Thrill Ride

I was just perusing Yahoo!, and noticed a story about a new diet on the front page. The promise of this diet…Eat More, Lose Weight! No, I didn’t make that up. It’s called Volumetrics. I’d bore you with the details, but I would just be boring you. Make sense?

Anyway, I’m glad I don’t have to diet, but that’s not the point. I’m thinking of starting my own new diet fad and see if I can sell a bunch of books or other things people don’t really need. I’m fairly certain that if my diet promises something that seems unrealistic, even if I can’t prove its efficacy, I’ll do okay. I mean, just look at the Atkins diet. You can eat an extra serving of meat with your meat, and you’ll not only lose weight but be healthier! Are you kidding me? Needless to say, Atkins is pretty much out of vogue now, but it sure made Dr. Atkins rich.

Diets that stress things that make sense probably don’t sell a lot of merchandise. For instance, if I came out with a diet that said, Eat less crappy food and more healthy food in smaller quantities while increasing your activity level, I’m fairly certain it would bomb from a marketing stand point. Why would anyone buy the book? It doesn’t fulfill the one requirement most Americans are looking to satisfy…something for nothing.

So…on to Volumetrics everyone! Eat more, lose weight! It’ll make a million.

Do you ever get sucked into buying a product because of its fancy new packaging? Chances are you were duped into buying the same old crap by some huckster snake oil salesman who devised a new color scheme.

Well, I’m sorry to tell you…the same thing has happened to you today. I migrated my blog content to this spiffy looking new site, but it’s just the same old garbage you already read and hated. Enjoy!

Does it ever seem like we’re constantly inundated with completely useless information? Sure seems like it to me. Then again, you never know when that seemingly useless bit of knowledge will suddenly have merit. Allow me to explain.

I used to work for a big accounting firm in Atlanta. I went there after obtaining my Masters from the University of Florida. A guy I worked with up there, who also attended UF with me, had a very annoying habit. He thought God had presented him with a mission on this Earth, and he felt obligated to fulfill that mission.

What was it, you ask? Feed the hungry? Wipe out homelessness? Abolish poverty? Bring an end to war? No…it was none of those things. He had, instead, taken it upon himself to alert everyone to who the non-hand washers were in the office. That’s correct. If he happened to witness another employee use the bathroom facilities and exit without washing his hands, he would tell everyone he knew. I can’t tell you how many times his head would randomly pop around the corner of my cubicle and casually announce, “So-and-so is a non-washer.”

It drove me absolutely insane. I would repeatedly ask him to stop telling me. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to know. It had no effect on me. I didn’t walk around the office shaking hands with fellow employees, so the information was absolutely useless…or so I thought.

A few months later, my friend and I were asked to do some recruiting back at the University of Florida. We flew down to Gainesville, talked to a bunch of prospective employees and headed back to the airport to return to Atlanta a few days later. While we were at said airport, I saw a rock star. Maybe a Rhythm and Blues star. Maybe a rock semi-star. I’m not sure exactly how to describe him, but I won’t name him here. I don’t need the lawsuit.

Anyway, I pointed him out to my friend, who did not believe me. We were across the building from this musician and my friend wanted a closer look. Of course, the guy ducks into the bathroom, and my friend casually follows him. He returns a few minutes later, apologizes and tells me I was correct. It was who I said it was, verified by the fact he had his name embroidered on the side of his carry-on bag. My friend then proclaims, “By the way, he’s a non-washer.”

I just shook my head and turned away. More information I didn’t need. Thanks.

Fifteen minutes later, he and I are called to board our little Canadair regional jet bound for Atlanta. We make our way to the plane, which is accessed by actually walking onto the tarmac and climbing a set of rickety stairs. Don’t believe me? Take a trip to Gainesville sometime. Anyway, I board the plane, make my way to the rear , where my assigned seat is waiting, look up and see the musician sitting in the seat next to the one I’ll be occupying. Why is this guy not in first class? Oh yeah, it’s a freakin’ puddle jumper and there is no first class.

I take my seat, say hello and bury my nose in a book. I don’t really know what to say to a rock semi-star, and I don’t want to make him uncomfortable, so I assume a course of action that will allow me to ignore him. As I’m sitting there, trying to ignore him, he’s jostling all around and starts making some sort of loud plastic clanking noise. I have to look. I turn my head to him, and he’s shaking mints out into his bare hand. He looks at me, extends the hand with the mints in it and says, “You want a mint?”

I think you see where this is going. Had my friend not told me this guy was a non-washer, I might have accepted the mint. You know, to have a great story or something. Hey, guess who gave me a mint! Alas, my friend’s bizarre predilection for watching people in the bathroom and ratting them out had just given me a better story and saved me from one tiny, nasty, germ-laden mint.

So, moral of the story? Not sure. I guess maybe don’t ignore all those little bits of information you come across. You never know when you might need them.

There are some things I just don’t understand. For instance, what makes certain people think they can just randomly stop you in a store and start talking to you? This is a totally foreign behavior to me, since I barely talk to people I know, let alone complete strangers.

I was in Target yesterday with my two young ones, and I hear someone say, “Excuse me.” Given my height, the next development is usually someone asking me to reach something for them. In this case, it took a somewhat surreal turn…quickly.

The woman proceeded to tell me she was from Illinois, vacationing in Florida, and asked where I was from. I didn’t know where the whole thing was going, so I just answered politely that I was originally from Ohio but had lived in Florida for 20+ years. She then asked me why she couldn’t find one-ply toilet paper in Fort Myers. I kid you not.

First off, I didn’t know one-ply toilet paper even existed. It would seem to me to be a rather unhygienic item with all the possible horrific things that could go wrong while using it, but I’ll spare you the gory details. I must have looked perplexed, because she went into some diatribe about how she just assumed you would use one-ply toilet paper in Florida because of the inferior system. Not knowing what “system” she was referring to and not really wanting to know, I just sort of nodded my head and told her we used two-ply and never had a problem with our “system.”

Praying the exchange was over, I started to turn away, but she felt the need to engage me again and ask me if I really liked living in Florida, like she couldn’t believe anyone would choose to stay here by choice. Not wanting to offer the first response that came to mind and offend the great state of Illinois in the process, I just stated that, yes, I do like it here. She then proceeded to shake her head and point to her insect bitten legs exclaiming, “But what about the No-see-ums?!?” For those of you unfamiliar with Florida pests, No-see-ums are tiny little flying insects that swarm at dusk, biting their unsuspecting victims and leaving behind an itchy little red dot. Sort of like a mosquito without the West Nile Virus. Anyway, I just inform her that they don’t bother me. She then wants to know why I don’t have bites all over my legs.

Now, at this point, I really don’t have anything positive to contribute, my kids are running up and down the aisle, and I have no idea why I’m still talking to this woman, but I tried to stay as positive as possible. I start to tell her that maybe some people are more susceptible to the scourge of the No-see-ums, but she just abruptly turns and walks away. It was so irritating that I almost yelled after her, then realized that I didn’t want to talk to her in the first place. Now it was my turn to shake my head. What else could I do?

People are strange.

A few things have piqued my interest as of late. I’ll share them here.

Did anyone see the story about the guy who tried to smuggle the monkey on an airplane by hiding it under his hat? This has me baffled on several different levels. Did he really think he was going to get a monkey from Peru to New York without anyone noticing? How in the world did he clear customs in Florida when he entered the country? The people checking him out must be the same people that “serve” me at various businesses here in the Sunshine State. Not all that bright, obviously. Good thing he didn’t have a gun under his hat.

What about the story regarding how branding has affected even toddlers in the US? In case you missed it, young children were given various types of food and asked how good it was. The food wrapped in McDonald’s wrappers, even if it was something like baby carrots, was rated higher by the kids. Unbelievable. Anyone who says advertising in this country has a nominal effect on children really needs to read this story. Now, I just need to save up those wrappers so I can give them to my kids wrapped around delicious liver and brussel sprouts.

Does anyone care that Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s homerun record? I thought I would be angry at this point, but all I feel is utter indifference. I saw the story this morning when I got up, and I thought, “Huh, he did it.” That’s sad to me. I can’t believe a guy I used to cheer furiously for as a Pirates fan has sucked the life out of the game for me. He has become the proverbial wet blanket on the fire that was my enthusiasm. Thanks, Barry.

On a final note, I have to confess one of my bizarre foibles. Yesterday, I realized the extent of my depravity. I wear Hanes ankle socks when I wear running shoes. Somehow, I ended up getting two different kinds…some with the word Hanes in red and some with the word Hanes in black. Now mind you, the word is sewn on the sole of the sock under the toes. So, you obviously can’t see it when you’re wearing the socks, even if you’re not wearing shoes. Well, you guessed it. I cannot wear one red and one black. I honestly tried. It’s been a while since I’ve done laundry, and I could only find one of each yesterday. I looked at them, thought it through, then put them on. After about five minutes of walking around in them, I freaked out. I couldn’t take it. I took them off and changed into Birkenstocks. Something is seriously wrong with me.

Okay, I won’t make a habit of this, but you need to read the attached article. It’s one of the strangest pieces of journalism I’ve ever seen. Check out the bolded portions in particular. The one about staring at the dime is one of the oddest sentences I’ve ever read. Enjoy!

(07-26) 19:04 PDT – John Feigenbaum flew out of San Jose this week in first class, with flip-flops on his feet, a T-shirt on his back and a dime worth $1.9 million in his pocket.

It was the most expensive dime ever to pass through San Jose. That’s because it is the most expensive dime in the history of dimes.

“All the way across the country I didn’t sleep,” Feigenbaum said. “I didn’t eat and I didn’t sleep. You wouldn’t, either.”

Feigenbaum is a rare coin dealer, and the dime he was carrying across the country, from San Jose to New York, is an 1894-S dime, one of only nine known to exist, and one of only 24 known to be coined that year in San Francisco.

It was his job to pick up the dime from the seller’s vault, in Oakland, and deliver the dime to the buyer’s vault, in midtown Manhattan.

The person who bought the dime does not want the world to know who he is. The person who sold the dime is Oakland businessman Daniel Rosenthal, who was unavailable for comment, perhaps because a person newly in possession of $1.9 million has got better things to do than answer a lot of questions.

But the dime’s cross-country trip was the stuff of intrigue, of that there is no mistake. The logistics of moving a $1.9 million dime across the country turn out to be at least as staggering as the notion of paying $1.9 million for a dime.

It was on Monday afternoon that Feigenbaum, a 38-year-old coin dealer from Virginia Beach, donned his best grubby clothes to meet the seller’s representative at an Oakland bank vault. Feigenbaum was slumming it so as not to attract attention, he said.

“There’s no reason to dress up in a suit and make a big production,” he said. “You don’t want to stand out.”

Feigenbaum put the dime, encased in a 3-inch-square block of plastic, in his pocket and, accompanied by a security guard, drove in an ordinary sedan directly to San Jose airport to catch the red-eye to Newark.

The overnight flight, he said, was the only way to make sure the dime would be in New York by the time the buyer’s bank opened in the morning. People who pay $1.9 million for dimes do not like to be kept waiting for them.

Feigenbaum had purchased a coach ticket, to avoid suspicion, but found himself upgraded to first class. That was a worry, because people in flip-flops, T-shirts and grubby jeans do not regularly ride in first class. But it would have been more suspicious to decline a free upgrade. So Feigenbaum forced himself to sit in first class, where he found himself to be the only passenger in flip-flops.

He was too nervous to sleep, he said. He did not watch the in-flight movie, which was “Firehouse Dog.” He turned down a Reuben sandwich and sensibly declined all offers of alcoholic beverages.

Shortly after boarding the plane, he transferred the dime from his pants pocket to his briefcase.

“I was worried that the dime might fall out of my pocket while I was sitting down,” Feigenbaum said.

All across the country, Feigenbaum kept checking to make sure the dime was safe by reaching into his briefcase to feel for it. Feigenbaum did not actually take the dime out of his briefcase, as it is suspicious to stare at dimes.

He does recall fishing around — somewhere over the Rockies, over the Midwest, and over the Alleghenies — for the dime. For the rest of the flight, he kept his flip-flopped foot planted on the briefcase and his eyes wide open.

At Newark airport, he was met by another security guard in another ordinary sedan. The two men drove to Manhattan, arriving an hour before the opening of the buyer’s bank vault.

The buyer was waiting at the curb for Feigenbaum, however. With an hour to kill, the two men went into a nearby Starbucks. Neither man dared to take out the dime and look at it. They sipped their beverages and stared at their watches.

At 9 a.m., the vault opened. The two men and the guard went inside and, for the first time, the buyer got to hold his dime.

The buyer spent about half an hour looking at it, Feigenbaum said, which worked out to 15 minutes for heads and 15 minutes for tails. He told Feigenbaum he had bought it strictly as an investment and did not intend to spend it, as there is no longer anything to buy in New York for 10 cents.

Perhaps, though, the dime is again fated to be locked away in a bank vault as a penalty for being ugly. The coin is known as a Barber-style dime, bearing a ghastly likeness of Madam Liberty on the front and a boring wreath of corn and wheat and the words “one dime” on the back.

The $1.9 million dime was produced at the stately Old Mint on Fifth Street, next to the doughnut place. It’s a long-shuttered stone building whose front steps are primarily used these days by homeless people on their lunch break. (The building is set to become a museum soon, although that plan has been kicking around, unfulfilled, for decades. The alley north of the mint is being turned into a plaza with fast-food eateries, to open by Labor Day.)

Except for the date, the top-notch condition and the fact that it’s one of just 24 known to be coined that year in San Francisco, it’s much like other Barber-style dimes of the era which typically sell on eBay for a couple of bucks. The coin’s rarity has something to do with the fact that 1894-S dimes were produced not for general circulation but as a special gift by the mint director for some visiting big shots. The director was also said to have given one of the dimes to his young daughter, who spent it on ice cream.

Feigenbaum said he and the seller’s agent stood to split a 6 percent commission on the deal. He also said that he has since changed out of his flip-flops and that he does not really know what the dime looks like — how many ears of corn or stalks of wheat are depicted on it, for example, or why Liberty’s nose is so big.

“It’s the Holy Grail of coins,” he said. “But Liberty, how can I say it, she’s not the prettiest. Actually, it’s considered an ugly coin. Sometimes, ugliness can be attractive.”

E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com.

I admit it. I’ve been a little hard on the boy wizard lately. Unfair, perhaps. For the record, from my limited knowledge of the books, I don’t think J.K. Rowling is introducing evil into the lives of unsuspecting children. I do; however, have one specific concern regarding books dealing with any aspect of the occult that find their way into children’s eager little hands. Before anyone freaks out, let me explain. I’m not condemning J.K Rowling or anyone else. I do have a vested interest, seeing how I have two wee ones in my household, and I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I just want to state my position. Nothing more, nothing less. If you agree, that’s fine. If you don’t agree, that’s fine too. Everyone was given a brain to reason things through on their own, and completely rational and well-informed people can support diametrically opposed positions. Just look at Washington DC. Wait…bad example.

Anyway, let me tell you about life when I was a child. Let’s say it’s 1979, and I’m an impressionable young lad of 11. I’m sitting at home on a lazy Saturday afternoon, idly flipping through the five television channels available to me. It takes a while to complete my task, since I have to buzz through umpteen clicks on my UHF knob. Finally, I stop on channel 43. It’s the afternoon Creature Feature and the 1931 version of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi is on. I sit down and watch. I’m scared, but intrigued. Vampires seem pretty cool to me. The movie ends, but I’m not satisfied. My thirst for knowledge leads me to the library and one lame little book about legendary monsters that has a two page section about vampires. I read it and move one. I’m scared to sleep the next few nights, but my days are filled with a black cape, slicked back hair and fake plastic teeth in my effort to emulate Lugosi and scare other kids in the neighborhood. In a weeks time, I’m over it, and I move on to the next thing that peaks my interest. Sound plausible?

Okay, fast forward to 2007. A child of 11 is sitting at home cycling through the 100+ channels available to them on DirecTV. As is the case with too many children in America, no parent is around to supervise them. They come across Interview with a Vampire, and they stop. They watch the entire movie, think that vampires are kind of cool - heck even that creepy little kid vampire played by Kirsten Dunst was neat. They want to know more. They stand up and walk over to their computer. They google vampires and start scrolling through the results. They read something on Wikipedia, find other occult websites and soon stumble into a chatroom filled with adults who think they are real vampires. The child types in, “Hi everyone, I’m 11 and I want to know more about vampires.” Seventeen deviants respond instantly offering to “help” this child learn more. Sound plausible?

The slogan for the internet should be “DEVIANTS UNITE!” I contend that back in the day, people with deviant thoughts pretty much thought something was wrong with them. They had very little opportunity to “mingle” with other deviants, outside of prison, and they didn’t have a lot of “material” to feed their deviance. With the advent of the internet, deviants had a way to connect to each other anonymously and provide “support” for other deviants. It has gotten to the point where you can find someone into just about anything out there, and people start to think, “Hey, somebody else is into this too, so it can’t be totally wrong.” Take NAMBLA for instance. You have a bunch of sick individuals out there that think boys actually need the kind of love they can provide. Is there anything sicker or more deviant than that? Unfortunatley, the answer seems to be yes.

Just a few months ago, a young girl met an older man in a vampire chatroom like the hypothetical one I created earlier. She started chatting with this lunatic, who obviously knew how to prey on her insecurities, and the whole sordid mess ended up with them killing her parents and running off together. Sad, sick and true.

I worry that things dealing with the occult will seem cool to kids, and that they’ll look to quench their insatiable thirst for knowledge in all the wrong places. I don’t want my kids googling “witchcraft” and linking to a chatroom filled with adults who take it seriously. Fortunately for me, my wife and I watch what our kids do, and we actually talk to them about issues like this. Unfortunately, most families in America don’t seem to have the same core values. Those are the kids I worry about.

I’m not saying that disenfranchised kids won’t find bad things without innocent books or movies about witchcraft or vampires on the market. I’m just saying that the hype and over-glamorization of all things occult in our society can have deliterious effects on our children. Am I overreacting? Possibly. That’s just how I feel. You don’t have to feel the same way, but at least think about the kids out there without proper supervision. With the right parents, and I hope that my wife and I are just that, points like this are moot. Then again, not all parents do the right thing.

Today’s entry will be short and sweet, as I’m working like a madman at my real job to finish some things.

As I was perusing the local rag this morning over a nice bagel, I nearly spit out my iced tea. The front page of my Local & State section has a story about a man who got his Harry Potter book recently…and get this…IT WAS MISSING SOME PAGES!!! I’m not kidding you. That’s what the whole story was about. Apparently, some people are getting books with missing pages. That’s it. That’s all. Fini.

This is news? Why exactly do I care about this? The whole world is losing their collective mind. I don’t even know what else to say.

Okay, here goes. I’ve never read a single word of any Harry Potter book. I know, I know. You would think an aspiring novelist would at least take a peek at the best selling series of all time, but I haven’t. I honestly can’t tell you why. It’s not that I don’t like the fantasy genre. I cut my teeth on it. The first series I remember reading was the Shannara books by Terry Brooks. I’ve also read the Thomas Covenant series, the Xanth series, everything every written by David Eddings, and so on, and so forth. So, it’s not that I don’t like the genre. That much, I’m sure of.

So, I have no idea why I’ve never embraced the boy wizard. Oh, did I mention I’ve never seen one second of any of the movies either. I haven’t. That’s the honest truth. I’m not wearing it like some non-conformist badge of honor either. Really, I’m not. I’m not some elitist that sits back and says, “The swill that the commoners will consume these days absolutely astonishes me. Now pass the caviar, Buffy.” That’s not me. Not by a long shot. It’s just something I can’t explain.

So, here’s my deal. I would like someone…anyone…to explain to me in fifty words or less why I should care. That’s all. It seems pretty simple. Why should I pick up the book? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

If you haven’t seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, shame on you. Then again, maybe you’re saying shame on me for not caring about Harry Potter. So someone try to make me care. I dare you.

Does anyone remember the good ol’ days? Were they really that good? I’m not even sure.

The thing that got me thinking about this was the fact that we lost the internet at work for a couple of hours today. What exactly did we do before the internet? I found I could occupy about fifteen minutes of time before I ground to a halt. I sat and stared at my laptop for a few minutes and thought, “Huh, this is fun.” Every time I thought of something I could do until the DSL started working again, I realized the thing I was thinking of doing required the internet. That’s pretty pathetic I know, but it’s just the way it was. Maybe not everyone has a job so dependent on the web, but if you do, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It stinks. I thought of going home and doing research, but then I realized I would have to VPN into the office to do anything with the research. Oh yeah, that would mean the internet would have to be up and running at work. Interesting.

So, I finally made productive use of my time and finished up a query letter that I’ve been working on for the past month or so. For those of you not in the know, that is a letter I’ll be sending to prospective agents to see if they would like to respresent me in my effort to sell my manuscript. Pretty cool, huh? I actually did something worthwhile without the internet. Problem was, then I needed to send it to someone to get their feedback. Oh yeah, the internet’s down. How I longed for the good ol’ days!