The Old Blog

Sandy Koufax has severed ties with the Los Angeles Dodgers because of a comment in the New York Post that implied he was gay. The Dodgers and the Post are both owned by the same parent company, Rupert Murdoch’s News corp. And while I might expect this behavior from Mike Piazza, I’m quite shocked that Koufax, who has always been a class act, would get so upset over such a stupid rumor. Is he really uncomfortable enough about his sexuality being questioned (which didn’t name names, but was fairly easy to deduce) that he would sever ties with an organization he has supported and been employed by for 48 years? “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy” was at the top of my Christmas list last year, and I had blew through it in two days. And if the book makes any points, they are that Koufax is as private and reserved off the field as he was dominating on it. My guess is that Koufax, an extremely private person (he has no phone number) is more upset about his name being in the gossip pages than he is about the specific allegations. Yet unknown is whether the Post’s apology will lure Koufax back.

This story only further intertwines the lives of my favorite pitcher of all-time (Koufax) and my favorite actor of all-time (Cary Grant). To wit:
Both men changed their names when they were young.
Both men loved the Dodgers–Grant often watched Koufax pitch.
Both men were (probably) Jewish (Grant claimed he was due to his parentage; he was quite generous towards various Jewish causes, including Dyan Cannon).
Both men were well-known as heartthrobs with chiseled bodies, even in their later years.
Both men worked mainly in Los Angeles.
Both men were accused/assumed to be homosexual (Grant lived with Randolph Scott for years and was an impeccable dresser).
Both men were married and divorced multiple times.
Both men were American Citizens (Grant received his citizenship in 1942).
Both men were left-handed.
Both men retired younger than they needed to, and on top of their professions.
Both men went years without seeing one of their biological parents.

I just hope Koufax doesn’t follow Grant’s lead by dying in Iowa.

Her idea for a reality series, mentioned on Jimmy Kimmel: Live last night:
“I’m an Iraqi Citizen; Get Me Out of Here!”

I’m talking about the airline, not the sketch-comedy group.

Allow me to relate to you a little story about charity, promises, and disappointment. In 2001, my inquisitive girlfriend Hillary spent the summer in Africa with the School for Field Studies. She worked on a game preserve and had a great time despite almost getting killed by a hyena. In May 2002, the School for Field Studies held an international get-together for all of their programs. Hillary and I attended the event, and ended up winning an auction for a trip for two to the SFS Center in Costa Rica. We were quite excited. The caveat was that the trip needed to be used within a year (actually less than that; it expired on April 30th, 2003). No problem, we thought. Travelling from 85-degree Boston to Costa Rica in July or August seemed silly, so me made the plan to go that winter, to escape the Boston freeze.

This is how the trip worked: we received a letter from Continental detailing our trip. We were to reserve G class tickets by phone, then send the letter to a Continental ticket office in Chelsea, MA. The ticket office would then send us the tickets, and we would be ready to go. The letter told us that there may be “holiday black-out dates,” so we should make sure to have some back-up times. In addition, it told us we needed to mail the letter at least three weeks before we planned to take the trip.

Flash forward to October. I call Continental, hoping to make flight plans for November/December/January, but everything is either booked or blacked-out. I understand, as it’s the holiday season, and this is probably what the holiday black-out was referring to. I called again in mid-February, hoping for a March or April trip, and found out that every single weekend is blacked out (despite March only having St. Patrick’s Day and April only having Easter), and, what’s more, there is not a single open return flight (and only 4 outgoing flights) at all between the time I called and the end of April!

I tried to call the ticket agent listed on my letter, but was unable to find the number. After a good deal of Internet searching and a few calls to Continental, I found out that they had closed the office months ago! So even if I had been able to book a flight between October and February, I would have been sending the original copy of my letter to an address that didn’t exist!

I called the School for Field Studies, and they told me they had gotten the letter from Advantage Travel. I spoke with Dawn, who offered to talk to their Sales Manager with Continental. After all, the School for Field Studies uses Continental to send hundreds of students all over the world each year. After that kind of patronage, certainly Continental would do what they could to remedy the situation, right? Wrong. Dawn emailed me back, informing me that Continental wouldn’t help her, either, and in addition, had been sold out of March and April G Class tickets since November. It seems that “G class” is the “promotion class,” and there are few, if any G class seats initially available on any Continental flight.

Realizing that booking had been impossible for the entire second half of the voucher made me feel quite cheated. Did Continental intentionally donate tickets to charity with the intent of restricting them so much that they could almost never be used?

Distressed, I called Continental, hoping that by explaining my situation, they would either allow Hillary and I to get tickets in another (still coach) class, on a black-out date, or extend the expiration date. I had read about Continental’s CEO, Gordon Bethune, and how his commitment to customer satisfaction saved Continental after it had declared bankruptcy in the 80s.

I called the corporate headquarters in Texas, and, after being denied the opportunity to speak with Mr. Bethune, was told I would be speaking a member of his executive team. Basically, they told me that so they could transfer me back to customer service, with whom I had already spoken many times. I was again told that Continental’s policy is not to extend the expiration date. I again explained that despite the letter saying I had a year to use it, it had pretty much been invalid for the latter six months of that year. The woman I was speaking with said I needed to be more flexible. I pointed out that “anytime in this six-month period” is pretty darn flexible (though now I regret not pointing out that rigidly adhering to April 30th was quite inflexible on their part). I also told her that while the letter told me to have my top three travel dates ready, I was not able to secure a flight in my top three months. After a long pause, she offered a “goodwill gesture” of $150 in travel vouchers if I mailed Continental my voucher letter. I told her that considering I spent over $1,000 on this, $150 didn’t seem like much of a goodwill gesture. She said I should think about it and call back if I wanted to take their offer.

And that’s where I sit now. After winning a charity auction to go on a romantic vacation with my girlfriend, I have found out that not only did Continental make it next-to-impossible to actually redeem the voucher, but they had closed a ticket office, failed to inform me of the immense amount of time needed to prepare the booking and tickets, misinformed me about the availability of tickets, and accused me of being “inflexible” because I had only chosen 6 months out of the year in which to travel (for the record, at this point, I would be quite happy traveling in July, if that meant they would honor their ticket). I have spoken to licensed travel agents who agree with me that Continental is being unfair. I currently am waiting for the owner of Advantage Travel to return to her office next week. I have been told that she might possibly be able to do something for me. If she is not, I am going to the Massachusetts Attorney General and the Better Business Bureau. Continental Airlines, for all their claims, has been duplicitous and deliberately obtuse in regards to this charity auction. If anyone wishes to contact them to voice their concern over this situation, their International Reservation Number is 1-800-231-0856. Their “Customer Care” number is 1-800-932-2732. Their mailing address is:

Continental Airlines, Inc.
Customer Care – HQSCR
P.O. Box 4607
Houston, TX 77210-4607

Please get the word out so others don’t have to go through what Hillary and I have. Hopefully, Continental will get the message that this type of behavior is unacceptable and an irresponsible way to behave towards their customers–from customers like me to customers like the School for Field Studies.

For the second time in a week, a fire at a dance club resulted in dozens of deaths. Sunday night, a bouncer at the E2 club in Chicago used pepper spray during an attempt to break up a fight, and 21 people died in the ensuing melee. Two nights ago in West Warwick, Rhode Island, pyrotechnics from the band “Great White” caused The Station to burst into flames within three minutes of being ignited. 96 people died, including Ty Longley, guitarist for the band.

Now that the shock has begun to wear off, people are looking for someone to blame for the tragedies. And like every story, these has multiple sides. Both clubs were in violation of codes–E2 for overcrowding and allowing people onto an unsafe VIP balcony, and The Station for overcrowding. In addition, there are some disputes over who did what. E2 maintains that its security guards did not use pepper spray, and The Station and Great White dispute whether the band’s pyrotechnics were approved by the club. In addition, fire doors at E2 were not openable, while The Station, a wooden building, was not equipped with a sprinkler system. Lawsuits are sure to be filed by the band, the club, and the victims’ families.

However, these tragedies could easily have been prevented had the clubgoers not succumbed to panic. Few, if any, would have died. Film taken by Brian Butler, a cameraman for East Providence’s Channel 12, shows how panicking people doomed dozens to their deaths. So many people were attempting to exit the club at once that they couldn’t get through double-wide doors. I watched this footage, and it is like nothing I’ve ever seen. An orderly evacuation could have saved most, if not all, of the lives lost in the inferno at The Station. Trampling occurred at both clubs; every death in E2 would have been prevented had the patrons kept their cool.

Hopefully something good can come out of these terrible tragedies. I have little faith in it happening, but perhaps American people can learn to think rationally about a situation before dooming themselves with the stupid “me-first” mentality. Thinking of the collective good of the group would have allowed for quick, orderly, and safe evacuations. In addition, I hope that clubs will be held more accountable for code violations, be they structure or capacity related. The laws concerning these violations should be enforced; if the current laws are not stringent enough to prevent such tragedies, stronger ones should be passed. I think that there is a chance some of this could happen. After all, the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston 51 years ago led to laws requiring exit lights and outward-swinging doors. The trampling in (hip-hop, mainly black) E2 was treated as an anomaly until the fire engulfed the (hair metal, mostly white) club in Rhode Island. “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” may end up accurately decribing the actions taken by club owners and inspectors across the country.

Angry? Wanna fry some sheep? Click here.

In my earlier “Survivor” post, I completely forgot that “Survivor: Thailand” ever existed. It was, in fact, the fifth series of the show. Apparently it ended the week before Christmas, and the winner was some former softcore porn actor named Brian Heidik. The fact that none of the hundreds of people to visit my blog pointed this out to me shows how little people cared. And why should they, when CBS is riding it into the ground like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” and “The Weakest Link”? Once “Survivor: Amazon” is over, CBS will have aired 6 complete series in less than three years; making the Amazon series a “battle of the sexes” only proves that they’ll do anything to garner ratings.

Unfortunately, Heidik’s victory throws a monkeywrench in my theory that the series is fixed…sort of. After a little research, I found out two interesting things:
1) The two oldest contestants were given the honor of picking their tribes–perhaps so they wouldn’t be voted off so quickly.
2) Of the final four contestants, three were older than any previous winners had been (none of them won). Perhaps rather than being fixed, “Survivor” is merely influenced. After all, they did switch the tribes around in “Survivor: Africa” after realizing that the all the younger people would vote all the older people off.

Read more about “Survivor”-fixing allegations here, here, and here.

My slightly humorous recaps of the first two episodes of Dragnet can be found here. The website I’m writing for, “The Diet Coke of Snark” (no, I’m not sure what it means, either), is a sister/spin-off of wondersite Television Without Pity. The biggest difference between the two right now is size…and pay.

Neal Rowland, who owns Cubbie’s restaurant in North Carolina, has decided to quit selling french fries because of France’s stance on American military involvement in Iraq. Instead, he will be selling “Liberty Fries,” which look, cost, and taste the same. He claims to have changed the moniker out of Patriotism, not out of spite for France, but I don’t see him renaming hamburgers because of Germany’s opposition to the war.

In addition, quack Pennsylvania State Representative Steve Barrar has introduced a bill to ban all French wine from its state-owned liquor stores. There are a variety of reasons why this is asinine:
1) Such a small boycott isn’t going to affect France’s wine industry one bit. In fact, stores may sell more while people attempt to stock up before the ban. This isn’t exactly Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956.
2) If we ban wine, what about other French things, like the bikini, scuba gear, pasteurized milk, and the Statue of Liberty? Hell, let’s ban Quebec while we’re at it–we can even take away their baseball tea–never mind.
3) Russia makes vodka, Mexico makes tequila, and Germany makes beer. None of these countries are too gung-ho about US invading Iraq; should we boycott their liquors, too?
4) Why is restricting freedoms of American citizens so often referred to as “patriotic”? Isn’t the right to choose not to drink French wine something Pennsylvanians should have?
5) If the UN is a democratic organization, doesn’t France have the freedom to voice dissent regarding the decisions of other UN members? Kind of like how US citizens supposedly have the freedom to question their government. Exercising the freedom of expression and the right to dissent is one of the most American things one can do. Hell, John Adams himself defended the British Soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.
6) Why not just raise prices and call it “liberty juice?”

Twice in the past week, citizens have unwittingly caused panic and terror by participating in a “Rice-for-Peace” initiative to mail uncooked rice to President Bush. Quoting the Bible verse Romans 12:20 (‘If your enemies are hungry, feed them.”), the intent of the mailing is to persuade Bush to aid the innocent citizens of Iraq, even while (or instead of) bombing and killing them.

A Montana State University student was pulled out of class after mailing her envelope from an on-campus mailbox. Even more alarming is what happened in Boston. A woman attempted to mail the rice-filled envelope (sorry no link), but the postal clerk who handled it claims he felt “tingling” in his hands (must be the preservatives) and notified police. Soon thereafter all of Faneuil Hall was evacuated; dozens of businesses lost almost a day’s worth of income. And while the Hall is a somewhat famous Boston landmark, I disagree with the worker there who claims it is a “symbol of freedom” and “where [freedom] started.” Yes, it’s better to be safe than sorry, but it’s worse to be paranoid.

I try to avoid Bill O’Reilly; even if I agreed with his politics, his abrasive, haughty, superior attitude would turn me off. Here’s a transcript of his “discussion” with a man whose father died in 9/11. No wonder he thinks he’s always right; if someone disagrees, he yells “Shut up!” and cuts their mic.