The market rate

I think it's safe to say most of us don't appreciate the skill and nuance involved in being a supermarket grocery worker. 

For example, the grocery store check-out cashier. Sure, they make it look easy. But clearly there's so much happening we "civilians" just aren't aware of and don't understand.

First, several times an hour they have to move their bodies several degrees forward, leaning into a bar in front of them activating a conveyor belt which brings the groceries conveniently within arm's reach. Then, as if bar-leaning wasn't difficult enough, the job requires them to actually pick up the groceries, with their hands, one at a time, and run them over a scanner which automatically records the price.

But there's more to it than that. Much more.

As any pro will tell you, they can't just continue on unfettered after having run the item. It's simply not that easy. They have to wait until they hear the beep confirming the item has been scanned before they can move on to the next item. Then they have to physically push the scanned item down the counter to their left, where another valiant grocery worker manually lifts it up, then places it in either a paper or plastic bag.

Child labor sweatshops in Thailand have nothing on these supermarkets.

It should be apparent to even the most casual observer these highly skilled professionals are doing God's work by doing a thankless job that clearly chimpanzees or the mentally challenged could never be trained to do.

You can see the difficulty factor on the faces of those brave shoppers going it alone at the automatic check out counters, and getting out of the store and on with their lives way ahead of the rest of us in those understaffed, slow-moving check out lines.

Yet day in and day out, these checkers do it all with the smile, friendliness and great attitude we see on display every time we go to the store.

Knowing how deserving these selfless servants are makes it much easier to support them in their vote whether or not to strike. The reason for the vote is the companies they work for have the audacity, the nerve, the unmitigated gall to ask them to contribute to their own healthcare costs.

The stores - and when I say stores I mean the customers in the form of higher food costs - now pay full fare for employee healthcare. But due to increasing health care costs, they want the employees to pay a monthly bank-breaking $36 for individual and $92 for family coverage.

Apparently all that time scanning groceries doesn't leave them much time to see what the rest of the world pays for healthcare. In the real world, the one outside the automatic doors, those rates would be a godsend.

Their union spokesman, Mike Shimpock, said here that by authorizing this strike they're sending a message to corporations "...for us and for everybody."

First, I don't need your union sending messages for me, but thanks for the thought. And secondly, what exactly is the message they're sending?

The one I'm getting is grocery workers consider themselves some sort of privileged class that should be immune from the rising healthcare rates the rest of us have to pay for the simple reason they haven't had to pay them in the past.

Note to grocery workers: things ain't the way they used to be.

No one wants to be paying the exorbitant healthcare prices we pay, prices by the way that are hundreds of dollars a month more than you're being asked to pony up.

I'm not a union-buster. I belong in good standing to two of them. But I have to say they are way out of step with reality here. Sadly this isn't rare for unions, which historically hold onto unrealistic positions like striking for raises during a recession, while at the same time not offering any concessions. They must think it makes them look brave. It actually just makes them look stupid, uncompromising and out of touch. And it gives ammunition to the real union busters, political and otherwise, that are out to get them.

In '03 and '04 there was a grocery workers strike that went on almost six months, wiped out most of the employees savings and cost the supermarkets 1.5 billion. The winners of that strike were stores that weren't being picketed like Trader Joe's and Bristol Farms.

The grocery union leadership needs to come to the table and negotiate with both the reality of healthcare costs and the interest of their membership in mind.

If they don't, they'll be the ones left holding the bag.

When the death penalty isn't enough

For those of you who doubt the existence of evil, or believe that it doesn't walk among us, you might want to have a seat and alter your thinking.

I don't have a term strong or accurate enough to describe the piece of white trash pictured here. His name is Jeremiah Lee Wright. What did he do to stir all this negative emotion? He decapitated his 7-year old son, then for good measure cut off his hands and feet.

His son had cerebral palsy and heart problems, and was confined to a wheel chair. And 'ole Jeremiah just got tired of taking care of him. (If you want more details, you'll find them here).

This isn't the first time I've posted about human garbage. I did it before for another animal equally deserving of being wiped off the face of the earth. The frightening thing is that psychopaths like this are like ants - you can never really get rid of them all.

As a parent writing this, and I'm sure if you're a parent reading it, the size of the unimaginable sadness is only matched by the desire to lock our kids away and protect them from everything, and everyone, bad in the world.

Which of course we can't.

I don't often do this, but I'm going to quote myself from that other post on the death penalty:

Here's the thing: I don't buy the argument that putting him to death brings us down to his level. It's a false analogy. Murdering innocent adults and young children, then executing the murderer as a consequence of their crime are two completely different things. They are not morally equivalent.

While it would be nice if the penalty worked as a deterrent, I don't really care whether it does or not. What does matter to me is that by putting him to death, one less monster walks among us.

A little bit of evil bites the dust.

So that's how I feel. And in this case in particular, I hope the way this guy eventually gets taken out causes him to feel as much pain and terror as he caused his innocent son.

For starters.

Tracks of my tears

If you follow this blog - and really, shouldn't you be out in the fresh air and sunshine? - you know every once in awhile as a public service I take time to contrast and compare the same song performed by different artists.

Did I say public service? I meant when I can't think of anything to write.

I've done it for Stand By Me and a song called Secret Heart. Today, for your listening pleasure, Tracks Of My Tears. Smokey Robinson wrote it and made it a hit. The first and last videos are of him singing it.

Please to enjoy.

A day at the races

For years I've always been told to bet the gray horse. No idea why. Maybe it's because there aren't that many of them. Or that they're so beautiful.

So that's what I've always done.

The family and I spent yesterday at Del Mar Racetrack, where the turf meets the surf. A beautiful track that sits on a spectacular section of the California coast, it was built by a partnership that included Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante and Oliver Hardy. As racetracks go, it has a much higher class of gambling degenerates than, say, Hollywood Park. Everyone seems to clean up a little better. There were a lot of hats that looked like they'd be right at home in the royal wedding party.

Preferring not to sit with the riff-raff in the general grandstand section, we sat with the riff-raff in the clubhouse section. You can buy reserved seats in the clubhouse section, but there's really no need to. There are plenty of empty seats to sit in until someone who's paid for reserved seats comes and throws you out (which didn't happen to us). And if it did, we'd have just moved to other unoccupied seats.

I used to go to the track quite a bit when I was in college. Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, here at Del Mar. And I used to bet on the ponies quite a bit as well. I'd bet things like my rent money (which didn't make my roommate happy at all), my paycheck, my savings - you see where I'm going here. If I'd been better at it, it wouldn't have been any big deal. The problem was my skill at picking horses was just as good as my talent for hang-gliding, barbecuing and car repair.

The one time I actually won back the rent money I'd lost I took it as a sign I probably should stop going to the track. So I did. For a long time.

But now that years have gone by, and I have kids, I thought it was time to show them the fun of racing. The splendor of the track. The grandeur of these stunning animals (the ones on the track, not in the stands). After all, it is the Sport of Kings. And seriously, aside from a smoke-filled casino, what better place for impressionable young children than a racetrack filled with drunken gamblers.

I know, right?

Oh, and about that gray horse I bet on? In this picture he's just out of frame to the left.

Along with his walker and oxygen tank.

What a putts

I don't play golf. I've tried, but I can't. It seems like a monumental waste of time. And land. And money.

Besides, if I want to wear plaid shorts with striped shirts there are plenty of other places I can do it.

The picture to the left is part of the route I take when I'm out walking with my German Sheperd. Have a closer look at it. I'm fortunate to live in a neighborhood with some pretty nice manicured lawns, but even this struck me as a little much. See the cups?

Apparently what my idiot neighbor (and if you've been following this blog you know the place is lousy with them) did was go out and spend money to have a miniature golf course/putting green put on his front lawn.

I know what you're thinking: at least he didn't put flags out. You know what I'm thinking?

Let me direct your attention to exhibit B.

On the lawn immediately in front of his house, he has two holes with flags. I don't know what to make of any of it.

My first thought is I wonder if he followed the same procedure every other resident has to follow and cleared it with the homeowner's association. Come to find out he didn't (which would also explain the dolphin sculpture and the flagpole that aren't pictured here).

On the heels of that I think, well, it's his house and if he wants to he can. Which of course he can't. That's why there's a homeowner's association.

Then I think, wow, at least this guy didn't do something so stupid and boneheaded like putting in a sand trap.

Oh, wait a minute.

Let me direct your attention to exhibit C.

If the guy wanted to put a miniature course on his property, he should have put it on his property. Technically the street-side parkway belongs to the city, and they get really pissy when they don't have a say in what you do to their property. Or when they don't get paid a waiver fee so you can do it.

They're just funny that way.

I have a lot of friends, good friends, intelligent people that I respect that play golf often and enjoy it. But they have the good taste to do it on a course at a club, not on their front lawn.

I think I have to agree with Robin Williams: golf is a giant joke being played on everyone who plays it.

So I'll keep walking my dog past this house, smiling to myself at the idiocy of it all.

And taking a small bit of satisfaction in the fact that even if my dog can't play golf, there are other things he can do on this guy's course.

This clip has language that may not be suitable for the youngsters.

Door to door

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Another.

Another who?

Another a&%$@*e at my door trying to sell me something.

It always surprises me when door-to-door salesmen show up on my doorstep. For one thing, it seems like such a throwback to a more innocent time. For another, I can't believe these people really think that by showing up unannounced and unwanted, I'm actually going to buy what they're selling. I don't buy anything from the many daily cards and flyers for house-cleaning services and lawn maintenance that get left on my step. I'm not going to buy anything from them. And finally, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night - I know they're just here to case my house, and then come back when no one's home and rob me blind.

I don't care if they're not. In my mind they are.

When I pulled up to my house last night, there was this guy standing in front of my neighbor's house (the good neighbor, not the other one). He was on his cell phone, and as I walked into my house he waved and said, "Hey." Well "hey" right back pal. I was fine being friendly to him at this point, because he wasn't on my property with his brochure about a new home security system. Yet.

A few minutes after I got in the house and settled in, there was the knock at the door. I knew right away it was him. So I immediately jumped into action, and did what I always do when someone suspicious I don't know comes to the door.

I called my German Sheperd into the living room.

I went to the door, my hand on my dog's collar looking like I was holding him back. The truth is, I was holding him back - but only because he would've licked the guy to death.

My dog hasn't read the German Sheperd manual.

Holding the dog with one hand, I opened the door with the other, but just the minimum amount so that he couldn't see into my house, but could see that I had a large dog with sparkly teeth that looked like he wanted to have a nice sales guy with steak sauce for dinner.

He started in with a hard sell about Skyline Home Security Systems. I said, "Oh, to keep out people you don't want on your property." It was lost on him.

I know times are tough and everyone needs to work, but I decided to save this guy some time by telling him we were happy with our system and not planning on replacing it. He said okay and left.

When I told my wife who it was and what he was selling, she was immediately concerned. Her father had been in the security/alarm business for years and had always told her that door-to-door alarm salesmen are always casing your house.

Even though the door hadn't been open enough for him to case anything, I ran up the street after him. I got one of his brochures, and a phone number to contact him. Then this morning, I called Skyline to find out if he was really one of their sales reps, or a guy trying to avoid a third strike. Turns out he was one of theirs.

Maybe next time instead of saying "Hey" when I see a door-to-door salesman loitering outside on his cell phone, I'll say, "Hey, don't bother going to that house."

It won't be as much fun for the dog. But then that's what pizza delivery guys are for.

The Con

This isn't the first time I've written about Comic Con. The last time was a post about the difficulties of playing hotel roulette and getting the one I wanted.


Fortunately, after writing a Jeff-letter to the Chairman and CEO of Hilton, that wasn't a problem this year. We were at the Hilton Bayfront, right across the street from Hall H at the San Diego Convention Center. Which was perfect, because we spent most of our days there holed up in Hall H.


For those who haven't been, Hall H is where all the major studios hold their movie panels. They parade the stars and directors out, show exclusive footage from upcoming films, then have a discussion led by a moderator before taking questions from the audience. The hall seats 6500 people. When they like what they hear you know it. Same when they don't.


There's way too much craziness, geek love, celebrity, craziness, fun and craziness at Comic Con to put into one post. So instead, I'll just put up a few pics from the weekend to give you a little taste.


And yes, since you asked, we're pre-registered for next year.

Kevin Smith interviewing fans dressed up in costumes

Francis Ford Coppola with Val Kilmer

Our tickets to the world premiere of Cowboys & Aliens. That's right, you heard me.

Andrew Garfield, the next Spiderman.

Nic Cage wore his bad hair costume for the panel.

Colin Farrell was funny and charming. Bastard.

Team Twilight.

The most surprising and one of the best panels this year, Pee Wee Herman.

Gulliermo Del Toro

Some guy named Spielberg.

Penn & Teller. Yes, Teller spoke.

Justin Timberlake & Amanda Seyfried pretending not to look at me.

My hotel across the street from Hall H