Fillmore Jive | Duluth Music, Politics and Ramblings

...a pretty funny--not to mention relevant since I was just in Illinois for a day--article in the New Republic. Actually, I talked to a couple of people around DePaul University and no one's really even paying any attention to the Obama/Keyes race it's so far gone.

Read about their debate here.

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James | 10/25/2004 12:18:00 PM

GBV OR Die: Part One

**Editors Note: This is the first of a two or possibly three part entry concerning the dates 10.21.2004-10.24.2004; specifically the set of events surrounding and including James Maryland's attendance at Guided By Voices shows in Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio. Proceed with extreme caution.**

Thursday, 2:30AM, Motel Room, Columbus, OH

Well, one show down and one to go.

Today I left Chicago at around 9:30am. Last night's Do Make Say Think show was, I'll have to admit, only halfway decent. I guess I just experienced them as a less talented Mogwai. Which isn't to say that I didn't like them--quite the contrary in fact--but I just think that the pretty parts weren't pretty enough and the aggressive parts were, I have to admit, pretty damn aggressive. When the band kicked the tunes into overdrive and started riffing heavily, I really dug it, but otherwise it was just ok. Still, I want to check their latest record out (which I would have bought had I not been cash strapped).

A quick comment on the audience: it was a bit odd for me to experience an entire crowd of hipsters. Sure, if you go to the right show at First Ave. you'll find 98% hipsters, but this was different for some reason. Probably because it was Chicago and probably because I just expect all big city types to be so sophisticated, but I guess it was nice to realize that I really am as cool as I think I am. Plus I felt really comfortable at the Empty Bottle--a mix between RT Quinlan's, The Anchor, and a graffiti marked East Hillside basement--where the beers were cheap as hell ($1.75 PBR) and the cocktails sufficiently heavy on booze.

Returning to my hostel room, I encountered two of my dorm-mates passed out, snoring uncomfortably loud. One of the guy's snoring sounded like--no fucking shit--he was blowing snot all over his face. The sound was very...how do you say...juicy? Yeah, I wanted to vomit. Luckily, the three PBR's and one whiskey at the Empty Bottle along with the one beer I drank on the hostel stoop hastened my slumber in spite the loathsome heathens I was forced to bed with.

As I said, I woke up early, ate breakfast at the Bourgeoisie Pig and took off for Columbus. I really hadn't realized what a long fucking drive Chicago to Columbus is and, even though I drove longer yesterday, it really took its toll on my sanity (due to this unfortunate circumstance, I didn't stop in Dayton to see if I could rip a page out of their telephone book with Bob Pollard's name, nor did I stop at Trader Vic's nor did I stop at the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame).

By the time I finally arrivedin Columbus--one hour later than I'd planned since I forgot that Columbus is on Eastern Time--all I could do was pass out in the double room that the dude at the front desk for some reason gave me.

Now the show: by far the drunkest I have ever seen Bob Pollard play. But first: Toby Sprout ruled. I've always enjoyed Sprout's songs and it baffles me why I've never picked up one of his solo discs. Tomorrow that all changes. Sprout's midwestern psych-pop has gotten so overshadowed by the GBV shadow it's almost criminal, so as penance I'm picking up Carnival Boy immediately. Bob joined the band onstage for "Awful Bliss" which was cool, but the highlight of Sprout's set was "A Good Flying Bird"--quite possibly the best GBV song of all (which, as you know, is saying quite a bit).

In the intermission between Sprout and GBV, Bob came onstage to introduce a small video montage in tribute to GBV's 21-year reign. Fittingly, two guys stood onstage with a huge white sheet because apparently no screen was available to project the film onto. During the ten minute long montage--which interspersed band photos and new age segue pieces a la SNL's Deep Thoughts (think: drop of water creating a calming rippling effect)--Bob narrated while various characters--like "Manager For Life" Pete Jamison--made appearances onstage.

By the time GBV ambled onstage, it was readily apparent to everyone in attendance that Bob was good and juiced well before the show. He was milling around boozing pretty freely, which translated into a carefree, loose first half of the show. However, things quickly devolved into a perfect rendering of every critic of GBV's wet dream. Bob was totally fucked up, spilling beer all over himself while sorta singing and humoring himself with drunken between songs rants that 1) clearly showed that he has bought whole heartedly into the GBV-as-perpetual-underdog myth and 2)underlined his (apparent) distaste for artists as diverse as the Black Keys, Mark Lanegan and Lou Barlow. In between people jumping onstage to sing with him, the band passing a couple bottle of Jameson into the crowd (they ripped off the Turtles!) and the drunken goon in my right ear the whole night (there always has to be that one guy you just wish would pass out), I kind of felt bad for Bob by the end. You could tell that, were he not onstage, he'd probably be curled up in an uncomfortable ball somewhere passed out.

However, against all odds--I actually mentioned to a guy that, after GBV left the stage, there was no way we were getting an encore tonight--Captain Bob and the troops appeared onstage for a three song encore. Unfortunetly, they ended the night with "Echoes Myron", which they'd just played about twenty minutes previous. The selection clearly caught the other band members off guard as Bob called out "This the last one; 'Echoes Myron' one, two, three, four...." and Doug Gillard gave him a "What the fuck?" look.

My impression: I had a great time, but I really hope that Bob got all his homecoming boozing (excessive even for GBV) and self-loathing--oh, did I forget to mention Bob's tirade about feeling like a monkey singing for his supper?--out of the way and that the Cleveland show goes off a bit more smoothly.

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James | 10/25/2004 09:51:00 AM

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

I'm Alive And Blogging From The Bourgeosie Pig...

which is a cool little coffee and sandwich place near my hostel. I made pretty good time, arriving around 8pm, and now need to find out how the hell to get to The Empty Bottle from here. Luckily, my hostel is very close to Depaul University and an El line.

Cheers!

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James | 10/20/2004 07:27:00 PM

I'll Climb Up On The Roof, Weep To Water The Trees

I'm leaving for Chicago in one half of one hour. I praying nothing will go wrong on this trip, but how could it right? It's destiny that I see the most incredible of incredible GBV shows on this mini-trip of mine.

Tonight I should arrive in Chicago around 9pm. Hopefully that gives me enough time to check into my hostel and figure out how to get to The Empty Bottle for Do Make Say Think. I've never seen or even heard--though have heard good things about--these guys, so it should be interesting.

The next morning it's off to Columbus. I still haven't figured out if OSU plays at home this weekend. If they do that should make the stay a bit more exciting.

Friday I'm staying in a hostel in the Cuyahoga Valley, about 22 miles outside of Cleveland. I think Friday I'm just going to bum around the countryside and see what kind of trouble I can get into.

Saturday I'm planning on hitting up the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before the show. GBV probably won't make it in there ever, but that's fine by me.

Sunday I'll try to make it home in one piece.

Wish me luck.

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James | 10/20/2004 07:46:00 AM

Monday, October 18, 2004

Postmodernism and All That Jazz

Here's a great article from The New Republic that I found very interesting. So much so that I've decided to pick up this book.

DAILY EXPRESS
True Value
by Gregg Easterbrook

Only at TNR Online
Post date: 10.18.04
t's encouraging that so many news organizations offered stories correcting the untrue or half-true factual claims made by both candidates in the presidential debates. My favorite was George W. Bush's claim that John Kerry voted to waive budget caps "two-hundred and seventy-seven times." That works out to more than once a month for Kerry's entire tenure in the Senate, which sounds implausible--unless Bush's figure is for procedural votes, not substantive votes. The president ought to know that not even the ponderous United States Senate calls the roll 277 times on any matter of substance. But Bush thought the line sounded good, so he used it regardless.

Is all that matters in contemporary culture whether a line sounds good? That's the thesis of an important, provocative new book, The Post-Truth Era, by Ralph Keyes. It's Keyes's thesis that in the current ethos, whether something is believed has become more important than whether it's true. Keyes cites psychological research showing that people lie far more often than we'd like to think--constantly telling petty lies they think will never be detected and often telling whoppers, even to friends and loved ones. One study showed that 28 percent of conversations among friends contained conscious lies, and 77 percent of conversations between strangers did so. The lies were on matters of substance, not just "your column is good today" and the many similar prevarications intended to avoid hurt feelings.

So perhaps Americans are no longer outraged when politicians lie because we lie so often in our daily lives. Much everyday lying, Keyes says, concerns constructing attractive pasts for ourselves. "I was the quarterback on my high school football team" or "I have a master's degree" or "I had lots of proposals of marriage" or many other claims along these lines are told both to impress others and to make ourselves feel our own pasts were richer or more accomplished. As Paul Auster has written, "Memory is the place where a thing happens for the second time." But not necessarily accurately. Americans like and even admire personal mythmaking and thus don't seem to object much when political figures lie to puff up their pasts. Lyndon Johnson, for example, constantly told audiences his grandfather died at the Alamo; his grandfather died at home in bed, but an Alamo myth made Texas voters more comfortable with LBJ. Jesse Ventura elaborately claimed to have been a Navy SEAL and to have fought in Vietnam. Keyes contends that neither claim was true--but the mythical Ventura had proven attractive to voters. LBJ and Ventura, it must be noted, came out ahead by presenting personal histories they may have wished were true.

There are many other examples, and The Post-Truth Era collects dozens, making it an invaluable compendium of the decline of respect for verity in modern culture. Today many would rather watch a docudrama, in which viewers have absolutely no idea what is historical and what is imaginary, than read carefully researched history. The made-up version is more interesting! Many would rather listen to Michael Moore or the Swift Boat guys--Moore on the left and the Swifties on the right being current exemplars of post-truth politics--since the sort of arguments in which it doesn't matter what is true are more fun than tedious accuracy. The really disturbing trend, Keyes argues, is that so many figures in contemporary politics, literature, journalism, and other fields get away with so much lying about themselves. The public appears to prefer the post-truth version.

Keyes blames the decline of respect for truth partly on intellectual modernism and postmodernism. Intellectuals, he says, crusaded to convince people that there are no absolute truths, that everything is contingent or based on frames of reference. Calamity descended as people actually decided to believe this. Postmodernism's worst idea has infected popular culture, and now millions of Americans and Europeans believe that nothing is really truth. Even though most people who watch docudramas or read self-serving "fictionalized" memoirs have never heard of Jacques Derrida or Paul Feyerabend, antitruth ideas they and others championed are loose in popular culture, driving discourse downward.

Since Derrida died nine days ago, it's fair to ask whether he should be assigned some blame for the post-truth state of public debate--intellectuals, after all, must accept responsibility if their ideas do harm rather than good. Derrida was a strangely polarizing figure: His followers considered him an oracle while his detractors viewed him with absurdly exaggerated alarm. Some of what Derrida maintained was inarguably true: for example, that writers can never really escape the confines of language structure nor free themselves of the conventional assumptions of society, which impose psychological limits on creativity. That's a powerful critique. Of course, if the critique is inarguably true, then how does it jibe with Derrida's additional contention that nothing can be inarguably true? Off you go into the postmodernism hall of mirrors, and pretty soon you are all the way back to fretting about whether the chair is actually there.

I think Derrida and others in his general camp do share some of the blame for declining public respect for the notion that some things are true and other things are not true. Intellectuals like to curse the benighted public for not grasping academic theories, but the worst aspect of postmodernism (which is now an old enough term that we ought to be saying aprés-modernism, perhaps) is that the public actually did grasp it. While the ideas of, say, metaphysicians currently have no bearing on public culture, the ideas of the deconstructionists and postmodernists are prevalent in movies, pop fiction, and politics. It's a worst-case outcome.

Though assigning Derrida some of the blame for the post-truth era, I would like to vindicate Werner Heisenberg, whose work is widely misunderstood, including by many well-educated people. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle holds that measuring certain systems alters the system, such that you can know either the position or the momentum of a subatomic particle but not both. Since Heisenberg began publishing his work in the 1920s, modern and then postmodern authors and thinkers have been insisting that the uncertainty principle is hard scientific evidence that no belief, statement, or even observation can be verified; nothing is definite, all is subject to uncertainty. This is total nonsense--because the uncertainty principle applies only to the quantum level, not the world of human senses.

Heisenberg's research concerned paradoxes of quantum mechanics, and quantum mechanics is the science of the incredibly small: of structures much, much tinier than atoms. For instance a "quantum leap" is an infinitesimally small subatomic transition, not a big jump as the term is commonly misused. At the quantum level, researchers observe many strange effects and can barely guess what they are seeing; for instance what the quark, the smallest observed unit of matter, is made of is anybody's guess. (My favorite theory is that quarks are made of very rapidly spinning nothing.) But quantum effects are never observed above the quantum level--that is, above the level of subatomic particles. Heisenberg's thesis has no relevance to the everyday world.

Here is an interesting paper on a University of California at Santa Barbara physicist who's been trying to determine why quantum effects are never observed in the macro world. Good luck, Professor Cleland, in puzzling this out. What matters is that nothing in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle applies to any object larger than a molecule. We may not be able to determine precisely where an electron is--but we know exactly where a rock, desk, or chair is. Uncertainty at the quantum level washes out when averaged across the quadrillions of quantum-sized particles in a baseball, whose position may then be precisely known. There is no uncertainty about most physics of the macro world, and no uncertainty about how we experience that world.

Theatergoers were done a great disservice by the recent hit play Copenhagen, which depicted a 1941 meeting in Denmark between Heisenberg and his teacher Niels Bohr and went on and on and on and on and on about how the uncertainty principle tells us that nothing is ever known or certain. I winced throughout this play regarding its distortions of science and wondered whether author Michael Frayn was a naïf with no grasp of physics or was deliberately misrepresenting physics in order to make his work trendy aprés-modernism. Critics who praised Copenhagen seemed to lack a grasp of physics too; I saw no review that noted the uncertainty principle has no application whatsoever to human experience. Audiences wanted, perhaps, to believe that science has proven there cannot be truth. I state, as an absolute truth, that this has not been proven and will never be proven. And I commend to readers The Post-Truth Era as an antidote.

Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor at TNR and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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James | 10/18/2004 01:48:00 PM

Friday, October 15, 2004

Cowards! They're All Cowards!

Like almost everyone else it seems, I read the inane--and actually quite hilarious--editorial in the highly esteemed Duluth News-Tribune on Tuesday.

The thing worked me into a bit of a lather, so I wrote a letter to the editor. I don't usually do this, but I happened to have an extra hour on my hands with nothing else to do. They even called me back to verify that the letter writer was indeed yours truly.

However, as of today--Friday--I've yet to see my letter to the editor printed. The omission could have something to do with the email address I used to send it, although if that's the case the DNT is even more petty than I'd previously been led to believe. In lieu of this thing ever seeing the light of day, I'll proudly present my witty rebuke to one of the lamest opinions I've ever read in a newspaper.

...

What just occurred is really strange and I have no explanation for it. Somehow the email that I sent to the DNT, where I wrote the letter, is missing. I cannot find it in any folders on any of my four different email accounts and now, it seems, my genius is forever lost on the public. If I manage to find out what the fuck happened to this thing I'll let y'all know.

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James | 10/15/2004 11:36:00 AM

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

This Column Frustrates Me...

becuase I feel like I should do something besides drinking coffee, writing letters to the editor, listening to music and playing online poker.

As Humans Are Hunted

Nicholas D. Kristof

NY Times

ARAWIYA, Sudan

Hawa Moussa Abdullah was lucky enough to survive the first round of murder here in Darfur, but all the international outrage at Sudan's genocide isn't helping her much. She and her four children are still having to live like hunted beasts.

She is one of more than 500,000 victims of the Darfur genocide who are beyond the reach of international aid. The inability to reach victims is one reason the United Nations describes Darfur as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

So Ms. Hawa and her children gather wild seeds to eat, and they huddle under trees at night. They live in constant terror that the Sudanese Army or the militia it financed, the Janjaweed, will find them and kill them all.

The Army and the Janjaweed attacked her village early this year. The thatched huts were burned, and village wells were filled with rubble or corpses. Ms. Hawa's husband disappeared and presumably was killed.

Most of the village's survivors escaped to Chad or to camps outside the cities. It is the frail - the young, the old, the infirm - who remain, stuck in a war zone with no way to flee. Ms. Hawa was heavily pregnant and could not make the journey to Chad, a four-day trip by camel.

So she hides with her children in the hills. She gave birth under a tree with the help of an elderly neighbor who was also too weak to escape. Ms. Hawa tries to nurse her baby daughter, but she has little milk and the infant is scrawny.

"It's like we're being hunted," said a woman from the village of Karakil, 60-year-old Kultuma Muhammad. "We're still staying outside, because of fear. We're terrified, and besides, our houses are burned."

The Sudanese government refuses to give me a visa so I came here on my own, sneaking across the border into Darfur from neighboring Chad.

The area is desolate and throbs with malevolence, with villages burned and abandoned and survivors hiding from the Janjaweed and the Sudanese Army. Tearing across the desert in a pickup truck, I see more gazelles than humans. When survivors see my vehicle, they tend to hide. And, frankly, when I see a man, my impulse is to hide as well. That makes interviews difficult.

This area is controlled, to some degree, by rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army. The rebels have also killed and robbed civilians, but not nearly as often as the Sudanese government. The limits of rebel discipline were underscored when I rolled up to a rebel checkpoint: the commander scolded me for not calling ahead because, he said, the rebels might have shot me by mistake.

The stories of those hiding in Darfur are heartbreaking. Zahra Mochtar Muhammad, from the village of Darma, saw the Janjaweed kill her husband. In the chaos of the gunfire and burning huts, she and her children ran in different directions, and she lost her 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.

Later, she found her children's bodies where they had died of thirst. They were together - the older one had apparently tried to protect her brother.

Ms. Zahra's family had owned 100 camels, 50 sheep and 150 cattle - a net worth of more than $100,000 - but now she is a homeless, penniless cavewoman. She and her four surviving children, ages 5 to 10, live furtively under trees or in abandoned huts, surviving on wild seeds.

"If I had transport, I would go to Chad," she said. But she and two other widows' families have only one donkey among them. Even if the adults and older children could walk to safety, the younger ones could not.

It's progress that the world has denounced the genocide without waiting the customary 10 years before wringing its hands in regret. But there are many other steps the United States could take: a no-flight zone, an arms embargo, an asset freeze on businesses owned by Sudan's ruling party, and greater teamwork with African and Islamic countries to exert more pressure on Sudan.

President Bush is already in the forefront of the world leaders who have addressed the slaughter in Darfur, and he has done far more than President Clinton did during the Rwandan genocide. But there is so much more the United States can still do.

Mr. President, you pride yourself on your willingness to stand up to evil - so why do you remain so passive in the face of such evil?

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James | 10/13/2004 09:59:00 AM

Monday, October 11, 2004

Feed Me Quickly, Kill Me Softly

I finally got a chance to watch Supersize Me last night and, despite my better judgements, found the movie somewhat compelling, mostly entertaining, but completely thought provoking.

I mention my better judgements, because when I first heard of the lawsuits filed by the two women against McDonalds--which played a minor role in the movie--I found them terribly frivolous; I found the editing in the movie itself frightfully manipulating; and the obvious agenda of the "docuemntary" maker, which played a central role in this film, seriously tainted its objectivity. It was clear from the first couple of minutes that this film was made with a specific end game in mind and through the manipulation of events that end game was achieved: the demonization of the fast food industry (there's really no scene more indicative of this than the one where Spurlock pukes out his Range Rover door from over eating, not--as he'd like you to believe--McDonalds' food).

I understand the argument made in the movie that parents and children (especially children) pose little, if any, match for the advertising onslaught that the food industry barrages them with. The figure used in the film was something like 10,000 commercial images/messages to 1,000 for the average parent. Those are nasty odds, but that presupposes that the strength of a parents' message is on par with that of the commercial. I don't buy that and, moreover, think that the strength of the responsible parent's message (the key word=responsible) far outweighs the message of the advertiser. Peer pressure cannot be overlooked here--the insistence of the child's peer group to meet, gather at or around these places--but again, it's a parent's responsiblity to instill in their child proper eating patterns and, maybe more importantly, choices. Providing children a wide array of eating choices--above and beyond frozen pizzas, mac and cheese, and microwaveable meals--exposes the child to a pattern of eating immeasureably more nutritional, interesting and beneficial to their overall health than any fast food restaurant could (a proper discussion of time constraints on parents is needed here, but I have to go to work, sorry).

I think that the greater issues here, which Spurlock certainly alludes to, remain that of corporate responsibility and the relative ease with which corporations and their lobbyists are able to manipulate and essentially buy into our system of governement (I probably need not point out: to the acute detriment of the greater populace they're elected to serve). Here's the irony from the ongoing tobacco wars: since most rational people alive in the latter half of the last century on assume/know cigarettes are bad--that they will in most cases kill us if we smoke them--it seems bewildering how the tobacco industry always remained essentially unregulated. Moreover, even when regulation was undertaken it usually only served (intentionally or not) to strengthen the existing tobacco companies (ex: taking commercials off television limited competition and warnings on packs insulated companies from liability for a long time).

The same thing is now happening with the food industry. We all know high fat food is bad for us--in fact causing an epidemic--but only recently has our government done anything to acknowledge the problem. Possibly even more damning however, is the American public's reluctance to admit there's problem, because (gasp!) that implies that Americans can't make the right decisions for themselves which, in turn, threatens our innate belief in free will. Americans don't want people telling them what to eat, not to smoke, or how to dress. They get even testier when the government steps in and tells them what to eat or not to smoke ("It's un-American dammit!").

The problem is that--whether we're willing to admit it or not--there are people in the cigarette, food and clothing industries paying some person, in some room somewhere, billions of dollars to make you to buy their jeans, smoke their cigarettes, and eat their burgers at the risk of social isolation for those who refuse.

Though the message is usually not that literal (though if you watch pro football, and don't regularly party with two buxom blonde twins, Pete Coors has a solution), it's certainly there and you've got to be proactive in combating that message. Especially if you're a parent.

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James | 10/11/2004 11:39:00 AM

Friday, October 08, 2004

Stop Me If This Sounds Familiar

Has this place ever been stable? Maybe at one time, but not in the last ten years since I've been going there. Here's one account of the current situation and another.

In other news, I sure am disappointed I missed Low last night at The MAC. I'm sure that it was the absolute height of Duluth cool.

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James | 10/08/2004 12:31:00 PM

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Hello, Goodbye

Last night upon arriving home from a long night slanging booze to residents of the East Hillside I found out that my GBV road trip will be, in all likelyhood, a solo endeavor. Oh well, I'm going to have a hell of a time anyway, but it woulda been cool to road trip with someone other than him, them and them.

For the past five months construction crews have essentially taken up residence in my back yard. Their mission: to repave Arrowhead Road, install a side walk, and transform it into a three lane road. Rumor has it that the construction is almost completed, though I have my doubts. During these five months I've had to deal with power outages, internet difficulties, telephone difficulties, tons of dust from the unpaved road and now, this morning and afternoon, a machine that does god-knows-what shaking my entire house. It's more than a bit disconcerting to awake at 9am only to feel as if you're living the shadow of Mt. St. Helens or directly above the St. Andreas fault line. I pray this road get done mighty quickly.

Go Twins!

I didn't watch the Vice Presidential debates due to a conspicuous (and annoying and yes, I'm a whiner) lack of a television set at my job. Everything that I've managed to browse this morning seems to have the debate at a draw, saying essentially that Cheney made up for Bush's terrible performance and that Edwards was able to clarify some of Kerry's positions that the Republicans have been spinning like mad for the last couple of days. Every article seemed to agree that no one would even remember this thing due to the Presidential debate in a couple of days. So it goes.

Tonight I find out the fate of Duluth's Transistor Transmission (don't even bother to try to look at the thing, because you can't). The last month or so the Transistor has been plagued by, not only bad communication from the top down, but the top's overwhelming work schedule which has essentially shelved it.

For those unfamiliar with the publication, it's a one-sheet that has a calendar of the week's events interspersed with three columns of varying length by five of the areas finest writers. I like the damn thing and would really like to see it keep going and maybe even expand. I'm meeting with some people involved at 8pm tonight to see what's up. Let's hope everything works out well.

Finally, please go visit Perfect Sound Radio if you have the time. Broadcasts for the time being are at 4pm and 11pm CST, but in the future I hope to expand considerably. Today's show features the Shins. I was at this First Ave. show and had a great time despite the sometimes annoying feedback of the monitors onstage.

Oh yeah, the new Interpol record blows my mind, er...I really like it.

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James | 10/06/2004 11:33:00 AM

Monday, October 04, 2004

Perfect Sound Radio

If you're looking for something to listen to at 4pm everyday this week, head on over to Perfect Sound Radio, click on the High Quality link on the right hand side of the screen and enjoy!

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James | 10/04/2004 01:11:00 PM

Friday, October 01, 2004

Let the Spin...Begin!

Yeah, I watched the debates just like everyone else, but that's not what I'm talking about. Wednesday night, whilst working a quiet, terribly monotonous 4-10 shift at the liquor store, someone robbed us (there's nothing like a good old fashioned robbery to break up the monotony huh?).

Yep, despite the fact that there were three of us on duty at the time, someone managed to get into our back room, open the unlocked safe and make out with less than $10,000 and more than $5,000--all without our knowledge. How could this happen? Believe me, I do not know. However, as my title would suggest, the spin on 4th St. has begun and though I've heard nothing directly, I imagine that it's not pretty.

If I've not detailed the gossiping that runs rampant on 4th St. before, here's a quick primer: there is no detail so minute that it cannot be of some interest to some schmuck on 4th St. for their ridicule, amusement and eventual gossip. It happens all the time, almost everyday of the week. Something as big as a robbery will probably keep these people talking for months, if not years, about possible scenarios involving god only knows who. Believe me when I say that this will, unfortunately, take on grassy knoll type proportions on 4th St. Sure, we all know that Carlos Marcello and his boys took care of Kennedy, but getting to the bottom of the Last Chance robbery won't be so simple.

The details: my co-worker made a deposit into our safe at approximately 8:30pm. He didn't lock the safe (a pretty common occurrence) and when he went back to do whatever else it is that he does at around 9:20 there's no deposit bag, plus another containing cash and checks missing. He freaks.

From 8:30pm on there were, amazingly, no visitors to our back room and, we figured, no more than 5 minutes when at least one of the three of us was back there.

The camera imbroglio: well, we've got 'em, they just haven't been taping since March. So what, you say? Well, there's a camera pointed directly on the entrance to the office. If those cameras would have been taping we'd know exactly who entered that office and at what time.

How the hell did someone get back there, grab the cash, and get out without anyone's knowledge? That's the million dollar question.

There's a theory that the perp used our wine cellar--which connects to our basement inventory area, which contains a stairway to the back room--to gain access to the back room. The theory goes that the perp snuck into the wine cellar, made his/her way through the inventory area, up the back stairs, into the office, and departed either back the way he/she came or just walked non-chalantly out into the store from the back room.

I have a really hard time buying this. First, withour prior knowledge, I'm not sure how this person would know how to navigate the inventory area and also know that it had stair access to the back room area. Second, the getaway would have taken considerable balls either way the person chose to leave. This, due to the fact that myself and another co-worker were in the inventory area three different times from 8:00pm-9:30. Granted it's easy to hide down there--doubly if you have prior knowledge of the area--but I still find it pretty unlikely. Choosing to walk directly out of the office into the store seems like suicide because there are just too many opportunities to be spotted by someone.

Three other questions inevitably need to be discussed. First, how did the person in question know that the safe was usually unlocked? I'm not sure how long it takes master safe crackers to bust open a locked safe, but I've seen enough caper movies to know that they don't do it during store hours with three people on duty who are more likely than not to walk into the back room at some time. This leads me to believe that this person knew that we kept our safe unlocked most of the time which--without pointing fingers--disturbs me greatly.

Second, how did the person in question know that our cameras were not taping? Our monitor is clearly visible by the front desk for anyone casing the joint to see. There are no discernible clues just by looking at it that would tell you it's not taping, however I suppose one could probably just take the chance that the cameras are more a deterrent that video log of everyone coming and going. Intuition tells me that most cameras aren't taping, are just there to scare people, so I've got less of a with this question than I do the first or the last: if you're going to rob us why not do it when there are two people working?

If this person was a professional and cased the place beforehand, why not pull the job on a Monday or Tuesday when there are two people working instead of three? Say you have knowledge of the inventory room and somehow know the safe is usually open and that the cameras aren't taping. You've got everything in your favor except the chance of detection, which, with only two people around would significantly decrease in turn making getting in and getting away that much easier. Would a professional really take as big a risk as going into a place with three people on duty when they could have just as easily gone in with only two people working? It doesn't seem likely to me, which only furthers my suspicions.

After the police showed up they questioned the owner--who came down as soon as we figured out we'd been robbed--for while before taking down all three of our names and personal information. They searched my co-worker and my bags as well as all three of our cars and came up empty.

Side note: Even though you know you're innocent, having the police search your car is a nerve wracking experience. Even having them go through my bag had my palms sweating and my heart racing purely because...who knows what they'll find! I haven't been as thankful as I was when the cops gave me the all clear in some time.

I'm glad the cops came up emptyhanded in our cars, but I know that won't stop the persistent rumors that this was an inside job. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of evidence that points to it not being an inside job.

My verdict on the debates: I think Kerry came out looking good. Bush hammered him pretty relentlessly on the war, at times asking how he hopes to build a broader coalition when he publicly savages Iraq as "the wrong war." I think Kerry handled himself well clearly discerning his opinion that the war was wrong, waged under false pretenses, and that Iraq clearly posed no immediate threat to the US, but that the only option left was to win. I think he had a bit harder time defending his vote for the war, but again, the false pretenses argument holds up well.

Watching the after coverage was sickening, as almost every pundit talked almost exclusively about "the big sound bites" and partisans on both sides seemed relieved that their man avoided "a big mistake" a la Bush I looking at his watch.

From everything I've read (and what I saw with my eyes) people seem to be generally pleased with Kerry's performance, which makes me happy. I just hope that translates to a win in November--the only thing that really matters.

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James | 10/01/2004 09:38:00 AM