What was it they taught us back in J-school? If a dog bites a man, it’s not a story. If a man bites a dog, that’s a story. Well, if it bleeds, it leads. Life imitates art once again, this time in Brazil. Here it is in black and white and red all over:
Thu Jul 24, 11:51 PM ET
SAO PAULO, Brazil - An 11-year old boy is in Brazil’s media spotlight after sinking his teeth into the neck of a dog that attacked him. Local newspapers reported on Thursday that Gabriel Almeida was playing in his uncle’s backyard in the city of Belo Horizonte when a pit bull named Tita lunged at him and bit him in the left arm.
Bluegrass band performs at historic venue in Bean Blossom, Indiana. This photograph was taken a couple of summers back. Hard times have hit the country concert facility. The venue is now closed and looking for an angel investor.
Great news! I just learned that I’ve inherited $2.5 million from a sick English woman whom I’ve never even met. It turns out that the ill old gal inherited the money from her recently passed spouse, and has been instructed to leave me all this dough because of my good works.
I’ve been scratching my head trying to figure out what good works I’ve done that would have merited such generosity, but then I remember what I learned during my boyhood back in Indiana: God Works in Mysterious Ways.
Not only does Barack rock, he’s a Dylan freak — just like you and me! Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner shares this and much more in his just-published conversation with Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. The RS Editor/Publisher/Founder asks the candiate about receiving an endorsement from Bob Dylan:
“I’ve got to say, having both Dylan and Bruce Springsteen say kind words about you is pretty remarkable. Those guys are icons.
Do you have any favorite Dylan songs?
I’ve got probably 30 Dylan songs on my iPod. I think I have the entire Blood on the Tracks album on there. Actually, one of my favorites during the political season is “Maggie’s Farm.” It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric.
It is midpoint between day and night
In the still quietude of June afternoon
Two seasons have passed
Two seasons to go
And so, while the cicadas pulse in the cornfields surrounding me,
I pause to take stock. Tie my shoes. Pull up my socks.
Dust off my shoulders and slap my hat.
I’ll not tarry too long before I hit the road again
And this moment is lost to all but these chicken scratches
But for now, I smell the air
And realize that this is all there is
All there ever was or is likely to be
Life
Happening now in a theater near you
In a cubicle, carport, lunch counter, truck stop
There.
If you take a long, slow breath
Hold it in
And squint till you can’t see but a faint shadow through your eye lashes
There, you just might see it
For yourself
Before it was beaten out of me
Before they taught me to color inside the lines
Raise my hand, and wait to be called upon
Before I was schooled to stand up straight
Avoid chewing gum; speak when spoken to
Before being trained to respond to bells
I learned to cipher my words
With poetry and slang and gibberish
Masking the fullness of my feelings
With oblique language
And casual nonchalance
Before my windows were walled in,
With self-medication
Sullen silence and cloudy self-pity
I used to speak directly to God
Connecting to the cosmic voice
Each night, sweaty underneath
The quilted bedspread
I called out to the creator in my head
And God he spoke back to me
In echoed tones and repeated phrases
Like the reverberating sounds
From Drive-In speakers:
Or the call of the bluebird:
Never forget, never forgive
the dispassionate void
the feeling of without
the empty solitude
alone in the dark before sleep
the longing to long
the desire to desire
is in and of itself
passion
Just what America needs, a little shot of Gonzo journalism to help us get straight during this election year madness. I can’t wait to see the new documentary about the life and high times of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
As your attorney, I advise you to make plans to see this film…
The trailer for Gonzo, the new documentary about the late, great Hunter S. Thompson, looks incredible. The film was directed by Alex Gibney and narrated by Hunter’s friend Johnny Depp. (Screenshot from the trailer: photo (c) 1977 lynn goldsmith/corbis.) Hunter has been gone for three years now. I miss him. The trailer alone reminds me why. Link(Thanks, Gabe “Tune Up Media” Adiv!)
No, No, I am not referring to the inveterate liars and Republican scandal mongers Karl Rove, Roger Ailes or Bill O’Reilly. According to Reuters, the right-wing tower of Babel is literally a nest full of blood-sucking parasites!
Fox News Worker Sues Over Office Bedbugs
Jane Clark, a 12-year veteran of Fox News, says she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after being bitten by bedbugs at work. Clark is filing a lawsuit against the owner of the Manhattan office tower where she works, claiming the building was not treated for months.
This weekend marks the unofficial start of Summer. Pools across this great land open, bathing suits put on for the first time. Yee haw. Break out the beach balls, ice down the beer, fire up the grill and store the socks for another season. This Spring has been particularly cool and wet in NYC, so I’m ready for some heat.
I’m originally from Indianapolis, and back home in Indiana Memorial Day is synonymous with the Indy 500, or what we Hoosiers like to call the world’s largest cooler sport. Sadly, I’ll not be able to join my tailgating, box lunch-eating friends for their Race Day infield debauchery. Instead, I’ll stay close to home here in Jersey City. I’ve been promising myself a day of late sleep and no plans. Turn off the phone, stay off the computer, and generally chillax.
Our blogging buddies at Free Pamphlet Publishing (www.freepamphlet.wordpress.com) will be celebrating by putting together a Memorial Day special edition, which should appear this weekend. They tell me that there will be contributions from some special guest bloggers, so be sure to check that out.
In the meantime, enjoy the beachball photo, courtesy of Citizen Image (www.citizenimage.com).
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the crazy mom in Missouri (talk about the ’show me’ state) who set up a fake MySpace profile in order to torment her teen daughter’s rival. Mom decided that the best way to help her daughter negotiate the tricky waters of teenage angst and the pressures of puberty was to assume a fake identity as a ‘hot guy’ in order to then send harassing and humiliating messages to a young 13-year-old girl. The victim of this vitriol became so distraught she ended up committing suicide.
Talk about socializing bad behavior. Life lessons to include clever ways to employ lying, cheating, intimidation and dirty tricks to get what you want — I guess mom just wanted to be sure that her daughter had all the proper skills needed to lead a successful adult life.
If you somehow missed this sordid piece of Americana, please read on…
MySpace Hoaxer Indicted in Teen Suicide Case
A 49-year-old Missouri woman accused of pretending to be a love-struck teenage boy on News Corp.’s MySpace and driving a 13-year-old girl to suicide with cruel messages is being indicted on federal charges. Social-networking sites are under pressure to crack down on cyber-bullying.
Awoken in the dawn of sleep
bombs bursting in mid air
To my naked feet I leap
to investigate the scare
Post 9/11 my nightly drill
one eye open, bed near cell
Last night Lady Liberty and I
were roused by rockets red glare
I grab my digi-cam and snap away
Capture the New York festive air
here’s a blog op, point and click
what the hey, this is it!
Statistics will tell us that the majority of blogs are personal in nature. Millions of people around the world take to the typepad every day, twittering away about the dullest details of their daily lives.
Opening my Facebook page each morning, I am greeted with a news feed of non-noteworthy activity of faint friends and business acquaintances: Marcy is feeling her oats; Janet is having another latte; Jake is blogging about Brooklyn; Rip is tearing it up.
Why do I care? I don’t know, but I do. I regularly check the profiles of ex-lovers and former colleagues, not with any intention of making contact; I have no desire to reconnect or even to reminisce. I am just a curious yellow voyeur. I enjoy the fact that I can browse the photos from last week’s picnic, or vicariously enjoy the wedding festivities of the most casual acquaintance: though I wasn’t close enough to merit an invite to the reception, I did get to see the bride, and while I don’t know the family, it was fun to see them all dressed up in their Sunday best.
The blogging habit has been a natural one for me to acquire. I have since childhood been an obsessive keeper of journals. I keep a file cabinet bursting with moleskins, binders full of scribblings, pages of poems, thoughts, and daily drivel.
I journal compulsively for an audience of one – myself. I do not share my notebooks, and , despite a background in journalism, do not harbor any serious pretensions of publication. I simply put pen to paper in hopes of divining some patterns; I long to put some order to the cacophony of thoughts and the randomness of life’s curious curveballs.
Occasionally, I get a comment on my blog posts. It is always surprising — and edifying — to make connections with strangers based solely upon the synergy of search terms – the coincidence of keywords. We are all looking for connections.
Like the proverbial message in a bottle, I post and pitch my little contributions into the choppy waters, and wait. A day, a week, a lifetime, for the echo of the cosmic giggle to ping me back.
It has long been known that on the Internet no one knows you are a dog.
Today, with the widespread adoption of web 2.0 tools and technologies, the rapid dissemination of false and malicious misrepresentation and the attendant fallout can be widespread and instantaneous.
Two episodes this week bring this home for me. One, well-known in the blogosphere, has to do with marketing guru and rabid self-promoter Seth Godin, who felt entitled to write about Twittering, despite the fact that he does not Twitter http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/02/02/when-seth-godin-isnt-seth-godin/
AND that in fact someone else Twitters in his stead.
The second episode took place at my workplace, where one young man took it upon himself to create a twitter account in the name of an older colleague. He then, in the name of this older, married man, began a campaign of sending somewhat provocative Twitters to young women throughout the office. A wild buzz ensued, with outrage, disbelief, and then an ongoing game of whodunit when the web-savvy gals figured out the old guy probably wasn’t really behind the offensive texts.
Last night the drama escalated when the old guy’s wife, who was innocently Googling her husband’s name (??) came across one of the offending Twitter posts. She flipped, and after chewing his ass out, the old guy called the boss and the shit hit the fan, sending reverberations bouncing from cubicle to cubicle. This morning, the young whippersnapper has confessed, and apologized to the old guy. All is seemingly back to normal, however, I can’t help but wonder how many similar Twitter dramas are happening across the blogosphere right now…
I was only 8 in 1968 when Dr. King was murdered, but I clearly remember watching the images flicker across the black and white set in my parents’ bedroom. My family stood around open-mouthed, not fully understanding the impact of the events in Memphis.
First the shock that another voice of peace had been silenced, then the fear that America was spinning out of control, and the very real feeling that something BIG was coming down. Notions of conspiracy, and of revolution, and talk of what we would do if the violence reached us.
America burned in the days to follow. One hundred cities saw rioting. Days later, driving through the gutted, burned streets of Cincinnati with my Uncle Joe and Grandpa Sandy, we surveyed the damage. It felt surreal. It felt like a War Zone.
My Rabbi at the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation had marched with Dr. King, identifying with the civil rights struggle as so many liberal Jews did. He spoke to our congregation about the widening division between Black and White, rich and poor, capital and labor. He preached the need for involvement. I embraced that notion of social activism, and made a commitment that I would be part of the solution, not the problem. A commitment that eventually led me to join the Peace Corps and serve as a volunteer in Central Africa for 2 years.
So it is 40 years later, and the cities of America have long since stopped smoldering. And yet, while much progress has been made, the same struggle for human, civil and economic freedom continues to rage on. Today a stifling political correctness pervades our culture. Gone is the heady sense of freedom and potential that the Sixties and its imminent change suggested. Today our ‘leaders’ feed us a steady diet of fear and fabrication. Tracking chips in our passports, and invasion of our privacy, and armed soldiers on our streets and in our subways is a fair exchange, we are told, for a sense of security. The enemy is terror, and he is everywhere and coming for us soon. We are engaged in a moral war, and yes, a very real global war as well.
The prospect of our first Black President gives me occasion for hope. Barack Obama is a man who epitomizes the social activism we espoused back in those brutal days. His candidacy suggests that the country might just be ready to transcend the ugliness that drove the events of that April day back in 1968. One can only hope.
Happy anniversary, Dave! Here’s a small item that ought to be in a blog somewhere:
“26 years ago yesterday marked the premiere edition of the first (and last) issue of Rot Potato, the infamous April Fool’s Day parody of Hot Potato. This Dud Spud Publication featured the first article I had the pleasure of publishing from a young I.U. journalism student named David Rheins. “The Saga of the Tainted Tater” was an inauspicious start for the young Rheinster who later became one of the top names in the infamous Indianpolis alternative monthly, Taboo Magazine, along with Jack Merde, Tim Brickley and other colorful characters of the day…”
– Don Berry, Former April Fool’s Day Publisher of The Sagabore (1976-83),t he Retro Stupid News (1979), Rot Potato (1982) and The Indianapolis Scar (1983); Founder / Publisher / Editor-in-Chief of Taboo Magazine (1981-83), Meridian Magazine (1983-85), Poor Jack’s Paper (1979-80) and The Bloomington Examiner (1976); originator of The Broad Ripple Music Festival (Indy, 1983-85), The Sixth Street Music Festival (Austin, 1985) and Nuke The Race buttons and T-shirts; Associate Publisher of the first Indianapolis Dining Guide (1978); Founder / Publisher / Editor of Indianapolis Night Life (1984 and 1985); unofficial World’s Record Holder for nonstop Television Watching (Bloomington, 1978 — 106 hrs 27 min); and stunt diver / body double and extra in “Breaking Away” (1978 — Winner of Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay). There’s more, of course — The Poor Jack’s Film Series, the Jack Merde Great America Dream Series published in Fun City!, Primo Times, The Ryder, Santa Barbara News & Review, The Milwaukee Journal America, and others; staff writer for the Indiana Daily Student and The Brownsburg Guide; and any number of live music events and promotions from New Wave Fashion Contests to the Counter-Inaugural Ball. Says Berry, “Everything that’s come since has been more or less boring in comparison.”
All that time in cubicles
has made our racers anxious
They honk and weave
then flip the bird
in theater cantankerous
Today I took a mid-day ride
and nearly lost my life
A large-framed man
in a too-small car
cut me off on the Garden State
He desired my place in lane
first sped up, then hit the brakes
I swerved and skidded to avoid a scene
and the loss of time that an accident takes
He waved his finger
Fuck you he screamed
red-faced and bloated
behind the Kia’s tinted screen
I breathed
out the stress
and in the bliss
before I saw the exit
that I had just missed
New Jersey doesn’t care about convenience
ten mile breaks before any off ramps
and then you end up behind mom in the mini van
at CR-657 and the Junction of 22 West
