When people who are my parents' age think of Gordon Jump, they probably think of the Maytag repairman, a man who had nothing to do because of the reliability of the product.

When people my age think of Gordon Jump, they probably think of him as a bicycle shop owner who tried to molest Arnold Jackson and his friend Dudley on Diff'rent Strokes.

I'm having trouble thinking of him as both of these things.

Labels: Gordon Jump, random thoughts

OK, I don't know how I'm just hearing about this, but apparently, there was a riot at my high school:

SPRING VALLEY, N.Y. (CBS) ? Police in Rockland County arrested more than a dozen students at Ramapo High School after a huge fight in the school's cafeteria sent several teenagers to the hospital.

School officials said a fight that started over the weekend, but continued Monday during school hours.

In fairness to my alma mater, it wasn't really much nicer when I went there. I remember a time around winter break that my 10th grade English teacher rushed us into the room and locked the door behind us, saying kids tended to get crazy right before school breaks started and us pretty much laughing out loud, right before we heard a big commotion in the hall, looked out the glass of the door and saw two kids just punching the shit out of each other. So, needless to say, this is not a new problem they're dealing with. They think this may be gang-related, to which I say, "Uh-duh."

But whatever. Here's the best part of the article. It says that the school suspended all of the kids arrested for 5 days. 5 DAYS?!?!? Way to lay down the law, Ramapo Senior High School. When I was there, if you cursed at a teacher, it was pretty much guaranteed that you'd get suspended for a couple of days. It may not have been a really good, clean, well-mannered school, but you could always count on them doling out a good dose of punitive judgment. They coiuld have at least given them a month or something. What do you have to do to get expelled, organize a mass suicide?

Labels: high school

Is there anything more frustrating than being out of town when you don't want to be out of town anymore?

My grandmother passed away this morning, and I'm here in New Orleans. I saw her a couple of weeks ago and we've all been waiting for this since my granddad went two years ago this May, but I just want to get home. But since Katrina, there are fewer flights in and out of here, so the best that I could do was get out a couple of hours earlier than I was originally supposed to.

And while it's really weird and probably selfish, I can't help but think just one thing: I'm out of grandparents now.

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Update 2:51 CDT: Due to "weather" in the NYC area, the one-way flight that I spent $500 on to get home a few hours early has been delayed to 4:41pm from 1:41pm CDT. Apparently, it's windy there. So, I'm sitting here in the airport watching a short order cook try grill a hamburger, but instead set the grill on fire.

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Update 4:41 CDT: We're supposed to be taking off now. We are not.

They actually haven't made an announcement about what's going on in at least an hour, which makes sitting here so much easier.

And as I type this, someone came and told us that they're going to start boarding us.

My favorite part about waiting to get in the plane is watching all of the people that need overhead space because they've taken all of their worldly belongings on the plane jockey for position in front of the ticket taker station. If airlines ever got smart about this, they'd get a bouncer and actually bounce people who are trying to board but haven't been called. I think I'd make a great ticket bouncer because I'm the kind of guy that gets off on having even the smallest amount of power.

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Update 5:43 CDT: Just kidding.

As it turns out, per FAA regulations, if our flight attendants take the flight with us, they will have have been working too many hours in a row. OUr flight has been pushed back to (at least) 7:00pm CDT. This means two things:

1) They have to fly in a new set of flight attendants from Houston (which is roughly 90 minutes away).

2) I will now officially be taking off later than the flight that I switched from, so that I could get out early.

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Update 6:14 CDT: Someone just sat down near me and said, "I just got on this flight, and it's going to wind up saving me some time today."

I said, "I wouldn't count on it."

And then I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Labels: air travel, Grandma, New Orleans

On Sunday, I flew down to New Orleans to attend the AdMonsters Publisher Forum. I'm sure that I've made stupider decisions than staying up until 5am gambling at Harrah's, then eating four Krystal sliders at 5:30am. However, I cannot remember any of them, because my brain is sad.

I have had the chance to enjoy a very good cigar (see below):


[Photo appears courtesy Joey Trotz]

I will now end this post because I can't think of any more words.

Labels: cigars, gambling, New Orleans

We're watching the hockey game last night, and one of the Rangers hops on a turnover, skates in toward the net and beats the goalie to score. My wife watches the replay and then says, "Wow, that was unassisted. Nice goal."

In my world, that's just about the most awesome thing ever.

Labels: hockey, New York Rangers

OK, this one made my eyes bleed. From the New York Times:

A 9-year-old girl who was carrying twins, and whose stepfather is suspected of raping her, underwent an abortion on Wednesday despite complaints from Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church.

It goes on to say that the girl was 80 pounds and in her 15th week of pregnancy. There's literally smoke coming out of my ears, because my brain is having trouble processing all of this. Apparently, in Brazil, abortion is illegal, but the courts can rule that you can get one if the fetus isn't viable or the mother may be in danger. Now, this is just me, but if a 9-year-old carrying twins doesn't meet the second criterion there, then I'm going to have to re-evaluate my whole worldview.

Secondly, even for a 9-year-old carrying twins, isn't 80 pounds a little bit heavy? I'm a dude, was always on the north side of the 50th percentile for people my age while growing up, and wasn't close to 80 pounds in the 4th grade.

Thirdly, how do you let your 9-year-old get to 15 weeks pregnant? Where's the mother? How did the judge not rule on this sooner? Who fell asleep at the wheel here?

Finally, the archdiocese of of the region came out and said that "the girl should have carried the twins to term and had a Caesarean section. 'It’s the law of God: Do not kill,' he said in comments reported by the newspaper O Globo."

Now, I get that the Catholic Church isn't bonkers about abortion or birth control or really confronting any kind of sexual issue at all. Fine. But I love how they can completely overlook how unnatural it is for a 9-year-old to give birth to children that were put inside of her by a sexually deviant stepfather who apparently can't keep his hands off of (primarily) pre-pubescent girls. You think it was god's will for little girls to get violated by grown men that don't know how to control their pecker? I'd like to get god on the horn and find out his feelings on this one, because I'll bet he's more flexible than the Catholic Church on this one.

Labels: abortion, Brazil, New York Times

Kudos to the NY State Assembly and Senate for stepping up their efforts to repeal the draconian Rockefeller drug laws. From the New York Times:

The proposal, scheduled to come to a floor vote late Wednesday afternoon, would be the first pivotal step in a push to dismantle the laws that tied judges' hands and imposed mandatory prison terms for many nonviolent drug offenses.

The Assembly's proposal restores judges' discretion in sentencing in many lower-level drug possession crimes. Judges would be able to send many offenders to treatment programs instead of prison without receiving consent from prosecutors. In addition, the measure would permit about 2,000 prisoners to apply to have their sentences reconsidered.

Let's face it: there's a pretty big difference between a guy that wants to get high and stare at his hands and a guy that robs a liquor store at gunpoint to score some drug money. These laws didn't make sense when they were signed, because like many laws that seek to address what the public views as a crisis, they were written reactively. Maybe if Rockefeller and his advisors had sat down and written a law that was thought through and made sense, we'd have a better understanding of drug abuse and be more educated about drug use.

Labels: drugs, politics

I'm going to see Van Morrison tonight at the brand-spanking-new Beacon Theater. This is very exciting, as Van will be playing Astral Weeks from front to end. He will also be playing another set of rarely heard songs (this per the Beacon Theater website). I'm also a little geeked out to see the Beacon renovation. It's an amazing venue.

Also, I'll be heading down to New Orleans on Sunday for a conference and have plans to eat my way through the city. I haven't been to New Orleans since 2003, so I'm excited to get down there. I've never been down there in a professional capacity, so I'll need to make an effort to keep my unslakable thirst for beads in check.

Labels: live music, New Orleans, Van Morrison