JonahWeiland.com

If you’ve known me for a while then you also probably know I’m not a big fan of law enforcement officers. Generally speaking I’m distrustful and very much dislike cops and what not. While I’ve not had a run in personally, too many honest friends have been mislead and mistreated by cops in the past and I’m just wary of them as a rule. Of course, I know there are many good ones out there, but that doesn’t change the history I’ve seen with them in Los Angeles.

Yesterday afternoon I was leaving my comics shop on Ventura Blvd. and did a stupid thing – I did a two lane lane change RIGHT in front of an LA County Sheriff without a signal. While there wasn’t any traffic for me to be screwing up, it was rather blatant and well, he caught me. So, he got in behind me and as soon as the light turned green he threw on his lights and I pulled in to the MTA Bus Stop depot at the Universal City Subway station. I rolled down my windows, took my keys out of the ignition and threw them on the dashboard and sat there with my hands on the wheel, like I’m supposed to, as the officer walked over to my car. As he approached I said, “Wow, I did a stupid thing right in front of you, huh?”

The officer kinda chuckled and said, “Yeah. License and registration please.”

Which I gladly gave to him. I was very cooperative, seeing as how he “caught” me red handed. I handed all my info to him and he said, “Man, if you had done that on any other street I probably would let you off, but it was Ventura Blvd.” I said I understood and he went back to his car to write it all up.

About a minute later he walked back to my car and said, “You know what, I really don’t want to do all this paperwork, so how about I give you a parking ticket instead of a moving violation? It’ll save you like $150 and there’s no point on your record.”

Obviously I agreed, so he wrote me up for stopping in an MTA zone. $45. I’ve got no problem paying that over a $195 moving violation, plus traffic school. So, either I found one of the good cops, or one just too lazy to do all the paperwork. Either way, thanks good buddy.

… to enjoy the song “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by The Temptations as much as I do? As Mr. Huntington would say, “That’s a motherfucking song, motherfucker!” I mean, are The Temptations a band generally well respected, or are they a joke? I honestly don’t know, but I do know that’s a song, yo. A song.

Late last month HBO premiered “Left of the Dial,” their latest America Undercover documentary that takes a hard look at the rise, fall and rise again of nascent liberal talk show network Air America Radio. It’s a fascinating documentary not for it’s political leanings, but simply the unbelievable drama that if scripted you’d find hard to believe.

Soon before Air America Radio was to take to the airwaves I had lunch with an old radio buddy of mine. I asked him if he knew the people putting the network together and he said he didn’t personally, but knew them by reputation and had talked to a lot of people about it. I asked if he thought they knew what they were doing and he immediately responded, “Not at all.” When you watch this documentary and you see them in rehearsal and the first few weeks of broadcast, it becomes painfully clear my friend was right. The producers they hired for this network seem completely inexperienced. They don’t know how to handle talent and they freak in the most unhelpful ways during a crisis. The majority of the show hosts have no on air experience. From the top down, save Executive Producer Carl Ginsburg, it seemed like no one knew what the hell they were doing.

I recall listening to the network the first couple of days it was on in LA and was unimpressed by the quality of the broadcasts. Constant mistakes, dead air and what not. It was an inauspicious debut for the network that was under intense scrutiny.

Two weeks after they began broadcasting, word of bounced checks got out and the network lost two of their three affiliates – Los Angeles and Chicago. This is where the documentary gets REALLY good. The main guy behind the company, one Mr. Evan Cohen, is as far as we can tell a massive crook living in a dream world. Twice, on camera, they catch him blatantly lying to employees. In one scene he’s approached by one of their sales guys who said he just sold HP Computers a $6,000 ad sales contract. Moments later Cohen’s on his cell phone downstairs telling the caller they just landed a $16,000 contract with HP. They guy’s a major piece of shit having successfully pulled the wool over a lot of people’s eyes. It’s not clear if he stole money or not, but it is clear they never had as much money as he was saying they did.

The network is suddenly broke and there’s little to no money coming in. The staff is basically left to itself to figure out how to make it work. Ginsburg and previously silent investor Doug Kreeger take over, finding what little money they can just to keep themselves on one more day. The battle went from winning on the air to just how can we pay our health care insurance premium today? Ginsburg and Kreeger work their asses off finding any kind of investor they can and they do it with unbelievable calm in the face of a horrible storm.

What follows is an interesting success story. Trial by fire, to be certain. Suddenly producers who looked like children in a candy shop start acting like producers. Talk show hosts who were once without direction had focus and drive (Marc Maron’s transformation into a truly entertaining broadcaster is the most fascinating in my book). Although Randi Rhodes is still a highly self-centered, crazy woman.

Ultimately it’s an unqualified success story. The network continues on to this day, having secured a large sum of investment money late last year. The broadcasts are now heard in 41 markets and the programs are showing quite a bit of success. Al Franken’s program has been taking on Limbaugh with some noticeable success in a number of markets. They all still have a lot to learn about broadcasting, but the ship is running much smoother today than it was those first few months on the air.

If you’re a hard core right winger who hates hard core left wingers, the stars of this documentary are going to say things to piss you off, but you should be able to ignore it long enough to enjoy the drama of the situation. This really isn’t about the politics. It’s more like watching a car crash, multiple times, but ultimately the body shop puts things all right again.

Heh, so you know that Disney movie, you know the one with the two dogs that fall in love. You know, the one guys a trampy, scruffy little dude, while the other lady’s a hot little bitch, and they’re having a date behind some Italian joint. You know, the kind with spaghetti? So, these two dogs are eating a romantic spaghetti dinner behind this Italian joint, as dogs that are in love will do. So they’re eating this dinner and at some point both dogs happen to pick up the opposite ends of the same spaghetti strand. So, they’re chewing on this strand, kinda sucking it in the way you do when you’re eating spaghetti with people your familiar with. And suddenly the two dogs discover this strand is bringing each other’s mouths together and a kiss takes place, but the girl dog looks away after the kiss, shy and a little embarassed, while the male dog is like, “Oh yeahhHHHhhh, doggie!” You know that scene?

It gives me a little boner.

I remember this one time back in high school when the girl’s high school softball team were all on the school bus going to a game. I went to most of the games as I helped Mr. Huntington with general stuff and also was the stats keeper. We had an extra long drive home that day after a disappointing loss so Mr. Huntington, or Coach as we were supposed to call him on game days, entertained us with another one of his amazing stories.

When Mr. Huntington was a little boy, he said he was a scrawny kid. Skinny, small, kind of meek and really didn’t speak out much. He said he had a high squeaky voice, too. That’s all in stark contrast to the man I knew in high school – 6′ 3″, 300 lbs., lots of muscle, outgoing, with a deep booming voice and never afraid to express his opinion. Mr. Huntington said he could mark the exact time and place when all that changed and he became a man. No, it wasn’t the sudden onset of puberty, rather a happening of significant importance.

One summer when he was 12 his parents decided it would be fun to go to San Francisco for a few days to take in the sites. His mother and father, brother Roland and sister Sela all took in the sites. They visited Chinatown, rode on those crickety Cable Cars, took in a baseball game at Candlestick, checked out the Golden Gate Bridge and visited Alcatraz Island. Young Mr. Huntington was most excited about visiting Alcatraz Island, the famed former penal colony. He thought it would be so cool to visit a jail!

So they did. The family took the boat over to the island and the moment it landed, the young Mr. Huntington ran quickly up the ramp to take in the giant structure at the top of the Rock. He said it was just so great and his little mind was filled with imaginative stories. Stories about all the bad men and the bad things they did. The cell of the famous Birdman. The many riots and knife fights that broke out in the mess hall. The giant sized rats that were known to eat the inmates if they didn’t behave. Stuff like that. His parents caught up with him and they went on a tour of the island.

At some point during the tour young Mr. Huntington lost track of his parents, but he didn’t notice because he was having too much fun thinking about all the license plates they made in the metal shop. Oh, and how all the inmates liked to run their cups up and down the bars to make noise, which didn’t make sense to him because he thought innocently, “Wouldn’t you spill your milk if you were to bump your cup back and forth on the metal bars?”

At that point one of the students, Stacie, interrupted to explain to Mr. Huntington that your cup would have to be empty in order to do that, so there wouldn’t be any spilt milk. Mr. Huntington stood up, walked over to the driver, told him to pull the bus over, turned around to Stacie and ordered her off the bus. He proclaimed, “You’re gonna have to hitch a ride back to school, Ms. Stacie. I don’t abide no interruptions when I’m talking, especially no saucy milk talk.”

It really wasn’t a big deal as the bus had stopped at the base of the hill our school was on, so it was actually pretty damn funny. Stacie went along with it, but that meant she missed out on the rest of the story.

So, back to the story, young Mr. Huntington wandered around the Island alone, looking for evidence of a true Bird-man, completely oblivious of the world around him. He was too busy thinking about the beat downs given new convicts in the showers and all the ink the men applied to each other out in the quad than to be concerned with where his parents were or what else might be going on in the world. Then suddenly, he realized, he was completely alone on the island.

No one was there. Not a single soul. And the sun was starting to set.

A worried young Mr. Huntington ran around the island like a mad fiend, growing more frantic with every passing second. Not a soul could be found. He was forgotten. And he was starting to worry about those giant sized rats showing up, ready to eat his scrawny ass up. At that moment he decided to swim for it.

Now, young Mr. Huntington may have been a small child, but he could swim faster than a spastic crack addict with turrets. He wasn’t going to be trapped alone on that island with the “Rats of Gigantic Proportions with a Penchant for Man Flesh.” No way. So, he found his way to the highest cliff on the island, removed his shirt and shoes, and took a four-story dive right off the Rock in to San Francisco Bay.

And he began to swim. Those scrawny little 12-year-old arms of his pumped and pumped away as his scrawny little sticks kicked like a small outboard motor as he made way for shore. He could see the ship he was supposed to have taken in the distance, but they were getting further and further away. So he pushed harder and those spaghetti like little arms broke through the water faster than a ho working a corner on a busy Friday night in Hollywood.

He was about half way across the bay when his right arm, on the down swing, hit something kind of cold and fleshy. It was a shark. He’d heard that San Francisco Bay had the occasional shark, but he forgot about that completely. All he could think about was starving to death back on the Island being chased by mongoloid rat things. The shark was none to happy about being bonked on the head, so it turned around and headed for young Mr. Huntington. Seeing as how he’d already managed to swim half way across the bay, young Mr. Huntington was feeling mighty sure of himself and uttered these seven memorable words.

“You wanna dance, shark butt? Let’s go.”

The shark came at him and Mr. Huntington stared him right in the eye. He was sitting there, in the bay, treading water like a child possessed, arms out front ready to bring a 12 year old beat down on the shark. The beast got closer, when suddenly Mr. Huntington began to kick his thin little meat hooks as fast as can be. His body began to rise out of the water as the beast grew nearer. Right about when the shark was ready to bite in to the body of the child, the young Mr. Huntington kicked himself almost completely out of the water and suddenly came down with both hands in a fist directly on top of the shark’s head with all the strength he could muster.

The shark…was dead. Young Mr. Huntington killed that shark good.

Through sheer will and inner strength and with just one blow, young Mr. Huntington pummeled the shark not just in to submission, but in to whatever existed as an after life for the shark population. The shark floated there dead in the water, unmoving. Young Mr. Huntington knew no one would believe his story, so as he continued on his way to the shore, he dragged the shark behind him.

About an hour later he found his way to a local beach and swan ashore. His exhausted little arms and legs were practically useless, but he managed to drag not only himself, but a very large shark up on shore. He collapsed on the beach next to the shark and caught his breath. A moment later he rose to his feet, every movement a struggle of intense proportions. He pushed and finally righted himself to a standing position and yelled for all the world to hear.

“I declare from this day forward, on this day here at this beach with this shark at my side, I propose to never be forgotten again. The scrawny, meek little bitch I was is no longer. A new Gilbert Loquacious Huntington will emerge, big as a mountain, strong as a freight train and faster than lightning. I will become one bad ass motherfucker and no shark or no one is going to stop my ass.”

A couple of things need to be pointed out here. First, Mr. Huntington said that was the first time in his life he ever swore. Second, that was the first time us students learned Mr. Huntington’s full name. Gilbert Loquacious Huntington. He told us if we ever made fun of his name, called him by his real name in public or revealed it to anyone at the school, he’d run us over with his car. No one ever spoke of his name to the other students. The girls softball team, myself and the bus driver were the only ones who ever found out.

God, I really hope Mr. Huntington doesn’t read my blog, see that I’ve revealed his name to the world and try to run me over with his car. That would suck.

I’ve decided to begin a series of entries here about why Fry’s Electronics (check out their circa 1996 era Web site), a big electronics retailer, sucks. There’s a number of reason’s why they suck, but I’ll just go one at a time as I have my various run ins with them. You should know, though, that they are generally much hated, have terribly unhappy and grumpy employees and their prices aren’t quite as good as most people think they are.

This last Christmas I received a total of $170 worth of gift certificates to Fry’s. That’s fine by me as I end up having to buy shit from there far more often than I like. Last week Activision sent me a couple of PSP games for review, so I figured I finally had a good thing to spend my gift certificate money on. I went to Fry’s on Saturday, found a salesman and asked if they had any PSPs in stock. They sure did, BUT you had to buy an additional two games with your PSP purchase. Now, seeing as I already have two games and have no idea if I’m going to like this thing or not, I have no interest in purchasing more games yet. I asked the guy why and he said it had to do with the fact that the PSP is a scarce and highly in demand item. He’s full of shit and I told him so, considering the PSP seems to be available all over LA and no one else, that I know of, is forcing people to buy games as well. Completely stupid. And then I’m told that Sony’s been somewhat disappointed by initial sales of the product. I told him there’s no way I’d buy an overpriced bundle package from them and left.

That’s Fry’s for you, generally trying to make the buying experience that much worse for their customers. For more reasons why you shouldn’t shop there, click here. I’d also like to point out the following entry from that page:

As for the security people at the front door, you do not have to stop and have them search your bags. I have heard this from several sources. The reasoning is that Fry’s cannot search your property unless they have observed shoplifting. Detaining you otherwise is illegal. I personally have never had a problem ignoring the security people and just walking out. It’s bad enough that you must wait in long lines to pay for or return defective merchandise, but it’s worse that they treat people like criminals.

NOTE: this does not apply to membership stores like Costco since with Costco you agreed to the search in your membership agreement. Do not try just walking by the security person at Costco.

Don’t stop for these fuckers. They’re jackasses. Don’t stop for them at Best Buy, Home Depot or any other non-membership store. Like I’m going to voluntarily let someone delay me. Don’t think so, jackasses.

A couple of friends of mine just returned from their honeymoon in Italy. They left for the country before the Pope died, had this trip planned months in advance. While I haven’t had a chance to talk with them about their trip yet, I bet at the airport in Rome when the went to leave the country the government paid them $200 a piece just to show their grattitude for leaving their massively overcrowded city. “Really, we’re so happy you’re leaving. Please don’t return until a new Pope has been selected. Thank you for leaving Rome, home to Vatican City - it’s a big hat town.”