Archives for February 2007

One Blogger’s Confession Part 98,876

February 19, 2007 by Jack Steiner 4 Comments

The rules of the blog are clear. This is a place for stark and brutal honesty. If I try to make this everything that I want it to be then I need to abide by the rules that I established for myself. OTOH, since this is my joint and I make the rules I can always change them.

My son has knack for changing the rules. He hates to lose. It is age appropriate. If you are really interested in this topic you can read more about it here as I think that I am going to focus on the topic of this post which is my confession.

And that confession has to do with comments. In an earlier post I admitted to being lurking challenged.

“I try to visit as many blogs as I can, but time is fleeting and it can be a challenge. Nevertheless I make an effort. I also make an effort to comment. I am not much of a lurker. I am “lurking challenged.” Some of that is because I feel a bit of an obligation to comment and not be as voyeuristic as I could be by sitting in the background watching and waiting. You took the time the write so I’ll take the time to remark is the unofficial motto.”

I still try to abide by that. I like to show people that I have been by their blog by leaving a remark, but here is the thing. Sometimes I go to my default comment. What I mean by that is I leave some simple remark, two words like ‘Nice Post’ when I could have given them eight or ten.

Since Spring Training is on the horizon I’ll go with a baseball reference. Sometimes I feel like a pitcher who has lost his fastball and is just trying to get through the inning. Instead of trying to fool the batter with a poor imitation of my heater I throw the change up. I try to avoid doing that as it doesn’t really feel like the move of a crafty veteran.

So my promise to you is to try and do better. I’ll try to leave you with more than the ‘nice post’ or ‘well said’ you have received. Or maybe I’ll emulate my son and compose a post about the elegant simplicity of two word comments.

Wait and see.

Old Man Pony Tail and Head Band Dude

February 19, 2007 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Here is a public service announcement that is being sent out for general consumption. Take it for what it is worth.

Men with thinning hair should remember that there comes a point in time when you cannot hide it any longer. There are two things that you really shouldn’t do. First, there is no reason to try and loop the six remaining strand across your bald head. It is not fooling anyone.

The second thing is directed to men with long thinning hair. There comes a point in time when the only way to try and camouflage your loss is to pull it back into a tight ponytail. That pony tail look is great if your name is Crockett and Tubbs or are a member of some Southern Rock band like Lynrd Skynrd. Otherwise it just makes you look like a foolish hick.

Last comment.

Dear Mr. Headband Dude,

I certainly am not the arbiter of fashion, but I do know a few things. Hair bands have been out for more than a decade. Your particular headband was the highlight of your outfit. Let’s go over the checklist.

Green tank top showing off chest hair that looked rather like it belonged on Austin Powers.
Holey shorts. Not blessed, nor filled with holes because DKNY thinks it is cool. Just moth eaten, smelly gym shorts.

Ok, that is enough nasty commentary.

When Bloggers Are Sued

February 19, 2007 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

I am a little late to the party, but it seems that Orthomom is being sued. A public official that was criticized on Orthomom’s blog is the plaintiff. Here is a clip from Orthomom’s blog:

“A LAWRENCE school board member fed up with anonymous kvetching about her on a blog is going to court to stop it from calling her a bigot and an anti-Semite.

Pamela Greenbaum, who serves on the Nassau town’s board of education, filed papers against Google over nasty comments posted about her on the Orthomom blog.

In the papers filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, Greenbaum said she was “horrified” to discover that she had been labeled a bigot on the Google-owned blog after voting against using public funds for what she called “private school interests.”

“I was even more horrified when I discovered the blog reported over 300,000 visitors,” Greenbaum said in court papers.

Greenbaum alleges that Orthomom – which focuses on issues of interest to Long Island’s Orthodox Jewish communities – slandered her by calling her ugly and an anti-Semite.

Greenbaum, who is Jewish but not Orthodox, seeks to unmask the blogger known only as Orthomom.

“Every day that the defamatory material remains on the Internet for all to see, I continue to be harmed as more such material is posted,”she said in court papers.”

I wonder who serves as legal counsel for Ms. Greenbaum as this is most likely going to be a waste of money. There are different standards applied to proving slander/libel for public figures such as Greenbaum. She is going to have a tough time proving that those conditions exist.

300,000 visitors suggests that the blog reaches quite a large audience. However a simple audit will show that this is a number that was achieved over time. It is not a measure of daily traffic. However Greenbaum has done a great job of providing free PR for Orthomom, as well as providing the rest of us with great blog fodder.

In short this is likely to be a big waste of time and money for Greenbaum. Stay tuned to see what happens.

If you are really interested in hearing other opinions you can check in at the Orthomom roundup. If you are too lazy to click around here is an incomplete list:

Canonist
SerandEz
Krum as a Bagel
DovBear
Just Passing Through
Chaim
YidWithLid
Jameel
Jewess
At The Back Of the Hill
Rabbi Without A Cause
Charlie Hall
A Barbaric Yawp
Shimon
Suburban Kvetch
Meryl Yourish
Israel Matzav

Charles Barkley Versus Dick Bavetta

February 18, 2007 by Jack Steiner 2 Comments

When Parents Die

February 18, 2007 by Jack Steiner 5 Comments

Eighteen years ago my life changed in a number of ways. It was the year that I suffered through a broken heart. The year that M.B. committed suicide and the year that B’s mother suddenly died and then so did A’s father.

We were only 20 but I didn’t spend too much time thinking about mortality. I just shrugged my shoulders and went about my business.

Since then I have borne witness to the loss of a number of others. There was another suicide, cancer robbed us of some good friends and of course the death of more of my friends parents. I have been to a lot of funerals. I have more practice than I want offering condolences to mourners. It is not easy. You do the best that you can to offer support and not intrude upon people during intimate moments of grief.

I wrote about ‘D’ on more than one occasion. We buried him. I won’t ever forget it. As a pallbearers we helped escort him to the grave. When the time came I took off my coat and shoveled the dirt into his grave. I paused for a moment and looked up. I made eye contact with his mother and I won’t ever forget the look of horror on her face. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

In all candor, most funerals pale in comparison to this. That is not to denigrate or marginalize the others, but they have been somewhat easier.

Back to the topic. This will sound silly, but it seems like my parents and many of my friends have aged overnight. With varying degrees we all see the affect of time upon our moms and dads. Most of them are hanging in there, but their ability to do things has diminished. Some of them are facing greater challenges than others.

It is not always easy to watch your heroes grow older. It is hard to reconcile how the man who used to effortlessly carry you around now needs your help with little things. And the deaths of the parents of friends weighs upon you because it is another reminder of the mortality of your own parents.

One day they will die. One day we’ll lose them to whatever comes next. Call me selfish, but I am not sure that I’ll ever be ready to say goodbye.

(author’s note: I couldn’t figure out how to end this. It might be because it is the middle of the night and I am tired. I don’t really care why, I just have to go to sleep.)

Text From a Post that I nuked

February 18, 2007 by Jack Steiner 1 Comment

I didn’t like the way that this was flowing so I am scrapping it and starting over.

If you are lucky you grow up in house populated by loving parents who do all they can to take care of you. I used to think that this was a given, but I sadly learned a long time ago that some of us have parents who should be a failing grade. That is a topic for a different post.

As a child you view your parents as being superhuman. It is hard not to. They seem to have answers to most if not all of your questions and are able to show you all sorts of really cool things. Who knew that mom and dad knew so many nifty tricks.

At some point in your childhood you realize that the superheroes you call mom and dad have some shortcomings. Their super patience sometimes wears thin. Occasionally they might even yell at you and those tricks that were so cool at seven just don’t play well anymore. Slowly but surely the pedestal that they stand upon shrinks until it reaches a point just slightly above the one that you stand on.

I suspect that many of us go through a time in which we find our parents to be incredible pain-in-the-asses. I know that there was definitely a point in time where I wondered how they had survived so long. Ok, I was an ignorant moron. Call me the case study for the teenager who knew better than his parents.

The good news (at least for my parents) is that it was a short phase and then I realized that they knew so much and went back to the comfort of knowing that I could always ask mom and dad for help.

I don’t much like asking for help. It grates upon my nerves to admit that I am having trouble. I prefer to try and work things out on my own. If it is offered I take it, but I still don’t like it.