The Office Christmas Lunch/Party

This is the time of year when many corporate offices/teams have the annual Christmas party or lunch.

I hate this.

It's nothing personal of course but I would just as soon not go to lunch with most of the people I work with. And I have even less desire to attend an official "FUN" event with them. My basic outlook on work is "Let's just keep it arm's distance shall we? Mmmmm-okay". I've been told on and off the record countless times that this attitude is a personal failing that limits my upward mobility. Well that's tough. Even if I wanted to I'm not changing primal personality traits at this point in my life.

There are a number of reasons I dislike the Christmas lunch/party. I usually attend out of a baseline sense of politesse and career protection but honestly I'd rather not. Why do I feel that way?

1) People are nasty. Yes it's true. We all have just oodles of bacteria, viruses and parasites living meaningful lives (or in the case of viruses semi-lives) on/inside us right this moment. This can't be altered. It's part of human life. But I'd rather have a choice as to whose invisible little nasties I'm exposed to instead of being forced to share eating space and a table with someone whom I know for a fact does not wash their hands after using the bathroom, or furtively picks their nose/teeth/ears in status meetings, or like a cat or dog, thinks that their saliva is nature's WD-40 and can be used for just about any daily problem they encounter. No don't pass me the breadsticks, Typhoid Mary. I'll get them myself.

2) People have different standards of propriety. I was raised that you don't double dip. That's even among family for goodness' sake.Your food is your food. My food is my food. Unless we are intimate that's just the way it's gonna be. And even then chances are I'll prefer some level of separation when it comes to eating. So you can imagine my horror at one Christmas luncheon, when having declined the dishes ordered by my co-workers and ordered myself a platter of steak fries, I saw the fellow next to me reach his grubby little hands into my meal, pour ketchup on the fries and start eating. In the ensuing "discussion" I learned that in his country it was usual for people to share such items and he learned that in my country you better not touch my food unless you like having your hand forked to the table.

3) People get a little too festive. Hey you made it another year without getting terminated. You might have some alcohol in you. You're probably about to be off for Christmas break and may even have some bonus money coming your way. So you're feeling good. Now MUST be the time to make your clumsy but long planned move on that flirtatious married blonde in legal who wears the tight sweaters. Right? Wrong. There is nothing worse than seeing people do or say things that they otherwise wouldn't dream of just because they're buzzed and/or it's Christmas. Now is not the time to sidle up to me and ask me what do black people really think about topic x or how come I never asked you out. In either case, if I wanted you to know...you WOULD know. 

4) People over share. At one Christmas luncheon a co-worker ordered a particular type of meat. The co-worker's boss was sitting next to that person and started a long diatribe about how bad that meat smelled, why they never liked it and how could anyone eat it. Now if your boss does that once, ok. But I wasn't surprised when after ten minutes of this nonsense the co-worker gave up trying to eat in peace and called for a doggie bag. What is really bad for me is being trapped next to a talkative person who simply won't stop droning on. When you're at the same table there really is no place to run. It's pure torture. Short of telling someone "Why won't you shut the f*** up?!!!", there's not much you can do. At another holiday party a boss decided it would be the perfect time to let me know how lazy their spouse was and if they didn't straighten up and fly right divorce would be imminent. Ok. Now that I know that what do I do? Yet another boss thought that all of her direct reports attending the Christmas lunch had to be informed (repeatedly) that she really really really hated her boss. Unsurprisingly, that information got passed on to said boss and blabbermouth was shortly removed from her position. Co-workers should know that if I didn't ask I probably don't care about your personal problems. This goes double if you are a boss. Too much personal information can only make things uncomfortable for both of us. ARM'S DISTANCE folks.

5) People state the obvious. If I had ten dollars for every time I've gone to some Christmas lunch or party and some mensa member has told me "You're quiet", I'd be retired already. "Yes, Sherlock I'm quiet. Incredible discovery. How long did it take you to ferret that out? Next you'll be telling me that the sun rises in the East!!!" I don't really do small talk well. I've learned the hard way that discussing things like politics, religion and other sensitive topics with people who sign your checks or evaluate your work is not really an intelligent thing to do. So sports, traffic, cars and weather are about the only things I discuss at work. Once those subjects are exhausted I'm pretty much tapped out. I don't talk for the sake of talking which from my pov appears to be about what 99% of the discussions at office parties/lunches really are. So....how about those Detroit Lions eh?

Does your organization have Christmas parties/lunches?
Do you always attend?
Did you ever embarrass yourself?

Book Reviews-The Racketeer, Grimm Reapings, The Don is Dead, Detroit: Then and Now, When I left home: my story

The Racketeer
by John Grisham

It's been a while since I read a John Grisham book. There were mixed reviews on The Racketeer but I'm usually willing to give a familiar writer a chance. I liked this book. It set a pretty fast pace but it wasn't difficult reading. Like many of Grisham's previous works the protagonist is a lawyer.

In The Racketeer the hero is a black man. This is not critical to the story. People are people. IMO, Grisham gets a few very minor things wrong, like the protagonist calling/referring to his father by his first name. I've never known any black person who did that, even as an adult. Possible? Sure. Just not very likely in my neck of the woods. No sir.
Anyway, the hero, Malcolm Bannister, narrates most of the story. There are occasional switches back to third person so that the reader can learn things Bannister doesn't know yet or see events take place in Bannister's absence. Bannister is a federal convict with about five years left on his sentence. Previously he was an up and coming lawyer at a small black owned law firm. Bannister briefly did some arms length work for a shady lobbyist and was, according to him, wrongfully convicted of money laundering. Insisting on his innocence, he refused to plead to a lesser charge and was as surprised as anyone when he was convicted, given a sentence that exceeded guidelines and ultimately sent to federal prison. Bannister's wife has divorced him and remarried. His son is learning to call another man father. His own strict father visits him infrequently and seems to believe that Malcolm must be guilty because otherwise he wouldn't be in prison. He is a source of shame to his previous partners who hired him when racist white law firms threw his resumes in the trash. 

Though the ex-military Bannister is still buff enough to have avoided any unpleasant physical incidents with other inmates during brief stints in higher security jails or prisons, the fiercely intelligent man must show deference and submissiveness to dim bigoted white prison guards and wardens. This grates on Bannister. But he still has one card left to play.
When a right-wing federal judge is murdered, Bannister is confident that he knows who did it and why. And for the reward money, release from prison, wiping of his record and entry into the Witness Protection Program, Bannister will tell the authorities everything that they need to know.

The FBI is desperate to make a deal to solve the case. The federal prosecutors are confident that they know the law better than any convicted former attorney and see no issue with making a deal. Of course getting out of prison is only the first part of Bannister's plan. He has plans within plans and nothing but a cold contempt for the system that ruined his life. Although Bannister maintains his innocence the book plays with this for a while. You may come to your own conclusions about this before the story gives the definitive answer. That is IF the story gives the definitive answer. I'm not telling. Bannister behaves like an innocent man..most of the time.

Grisham obviously knows a lot about the law. That's evident in the casual references to all sorts of laws and precedents (many real, some fictional) in the story. He also doesn't like bullies, the insane proliferation of federal crimes and the awesome ability of federal prosecutors to convert just about any activity they don't like into a crime, given time and motivation. That comes across loud and clear in the book. Grisham has a lot of criticism of prosecutors and the legal system as it actually works in practice, not in theory. One character muses it's surprising that more federal judges aren't murdered. You don't have to be a legal eagle to appreciate this story.
I'm not sure we get quite enough information early on to really root for Bannister. Most of the bureaucrats and prosecutors Bannister deals with are unpleasant people who don't care about his innocence or guilt as long as they get a promotion and/or their department budget increases next year. There are a lot of twists so if you like the idea of the author (and protagonist) showing you that he's smarter than you, or at least was smart enough to fool you a few times, you may like this story. As mentioned, it can be read very quickly. This is something which could and should very easily be made into a movie starring Idris Elba or Michael Ealy.



Grimm Reapings
by R. Patrick Gates

Grimm Reapings is the sequel to the book Grimm Memorials. It's been years since I read Grimm Memorials but Grimm Reapings, which takes place thirteen years after the first book's events, provides just enough back story to jog a reader's memory if they've read the first book or satisfy their curiosity if they haven't.

In the first book, we learned that there really are wicked things that go bump in the night. Eleanor Grimm was a real life witch. And I don't mean "witch" as an euphemism for a gender slur or "witch" as some new age feminist who wears a lot of patchouli, avoids deodorant and has full moon consciousness raising sessions to commune with the Goddess. No, Eleanor Grimm was the real deal. She was straight out of Grimm Fairy tales. She was an old ugly hag who via very real magical and psychic powers and acts of great evil, had discovered what she believed to be the secret to immortality. This involved sacrifices of innocent children and various sexual perversions. At the height of this carnage she intended to place her soul in the unborn child of one Diane Nailer. Eleanor Grimm would have thus been able to live again in another body. She intended to sacrifice Diane Nailer's other children, Jen and Jackie. However, six year old Jackie proved to have powerful resistance to Grimm's mind control. In a scene deliberately lifted from Hansel and Gretel, with the unknowing assistance of ten year old Jen, Jackie was able to push Eleanor Grimm into her own oven and burn her alive.

Thirteen years have passed. Jackie Nailer is a somewhat disturbed college student. His mother tries to believe that Eleanor Grimm was a child molesting killer and tries not to listen to what her subconscious tells her. Jen has just married and doesn't remember anything of the events (she was under Grimm's domination). Jen has even gone so far as to have moved into Grimm's mortuary. She and her husband are turning it into what they hope will be a profitable bed-and-breakfast.

Jackie alone remembers everything and knows that the supernatural is real. Barbara Walters does a special retrospective on Eleanor Grimm and her occult claims and "serial killings". Walters interviews Diane and her two older children. Jen and Diane are mildly discomfited. Jackie is more upset initially but is rather mollified when his Goth girlfriend, Chalice, is turned on by Jackie's "bad boy" past and expresses this to Jackie in the usual way.

But Jackie and Jen's half brother, thirteen year old Stevie Nailer, is intrigued by the television special. He was the unborn baby that Eleanor Grimm tried to possess. Eleanor Grimm left all of her considerable wealth to him. Stevie has strange memories. He has effeminate ways and a girlish voice, something which confuses, irritates and embarrasses him greatly. Stevie resents that no one will tell him what happened to his father or what Eleanor Grimm intended to do. Stevie doesn't know it but when he was younger Jackie kept a sharp eye on him, looking for evidence of Eleanor Grimm's possession. Well Jackie didn't look deep enough because there is something of Eleanor Grimm still floating around. It's just awakened in Stevie and will soon control him. Eleanor Grimm has horrifying new plans for all of the Nailers, but ESPECIALLY for the young man she still calls Little Jackie, the only person who was immune to her power. There are rituals to perform, folks to kill, people to manipulate and possibly a new unborn child to possess as Jen is pregnant. Obviously Jackie becomes aware that all is not right with little brother and for that matter other people around him.

This book had a few more gross out scenes than I remember the previous book having but like I said it's been YEARS since I read the first book. There is a goodly amount of (often perverse) sex described within. YMMV. There are no post-modernist or relativist musings here. Even when we (rarely) see things from Grimm's viewpoint she is evil with a capital E. I can't overestimate the sheer malice of Eleanor Grimm.


The Don Is Dead
by Nick Quarry (Marvin Albert)

A truism of life is that anything that is done successfully invites other people to copy it. The Don is Dead was a dime store novel (original edition cost $.75) that was rushed out by Fawcett Publishing after the unlikely success they enjoyed with Mario Puzo's The Godfather. It is nowhere near as bloated as The Godfather. I don't know if you ever read that book but it was chock full of boring sideplots about feminine medical problems, Hollywood's mistreatment of writers, abortionists with hearts of gold and other dross which was fortunately dropped from the film adaptation.
The Don is Dead doesn't have all of that extraneous clutter so it doesn't hit The Godfather's lows but of course Marvin Albert (Quarry was a pen name) was not Mario Puzo so it also lacked The Godfather's high points. The characters aren't as well defined as those in Puzo's work so you don't care as much when they start to run into trouble. Albert doesn't depict any of the characters as relative good guys. There are some people you may dislike more than others but that will be about the extent of your involvement.
That said it's not a bad book. It's short, just 182 pages and moves VERY quickly. The stage is drawn and things start to happen almost immediately.  It reminded me of Mickey Spillane's work in some places.

In an unnamed Eastern city ruled by three Mafia kingpins and friends, the oldest and most powerful Mafia boss, Don Paolo Regalbuto, dies of a heart attack. The Mafia Commission must decide who will inherit Regalbuto's criminal kingdom or failing that split it between the other two organizations. Regalbuto's son Frank claims the right to rule but everyone else agrees that Frank is too hotheaded, not leadership material and far too young. The second Mafia kingpin Jimmy Bruno is in prison but has left his organization under the control of an ambitious man known as The Accountant. No one trusts or likes The Accountant and they are wise not to do so. The Accountant and his trampy power hungry wife Marie have their own plans about what comes next. Regalbuto's top enforcers, the violent Fargo Brothers (based on The Gallo Brothers) who are both mean and liberal minded in business matters (they use blacks and hispanics in their crew) decide they want to go independent, despite their friendship with Frank. Angelo DiMorra is the city's third and final Mafia boss. He wants to honor his friend's memory, avoid bloodshed and settle everything peacefully. But DiMorra didn't become boss by drinking tea and writing poetry either. These people search for a settlement that will satisfy everyone's interests. They briefly find one. But it wouldn't be a story if war didn't break out, sooner than everyone expected and over a pretext no one saw coming. This isn't great writing but it's entertaining genre prose. The film version starred a few of the same people who had been in The Godfather. You never know what you can find in dusty musty used bookstores.


Detroit Then and Now
by Cherri Y. Gay

I like old things: antique music, vintage cars and archaic buildings. It seems like that there was a craftsmanship and panache in older creations that simply isn't found in our more hurried creations of today. I'm old school to the bone. That said, though like the song says, everything must change and nothing stays the same. No one gets to live in the past. The moving finger writes and having writ moves on...

This book is a photographic essay which contains a number of side by side pictures comparing Detroit landmarks from when they were first created, or at least relatively new and to how they look today, or more accurately how they looked when this book was published in 2001. Some of these buildings or areas no longer exist or have been so greatly altered as to be unrecognizable to anyone who saw them back in the day.There's a lot of hidden beauty in Detroit and I'm sure that's true of whatever city you happen to call home, as well.

The Michigan Theater

Fort Street Presbyterian Church

Wayne County Building

So in that aspect this book is about as close to time travel as you can get unless you happen to have a flux capacitor and a 81' DeLorean laying around. Detroit has a really fascinating mix of neo-gothic and neo-baroque architecture sprinkled with perhaps the Midwest's largest collection of Art Deco architecture. Okay maybe not the largest. But it's certainly among the nicest. This book was another gem I purchased when Border's Bookstore went out of business. I just now got around to reading it. I have literally hundreds of books I haven't read yet so I am trying to pick up the pace. This book isn't "ruin porn". Some of the places shown have definitely improved over the years. This shows the city at its best in modern times and in times long gone. Each photograph has some short blurbs explaining what you're looking at, what purpose it served in the past and how it's changed, or not, for modern times. The author is a librarian, photo archivist and treasurer of the Michigan Photographic Historical Society.


When I left home: My Story
by Buddy Guy

My brother gave me this book, for which I am quite thankful. George "Buddy" Guy was born in 1936 Lousiana. He was among the last of his generation of black American musicians to see blues as a commercially and personally viable musical option. Guy was among the final blues guitarists to have a truly original sound. He was only a few years older than famous rock musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and only a few years younger than rock-and-roll originators or avant-garde bluesmen like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and BB King. So he's the bridge between a lot of different musical formats. Buddy Guy could legitimately sing about such archetypes of black oppression as "one room country shacks". He lived it.

This (ghostwritten) book is just as Buddy Guy says his story. There aren't a lot of people left around to contradict Buddy Guy's version of events. There is some score settling. Buddy Guy arrived in Chicago in 1957 and was on the verge of starving to death before legendary blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters gave him a sandwich, something to drink and ultimately his first job in the big city. Decades later you can still feel Guy's gratitude and respect leaping off the page.

In Chicago Buddy Guy was unusual because despite his youth he was intimately familiar with all of the more relaxed, slower and more intricate blues popular with the older generation of people like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf. Buddy Guy began a career as a session guitarist for labels like Chess and Cobra. He arrived promptly, played what he was told to play and didn't (at first) ask questions about shady accounting practices. Buddy Guy also had a completely different side when playing at clubs.

He was a wild live performer. He would use tricks, some of his own devising, others borrowed from people like Guitar Slim and T-Bone Walker. These included but were not limited to playing guitar behind his back, starting his set by playing outside and walking in, leaping into the audience at the solo's climax, using extreme volume and feedback, playing the guitar with his teeth or a handkerchief and so on. Compared to people like Albert King or BB King, Buddy Guy never played one note when ten would do. Buddy Guy was very attuned to the rock-n-roll and soul that of the late fifties and early sixties. When he finally got a chance to lead his own sessions, some of this pent up energy slipped out. Both his voice and guitar style could be described as impassioned and frantic. To hear Buddy Guy tell it he was playing Hendrix before Hendrix was. This may be slightly overstated but it is a matter of record that Hendrix was a Guy fan and would record Guy at clubs. Unfortunately none of this louder faster music impressed Leonard Chess very much and he usually insisted that Guy tone it down on vinyl. Guy tells the story that eventually Chess, upset that he hadn't exploited the heavier sounds, invited Guy to kick him in the a$$ for his stupidity. Guy has told this story before and plainly it is something that still vexes him. I was fascinated not by Guy's frustrations over career setbacks caused by racism or stupid label owners, but rather his descriptions of working the tough Chicago and national black club circuit.

It was not an overstatement to say that some venues Guy played were literally buckets of blood. Serious fights were common among the audience, among band members, and between musicians and occasionally mobbed up club owners who never seemed to pay in accordance with the original agreement. Guy tells a story of a musician relaxing between sets only to be approached by a drunk man who boasted that his wife would never bother him again because he had cut off her head and was carrying it around in a paper bag. I was struck by how much of the chaos and destructive lifestyles that Guy relates, the fights, the boozing, the prostitutes, the drug abuse, seems to fit right in with a lot of the rappers today. Blues, like rap today, was often considered to be very low class. Guy writes ruefully how those rare blues musicians who could read music often got better paying/classier/safer jazz gigs where reading music was mandatory and a much wider range of musical knowledge was expected.

Another powerful theme was Guy's touching detailing of his decades long love/hate partnership and friendship with gifted harmonica player Junior Wells. These two were so close if one of them had been a woman they would have been married. These were the original Blues Brothers. Unfortunately Wells had a rather serious alcohol problem. This increasingly caused erratic behavior, including fights, missed gigs and what would today be termed sexual harassment. Drunkenly pawing/chasing a white woman in Texas was probably not Wells' wisest career move. Ultimately Guy decided that he would be better off going solo. Guy was "rediscovered" in the eighties and nineties thanks to fans of people like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Robert Cray. He seems thankful for this but remains proud enough to be somewhat upset that it was even necessary. Guy tells it like he sees it with no apologies. He is somewhat coy about his own relations with women before he married but that's how a gentleman should be I think. If you are curious about Muddy Waters' sick sense of humor, Willie Dixon's ability to gobble up songwriting credits faster than he gobbled up food or how Guy's venture into club ownership worked out read this book. It is despite everything a very optimistic story. I still can't help but think that he hasn't told the half of it. As you may notice Guy was and is one sharp dressed man. He never played into stereotypes about decrepit bluesmen. Unbent, unbroken and unbowed, Buddy Guy has an extremely healthy ego. And I'm glad to see that.

Michigan: Right to Work State?

My home state of Michigan is in many ways ground zero of the modern industrial labor union movement. Even as unions have lost ground nationwide and been all but outlawed in the South, unions in Michigan have persevered even though they have but a shadow of their former strength and militancy. Roughly 18% of Michigan workers belong to a union. In some respects the union movement is on life support. But if there's one thing the Republican establishment agrees on it's dislike of unions. So the Republican dominated House and Senate passed bills that would establish Michigan as a "right to work" state. Michigan governor Rick Snyder, who had previously cast himself as a moderate technocrat and said that he thought such legislation was divisive and not very useful to the Michigan population, has done a 180 and said that he could sign the measures into law as early as today.

So what brought us to this point? Well a lot of different things actually. You can't just point to one item. There has always been a struggle between labor and capital simply because the interests are different. If capital could go back to the bad old days of the 1920s or before when they had no unions, compliant politicians, non-existent worker protections and virtual immunity from legal consequences they would do so. If labor could get back to the 1950s when they had strong large popular unions they would do that as well. But the proximate cause of this fight is strangely enough not something in Michigan at all. Michigan unions, and their supporters, deeply worried about labor rights in the wake of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's successful trimming of labor protections in his state, backed an amendment to Michigan's Constitution. This Proposal 2 would have enshrined labor rights in the Constitution by guaranteeing public and private sector employees the right to organize and collectively bargain for wages and benefits. This was decisively rejected at the polls.

Well as the saying goes, elections have consequences and payback is a muyerfuyer. Republicans saw the Proposal 2 amendment failure as a shot across their bow that had to be responded to, proof of union weakness or as the excuse they needed to implement long desired ideas. So that's how we arrived at this point. Republicans are in the majority. Majority writes the rules. It's been called a lame duck majority because when the new members arrive in the next session there won't be quite as many Republicans and/or possibly not even the support for "right to work" legislation. But just as Scott Brown's election didn't stop the PPACA, Republicans similarly intend to work with the numbers they have while they have them. Ironically Scott Walker says he has no interest in "right to work" legislation.

So what is "right to work" legislation? It's quite simple. It plays on people's financial incentives and uses the free rider problem to destroy unions. When a union is established in a given arena it has to represent everyone in that workplace, whether they joined the union or not. It can't restrict higher wages and better benefits only to union workers. It can't force union membership.It would be a good thing if the union could restrict better wages to those who joined the union but that's against the law. Certainly no employer would ever go for that. So as a result unions have to have a method by which to ensure that there is some ability to ensure that everyone in the workplace has some skin in the game. For union members this is where union dues come in. For non-union members this is where "fair share" provisions come in. These monies are part of what allow the union to continue to exist and have the wherewithal to fight back against management overreach, whether that is in court or simply by organization and communication among workers.

"Right to work" legislation strips unions of the ability to obtain monies from people in a shop where there is a union. This sounds good no? It's expanding the worker's choice no?

Not really. This means that everyone, union worker or not, then has a MASSIVE incentive to withhold dues or fair share provisions because they get the benefits of union representations without the costs. Over time the union can't economically function with all the free riders and can't legally or politically function with smaller and smaller membership. So goodbye union. In other arenas people understand the free rider problem.

This is no different from giving someone like me the option to withhold taxes from the US government because I am bitterly and profoundly opposed to its foreign policy. I have no intention of leaving the US and going to live in another country. I just don't want to pay taxes. If everyone did that the US could not continue to exist. Now unions aren't nation states but the concept is exactly the same.

Do "right to work" states have better economic outcomes as companies that were avoiding the state because of grasping, overreaching unions, come flooding into the state?

The evidence seems to say no those "right to work" states aren't better off. "Right to work" states are associated with lower income and higher numbers of uninsured people. If you want a low wage state with fewer worker protections, then by all means support "right to work" legislation.

And this soon to be law can't be overturned by referendum because the Republicans were smart enough to add appropriations to the bill. Under Michigan's constitution, doing that means that the law is not subject to referendum of the people. Assuming that Governor Snyder signs the legislation, the only way to overturn it would be to replace Snyder and a sizable number of Republicans in 2014. So we're living in interesting times in Michigan.

Questions

1) Do you support Right to Work legislation?

2) Do you live in a Right to Work State?

3) If Snyder signs the bills, what should the response of the labor movement be?

Fat Women in Stockton Offended at Being Called Fat

Obesity is a serious societal problem that is rising in America. All else equal, being morbidly obese puts you at higher risks for a number of life threatening diseases and conditions including but not limited to Type 2 diabetes, cancer, hypertension, higher infant mortality rates and cardiac disease. I've seen obesity and related illnesses kill people that I cared deeply about. So it's no joke. The unpleasant fact about obesity is that you can't hide it. Well you can hide it for a while with different types of clothing or a really good tailor, but generally speaking if you're really fat, everyone knows it. This is not necessarily the case if you happen to have an extremely bad temper, are a sexually jealous paranoid, are a horrible spendthrift,  are incredibly bossy, are a stone cold bigot, are as lazy as can be, have an allergy to sexual fidelity, are dumber than a box of dirt or have other ugly internal personal flaws that may only become apparent over time to people who know you intimately. You can cover up those things from the general public. But, if you're WAY past a BMI of 35 or so that's immediately evident to everyone who sees you. People will judge. And many people will make unpleasant judgments about your willpower, sex appeal, health and ambition.
There are all sorts of reasons which might explain why you're so heavy but the mechanics are very simple. You're eating too much and not exercising enough. You're storing the excess as fat. End of story.

It's been my experience that no one likes being singled out for doing something wrong. I certainly don't.  It's difficult enough to do this with loved ones because the person doing the calling out may not want to hurt the other person's feelings. This seems to be less the case with parents though.  My parents, had no problem telling me what I was doing wrong and how I needed to fix it. But in the world outside of familial relations no one expects to hear criticism, implied or not, from someone they're doing business with and/or don't know from Adam. So recently, three women in California, who look to be somewhat larger than a healthy norm, were offended when they received a bill that said "fat girls".

Insult was on the menu at a California restaurant where three women say they were identified as “fat girls” on their bill. Christine Duran, Christina Huerta and Isabel Robles say their enjoyable meal at Chilly D's Sports Lounge in Stockton, Calif., ended painfully Thursday when a waiter plopped down the offensive receipt on their table. "I got the bill, and I was like ‘Why does the receipt say 'fat girls'?’" Duran told News 10.

Her friends refused to believe her.

“I was laughing at her, and she was like ‘I'm serious.’ I'm like ‘No, it does not say fat girls. Let me see it,’” Huerta said.

The women confronted their waiter, who denied any involvement. He said the slur was likely entered by Jeff, the server who had taken their order. The women demanded to see a manager, who then offered the ladies 25 % off their bill – a move that provoked further outrage.

"He had like a smirk on his face, like if it was funny, but he was trying not to laugh,” Huerta said. “He was like ‘Well, I can do 50 percent,’ and we were just like ‘Are you serious?’”

The bar manager at Cameo Club Casino, which owns Chilly D’s, later said he was “appalled” by the incident.

Link

At the time of this writing it appears that Jeff has been suspended. If you are in the business of serving the public then one of the top rules to live by is not to upset the customer. So to that extent Jeff, if indeed he did enter the words "fat girls" on the receipt, was wrong. I'm not sure it's an offense for which he should be fired but it's not my business. It's not Jeff's job to point out to these women that they are fat. I'm betting they know that every time they look in a mirror or go shopping for clothing. Mirrors don't lie. Does Jeff do that to every fat person that comes in to order some food or just the ones that he feels are not really a risk to kick his a$$? Cause fat or not some large people can throw down and aren't the type of people you want to needlessly enrage.

It is however the women's doctor's job to point out to them that they are apparently WAY past a healthy weight range and are increasing their risks for the types of conditions I mentioned before. And if we accept the premises underlying the PPACA (Obamacare) or from Mayor Lord's Bloomberg's jihad against sugar, fatty food and pop, then we're all in this together. Fat people, just like smokers, are willfully engaging in behavior which costs all of us money. So just like smokers, morbidly obese people need to have a little shame and opprobrium thrown their way. Perhaps we should have taxes on second helpings or fast food outlets with starchy menu items. Maybe having it pointed out to them that they are indeed, fat, will help these women start on a process to change their behavior patterns and embrace a healthier lifestyle? Maybe. Or maybe it's just a rude act of social bullying that will do nothing to change any one's behavior patterns. Maybe one of these women will eventually become so fat that she will be unable to fly and end up dying from renal disease. 

Unfortunately obesity is very tied up with ideas around beauty, desirability and discrimination. But that doesn't change the fact that rude servers or waiters aside, human beings are not designed to be so heavy. It's ultimately a medical issue and one that we as Americans in particular, need to deal with head on. I don't like rude people and would not have done what Jeff allegedly did. But I also think obesity is a real problem. And we do no favors to anyone by trying to be "fat-positive" or ignoring the fact that Americans are getting fatter and fatter every year.

Questions

1) Should the server be fired? Did he have any business calling the women out for their weight?

2) Is it a slur to call someone fat or is that merely descriptive?

3) Did the women deserve anything other than a discounted bill and an apology?

Music Reviews-Felix and Jarvis, Mingus: Blues and Roots, Van Halen: 1984, Steely Dan, David Ware, Mickey Baker

Felix and Jarvis

There was a glorious time back in the post-disco early eighties in which people didn't care about what you called music, they just wanted to dance. Disco had temporarily spent itself; hard rock had gotten flabby and soft; funk had lost its way but new wave and rap were just getting started. Out of Detroit, came a group that combined elements of all of the above and then some. That group was Felix and Jarvis.

I don't know much about Felix and Jarvis other than they started out as either dancers or producers for The Scene. The Scene was a mid seventies to mid eighties Detroit dance show that everybody in Detroit watched in order to know all the latest dances and styles.  Along with local DJ's like The Electrifying Mojo, The Scene was instrumental in helping to introduce Detroit to then unknown people like Prince or The Time. The Scene was a little raunchy for the times but certainly not compared to what goes on today. About the worst thing ever heard on The Scene was the signoff line "Sugar is sugar and salt is salt / If you didn't get off it's not our fault!".

Detroit humor.

Anyway I mention Felix and Jarvis because for the longest time I had been trying to find a song they they did. However I had of course forgotten they they were the group that did the song. Completely out of the blue a cousin of mine put a selection from Felix and Jarvis on his FB page, not even knowing I was looking for a song. That jogged my decaying brain cells and all sorts of fun music memories came flooding back.

As mentioned you could call Felix and Jarvis' music electro-funk or rap or proto-House or rock-n-roll or new-wave or whatever you wanted. It was always danceable though no matter what you called it.
The song I was looking for was Make it Rise. The lyrics "...you know I'm not that kind of girl/There's part of me that wants to get down but my mama told me to keep my feet on the ground" always make me smile. Felix and Jarvis also did Flamethrower Rap Flamethrower Rap (Live at The Scene) Jam the House and Bounce.


Blues and Roots
by Charles Mingus

Rather unfortunately today blues has come to mean either decrepit old black men moaning about my baby done left me or white singers doing their best to sound like decrepit old black men while playing the guitar much louder and faster than the next person trying to play the guitar louder and faster than the next person trying to play the guitar louder and faster and so on.

For better or worse the electric guitar has become the signature instrument of the blues while the blues has become extremely formalized and ossified. This obviously wasn't always the case. There was a time when both the range of instruments used in blues music as well as the actual types of music understood to be blues were MUCH wider than is currently the case. Charles Mingus was best known as a jazz virtuoso bassist, composer and pianist, though he was not overly fond of the word "jazz". In fact he didn't like that word applied to the music that he created and enjoyed. Not one bit.

It made sense to pay attention to what Mingus did or didn't like as not only was he a genius level intellect who could verbally rip you a new one but he was also an extremely demanding bandleader and a psychologically and emotionally disturbed bully who could and did throw public beatings to musicians who weren't performing up to standard. He once beat up his trombone player, knocking out the man's teeth. He was fired from Duke Ellington's band (Mingus' hero) for fighting. You could say that waking up Mingus' temper was always a mistake. Of course you could also say that working with Mingus was always a mistake but like a lot of disturbed people when he wasn't actually kicking you in the a$$ he was apparently a pretty nice guy. As you know all that stuff is less important to me than his musical talent though to be fair I'd probably feel somewhat differently if I had been the one getting punched in the mouth. Like a lot of talented people Mingus had personal demons. The more open racism of the time didn't help matters. Mingus is one of the most prolific composers of any genre and definitely someone you should know about. In Mingus there's not only every jazz musician who came before him but a fair amount of classical influence as well. Mingus took his music very seriously and saw himself in the same light as Van Cliburn, Glenn Gould, Beethoven or any other classical icon. Talking during his concerts was not something he enjoyed or tolerated.

Blues and Roots was Mingus' backhanded response to critics who complained that he had become too intellectual and lost the blues feeling in his music. I say backhanded because not only is the album dripping with blues feeling but it has more than a few avant-garde stylings contained within that are far far beyond what Mingus saw as more simple blues that he had surpassed. Mingus required constant improvisation from anyone in his band and that's what you hear in Blues and Roots. I guess his soloists decided they didn't want to get punched in the mouth. Whatever the reason might have been, this is a great introduction to Mingus if you haven't heard him before. "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting" sounds EXACTLY as it's titled. It's something I listen to over and over again. Despite Mingus' contempt for fatuous fans and musically ignorant critics this album does have a rootsy, bluesy sound. And of course the bass is EXTREMELY well recorded and mixed.

My music is as varied as my feelings are, or the world is and one composition or one kind of composition expresses only one part of the total world of my music... This record is unusual—it presents only one part of my musical world, the blues. A year ago, Nesuhi Ertegün suggested that I record an entire blues album in the style of Haitian Fight Song (in Atlantic LP 1260), because some people, particularly critics, were saying I didn't swing enough. He wanted to give them a barrage of soul music: churchy, blues, swinging, earthy. I thought it over. I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I've grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing. So I agreed.

Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting  Moaning  Crying Blues   E's Flat and Ah's Flat Too



1984 
by Van Halen

This album was the last by the original incarnation of Van Halen with wild frontman David Lee Roth. It was probably the perfect balance between a pop sound and the earlier heavy metal/hard rock sounds of Van Halen. It was also the album in which Eddie Van Halen insisted upon having his keyboard playing more upfront than had previously been the case, over the objections of Roth and producer Ted Templeman, who had desired that the guitar virtuoso stick to playing guitar.

So there is a bit of tension throughout this album but it's good tension. Van Halen had four members but even more so than normal, on this album bassist Michael Anthony is buried deep in the mix. On a few songs he's almost inaudible. Eddie Van Halen has strong beliefs about the proper role (secondary) of bass in a rock band. And since the band's name is Van Halen, not Anthony, Eddie's ideas tended to win out. It's something of a shame since Michael Anthony is not a bad bassist but merely playing very limited simple parts. But this album is still full of catchy riffs, amazing guitar work, loud clean drums from Eddie's brother Alex and Roth's raunchy braggadocious vocals.

This album was full of hits. My favorite was Drop Dead Legs which defines bada$$ but the really big hit here was Jump. Panama is a fun driving song while Hot for Teacher is actually built from an insistent boogie riff that slowed down wouldn't sound out of place on a John Lee Hooker or Slim Harpo release. And to be honest the video sold the song at least as much as the music did.  I'll Wait (co-written with Michael McDonald) is a great power ballad or at least as close as Van Halen could come at that time. It also has great synth sound combined with trademark Eddie Van Halen guitar. Top Jimmy combines technical fireworks with rhythm guitar playing far beyond that of your average metal player.  1984 is a creepy little synth number that sounds like a missing track from a Death Wish or Miami Vice soundtrack. House of Pain and Girl Gone Bad round out the album for those metal/hard rock fans worried that Van Halen had gone too pop.

I wasn't a metal fan when the album was released and am not really one now. But this album was all over the radio and MTV and for folks of a certain age was almost impossible to avoid. This is full of melody and hooks. I still wish that Anthony had been turned loose a little more on bass but other than that this remains an album I enjoy listening to and a reminder of better times.



Steely Dan

When you name your music group after a literary euphemism for a woman's sex toy it's a pretty good bet that you either have an incredibly dry sense of humor or you're just gonna be downright nasty. Steely Dan mostly leans to the former. Even when they are nasty their command of lyrics means you might not even know it until you've thought about it for a while. It's rare that they are explicit.
Steely Dan is basically a rock band that actually knows a little bit about jazz. Actually they know quite a bit about about jazz as many of their classic seventies albums featured rock or R&B players who were familiar with jazz or actual jazz musicians who were slumming. Steely Dan is currently a two man show that is run by Walter Becker (bass, guitar, vocals) and Donald Fagen (piano, synths, vocals). Other group members either left or were pushed out depending on whose story you believe. In any event Becker and Fagen always hired a lot of studio musicians and did almost all the writing* themselves so they had no real need for an actual "band".
When people like Michael McDonald sing backup for you, you know that you're in the big leagues. Fagen's voice is quite nasal but it sort of grows on you I think.

The first thing that I always noticed about Steely Dan is how clean and pristine their music sounds without being sterile or lifeless. Infamously Becker and Fagen are obsessive studio perfectionists who know exactly what they want and won't stop until they get it. That might take 20 minutes or it might take 365 days. Either way. You get to hear every single instrument but no single instrument dominates. It's similar to some Motown recordings. It's very radio friendly music. I don't know how well it comes across live because I've never seen Steely Dan live. Fagen and Becker stopped performing live when I was just a kid and only started performing live again in recent years.

The second thing I noticed about Steely Dan (and this is true of a lot bands from before the video era) is that they weren't exactly the most handsome dudes in the world. It was a simpler time, when musicians were judged a little bit more by what they could play and somewhat less by what they looked like. All things considered I think that was a good thing and something that's missing today in our more visual age.

My favorite Steely Dan songs are almost all from their debut album, Can't Buy a Thrill. I like some of their later work but to me the first cut is usually the best. Unfortunately "Dirty Work" describes a few women I've known over the years. To be fair I'm sure women might recognize a few men in those lyrics. "Reeling in the Years" was supposedly one of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page's favorite songs. Although Steely Dan got radio play on some pop-jazz or smooth jazz radio stations, it wasn't really a jazz band. I grew up with relatives who were fierce jazz fans and inherited many of their tastes. So I don't see Steely Dan as a jazz group but more of a light rock group with some jazz stylings.

Dirty Work  Reeling In The Years Hey Nineteen Reeling in the years (live) Black Cow   Do It Again Peg Cousin Dupree Kid Charlemagne Midnite Cruiser Rikki Don't Lose That Number Deacon Blues The Royal Scam

*Rikki Don't Lose That Number borrowed heavily from the jazzman Horace Silver's work "Song for my father" while Gaucho was a total steal from the jazzman Keith Jarrett's creation "As Long as you know you're living yours". As we've discussed before, whatever you create , SOMEONE may try to steal it. I believe Garrett sued successfully for writer's credit.



David Ware

David Ware just recently passed away from kidney disease. He was an avant-garde post-bop tenor saxophone player working in the jazz tradition but with a foot firmly placed in gospel and blues worlds as well.

His masterpiece as far as I was concerned was his composition Godspelized  (this is a severely shortened version) which just as it sounds combined gospel with free jazz. This is an acquired taste of course but again if you want to go beyond blues cliches, take the red pill and listen to David Ware. Glorified Calypso is just a beautiful tune, just beautiful. I love the drums on that piece. Peace Celestial is basically a prayer given through the saxophone. David Ware was very interested in eastern forms of music, worship, and philosophy. This came through in much of his music but especially in things like Ganesh Sound.

Ware's mastery of circular breathing (he was a practitioner of yoga and meditation) was on display in the piece Flight of I. His deconstruction of Ellington's Autumn Leaves is awe inspiring but even I have to admit that his tone is a bit harsh here. You kind of have to be in the mood for it. That's sort of the same with the song Astral Earth. So tread carefully if you're not familiar with this music genre but if you are open to new things David Ware was the musician to show them to you.



Mickey Baker

If Mickey Baker wasn't quite a founding father of rock-n-roll he was certainly an important uncle. Arguably he was just as important a guitarist as Ike Turner, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley or any of the other greats. He was definitely as talented. For a variety of reasons Baker didn't get the press they did. He should have. Baker didn't do as much initial recording under his own name but was a very in-demand session guitarist for various rock-n-roll, blues, R&B or jazz bands. Baker came to greater prominence with his partnership with Sylvia Robinson and their smash hit (co-written with Bo Diddley) "Love is Strange". The man-woman guitar playing duo was popular at the time in part because of the success of Les Paul and Mary Ford.
Mickey Baker was originally from Kentucky. He was mixed. His black mother was the victim of what would have been statutory rape had laws on such things been enforced for black women's benefit at that time. His mother was twelve when Mickey was born. I don't think Mickey ever knew his father. Mickey was sent to an orphanage when he was eleven for theft. He escaped that place and bounced around St. Louis and Chicago for a while as a musically minded hoodlum before putting crime behind him and moving to New York where he became a budding jazz guitarist. After working in a club and seeing Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie play he had wanted a saxophone but a guitar was all he could afford. 

Playing jazz wasn't very lucrative, then or now and after seeing bluesman Pee Wee Crayton on a West Coast tour, Baker decided to move more into blues and R&B. As he had no name for himself yet that was only marginally more lucrative. Struggling around New York however, Baker played everything from bar mitzvahs to calypso, blues to R&B. This hard won talent attracted notice and Baker became first call session guitarist for big names like Ruth Brown, Louis Jordan, Ray Charles, Little Willie John, Wynonnie Harris, Screaming Jay Hawkins, The Drifters, Big Joe Turner, The Coasters and many more.
Baker was something of an entrepreneur. Not only was he working as a session guitarist and slowly starting to record under his own name but also he was writing guitar instruction books (one such caught the eye of a young Frank Zappa) and giving guitar lessons to make money on the side. Sylvia was a previous student who decided that she wanted to be a rock-n-roll star. So the two joined up and Mickey and Sylvia was born. Baker remembered it this way:

"Finally I would go out on little gigs with her and get her to stand up with the guitar in her hand. It took time to do that but finally when she got that courage, she could really gyrate with that guitar man. I'd be up there on that damn stage man and no matter what theater it was or what club it was-and I could do anything. Here I was supposed to be one of the most famous guitar players in the world. No matter what I did with the guitar, nobody would pay any attention. They were looking at Sylvia gyrating. She had those sequined dresses. She'd be gyrating the guitar!!"

Baker usually had a very sharp biting tone with just an edge of distortion. Rhythmically he could and did play almost anything and with some of his instrumentals you could call them rock or jazz and you'd be correct. NO ONE did better rock guitar instrumentals. Fed up with the music industry and with American racism he left the US for good in 1962 and moved to France, where he recently passed away. "Love is Strange" was used in the movie Dirty Dancing and also used for Pitbull's "Back in Time". It is one of the greatest songs of all time. Their duet "Dearest" is pretty good too. Do men and women even sing to each other like that anymore? I also like the song "I'm Tired". "Whistlestop" was funk before its time. Check out Baker's use of reverb, echo and doublestops. He also used overdubbing and doubletracking and other studio tricks that were ahead of his time. "No Good lover" is nasty rock-n-roll with a light feminist touch. It sort of reminds me of the song "These boots are made for walking". Love it. It's a song I keep on repeat...

Love is Strange Third Man Theme No Good Lover Dearest   Mickey Baker with Memphis Slim (Live)  Spinning Rock Boogie I'm Tired  Blue Jazz Rock  Riverboat  Whistlestop Do what you do  What Would I Do?