Whether contributing to a Civil War reenactment
Internet e-mail list or sending out rugby e-mails to club members, I have
always had a tough time staying on topic. Some people enjoy this, others are
annoyed by it. Anyway, here are my collected BCCs from the club e-mails I sent
out as secretary. The first ones (when I was reading “Dante’s Inferno”) are at
the bottom and go up in this article chronologically. Some of them have a rugby
tie-in. I appended them partially as filler and partially because, sometimes, I
just have to write about whatever catches my interest. - Brigham
Brigham’s Cultural Corner
Various articles sent out to rugby club members in
e-mails 2001-2004.
Brigham’s Cultural Corner - The First Tuesday in November
Politics. You’ve got to love it.
Perhaps more so when your candidate wins, I will admit.
The last general election introduced the hitherto little-known phrase "hanging chad" into the lexicon. Last night gave us "provisional ballot" and "statistically insurmountable." Not to mention whatever bizarre metaphors and analogies Dan Rather came up with. (Something about biscuits and gravy? I wasn’t tuned in.)
A golden oldie from last time made its reappearance on the front page of one of this morning’s free papers: "All Eyes On..." I like that phrase. In my mind’s eye I can see the vast National Collective Eyeball swiveling in its socket away from Florida to be fixed with its terrible stare upon the Buckeye State. Like the Eye of Sauron in "Lord of the Rings."
So far I’m unaware of legions of aggressive lawyers descending upon various election headquarters. Perhaps they are pawing the ground and straining at the leash,
waiting to be freed to "Ensure that every vote counts" (for their respective employer’s candidates). Will Senator Kerry let slip the dogs of war? The paychecks of many an attorney hang in the balance.
I did most of my viewing on NBC, mainly because I get a kick out of Tim Russert and his ever-present slate, this year electronic. (Have you noticed that the man looks like a crazed gnome? There’s something about that smile and the set of his eyes and brows that suggest an infernal inner fire.) I’ve got to hand it to him, he does the math that counts. My daughter Julie, a political neophyte, kept asking about California and its walloping amount of electoral votes. Russert knows better; he was running the numbers with Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico and Wisconsin.
Looks like a record, or near-record, turnout, which I consider is yet another triumph for democracy. My daughter and her friend served as political volunteers at the polls, handing out literature and telling people, "Thanks for voting!" One lady looked at her political button and asked, "Are you sure?" I told her next time to reply, "Absolutely!" The American
electorate is a big, unruly, noisy, divided jumble of special interests, and like it or not, political parties have to compromise. When more people vote it makes America and democracy more representative.
As the "Rock the Vote" people might say, that’s kewl.
Brigham’s Cultural Corner - The Wearin' o’ the Green... turban
I read, that is, rapidly scanned, through a dreadful book last night about doing genealogy on the Internet. It’s by a North Carolinian named Ralph Roberts and
it’s called Genealogy Via the Internet. I call it dreadful because the writing style is overly colloquial and folksy; it reads more like a badly-written e-mail than a published book. (He owns his own publishing company, which explains how it got published.) Misspellings abound, and it is badly in need of editing.
Anyway, Roberts is a proponent of what he calls “full genealogy,” that is, finding every available ancestral link. This leads to documented connections with celebrities. It’s relatively easy to do on the Internet; I’ve been at it for about a year, now, and, on my mother’s side, I have discovered distant cousinship with such French-Canadian luminaries as Madonna, Celine Dion, Jack Kerouac, a hockey hall of famer and the guy who invented the snowmobile. But how good is the documentation? The widely-varying quality of data on the Internet is enough to make a professional Daughters of the American Revolution-style genealogist blanch. However, while Roberts’ book is poorly-written, I cannot argue with some of the conclusions he draws about kinship and humanity in general.
I was alerted to his work when I read an article in the Washington Times that quoted a fellow at Burke’s Peerage, who mentioned that Senator John Kerry is a lineal descendant of the Prophet Mohammad, the founder of Islam. One of Roberts’ (many) books was mentioned.
Well! Senator John Kerry a lineal descendant of the founder of Islam! That ought to give conspiracy theorists a field day!
Turns out that not only is John Kerry a lineal descendent, but so is George Bush. And, according to Roberts, perhaps upwards of about 70% of all Americans of European descent.
Roberts’ chapter about this is detailed, but summing it up:
1.) Mohammad’s genealogy is traceable and well-known.
2.) Mohammad had twelve wives, and therefore many lines which survive.
3.) Members of these lines later intermarried into Spanish royalty.
4.) Spanish royals married into other European royal lines.
5.) European royals married non-royals.
6.) Because of simple math, each of us has hundreds of millions of ancestors as far back as Mohammad’s time.
7.) Math and geographic boundaries being what they were and are, we all share direct ancestors with a lot of other people.
This raises some interesting geo-political questions.
In the Islamic world, green is the color of the Prophet Mohammad, and the Encyclopedia Britannica notes that, in some countries, a green turban usually
denotes a "Sharif" or a direct descendant of the Prophet. So, very conservatively speaking mathematically, there are millions and millions of Americans who could properly wear the green turban. Maybe me. Maybe you. Rather than being called “The Great Satan,” you’d therefore think we’d get a little more respect than that. We’re the Rodney Dangerfields of the Islamic World.
Think of genealogy as an inverted pyramid, with yourself at the bottom apex. You have two parents, four grandparents, etc. A geometric progression. You have 1,048,576 direct ancestors only 20 generations back, which is in the 1400’s. (This is where European genealogical documentation starts because it was about then that surnames started being created.) If you consider that a generation is 50 years, there are 28.7 generations which separate us from Mohammad’s time. That’s more than 268 million direct ancestors at the
28th generation alone. So how many parents and grandparents do we all have at every generation? You do the math.
Moral: Realistically speaking, we are all related and all wars are Civil Wars. So, being kin, why don’t we treat each other better than we do?
Brigham's Cultural Corner - Crappy Shakespeare
I have embarked upon a project I call the "Crappy Shakespeare Survey." Sure, everyone has read or seen the movie of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet or Henry V. Those are well-known. But what about his crappy plays - the ones few have read or seen performed? King John; Titus Andronicus; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Troilus and Cressida and Coriolanus?
The Pohick Library near me has a complete set of the BBC/Time-Life Shakespeare plays produced in the Eighties on VHS - the ones I've seen are well-cast with interesting British actors (many of whom I've also seen in episodes of Doctor Who!) So, the other night I checked out Titus Andronicus (1985).
Talk about over the top. The plot: Titus, a Roman soldier, captures some Gauls and the Queen of the Gauls begs for the life of her son. Unswayed, Titus has him hacked apart and takes her and her two other sons to Rome as his captives. In Rome (and unaccountably married to the Emperor), she gets her sons to rape Titus' daughter. They lop off her hands and cut out her tongue so she can't reveal their identities, so she gurgles and gestures with her stumps a lot during the rest of the play. A black man - a Moor - gets involved and convinces Titus to lop off his left hand to save his sons threatened by the Emperor, which he does. Ha! He was just kidding! Titus' sons' heads and his own hand are delivered to Titus on a platter, and a long speech about woe ensues.
Titus gets revenge, however. He slits the necks of the Queen's sons (hung upside down) while his daughter catches the blood in a basin held in her stumps. He then has his cooks chop them up and turn them into a pastry, which he has served to the Queen and her husband, the Roman emperor. Barf! In the last few minutes of the play, Titus, his daughter, the Queen, the Emperor and the Moor all get killed. (Not to mention the infant son of the Moor and the Queen.) Titus' son Lucius becomes the new Emperor.
Whew. William Shakespeare meets Jerry Springer.
This production has a couple of oddities: Titus' grandson looks like Harry Potter, with oddly anachronistic glasses. And the actor playing Titus, Trevor Peacock, looks like Patrick Stewart with hair. He also happened to write the Sixties hit single "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter", recorded by Herman's Hermits. How he made the transition from Sixties pop song composer to Shakespearian leading man, I don't know.
So… Titus Andronicus isn't crappy, merely gross. I suspect the truth of the matter is that even The Bard's lesser plays are still pretty interesting.
Brigham's Cultural Corner - The World of Rugby
From Pablo Arce, our resident Chilean, in response to the question "What do Spanish-speaking ruggers say to each other when they want the ball?"
"I say "pasala" (pass) or "habre" (open)."
Now we know. While we're on the subject of multicultural rugby, take a look at this.
From it we learn that a Zulu would call the right flanker a "Ifolosi langasophikweni," whereas in Tswana he'd be known as a "Mofolanka." (Fill in racial comment here.)
In Northern Sotho, a prop is a Mothekginngeleng, which is what I'm pretty sure attacked Godzilla in Tokyo. And in Russia, what we call a "wing" is what they refer to as a "Pravyj krajnij tr'oxchetvertnij," which perhaps explains why we beat them to the Moon. By the time their scientists finished pronouncing the word "Moon," we had the second stage booster rockets designed.
I note with some amusement, that under the position names for Georgia was written "(ex USSR)," lest anyone suppose that in the American South, ruggers were referring to centers as "Tsentralury mesameotxi." The position there is probably called, "Y'all."
Yes, yes, I know, making fun of other countries' languages merely puts our well-known American arrogance on display. But it could be worse. We could make fun of foreign currency, like James Lileks. The following link is shamefully xenophobic, so I encourage you not to follow it.
The link: http://lileks.com/money/0.html (Wait to see the animation before clicking on it.)(Oh, wait, I told you *not* to go there, didn't I?)
My opinion is that if there were any justice in the world, instead of Jose Carrera on the Chilean five-peso note, it would be Pablo Arce instead. After all, his nose is nowhere as long.
And now, having gone full-circle by invoking Pablo's name, which started all this, I close.
Brigham’s Cultural Corner – When the past becomes lost
Okay, Brother Brigham is now going to tell you a
little tale with a moral attached. You may not be
receptive to it because you’re young and it doesn’t
apply to you – yet. But it will.
The other day I was digging through my collection of
old family photos and came across a medium format (2
1/4” x 2 1/4”) negative of what looked like a WWII
soldier standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Medium
format cameras nowadays are expensive and in the realm
of the professional (think Leica or Rolleiflex), but
back then there were many common box cameras shooting
images on big (bigger than 35 mm), relatively high
quality medium format film. Anyway, I was excited
because I figured it was probably my father. A 1200
dpi flatbed scan and a Photoshop inversion enabled me
to see that it wasn’t. So who is it? I have no idea.
Doing genealogical research, I encounter all sorts of
great old photos – formal wedding shots, handsome
and/or interesting-looking portraits of people - that
might as well now be rubbish. Why? They’re not
captioned. With the passing of years, and the photos
being transferred from person to person, the knowledge
about them (as well as the family relationships)
becomes lost. And it’s a shame, because I know
somebody out there would, for instance, love to have a
photo of his father standing in front of the Eiffel
Tower during World War II.
Everybody has an interest in his or her family to some
extent. Generally, this interest becomes more
pronounced as one grows older, which is why, I
suppose, most genealogists are over forty. This past
year I have redoubled my efforts in doing family
research and have gained a ton of information as a
result. This kind of thing is much simpler to do now
because of the Internet, e-mail, and search engines.
In one short year I was able to do many times more
fact-gathering because federal census records are now
indexed and available on the Internet, people have put
up genealogical websites, etc.
The additional information brings with it knowledge
about cousins and relatives I have never met and never
knew existed. In the past year I have talked to
perhaps ten of them on the phone, and many of these
have old photos they have sent me. Some I can figure
out based on resemblance with other people in photos I
can identify, some have other visual clues. It is very
much like detective work with some photo analysis
skills thrown in.
When I visited the family of my recently departed
half-brother last month, I was surprised to learn
that, like me, he was into photography, scrapbooks and
electronics. I didn’t know. His photo albums, some
from the late forties, are well-captioned and
wonderful to look at. Some of them contained photos of
my father that I have never seen. Like me, he bought a
high-end digital camera. His work was shared and
displayed with a local camera club. I feel like I lost
a brother whom I have never really known – whom I
should have known.
Anyway, here’s the promised moral: If you can’t put
your photos in scrapbooks with captions, caption the
backs of your photos! Future generations will be glad
you did.
Brigham's Cultural Corner - The Eye Blinks
I can stand it no more. I just have to comment on the current CBS News flap. The challenge, of course, is to keep it apolitical, as befits this website. Watch me.
One of the current top stories is the failure of CBS News to identify a politically-charged document, which purports to date from 1972, as a forgery. Yesterday, after a week of trying the "We're a big, respected news outlet and we stand behind this story and you should believe us - now go away" tack, they threw in the towel. Yes, guys sitting at their PCs at home in their pajamas took down mighty CBS News. You can almost hear the gleeful cheers and mocking laughter of hundreds or thousands of Internet users.
Good heavens, can nobody at CBS News do basic fact-checking? The Internet has grown to be the supremely useful tool for this kind of thing - I do it all the time. In literally a matter of seconds I can get information about all sorts of obscure items. Want to confirm that a CD732.2 December 19 1871 threadless sage green Hemingray insulator is only worth a buck or two? (Hint: there are only three known in existence.) Or that the Honeytone FR-601 Japanese transistor radio from 1962 was also known as the Windsor FR-601? (It was.) Or whether or not IBM Selectrics or other typewriters commonly had Times Roman font balls in 1972, etc. etc. etc.? Anyone, let alone reporters who are supposedly trained to ferret out such information, can find this stuff. The Internet search engines are that good. (Example: On a challenge from a film noir writer, I once found the one and only website out of 4,285,199,774 on the Internet - according to google.com - which contained the phrase, "A promise is a promise to a person of the world." (It was associated with the famous 1947 murder of the Black Dahlia in Los Angeles.)
Now, of course, the quote may also be found on rugbyfootball.com - and somebody will find it here.
In 1992, NBC News was caught rigging model rockets to the sides of GM trucks to enhance film footage on a story about automobile safety. In Spring, 2003 CNN had to admit that they were holding back on reporting stories in order to maintain their access to Saddam's spokesmen. And now CBS News admit they were had. I'd say that investigative journalism ain't what it used to be - but it wasn't always none too good, either.
Back in 1983, in Provo, Utah, I was involved in an accident during a Civil War reenactment. A cannon had fired during the ramming of the black powder charge, causing a near fatal accident for the fellow doing the ramming. He had both arms blown off, and was rushed to the hospital. When I got to my sister-in-law's house some hours later, I heard a radio report that a man had been killed in Provo when a cannon ball passed though his chest during a Civil War reenactment! Now, I know that while the Internet hadn't yet been invented, telephone technology existed back then. Would a phone call to the Provo Hospital, or the Provo Police Department have been so difficult to do before going on air?
Yesterday I gleefully tuned in to the local CBS affiliate to witness some mea-culpa chest thumping. What I got instead was a panel discussion where some old media buzzard insisted that CBS were the victims in this situation. Do they really want to pursuit that angle? Yeah, that's who I'm going to tune in to for my news, all right. A multi-million dollar news organization that is so hapless it can't recognize a MS-Word forgery when one hits the editor's desk. CBS News: We're Victims On Your Side.
Enough. Being in the news reporting business myself - hey, I have accurately told you the what, when and where of our rugby activities for years, haven't I? - I had to vent.
"Journalism is the one solitary respectable profession which honors theft (when committed in the pecuniary interest of a journal,) & admires the thief....However, these same journals combat despicable crimes quite valiantly--when committed in other quarters." - Mark Twain
"I am personally acquainted with hundreds of journalists, and the opinion of the majority of them would not be worth tuppence in private, but when they speak in print it is the newspaper that is talking (the pygmy scribe is not visible) and then their utterances shake the community like the thunders of prophecy." - Mark Twain
Brigham's Cultural Corner - Hey, Remember the Eighties?
As I mentioned somewhere before, it seemed like I spent most of the Eighties wearing blue wool and dragging around a ten pound musket in Abe Lincoln's Federal Army, shooting at Rebs. And if there was a soundtrack to the year 1985, it was provided by Tears for Fears, who had great hits with "Shout," "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and my personal favorite, "Head Over Heels."
I am happy to report that the two songwriters, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, are back together and have released a new CD, "Everyone Loves a Happy Ending." I
bought it last night; on my first hearing, it sounds excellent. Catchy pop at its best. Actually, if the Beatles were still together and recording, I think they'd sound something like this. And yet - Tears for Fears still sounds like Tears for Fears. Nice trick. (But then, they could sometimes sound a lot like John, Paul, George and Ringo. 1991's "Sowing the Seeds of Love" - a great tune - sounds very Fab.)
Some of the songs on this new CD sound a lot like John Lennon wrote and sang(!) them, some sound like Tears for Fears, and a couple sound like Neil Finn.
Everyone know Neil Finn, from New Zealand? In the Seventies and Eighties he was in Split Enz (a favorite band) and Crowded House in the Eighties and Nineties. He wrote a rousing little tune, "Can You Hear Us?" for the All-Blacks in the 1999 Rugby World Cup. Unfortunately, they didn't play up to the level of the song, getting beaten by France in a major upset. Good song, though.
It's funny... with the impact that the Beatles had on popular music, nobody has quite claimed their crown. The closest thing to the Beatles these days is Tears for Fears, Neil Finn... and a rapidly-aging Paul McCartney.
We're right where we belong
Can you hear us
The fire is coming back
Can you hear us
And the final moment in your hands
Can you hear us
Can you hear us.....
Brigham's Cultural Corner - What makes a film "film noir?"
This question was asked at Buzz's party this past weekend, so I feel empowered to bore you about one of my favorite art forms.
The first thing to understand is that film noir isn't a genre, like a Western or a Martial Arts film. It's a style, or a sensibility. For instance, there are what are called "off-genre noirs": Western noir ("Pursued"), Horror noir ("Dementia," "The Body Snatcher"), Science-Fiction noir ("Blade Runner," "Dark City"), or Costume Drama noir ("Reign of Terror," "Queen of Spades"). So influential was the style that there are even some noirish elements in the 1946 Roy Rogers film "My Pal Trigger!"
So, not all noirs take place before 1950 in a city inhabited by Humphrey Bogart. In fact, there are only about twelve "private eye" style noirs from the classic period.
The truly amazing thing about noir in all the articles I've read is how greatly the critics disagree on what is required for a film to be classified as a noir. One critic, for instance, calls "King Kong" a film noir! But since this is the quickie lesson, here's a list. I'm safe in saying that a true film noir would have some or many of these characteristics.
1. A morally ambiguous protagonist
2. A femme fatale - often blonde
3. A central crime
4. High contrast black and white photography, deep shadows
5. Odd, jumbled framing
6. A voice-over narrative; story told in flashback (the plot is therefore inevitable)
7. A convoluted plot, unexpected turns
8. The men wear fedoras
9. Everyone smokes
10. A fatalistic or cynical philosophy ("The little guy can never win")
11. An urban setting, usually at night (the title sequence often features the city at night)
12. A sad ending, or a less than entirely happy ending
13. Right-wing directors: a police procedural style of plot
14. Left-wing directors: pronounced social commentary
15. The past comes back to haunt the protagonist
16. A couple on the run from the police
17. Made between 1940-1960 (around 1948 was the peak)
18. A dreamlike mood
19. The protagonist is emotionally detached and cool
20. The bad guys are sadistic and/or psychotic
21. Desire and desperation are often present
22. Corrupt authority figures
23. Adapted from a book by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane or James M. Cain
Half of the fun in film noir - besides watching them - is determining if a film can be properly classified as such. For instance, where does Roman Polanski's "Tess" (of the d'Urbervilles) fall? Period piece? Adaptation of a classic? Noir? After all, elements 2, 3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15 and 16 are present.
How about "The Usual Suspects" or "L.A. Confidential?" Generally speaking, those would fall into the category of "neo-noir," or noirish films made outside of the classic period. While still film noir, they're different because the newer movie code permits more violence and sex to be shown - which puts the films in a somewhat different category.
There does seem to be one consensus of opinion among critics: if the film has an overall light-hearted tone, it can't be film noir. And yet… Charlie Chaplin's 1947 black comedy "Monsieur Verdoux" is considered an off-genre noir by some!
So, as you can see, the answer to the question "What makes a film 'film noir?'" is complicated.
Brigham's Cultural Corner - A calendar day sly and unseen
I am currently reading Thomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles," which I first got interested in twenty-five years ago, when I saw the Roman Polanski adaptation of it starring Nastassia Kinski. My wife considers this work the World's Most Depressing Story, and she may be right. Polanski made the film in memory of his wife Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Manson Family. (Tate read the book and encouraged him to do a film treatment.)
It is of interest to genealogists because the story line involves the disastrous consequences of ill-used genealogical knowledge. In brief, an encounter with a local vicar (who is also an antiquarian) leads a drunken villager to the knowledge that he is descended from a once great and noble family. He therefore (inadvisably) sends his pretty daughter to the home of some local gentry of the same name to claim kinship. Unknown to him, however, the family appropriated the name and are not at all related. His daughter, Tess, is raped by the man of the house and returns to the village dishonored and pregnant. The infant dies. While working as a dairymaid elsewhere, Tess meets a man she falls in love with, and they marry. On their wedding night, however, she tells him of her past, and he leaves her. To keep herself and her family from impoverishment she marries the man who raped her and lives comfortably, if not happily. However, her husband - that is, the second one - returns to her. She then murders her husband - that is, the one who raped her - and flees to Stonehenge, where she is apprehended by the police, presumably to be executed. End of story. At this point, notes Hardy, the Immortals give up their Plaything. So there is a heavily fatalistic tone to the book.
Doing genealogical work as I do, and discovering facts that do not always coincide with what I or others had always supposed about myself or my family, Tess of the d'Urbervilles leads me to sometimes wonder, "Now that I have this knowledge, what do I do with it?" For instance, as a result of last winter's genealogical work on my mother's side of the family (and distribution of it to previously-unknown relatives), some cousins of mine have proposed a reunion, and I have been invited. What, if anything, will come of it?
Anyway, one passage in Tess jumped off the page at me, and described an idea I have seen nowhere else. It's about a date on the calendar that we're all unaware of. The passage follows:
"She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year; the disastrous night of her undoing at Trantridge with its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby's birth and death; also her own birth day; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation? She had Jeremy Taylor's thought that some time in the future those who had known her would say: "It is the -teenth, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died"; and there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement. Of that day, doomed to be her terminus in time through all the ages, she did not know the place in month, week, season, or year."
Nor do any of us. That knowledge is for future genealogists.
Brigham's Cultural Corner - Ramada Broke My Toe
In addition to all sorts of great family photos and a "Star Chaser" I got at Disneyland (I'll bring it to practice tonight), another thing I brought home from vacation in California last month is a broken toe.
We stayed at a Burbank Ramada Inn, not far from the airport. (That's "Ramada Inn Burbank Airport, 2900 North San Fernando Boulevard" for all you Internet search engines.) For some weird reason probably having to do with economics rather than safety, they mounted fairly heavy-duty doorstops on the bathroom floors, not far from the toilet. No, they didn't mount one on the wall, or on the hinge. It's on the floor.
So, Yours Truly gets up in the middle of the night to do what most guys are up to when they get up in the middle of the night, and, fumbling around on the wall trying to find the bathroom light switch, I slam the little toe of my right foot into the doorstop - hard. So hard that… well, you know how little planets, dashes, exclamation marks and swirls used to issue forth from conked heads on old cartoons? That's what happened with my little toe. I uttered some swear words - waking up the Fam - did my business and went back to bed.
I know I broke the toe because I had done this before, slipping on some rocks while on a Scout hike, and it feels and looks exactly the same way. Last time I got it x-rayed after it still hurt weeks later, and the doc said, "Yep, it's broken. No sense putting a splint on it or anything like that. It'll be better in a month or so."
Now, I'm an eager capitalist. When a business pleases me, I let it know. When it doesn't, I let it know, too. I figure the customer (I refuse to call myself a "consumer") input helps the business provide better service, and then everyone benefits. So, I wrote the manager of the Burbank Ramada Inn a letter saying, in effect, "Floor-mounted doorstops are stupid. I broke my toe on one. Somebody else might sue you. You ought to replace them." I got no response. I sent a copy via e-mail to Ramada Inn's website - and got a form letter style e-mail back telling me that the hotels are franchised-owned and operated by the local managers. She included the name and phone number of the person they thought was the manager - but he wasn't. Anyway, I left the current manager a phone message, but he never returned my call.
I can only conclude that Ramada Inn isn't very concerned about the safety and well being of their customers while on their premises. And so, Dear Reader, I am writing this little piece because I'm an old hand at using the global communicative power of the Internet to get the word out. (Which, when you think of it, is awesome. I once had to do a film noir scavenger hunt on the phrase "A promise is a promise to a person of the world" to find the only one website out of tens of millions that explained that this phrase appeared in a 1945 telegram to Elizabeth Short, the celebrated "Black Dahlia" murder victim in Los Angeles.)
My suggestion, based on personal experience, is that when you need a hotel, find a Sheraton, Marriott, Holiday Inn, Red Roof Inn or Hilton instead.
Brigham's Cultural Corner - Eisnerland
Journalistically fearless, I have taken rugby newsletters to places they've never gone. This time, we go to Disneyland.
While on vacation in and around Los Angeles not too long ago (I'm suffering from extended post-vacation let-down), we spent a day at The Happiest Place on Earth. To be accurate, we spent sixteen hours there. Now, you all know I'm not a very impressive runner or athlete, and my big ol' frame gets pretty worn down during a match or, especially, during an hour and a half of practice. Especially if it's warm. But that's to be expected - I'm a lumbering, overweight 48 year-old.
None of that comes into play at a theme park, however, where there are rides to be ridden. A place like Disneyland is my natural habitat, and there I do believe I can outlast anyone. Once, I went there for seven hours alone one day and then sixteen the next, running a high school chum around. It was about 11:30 PM when I rode the surrealistic Roger Rabbit dark house ride on that second day - and things were getting weird. I suppose it'll be the closest I ever get to bonging up. Anyway, I just about grew up at Disneyland, and always enjoy looking around and enjoying the artistic creativity as well as the attractions.
Standing in lines and shuffling from area to area all day in the heat is a pretty wearing experience, and during our recent day at Disneyland my wife stopped talking to me at about 6 PM or so. The teenaged daughters were wiped out as well. But at 11:30 PM (the park closed at Midnight), I was still going strong. I would have run my family across the park to make the Haunted Mansion again if I could have gotten away with it.
By Neil Finn
Composed for the 1999 RWC Tour of the All-Blacks
Where mountains meet the ocean
Beneath the Southern Cross
A symbol of our devotion
We'll never let go
Can you hear us
And carry our hopes
Can you hear us
We'll never let go
There's magic in your touch
Silver fern on black
Somehow it means so much
The time is running down
The shadows getting longer
But don't you hang your head
Cos brother it's not over
We'll never let go
Can you hear us
And carry our hopes
Can you hear us
We'll never let go
You feel the power from the stands
And it's like thunder coming to fill the silence
We'll never let go
Can you hear us
And carry our hopes
Can you hear us
We'll never let go
Aotearoa.....
Hear us.....
Aotearoa.....