Bagging for Biden (Who Won't Bag for Himself)

Oh, Joe, you're so coy!

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Bagging for Biden (for Veep)

Today's New York Times has a profile of our favored presidential candidate of old, the Senator from Delaware, Joe Biden, positing that his strengths and weaknesses as a vice-presidential are glaringly obvious and that they are, more importantly, the same: his age, his lengthy legislative experience, and his mouth.

I fell in love with Biden a year ago after watching him in the early Democratic primary debates. I devoured his memoir and set to blogging about why he's the guy the country needs. Readers of NPH were quick to note, after Biden's candidacy failed, the deleterious effect which the blog may have had on the Senator's try. We're pressing our luck here that a similar endorsement for vice-president won't have do likewise. We're giddy at the notion.

A couple of things to clarify from the Times' profile, though:

He first told Brian Williams of NBC on “Meet the Press,” “I am not interested in the vice presidency.” But with very little prodding, a moment later he said that if Mr. Obama asked him to be his running mate, “Of course I’ll say yes.”

I saw that interview (below), and Biden's answer was the only honest one to give. "I'm not seeking it," he said, "but if asked I'll serve." That falls short of "wanting the job" in the way the profile suggests. It was a great answer.

Second:

Mr. Biden’s appeal as a national candidate is suspect. His first bid for the presidency, beginning in 1987, famously flamed out after he was caught stealing passages from a speech by Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labor Party in Britain at the time.

The passage of Kinnock's that Biden used (the famous "platform on which to stand" line) he used repeatedly, and every time he used it he cited Kinnock as the source. In one appearance he failed to do that, and that was the appearance that got him. He acknowledges he fell down on it, but to say that he was "caught stealing" misses the mark significantly.

Whatever. Go Joe, go.

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Alan's Family Jewels (The Movie)

Back in May I shared the story of my friend Alan's mom and how her long lost family jewels had been uncovered by a reporter at the Rocky Mountain News.

This past weekend Alan's mom went with Alan and his son to Denver to actually claim the jewels. Watch the video below.

Big ups to Tina Griego, the reporter who chased down the story.

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Tow Truck Trouble II: The Reckoning

Not 48 hours after the tow truck theatrics in our condo complex, a drama that pitted villainous truck drivers looking to make a buck against a heroic citizenry standing up for its rights, I found myself at the mercy of the villains.

I drove out at 9:30 in the evening to pick up my mother-in-law from a CPR class she's taking at the local chapter of the Red Cross. I took this drive in a car that has never, in seven years, stranded anyone anywhere, but that had been rather finicky throughout the week with respect to its ignition switch. For three or four days prior, I had been forced into a ridiculous ritual to simply start the car: insert the key into the ignition, attempt to turn it, fail, then jiggle the key violently in the ignition until it turns. The ritual never persisted past, say, five seconds.

I sat in the Red Cross parking lot waiting for the class to let out, listening to the radio and enjoying the air conditioning. After waiting about five minutes, my conscience got the better of me and I turned off the car. How could I have known the nearly five-hour ordeal such a simple decision would effect?

As you certainly have guessed, the key wouldn't turn anymore. Only minutes after turning the car off I tried to turn it back on and failed. And failed, and failed, and failed. Finally my mother-in-law appeared, as did all of her classmates. I explained the difficulty calmly, even while violently shaking the key in the immovable ignition switch. Sweat was trickling steadily down my forehead.

Finally I called M (my new shorthand for the wife) to bring me the other key for the car. You see, this sticky key problem dogged us about a year ago until I went and got a new key. So, obviously, the other key would work. M got the baby out of bed, put her in the carseat, and drove the 1.5 miles to the now empty Red Cross parking lot.

No go. That key didn't work either. So we called the roadside assistance service we pay for through our cell phone provider. They said a tow truck would be there in 20 minutes or less. So I sent M home with her mother and the baby while I stayed to wait for the truck. It arrived around midnight, but the driver took one look at the narrow driveway leading back to the parking lot and shook his head, "nuh-uh."

"I no can do it," he explained with a shrug of his shoulders. "Truck is too big. You need smaller truck. My company no have. You ha' to call a diff'rent company." Then he left.

I redialed the roadside assistance service and explained the increasingly complicated situation: key won't turn, wheels are locked, driveway too narrow. She put me on hold for nearly thirty minutes while she appealed to nearly every tow truck company in the San Gabriel Valley. Finally she shared with me the good news that a smaller truck had been dispatched and would be there within the hour.

I don't know how long it's been since you sat in a deserted parking lot by yourself after midnight. It was a first for me. With no radio and no company, I thought about Chris McCandless, the subject of the John Krakauer book and Sean Penn film Into The Wild, a young man who ventured off into the Alaskan wilderness by himself at age 24. "Surely there is some virtue in this," I said to myself. "The isolation, the silence, the stillness. This is only making me a better person, less hurried, more flexible, more patient."

But I couldn't shake the bald outcome of McCandless' sojourn: he died. Alone. In an abandoned vehicle.

Help finally arrived an hour later that the roadside assistance operator said it would, now 2:30 in the morning. The husky driver reached under the car's hood, disconnected the transmission, chained up the car's front end, and loaded it onto the reclined bed of his truck. I watched with strained interest, even as I mentally sketched out the Wiffle Ball dimensions of the parking lot (if you hit from here, on top of the building would be a double, over it a home run. If you hit it the other way you'd have to get it through that tree for a homer . . .). We towed the car to a garage near the condo complex and left it in the empty lot. Then the generous driver ported me the half-mile down the street to the condo complex.

So, to whoever in the tow truck cosmos reads my blog and was offended by the implications of that earlier post: I'm sorry. I see now the benevolence of your profession. I will never insult you again.

Postscript: it was the keys. We paid a mechanic $175 the next day for three hours of labor that revealed that verdict.

Blurg!

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The Gruen Transfer Finale

In case you missed it a few weeks ago, one of my favorite things to watch this summer has been The Gruen Transfer, and Australian public TV show dissecting advertising.

On the finale, the panel looked at some of the ads that won awards at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

Here's the winner, a spot by the English chocolate manufacturer Cadbury. I dare you to watch it just once.

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Tow Truck Trouble

So there was a real dust-up at the condo complex last night when a tow truck driver attempted to hitch up our neighbor's illegally parked car. The neighbor came out as the tow truck driver was securing the car and said, "Hey! What are you doing?!" The driver refused to drop the car and instead proceeded to secure it to his truck to tow it away. When the neighbor threatened to call the cops, the driver said, "I dare you."

"Hello dispatch . . ."

Just then our other neighbor, a very amicable fellow who happens to be a pastor at the nearby Vineyard church, pulls up the driveway to tuck his car into his garage, which is positioned right in front of the tow truck. Neighbor one appeals for help to neighbor two by yelling, "Stay there!" Neighbor two gladly obliges, thereby blocking the tow truck in the driveway.

Then things got interesting. In a shower of four-letter epithets, the tow truck driver called up another tow truck to come and tow away the car of neighbor #2. Now we've got two tow trucks on the scene, and I for the life of me can't think of a scenario where that's going to end well. And so, when the driver of the second truck angrily informed neighbor #2 that he would be towing his car away, neighbor #2 informed him in sonorous pastoral tones that he "wasn't going to do *&$%." And away we go.

Just in time, no fewer than three police cars arrived in a flood of red and blue lights. For nearly an hour they held court, listening to the now overly-civil tow truck drivers and the neighbors, while I got the scoop at a distance from the neighbors' wives. Apparently the tow truck company is under contract with the condo complex. They like to troll the complex for illegally-parked cars and quickly drag them off. Times are tough; even tow truck drivers are suffering.

Anyhow, it all got resolved somehow. Then, in a nasty twist of DMV fate, the car of neighbor #2's wife was towed away at 5:00 this morning for expired tags.

Don't mess the the parking gods in Southern California.

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Monday Morning Phone Call

Someone called the church this morning seeking "information" about it, so that he could decide whether or not he would recommend his friend coming here. The information he wanted all had to do with the church's position on homosexuality.

Obviously, he knew what he did and did not want to hear when he called. But when what I told him didn't square with what he wanted, he engaged me in an hour-long debate about Biblical authority, the cultural context of the Bible, marriage, and, I think, pederasty.

He wasn't going to be happy with anything I said. Yet he pursued me for an hour. When I could tell he was too frustrated to continue, I laughed and said, "It doesn't sound like you're going to recommend your friend come here, but I've enjoyed our conversation."

"Yeah," he said, "Thanks."

"God bless you, brother."

Bye.

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