If you watch any amount of TV and live where the Six Flags amusement park might advertise, you've seen the commercial. An old man rolls into town on a Six Flags bus, then creeps out of the vehicle. And the rest unfolds from there.
I just had the idea of finding it online and posting it on my blog (because it has nothing to do with things like Lodi suing Wall Street and Wall Street suing Lodi). Well, I found the commercial. And I learned that I haven't seen the whole commercial. Yep, that's right: The full one is longer. So turn up your sound and go watch it.
Little ole' Lodi, population 60,000, has gone and sued Lehman Brothers, a 154-year-old Wall Street investment firm that's one of the largest in the world.
The lawsuit was filed hours after a federal judge scolded a state agency, saying, in layman's terms, "Shame on you. You helped get the city into a mess." (Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in federal court yesterday. And three other print reporters were there, possibly because they realized an insane amount of money is at risk.)
I know a bunch of you don't follow the legal happenings in Lodi, Calif., and that's not surprising. It's amazingly complicated, too. But just imagine suing a bank. Then imagine suing the bank that was recently put in charge of a $15 billion bond deal for the state of California. Such a bank really doesn't want negative publicity right now. Such a bank also has the money to pay for very good, very sharp lawyers.
Millions upon millions of dollars may be at stake in a pollution case (which took me to federal court today), but we mustn't let that be overshadowed by the man who decided to paint an iceberg red.
"So, Layla, what did you do on Sunday? Did you do the laundry that needed washing?"
Nope, no laundry was done. That idea went flying out the window when a friend called to see if I wanted a free ticket to see the Kings play the Houston Rockets. There is no way I'd pass up that opportunity, so away I went.
That was one good game to see live. Houston led for almost the entire game, except for a tie. But then Vlade Divac made a three-pointer (something he doesn't do) with no time left on the shot clock. That had me out of my seat, along with most of the other 17,000 people in attendance. And then the Kings just coasted to a win. It was beautiful -- even if stupid people were booing Chris Webber.
One other note: Rockets player Yao Ming is TALL. We went down to the floor to see the players warming up before the game, and that gave me a better idea of how tall a 7-foot-6-inch guy really is. If he lived in my apartment, the top shelves in his kitchen cupboards would not be empty.
So the autobiography written by disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair has flopped in a spectacular way. At this rate, extra copies of the plagiarist's book might be best used as kindling.
In case you missed the negative tone in those last two sentences, I don't feel sorry for the guy. He stole the work of others and fabricated lies, all while working for the New York Times as a supposed journalist. So many of us work so hard, but he goes and does a thing like that to disgrace the field that is already hated by most of the world. Frankly, I'm glad there was so much coverage of his actions, because now nobody wants to read his book.
The friend who sent me that link wondered if there was any way the publishers could get back some of the six-figure advance they gave Blair. Unfortunately, I think Blair made out like a bandit -- again.
Is it irony when the health insurance company for a newspaper's employees sends a "PRE-SERVCIE" denial to one of the reporters?
And is that "typo" grounds for said reporter -- who may happen to have written a ton of articles about insurance companies -- to find and take down Aetna and Medcore (whatever the hell that is)?
I tend to dream about work regularly, though I don't always remember a lot of my dreams. The ones I do remember are the ones that slightly wake me up, or the ones I was having when my alarm clock went off.
Sometime between around 12:30 and 7:30 a.m. last night (this morning, to be technical), I dreamed that a high school student had died. This was a work-related dream, because I covered an accident involving two pedestrians who were hit by a truck in front of a high school 10 days ago. As part of my job, I've been checking regularly with the hospitals on the girls' conditions. One girl improved to serious condition while this girl -- the one in my dream -- remained in critical condition.
Someone from the newsroom just called me. I knew what he was going to say. He told me the girl had died, and for a fraction of a second, I got mixed up between my dream and this real conversation. I interrupted him to ask what time the girl died. Around 7 this morning, he said. A half an hour before I woke up.
I didn't even let my co-worker talk because I was just too stunned. I had woken up this morning, thinking that I should call the newsroom and ask them to check on the girl's condition. Then I told myself I was being silly and bordering on superstitious. So I forced it out of my mind. But now it's back in my mind.
This blog is titled "A Reporter's Life," so I decided to mention a few things that have happened on this day in my reporting life.
1. I accidentally sent a 43-page PDF file to the printer, but when I tried to cancel it, my computer froze. I rebooted. I rebuilt the desktop (Mac thing). It froze. I rebooted. Lather, rinse, repeat. Again. I think it's working now.
2. I hung up after talking to someone and said, "Question-dodger!" That's never a good sign, but in this case it's quite interesting. It will be filed in a certain section in my mental database.
3. I have a large pile of folders on my desk and a huge contamination map tacked to my wall because an editor cleaned his office.
4. And, last but not least, an iguana used my chairmat as a bathroom. I kid you not.
I'm finding myself in an interesting situation. I can't -- and won't -- say much about the unpublished manuscript I've been given, but at the same time, I want to shout, "I am reading 96,207 words, nine months before the book will be published! Ha!" You know, it's that whole "scoop" mentality that I must have been born with.
It's weird, because I've never read a book that I already know so well. I skipped to the last page to see how it ended, and it didn't ruin it for me at all: I was more curious at seeing when the author chose to stop. I ran a search for various names to see when they popped up. I scrolled past lines and lines of text, pausing to see where the author placed the chapter breaks.
This is the second book-length manuscript I've been given the privilege of reading, though the topics are probably as different as could possibly be imagined. Both manuscripts have given me a feeling of awe. But now, more than ever, I'm thinking, "I can do this. I want to do this. And something in me will not rest until I do it."
I missed out on one book idea, but two others are within my grasp. I feel small; I feel intimidated. But I also sense that familiar feeling of wanting to take on a challenge.
If you donated your body to a university for scientific purposes, would you really want your family to sue the university when someone stole and sold your dead body? That's what happened at UCLA, a couple days after two guys were arrested for stealing cadavers and selling them.
Of course, it's wrong. Of course, security obviously lapsed at the university. But does this really warrant a class-action lawsuit? What on earth will the families get? The bodies will still be just as dead as they were before. I know the purpose of a class-action lawsuit is to teach the wrong-doer a lesson so such a thing doesn't happen again. But if I donated my body to a university, the last thing I'd want would be for my family to turn around and file a lawsuit. In essence, my donation would actually make the university lose money.
Why do so many people in this country file so many stupid lawsuits? Most of the suits are just games run by the lawyers who care only about making money.
If I don't watch out, a certain massive civil suit will make a lawyer out of me. Or someone who's learned about things like LLPs, also known as limited liability partnerships.
You see, it turns out that if you're a law firm and you let some state bar fees slide, you might be screwed. And for some reason, this isn't something that's easily found. You have to be a curious person (who, me?) who decides to jump through investigative loops.
Only in New England would a town want to secede from its state and join New Hampshire, even though it's in the middle of Vermont. Yes, it's true. The Vermont town of Killington -- population: 1,000 -- wants to become part of the state that's 25 miles away and bears the motto, "Live free or die." The townspeople argue that their tourism and taxes give the state $10 million annually, but that they only get about $1 million back for things like schools.
I thought it was ridiculous until I read this quote by Vermont's secretary of state: "Absent an armed insurrection type of thing, there isn't anything a town can do to secede. A town is a construction of the state and exists at the pleasure of the Legislature."
Yeah, that's enough snootiness to make me want to flee the state. That, and the fact that New Hampshire has one of the lowest tax rates in the nation. (Visiting the state for three weeks wouldn't make me at all biased, would it?)
Six Flags guy
If you watch any amount of TV and live where the Six Flags amusement park might advertise, you've seen the commercial. An old man rolls into town on a Six Flags bus, then creeps out of the vehicle. And the rest unfolds from there.I just had the idea of finding it online and posting it on my blog (because it has nothing to do with things like Lodi suing Wall Street and Wall Street suing Lodi). Well, I found the commercial. And I learned that I haven't seen the whole commercial. Yep, that's right: The full one is longer. So turn up your sound and go watch it.
Posted by Layla at 8:59 PM, March 31, 2004. Comments (0)