Took me over ten long years to get (back) here. sleepless night, peaceful drive. I knew I was getting there. When I take my sun-glasses off for a picture it signifies I want to remember it and be remembered there. Especially when I have no makeup on. LOL !!
Picture taken by someone I love so very much. A perfect moment in a pristine world of mine. People who love me and waited for me have trod that mountain since before the Mayflower and right up until this very moment, and always will. Always.

Step up and claim your destiny.

I finally picked up a copy of This is IT. What a point of the gun robbery on a dark and lonely highway where you should have felt safe anyway.
I don’t even want a trial.
The guy from Australia made me cry …. I wonder what all those people are doing now.

(Obviously I wrote this before the trial began or ended and that now is what it is…) But here is Kenny Ortega, while waiting for the release of the movie, “This is IT”, talking about his friend, Michael Jackson. A touching, informative interview.
Anyway, before this place turns into a graveyard while I try to make it a place where things that interest me and maybe someday legal issues find their place …. I have to put all the “obit” type things in one place.
I know Michael isn’t the most important person we’ve lost lately. But people greatly neglected to give him credit for his extreme talent, love and kindness. I never believed Michael was a child-molester. It was pretty obvious … first they tried to destroy him; who bravely stepped up and raised her voice but the legendary Elizabeth Taylor?
She stood next to him and never left and loved him like her own …

Who was torn down next? Why, if your guess is Elizabeth Taylor you are absolutely correct.
I don’t care if you have every bias under the sun, hate music, despise pop, would rather die than listen to a “child molester” sing … turn on “billie jean” and keep from tapping along … whirling through your living room … BEAT IT … BEAT IT…..

but save the thriller for my precious memories of my beloved Godson whose one-gloved dance through my living room became the stuff of family legend … and so, it came naturally as I am finally watching “This is it”…

(took me much longer to watch “Titanic” Jack and Rose jokes sailed over my head for over ten years until I gradually watched it, getting to certain parts and stopping it and then finally after five or so false starts, the hooks stayed in and I managed to keep it in the player and not pause)

…. that the aforementioned sticky post for “obit” type stuff be centralized here.

Michael Jackson, like him or not, is woven throughout my memories of my beloved family and early TV where he appeared with his brothers on some show and captivated the world and later captivated my favorite family member.

In fact, my Godson brought up Thriller and Beat it and I got that album and surprised him with it next time he came over, plunked it on the victrola (lol) thingy,and just sat down and watched with never before delight as he bopped to it and slid around and moon-walked in damned good imitation of MJ. Got him the black jacket and searched for the glove …. He had all the moves down and I mean “DOWN”, hand gestures, the one-gloved point and jab ….
There are things God gives you, special places and gifts, exquisite treasures which he knows you will need. So, when the beach was taken away from me for years .. a place I couldn’t go .. I had these gifts to open. Wrapped years before, bow wilted with the passing of years, but waiting.
It’s pretty sad MJ didn’t get to roll about with this show. Extraordinary. There is no other word except for fabulous. Or spectacular. Mesmerizing.
The difference between Kenny Ortega’s face while passing the waiting line of dancers from around the world, auditioning for a chance to bop onto the state with MJ. Some just wanted the chance to audition…. considering it one of the great honors of a lifetime.
So, through a mixture of sadness, memories and gladness for these gifts left behind in the newspaper packaging tied up with strings … just go pick up a copy of THIS IS IT >>>
a glimmer of what might have been.

“you labled me .. I’ll label you .. so I dub thee unforgiven..”
Hopefully, I’ll hold down the outrage over early and unnecessary deaths but hey .. it’s all part of all of us. Even those in denial.
Protection
For Gangs, Clubs
And Nations
Causing Grief In
Human Relations
It’s A Turf War
On A Global Scale
I’d Rather Hear Both Sides
Of The Tale
See, It’s Not About Races
Just Places
Faces
Where Your Blood
Comes From
Is Where Your Space Is
I’ve Seen The Bright
Get Duller
I’m Not Going To Spend
My Life Being A Color

[Michael]
Don’t Tell Me You Agree With Me
When I Saw You Kicking Dirt In My Eye

But, If
You’re Thinkin’ About My Baby
It Don’t Matter If You’re Black Or White

I Said If
You’re Thinkin’ Of
Being My Baby
It Don’t Matter If You’re Black Or White

I Said If
You’re Thinkin’ Of
Being My Brother
It Don’t Matter If You’re
Black Or White

Jack Arent/Palo Alto Daily News/AP Photo

Steve Jobs’ sister Mona Simpson shared in the eulogy she delivered at the late Apple CEO‘s memorial service that his surprising final words from his deathbed were, “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.”

In the eulogy, which was printed in The New York Times on Sunday, Simpson describes Jobs’ final days and moments in a Palo Alto hospital, which was spent surrounded by family as his breathing gradually became shorter.

His breath, she said, “indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.”

Delivered at the October 16 service for Jobs at Stanford Memorial Church, Simpson, an accomplished novelist, began by describing her initial meeting of her brother for the first time when she was in her mid-20s. Simpson was born in 1957, two years after Jobs, who was given up for adoption as an infant.

“Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother,” Simpson said.

Simpson went on to describe her strong relationship with the man now know for the revolutionizing computer world, while explaining Jobs’ work ethic and capacity for love — particularly for his wife Laurene and as a doting father to their three children.

“Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him,” she said.

In describing his illness from pancreatic cancer, which Jobs was diagnosed with in October 2003, Simpson paints a picture of Jobs as an enduring, “intensely emotional man.”

She concluded her eulogy by sharing Jobs’ final moments, which were spent staring lovingly at his family, and his final three monosyllabic words as he stared into the distance past their shoulders: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Simpson is currently a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has written five novels, and won the Whiting Prize for her debut, “Anywhere But Here.”

OUR WOODY !!! Because I always believed Woody was modeled after Steve Jobs, our very own miracle man who most definitely wanted to and should have lived. How very, very sad.

How many CEO deaths can bring you to tears? NONE. NONE.

Steve Jobs !! So, I guess just one …. a very private man who became a very public person and thank goodness for that.

It was the most awful thing …. I ran to the store for some essentials, upon entering I espied some woody and buzz cups and while I was there, picking them up and turning them around a latino family came in. The wife stopped next to me and was looking at the other cups. They’re really cute !! I have this habit of setting things back down because .. hey, that’s two or three dollars you still have and when your Grandpa and family lived through the depression you know the maxim, “watch your pennies and the dollars take care of themselves,” and you get pit tickets to Linkin Park instead of junk.
So anyway, I stifled that inner voice and had stuffed the woody cups under my arm and was looking at the others and the man is talling his wife en espanol, “that’s junk, set it down,” and I laugh to myself (I do not look in the least bit “latina” so people are often surprised I understand them) … she looks at him and relates how cute it is and he repeats that it is junk and notices I am laughing. I nod my head at him and we laugh a bit more. As I walk away, I show him the woody cups in my hand as he is still trying to get his wife to set down the cups and go into the store. He laughs pretty hard and so does the entire family.
I don’t know if she got her Woody cups.

But I DO KNOW when I walked back in to my home, my family was sitting on the edge of the couch staring into the TV which as you may know is rare in our house. I glance over while I am reaching for the cups to show them and see the ribbon across the screen …. “Apple CEO dies ….” My family aims stunned looks at me, “How old was he?” ..and I’m stock still and hesitant, “very young, he’s only sixty or so, maybe early sixties.”

NO !!! FIFTY SIX GODDAMNIT !!!

WE WERE ROBBED. HE WAS ROBBED (although I’m of the mind if you look at a life as having been the length it was meant to be and was always GOING TO BE with no outside interference, many are extraordinarily perfect)

WE WERE ROBBE. HE WAS ROBBED.

I’ve never before and never will again in all likelihood cry upon the death of a CEO.
We just sat staring in sad silence or alternately discussing the Gates v Jobs, PIXAR and all else STEVE JOBS (IPOD!!!!!) (andy woody belle buzz soldiers mr and mrs potato head and his angry eyes and slinky and rex and … the pig !!! and barbie …) while watching the WOZ and so many others voice their sadness and surprise or lack there of.
Very odd, the little woody cups my family says, how I came in smiling, .. and as I take them out of the bag …. NO !!
We’re the people you saw in line way before midnight to be sure we were up front to celebrate a special birthday at TOY STORY THREE the night it came out …. where we all left crying …

Find me another Steve Jobs.

Woody, such a staunch defender of friendship often put the other toys to shame, and ALWAYS put them FIRST after Andy, without ever meaning to. “No Woody,” the other toys would say, … but OFF Woody would march, resolute to do the right thing, save his friends, BE LOYAL TO ANDY. Woody once stuffed his severed arm in a sack and did things with ONE ARM. Woody is an irresolute, admirable, creative, prolific, heroic, humble and charismatic character. The Toys count on him as their natural leader. … now who does that remind you of?

JOBS !

Steve Jobs, a man of quiet statements, putting John Lennon first on the music library advertisment in a way no one could fail to recognize.

I finally made them change the channel, I just couldn’t listen anymore. NO NO. Stuff it back in. I don’t want this to happen. I mean the adult in me knew it when he resigned … this me — staring at the woody cups now bracketing the TV, and thinking of what 30 more years of that amazing life might have brought ??? NO NO, come back, please !!! We want to watch ! We need to know.

It just SUCKS.

If your family ever stumbles on this illiterate attempt to memorialize and all but canonize such a universally incredibly cool dude who brought a little stitched together guy to life and made me laugh and cry and hate for the movie to end …. forgive my ineptness and accept my oh so very genuine condolences and sorrow for you upon your very grave loss. I can only imagine how sad you feel and how lucky you were for your far too short years together. Much love to you !

Seeya Woody. I always thought Woody was the sexy one !

(a very, very sad fan, I always wished you had known Walt Disney)

P.S. I can’t do any surfing for fear of seeing this everywhere but was then pleasantly surprised by Jack Rowland’s excellent coverage, prior coverage and links to things done well by Steve (EVERYTHING) and so share that with you here, at the St Pete Times (thanks Mr. Rowland).

Now my Grandpa can meet Andy and my Grandma and Andy can laugh about how they talked back to the telly. R.I.P.

I love Andy Rooney.. I can’t say I always agree with him but he’s a character and many many many times I DO agree with him, just don’t want to make that universal as he’s a prolific chap.

“For all those men who say, ‘Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Here’s an update for you… Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage!”

And that’s how I’ll remember him: he staunchly defended us ! He said a tremendous number of important things but that was important AND funny.

If you see him, for God’s aake, let the young 92 year old have his dinner !
I understand there were some unkind words involving Kurt Cobain which I discovered as I coasted around. Sad. See? Good thing I didn’t make that universal ! I’m not sure I ever believed Kobain killed himself but I DO know that people do and his remarks about whether kids suffer enough are simply out of place and context.

Still, he was fun to watch with the crazy eyebrows and voice. I thought you’d enjoy the picture !

An icon goes by the wayside. I guess you don’t have to wonder too hard where I met Andy Rooney ! Yes, listening to my Grandpa talk back to the TV.

Love you guys !!
WAIT ~~ Rooney isn’t RETIRING. Writers NEVER retire. He’s just going to stop reading his writings on the telly.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration says at least 10 million bankruptcy case files and several million district court files from 1970 through 1995 will be shredded, pounded to pulp and recycled. Files designated as historically valuable, however, will be kept in storage. (WHO is designating?)
Federal archivists spent years consulting legal scholars, historians and others about which files to purge after realizing that sorting and digitizing just the bankruptcy cases would cost tens of millions of dollars. None of the civil or criminal cases up for destruction went to trial, and docket sheets that list basic information such as names of defendants and plaintiffs will be saved from each case.

Such reassurances haven’t allayed concerns of some of those whose work relies on the paper documents.

Cornell Law School professor Theodore Eisenberg said it’s precisely the mundane, every day records with no clear historical significance that, when looked at as a whole, are critical to establishing legal trends upon which court policy is often based.

“Something really important will be lost here,” said Eisenberg, a former clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court for the late Justice Earl Warren. “We would lose any ability to assess trends over time. This is not just a matter of history, it is a matter of influencing basic policy today.”

Indeed Mr. Eisenberg !! Thank you. It’s not that I want it hoarded there is just such an easy solution. Years in banking ..spent way more than half of them about three feet from the “proofing room.” Proof is where a few or a bunch of people “run” your checks and other debit and credit items and general ledger stuff and such through a machine where they add them up and MAKE SURE they total what your tellers say they do. Now, proof is separate from teller functions for just that reason: audit control. BUT, all of us who had any kind of authority learned how to sit down and run the checks through for a very good reason: Do or DIE. This was your settlement, how you made your money, your life blood. AND if you didn’t have it ready to be “picked up” a bank officer had to “run” it over to your mother bank … no one is happy. They actually do some of that by helicopter. BUT BUT BUT .. the FIRST THING you did if you were trying to help the proof dept since they were under the most serious pressure at least that once a day is the solution to this problem.

My tellers, who were really such sweethearts (LYL forever) would grab each other’s “bundled” work as they walked by on their way past me and into the proofing dept and this was important … because the MORE bundled work .. meaning you had a good idea it was “correct”

and NOT close enough for govmint work but CORRECT

you got rid of earlier the faster you could proof your own cash and you could help others and everyone go get drunk. I mean home.. bankers don’t drink !!!

Banks are all about CORRECT at THAT level.
But any banker worth their salt can create a paper trail and will never forget the importance of a paper trail.

So, if you really wanted to help our proofers out you grabbed that bundled work and transported it through to a box. Proof had two boxes for “in” and a big hanging bag like you see at the post office for “out.” The out bag was see through plastic and there was hell to pay if they ran out because you had to find a currency bag big enough and that endangered folks because someone might think the poor guy was carrying a bag of loot. Bad all around.
Yes I am purposely going on and on and on because I know a whole lotta completely useful stuff other people don’t know or PRETEND they don’t know about the importance of original documents.
Now, the reason proof had two in boxes was not because work was different. It was all the same from all depts of the bank, it had to be tallied. Proof had two inboxes because ONE was for UNFILMED work and ONE was for FILMED work.
Yes, that’s right. If you wanted to help the proof dept you would grab that first inbox, and carefully remove the rubber bands so as to re-use them and you would flip on the big old machine the inbox sat on. And easy as pie you turn them face down and like a deck of cards feed them through. Bundle it back and toss it over to the other inbox. FOR FILMED UNPROOFED WORK. Sometimes we were so backed up the proof person was rolling her/his chair over to grab it from you without a rubber band.
Now sometimes you never even glanced down and it became second nature to thumb them, fan them and feed them in … BUT they never EVER went through the proof machine without the proofer saying,” Has this been filmed?” EVER. NEVER. EVER. NEVER. Okay, maybe once but we were just so nervous that soething would come back we stocked five extra light bulbs after that and after cursing the gods. And each other. And the supply ordering guy and anyone else we could think of. We were family. That’s what family does. Don’t they?

Anyway …. you think to yourself, BFD, a ten dollar check .. a loan payment, these things can be proven in other ways. True. They can. BUT, let your mama bank call you on something or an auditor run through and say … what was that large item about? We need to know whether to give credit or not. MOST IMPORTANT: endorsement. If that helicopter guy gets a notion to go to tahiti instead or the mama bank’s roof caves in and all your settlement items are lost you have no way of proving whatcha “had” and what is owed to you and yours. BUT if you can reproduce that item and with that film sitting there on your shelf you can do so in SECONDS with a good proof operator…. you have no problem. By that same token, the endorsement …. someone reports a loss .. another bank tells you a large item is coming back, a hit notice is sent, someone tells you they are missing a check, a million dollars or a large ass deposit and they are screaming .. you say to them .. “and my good screaming man, what time and when did you come to the bank? Did you have any other items?” Believe it or not sometimes people will leave something completely mysterious and you have to do something with it .. you can’t just leave items lying around in a bank.
Can I impress on you HOW MANY TIMES that FILM SAVED OUR ASSES????
Catching potential robbers!!! Catching SCAMS before they harmed another bank or us .. so MANY THINGS. And the PROOF of what they did was there FOREVER.
Forever.
History is important and these folks are right to be worried.

Film it.Index it.
The
Has the world forgotten the indispensable microfiche? I LOVED microfiche. Loved loved it… slap em in slap em out swoop back and forth on the screen. If we had our film processed it was on microfiche. It was THE BEST system and MOST SECURE I have seen to this day.
FILM IT.

For all I know I was watching reruns. But, the brilliant and devastating Mr. Falk was hilarious, I have never seen his more serious movies and now intend to. Belongs on the list of things we do too late. I admire John Cassavetes who was Mr. Falk’s good friend and also directed.

Well, Peter Falk died yesterday at 83, I wasn’t just hanging about thinking about ships that sailed and crushes that never went anywhere. Sad! And wtf, what IS IT with Alzheimer’s? Another disease I give no credence to as I believe it is environmentally caused. And it’s sad when such a brilliant person is said to be out of touch.
There is still nothing funnier in THE WORLD than, “It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world” or Jack Lemon in “out of towners” with the lovely Paula Prentiss, I believe. I don’t know where I catch these old things but I dearly loved cackling with my sons while we watched mad mad mad mad ….

Farewell my mad mad mad mad crush. Tell everyone I love hello !!! Thanks so much for the laughs and the hottiness.

If I had it to do all over again I would be an engineer and a sociologist on my days off. Or anthropologist. Or rockhound. Anyway, he lived a long, illustrious and well-admired life. Hopefully my memory of him was the right one – it’s tangled up in there with what I think might be Rifleman reruns and that one where they advertised Boraxo??? Or a mule team? (I remember being scared of the Rifleman opening)

Law and ORDER broke the record of longest running series?? Now THAT is hard to believe but I dislike the soap opera-ish shows and rarely watch TV. Watching it with the Grands was different. A very few hours and very directed time-slots and quality time as my Grandpa and Grams argued with the TV, talked back to the newscaster and generally appreciated each other in that joyful way of people very much in love.

Everything important I learned right there. (and thank you again)

Au Revoir, Mr. Arness. I heard you left a touching message but for me you touched off a cascade of happy memories. thank you.