Sometimes you just have to wonder what the hell is up with the Japanese.

What the Hell is Wrong With the Japanese?

RIIIIICOLA SAAAAAN!

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Note: The Poobah is out of town for the next few days attending a senior dinner for Claire Koeneman at Cal Poly Pomona. To keep you entertained. Here’s a Poobah Classic from the archives.
There are 8,000 stories in the Naked City – this is one of them

I drove through the pre-dawn streets. The traffic lights cycled through their silent and regular routine, directing dozens of ghost cars to dozens of ghost locations. The street glared with rain and my windshield turned runny from the fat drops. It was weather best described as cheap film noir.

I needed some cash, so I pulled to the curb in front of my bank, snugged up my hat, and dug through my wallet looking for the ATM card. As usual, I confused my credit card and ATM card. “There are far too many blue cards,” I thought.

I jumped the rain swollen gutter and looked down. There, barely afloat in the dirty river, was a discarded and sodden package for a pair of Fiskars™.

The Mystery Scissors
Then, midway to the auto-teller, I found the scissors lying on the sidewalk. They had bright orange, left-handed handles. Not your routine find on a rainy pre-dawn morning, but I only vaguely took notice. I thought, “that’s odd” as I walked by. “I’ll pick them up on the way back to the car.”

You can never tell when you might need a left-handed, orange-handled pair of scissors. Fiskars™ are a well-respected brand too.

I reached the ATM still pulling at more plastic than any one person needs, so I wasn’t paying close attention to the ATM itself. Sure, there was the usual scatter of envelopes dropped by people who are too stupid to fill out BEFORE doing their business. I saw them, white and bold, out of the corner of my eye, but it never crossed my mind that I might see something else. Something stranger and more out of the ordinary than a pair of early morning Fiskars™.

I let the machine slowly suck my card into its mechanical maw for the transaction. It began asking questions a real person should have asked. It asked me which of the 16 separate languages I would like to use. I wondered if anyone ever chose Portuguese. Did I want to take advantage of the triple rewards that would allow me to check up to two bags on United airlines for free?  That will remain a mystery I’m afraid.

Absentmindedly, I glanced down. There, in the wet, was something for which I was completely unprepared. It caused me a start.

It Looked Male
An intact, dark, still rubber band-tied, pony tail – it looked male – lay at my feet. The hair at the base was ragged and angle cut, suggesting a self-make over. I didn’t dare pick it up. Who knew where it might have been?

Did the former owner find himself in one of the local bars deciding right then and there that good grooming was just too important to wait for morning? Just how many beers or whiskies went into that decision?

Where does one purchase scissors in the middle of a deserted neighborhood at night – especially the left-handed variety you can only find at old-fashioned stationers’ shops?

Was the hair a hint of something more nefarious? Did a thief come to rob the ATM and decide to change his appearance to confuse the cops? If he did, why do it in full view of the ATM’s security camera? Surely the cops would have found him easily for a simple open and shut case. Perhaps I’d found important evidence, I thought.

Plus, it was an ATM. How do you rob one of those? On America’s Dumbest Criminals they never get away with it.

Maybe it wasn’t a  premeditated caper at all. Maybe the thief hit a stationer’s shop the day before with the intention of lopping his locks for the big ATM play. Would the store have captured him on their security cam while he made the buy?

Hmm.

I left with the scissors. The rest of that day was normal. I never found mystery scissors again. But, I still remember those. And the rain. And the small break from the monotony of everyday life.

I still use the Fiskars™ too. Even if I am right-handed.

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Note: The Poobah is out of town for the next few days attending a senior dinner for Claire Koeneman at Cal Poly Pomona. To keep you entertained. Here’s a Poobah Classic from the archives.

No, really…true story…

My father died about a year and a half ago. He’d been in reasonably good health for an 86-year-old, but by his last year started to decline like, well, an 86-year old. Still, he had a reasonably good run and didn’t have any pain at the end. You can’t ask much more from life than that.

I never recalled Dad being a pack rat. I didn’t know him to keep excessive paperwork or most of the other flotsam of life. Possibly a few pictures that, like most people, he never organized or looked at. A small hording jones when it came to postcards and stolen motel stationery. Maybe even the occasional bumper sticker in which only he and Paul Harvey could see the humor. I thought he traveled light. No soft or hard copies for him. No self-storage unit filled to the rafters with broken bicycles and cheesy Christmas Story leg lamps.

Or so I thought.

Back to the Other Coast
My stepmother was diagnosed with cancer the same week Dad died. She lasted only a short time after him, so I found myself on another bi-coastal flight in less than six months. Understandably, we hadn’t completely sorted out Dad’s affairs yet, so my crack team of stepbrothers and sisters started to unravel both their affairs at the same time.

For some inexplicable reason their finances were only slightly less complicated than the International Monetary Fund’s. There were bank accounts in both names, one or the other’s names, and single or joint accounts with some concatenation of one or more kids just to keep things interesting. And, no list of which accounts were still open. Bernie Madoff would’ve given up on the grounds it was too difficult to figure out what to steal. An FBI forensic accountant would’ve been hard-pressed to figure it out. We’re still finding the occasional bank account, Certificate of Deposit, or book of still valid S&H Green Stamps a year and a half later.

I started my hunt with a broken roll top desk in an upstairs bedroom. I had to pry the top open with a large screwdriver. It wasn’t locked, there was something blocking it from the inside. With a little sweat and a lot of cussing, the lid flew open and a cascade of paper flew out like projectile vomit from a morning sick Mom.

An Epiphany
Within the first few seconds, I saw this was going to be a job only slightly less difficult than building the pyramids. There were thousands of pieces of paper. Empty envelopes marked, “Do not throw away”. A 1956 West Virginia income tax file clipped to unused tickets to last month’s Ice Capades and my great grandfather’s pay stubs from several US and Mexican brewers. There were hundreds of 40-year-old canceled checks from banks apparently not too big to fail. A rabbit’s foot dyed purple. And, a photo of Dad, age 10, wearing Harry Potter-style glasses, a pair of knickerbockers, and standing with the family bull terrier on the cowcatcher of a belching steam train.

Come to think of it, I never knew he wore glasses until he was 50 either.

All the same, I figured it was only going to take a couple of hours to sort out – tops. Yet, I was still working on that desk two days later.

Because of the sheer amount of paper and the arcane and haphazard filing system, I had to open every envelope and review every individual scrap and napkin corner to ferret out the paper trails to the good stuff. But, I did learn things. You know, it’s amazing what a set of tires bought by check in 1957 went for. And apartment rent? You couldn’t get a tent in a garbage dump at those prices today.

I sorted paper far too long. It began to wick the moisture from my fingers. They cracked and became painful. My head hurt. My back hurt. I felt like I’d worked a pig farm for the day and still the piles were there.

But mid-way through one-foot high stack, I came across something that lightened my day. The pounding in my head stopped for a moment and the back pain went away. If Dad or I hadn’t been atheists, I would’ve claimed it was a voice from the grave.

Right there, wedged between a 1972 receipt for a “harvest gold” Amana I don’t remember and a valid statement from one of the missing accounts, was a small, Post-It size piece of paper that brought a smile to my face. It was in Dad’s handwriting and contained what I thought was a true epiphany…

“Please, give me a clue.”

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Note: The Poobah is out of town for the next few days attending a senior dinner for Claire Koeneman at Cal Poly Pomona. To keep you entertained. Here’s a Poobah Classic from the archives.

“You ever go in here?” the pilot said to his co-pilot.

“Yeah, it scared the shit out of me. It’s waaaaay short and that down slope’s wicked,” the co-pilot answered. “High pucker factor for sure.”

I had to agree. After hundreds of hours of flight time, I’d never been to a loose gravel runway with an upper end on the down slope of a Turkish mountain, the other end wetted by the Black Sea, and so short it was barely long enough to land our airplane. To say the flying was challenging was an understatement. To say it was frightening was too.

Was Food Really Necessary?

The Cold War was on and the Russians were not so far away on their own side of the Black Sea. The Turkish shore sported dozens of listening posts and radar sites and all those listeners and watchers needed food, mail, equipment, and all the other things a modern army needs to wage a tense, non-shooting war. I checked the tie-downs for a few tons of the stuff and wondered whether food really was all that essential.

I finished the checks and climbed up to the flight deck. It was bright and the sun reflected through our greenhouse windows off the Black Sea. Straight ahead a huge mountain blocked our path. There was a tiny brown slash along the shoreline and I felt a familiar pucker feeling in my butt.

A High Pucker Factor

It really did invoke a high pucker factor.

We began our approach flying up the slope of the mountain and past the runway. The uphill flight produced a slight sense of vertigo as the ground rose to meet us and we climbed to keep it away. Our sense of distance felt odd too. Contrary to the normal physics of sight, the runway seemed smaller as we neared. About a mile past the runway, we made a long, climbing turn and aligned ourselves with the strip.

“OK, just as soon as we touch, we’re going to stand on the brakes and go full reverse,” the pilot said. “Crew, I want everyone strapped in. It’s going to be rough as hell.”

The ground that previously rose up to greet us now fell away more like a takeoff than a landing. To my stomach and inner ear, we had entered a climbing descent. That couldn’t be right, could it? Was I feeling negative Gs or positive? Only the altimeter and accelerometer could tell for sure.

The pilot flared for his landing before we even reached the runway. His goal was to use every last inch of the loose gravel. Our nose seemed frighteningly high as the loose rocks rained against our belly like buckshot at close range.

“REVERSE! BRAKES!,” the pilot yelled.

A Near Dip in the Black Sea

The reversing engines screamed. The airplane bucked and wobbled crazily as gravity threw us into our straps like a devil pushing us toward the lip of a yawning maw. Although the runway was short, it seemed like the noise and tumult went on forever. The Black Sea roared toward us, opening itself for a possibly fatal embrace. Through a side window, I saw a pickup truck flash by at breakneck speed.

“Shit, that water’s coming up fast. Too fast,” I thought.

Oddly, there was little sense of slowing. We seemed to go straight from a screaming tear down the runway to a full stop. When the pilot pulled the engines out of reverse, the airplane became shockingly quiet and an unnaturally still. The Black Sea lapped placidly a few feet away from our nose, certainly too close to see the line where land met sea.

“OK,” the pilot said, “Let’s get this puppy turned around. Chief, hop out here and walk me around. This is a tight fit.”

A Very Good Day

I let the door down – only a few feet away from the banshee propeller tips – and hopped out. Taking up a position on the left wing, I began using hand signals to direct the pilot through a turnaround. It was a tight fit, not unlike parallel parking a 175,000 pound car in a tiny Manhattan parking slot. We had to pull forward and then back up several times. I constantly jockeyed away from the screaming propellers so I wouldn’t be blown into an unplanned Black Sea swim.

Once turned, I led the airplane back up slope – like a pooch on a long leash – looking for brush or obstacles the airplane might encounter. With a break to shoo a few lounging goats away, the walk was uneventful. A Navy Commander in civilian clothes met us at the end of the runway. As he and his men loaded their goodies into the pickup truck, an ancient Turkish man and his grandson served the crew sweet Turkish tea and delicate almond cookies. I thought, what a day. The amusement park ride of my life and fine dining – al fresco – on the shores of the Black Sea.

It was a very good day indeed.

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Tossed into his rich and simmering ragoût of stupid was Mittens’ recent offer to take Obama to the closet – um, poor word choice – woodshed for a good old fashioned water-ski whooping. But no golf. He hears Obama is good at that. Presumably, Mitt would borrow the Presidential barge for the match. I don’t blame him. In 1981, he tried to do the whole middle class water-ski thing and managed to get himself arrested for disorderly conduct. Not a big, Earth-shattering deal, but a deal nonetheless. The story goes something like this:

The Salt Lake Scion Goes to Jail

The Salt Lake Scion, a true Masshole,was launching his boat at Cochituate State Park, MA. One of Cochituate’s finest took issue after seeing the boat’s registration painted over. After a ‘confrontation’ in which the ranger warned of a $50 fine, Mitt pulled out a crisp $50 and handed it to the ranger -  probably in much the same way he tips reporters after they write flattering stories. The Ranger promptly arrested him for disorderly conduct and everyone else stood around thinking, “Damn, I wish I could piss away $50 like that.”

The boorish Romney cash – valid only at the Salt Lake Tabernacle Gift Shop (sorry, no women allowed) – was bad enough. If I had defied the cop’s order to stop, I would’ve found myself prone on the pavement with a Glock to the back of my head or maybe even a pair of scissors in my hair.

Mitt, I know you’re a little thick, but here’s a simple example why your $50 payoff was just wrong.

Say I was speeding and was pulled over. I’m not allowed to throw a $50 out the window and assume that takes care of the whole thing. There are laws to be followed, and yes, they apply to you too. If I can’t just throw some money in the hat and drive off disregarding points on my license, higher fines for arguing with the cop, and additional fines for driving with Irish Setters strapped to the roof, neither can you. BTW, they apparently let you off the hook completely for having an unregistered boat so you should consider yourself lucky.

But he couldn’t leave it at $50 worth of dipshittedness. No, his defense was that he was wet and in a bathing suit when they hauled him off to the Natick lockup. His kids could see his embarrassment as he argued with the cops. Poor dears. I’m sure the cops were visibly moved by the sight of a grown man in madras swimming attire, especially when most of their clientele is vomit-covered and naked for their big night at the Soap on a Rope Invitational.

Ipso Facto, Caveat Emptor, Lorem Ipsum: INNOCENT!

He then went to court and defended himself by claiming the cop didn’t specifically tell him he would be arrested as a law-breaking swine – ipso facto, caveat emptor, lorem ipsum – he was innocent. He iced the cake by threatening to file unlawful arrest charges and backed that up using the firm legal principle that since the cop didn’t show up in court, he must be innocent.

Newsflash Newton, cops usually go to court on their own dime. No overtime. No pay at all. No water skiing with the kids and getting arrested for disorderly on a lost day off to attend to a shitheel like you. Shocking, I’m sure. Besides, what does the cop need a tax break for?

Um, Mitt? The rest of us don’t go to court. We’d be laughed out of the place for a story as lame as this. We pay the frickin’ fine, consider ourselves lucky that SWAT didn’t show up, and say, “Thank you for guarding my safety Mr. Law Officer, sir. I shan’t do it again. Have a good day!”

A very, very understanding  judge let you off, which explains why I’d never make it as a judge. Had you been in my court, I would’ve forced you to launch your boat – carefully supervised to ensure you do it legally this time – and I’d have dropped you overboard without your gold-plated water-wings.

Let me tell you buddy. You’re one lucky sumbitch.

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