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Random notes: December 28, 2013.

Saturday, December 28th, 2013

Desert Hot Springs, California is in trouble.

Turn north, and you make your way up an arid stretch of road to a battered city where empty storefronts outnumber shops, the Fire Department has been closed, City Hall is on a four-day week and the dwindling coffers may be empty by spring.

Why? I’ll give you one guess.

Here, under the budget enacted last spring, about $7 million of the city’s $10.6 million annual payroll went to the 39-member police force. The situation was so dire that an audit, compiled weeks before municipal elections in November but not made public until later, showed that Desert Hot Springs was $4 million short for the year and would run out of money as early as April 2014.

Last week, the city cut all municipal salaries, including those of the police, by 22 percent. The city also capped “incentive pay” and cut back on holiday and vacation days. Naturally, the police officer’s association is stating these cuts are illegal.

Police officers here, as in many California cities, can retire as young as 50 with 30 years of service and receive 90 percent of their final salary every year — drawing those pensions for decades. Police unions say the fault lies with state and local politicians who failed to adequately fund the pension system over the years, and inflated benefits during boom years. Others wonder whether such salaries and pensions were ever affordable, particularly in cities as small and struggling as this. In Desert Hot Springs, for example, for every dollar that the city pays its police officers, another 36 cents must be sent to Calpers to fund their pensions.

Desert Hot Springs has a current population of around 27,000.

The average pay and benefits package for a police officer here had been worth $177,203 per year, in a city where the median household income was $31,356 in 2011, according to the Census Bureau. All of this had gone largely unnoticed until becoming the center of debate during the recent municipal election.

Oh, and by the way: Desert Hot Springs filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and is still making payments on a $10 million civil judgment against the city.

But, you know, the police aren’t the only people who get large salaries.

An examination of tax records, contracts and other documents by The New York Times found that hefty stagehand salaries at many New York nonprofit performance institutions are more widespread than was previously known.

You don’t say.

At nine top such institutions that have contracts with Local 1, stagehands make up 36 of the 98 most highly compensated employees, or about 37 percent. The average annual total salary and benefits of those highest-paid stagehands, at places from the Metropolitan Opera to the Roundabout Theater Company, is nearly $310,000, according to the nonprofits’ most recent tax filings.

That’s good money. I wonder when they can put in for retirement.

Backstage workers can earn more than the onstage talent. Five stagehands at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center were each paid more in total compensation in 2011 than the highest-paid dancer at New York City Ballet, filings showed. And, in 2010, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” paid its stagehands a total of $138,000 a week, while the principals and members of the ensemble earned slightly less than $100,000 put together, according to documents submitted to the state attorney general’s office.

The paper of record seems to want readers to be shocked and appalled at how much stagehands are paid. Personally, I’m glad to hear that they’re making big money; I think they have every right to negotiate lucrative contracts with their employers, and I don’t see any reason to be indignant that “the four top stagehands at the Metropolitan Opera earned more than $500,000 each in total compensation (including retirement and other benefits), tax filings showed.“

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Holmes for the Holidays.

Friday, December 27th, 2013

Here’s a nice little Christmas present – slightly late, but who cares? (I celebrate Christmas through January 6th, anyway.)

A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law and can be freely used by creators without paying any licensing fee to the Conan Doyle estate.

(Previously on WCD.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Words have meanings.

Thursday, December 26th, 2013

This is how Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary on Project Gutenberg defines the word “infamous”:

INFAMOUS
In”fa*mous, a. Etym: [Pref. in- not + famous: cf. L. infamis. See
Infamy.]

1. Of very bad report; having a reputation of the worst kind; held in abhorrence; guilty of something that exposes to infamy; base; notoriously vile; detestable; as, an infamous traitor; an infamous perjurer. False errant knight, infamous, and forsworn. Spenser.

2. Causing or producing infamy; deserving detestation; scandalous to the last degree; as, an infamous act; infamous vices; infamous corruption. Macaulay.

3. (Law)

Defn: Branded with infamy by conviction of a crime; as, at common law, an infamous person can not be a witness.

4. Having a bad name as being the place where an odious crime was committed, or as being associated with something detestable; hence, unlucky; perilous; dangerous. “Infamous woods.” P. Fletcher. Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds. Milton. The piny shade More infamous by cursed Lycaon made. Dryden.

Syn. — Detestable; odious; scandalous; disgraceful; base; vile; shameful; ignominious.

I quote this here because it is in the public domain. More modern sources, such as the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, agree with the definition, especially the “having a reputation of the worst kind”.

So what?

That’s part of the front page of today’s HouChron. The 1993 Houston Oilers had “a reputation of the worst kind”? They were “held in abhorrence”? They were “base; notoriously vile; detestable”? That’s really not how I remember things.

After a 28-3 halftime lead against the Buffalo Bills, the Oilers eventually lost 41-38 in one of the most infamous comebacks in NFL history.

Same thing here. Guys, “inflammable” and “flammable” mean the same thing, yes. But “infamous” and “famous” do not.

They may have been “dysfunctional”. But they went 12-4. I’d be more inclined to refer to the 2013 Houston Texans as “infamous” instead of the 1993 Oilers.

That is, if I was going to use the word to refer to a football team. Which I’m not, because I feel like I have a grasp of what the word means, unlike the HouChron headline writers. (Brian T. Smith, the author of the linked article, avoids using “infamous”. Kudos to him; I’d like to read the piece that’s coming on Sunday, but it looks like it will be behind the paywall.)

Posted in Clippings, NFL, Sports, Wordplay | Comments Closed

You. Don’t. Say.

Thursday, December 26th, 2013

Gun facts and terminology can be complicated for those not intimately familiar with the topic. But many readers are knowledgeable, and lapses like these hurt our credibility with them.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Media | Comments Closed

Mao mix.

Thursday, December 26th, 2013

Mao Mao Mao, Mao Mao Mao, Mao Mao Mao Mao Mao Mao.

(Sorry. But when was I going to get another chance to do this?)

Posted in Clippings, History | Comments Closed

Merry Christmas from the Austin American-Statesman.

Tuesday, December 24th, 2013

It is the most celebrated letter to the editor and its reply the most celebrated editorial in American journalism.

Yes, that one.

In the summer of 1897, 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon sent a letter to The New York Sun asking if Santa Claus was real. An editorial writer named Frank Church was assigned the task of answering Virginia’s letter. Church’s response, published anonymously Sept. 21, is a Christmas classic.

Please, good sirs, do go on.

This story continues on our new premium website for subscribers, MyStatesman.com.

Oh.

Or you could read it on the Newseum website. On on the New York Daily News website. Or any number of other places where they don’t charge you to read something that (I strongly suspect, but you never know with US copyright law) is in the public domain.

Posted in Christmas, Clippings, Media | Comments Closed

Behold!

Tuesday, December 24th, 2013

The awesome power of cheese!

“You want to use provolone or mozzarella,” said Jeffrey A. Tews, the fleet operations manager for the public works department, which has thrice spread the cheesy substance in Bay View, a neighborhood on Milwaukee’s south side. “Those have the best salt content. You have to do practically nothing to it.”

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

Obit watch: special oh Mikhail you’re so fine edition.

Tuesday, December 24th, 2013

Mikhail Kalashnikov: NYT. LAT.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Obits | Comments Closed

The story you are about to hear is true.

Monday, December 23rd, 2013

The names have not been changed to protect the innocent.

One night in 1962, a young police officer was working Vice out of Wilshire Division.

We were trying to bust after-hours drinking spots engaging in illegal alcohol sales, prostitution and drug activity. I had been the undercover operator on a recent takedown, and on this particular night our sergeant and one vice team were trying the same tactic on a second persistent offender, this time in a residential area. My partner and I, along with another vice team, were providing backup, out of sight but on the tactical radio frequency.

The vice cops pulled over a cab that had two men in it.

One of the men was Lenny Bruce. The other man was a then unknown actor named Peter O’Toole. And the vice cop was Joseph Wambaugh. Click through for the whole story.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 21, 2013.

Saturday, December 21st, 2013

I’d never heard of Ned Vizzini until yesterday; this isn’t a shot at him, I just don’t read a lot of YA fiction. But this is just sad and awful.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 (TALK).

The WP reviews “Chris Burden: Extreme Measures”, a retrospective of his work. I believe Mr. Burden and his work have come up here before, but for those who don’t remember…

In 1971, in a bare gallery space in Santa Ana, Calif., artist Chris Burden filmed himself being shot with a rifle. The bullet went through his left arm, causing more damage than expected. The moment after he was shot, the boyish young man with short-cropped hair staggered forward a few steps as if stunned by pain or shock, and was photographed later with blood dripping from the wound. In the previous few years, tens of thousands of men his age died in Vietnam, and the performance, titled simply “Shoot,” obviously had something to do with the political climate since 1968.

Unmentioned because it isn’t really relevant, but: Burden’s performance inspired one of Laurie Anderson’s early works, “It’s Not the Bullet That Kills You (It’s the Hole)”.

Posted in Art, Books, Clippings, Guns, Obits | Comments Closed

Better Red than…

Thursday, December 19th, 2013

Darden Restaurants Inc. said it would separate itself from its Red Lobster business while halting expansion at Olive Garden and stopping acquisitions “for the foreseeable future.”

Darden said the Red Lobster move may take the form of a tax-free spinoff to shareholders or an outright sale.

The last time I went to Red Lobster, it was kind of a disappointment. And the last two times I’ve gone to Olive Garden, I’ve walked out before even getting a drink. Maybe this is what Red Lobster needs.

Obligatory: the all-you-can-eat crab legs story.

Obligatory 2: make your own cheddar biscuits at home.

Posted in Bread, Clippings, Food | 3 Comments »