Baggy Pants: From Fashionable To Criminal

Ever see some hip-hop dickhead walking around the mall with his ass hanging out? Well, I started that fashion trend years ago! I wrote about it in the column below, published in WAYNE TODAY, Sept. 2007.

My pants sag. I can’t help it; it’s the way I’m built. I’ve got a round belly and a flat butt and it’s a constant struggle to keep my pants up around my waist.

One of my most traumatic grade-school memories is sitting on the floor of the gym during a school assembly and hearing giggles and titters from the rows of students behind me. I tried to ignore it until someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey, man, everybody can see your butt crack and they’re laughing three rows back,” he said.

Blushing deep red, I wiggled and squirmed until my pants were back in place. But a few minutes later they had drooped back down again. It was a very long assembly.

I’ve had this “sagging pants issue” since childhood. Belts help, but they are by no means foolproof. They just give me something substantial to grab onto when I’m hoisting my pants back up. A former girlfriend used to call me “Deputy Droopy Drawers.”  Cute.

But then, as I transitioned from a teenager to a twenty-something, I was suddenly “fashion forward.” It’s believed that the baggy pants craze started in prisons, where inmates aren’t given belts (to prevent hangings and beatings) and, as a result, their pants sag. But by the late 80s, the trend had made it to gangster rap videos, then went on to skateboarders in the suburbs and high school hallways. Soon the droopy pants look became a part of everyday fashion for kids a decade or so younger than me. I was a fashion pioneer, baby!

But now I’m bordering on being a criminal. Several communities have recently passed laws banning saggy pants. In one Louisiana town, wearing pants low enough to show your underwear or bare buttocks will get you a $500 fine or up to six months in jail. In Trenton, New Jersey, Councilwoman Annette Lartigue is also drafting a law to outlaw saggy pants. Under Lartigue’s proposed law, wearing drooping pants will not only get you fined, you’ll also have to answer questions from a city official about your employment and educational status.

“The message is clear,” Councilwoman Lartigue explains. “We don’t want to see your backside.”

Trust me, Ms. Lartigue, you don’t. But what can I do? My belly…my butt…!

Fortunately the American Civil Liberties Union is on my side. When a baggy pants ban was recently enacted in Atlanta, Georgia, the ACLU stepped in with a cry of racial profiling.

“This ban is going to target African-American male youths,” says Benetta Standly, statewide organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. “There’s a fear with people associating the way you dress with crimes being committed.”

So what if I’m not black (and hardly a youth) – I will not be discriminated against just because I’m a misshapen male who can’t seem to keep his pants up! I will stand alongside my baggy-pants brethren (lots of plumbers and carpenters, in addition to all the hip gangster wannabes). We shall overcome!

Now, if I could just find a way to stop stepping on the hem of my pants…

 

Laughing Loughner Has To Go!

Below is a column I published a year ago in Wayne TODAY. I’m posting it here in honor of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who officially stepped down from her post last month. Fuck Jared Loughner!
***
Why is Jared Loughner still alive?

Dozens of witnesses (along with half-a-dozen security cameras) watched Loughner (allegedly) walked up to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on January 8 and shoot her in the head at point blank range. They saw him fire on others at the political event outside a Tuscon Safeway, killing six, including a federal court judge and a nine-year-old Girl Scout. Thirteen others were wounded in the shooting.

Whatever your personal view on capital punishment, Arizona has the death penalty. One of the arguments in favor of the death penalty is that it deters criminals from committing similar crimes.

When Jared Loughner was formally charged with his crimes last month, he entered the courtroom smiling. He chuckled as the charges were read. Then his attorney entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.

Not guilty.

Despite dozens of witnesses and confirming video, Loughner still entered a plea of not guilty.

This paves the way for a long, costly trial for Loughner. No doubt his mental competence will be questioned in court. Clearly Loughner’s a madman, but there’s also strong evidence he planned his crimes well in advance. In fact, police seized signed notes from Loughner’s safe that read “I planned ahead,” “My assassination,” and “Giffords.”

I feel bad for Loughner’s parents. I feel worse for his victims. But ultimately there’s no one to blame but Jared Loughner himself. Is he insane? Probably. Is he a danger to society? Unquestionably.

We live in a country where people are innocent until proven guilty. Our legal system grants everyone the right to a swift and fair trial. That’s one of the things that makes America great.

But what about swift justice for victims?

If there was ever a case for eschewing the standard legal machinery and fast-tracking execution, Jared Loughner is the guy. It’s hard to think of another case where someone’s guilt was so blatant. Despite his attorney’s plea, Jared Loughner is not “not guilty.” He’s a cold-blooded, premeditated murderer.

Why should we pay for him to sit in prison, read books, and surf the Internet for the next 65 years? Why isn’t he strapped into Ol’ Sparky, riding the lightning to a Judgement Day beyond the humanity he so despised?

Random acts of violence are happening with greater frequency because A) The world is full of mentally unstable people, and B) It’s easy for them to get guns.

But maybe, if Loughner were executed within weeks of committing his murderous spree, the next campus shooter or workplace rager would think twice before resorting to violence.

So, why is Jared Loughner still alive?

Follow Me! Like Me! Friend Me!

Happy new year! I have joined the world of social networking!

Check out my Facebook page and my Twitter feed! (@haikubob). There will be exciting updates! Stimulating information! Thoughtful messaging!

Thanks to everyone who has supported Autism Dad and my other work in 2011. Lots of exciting things planned for 2012. Joining the ranks of social networking is just the beginning!

In the meantime,enjoy this column from August 2010 about how much Facebook, MySpace and Twitter suck. and why I’ll never use them. Ha-ha, I’m a douche bag! But I’m learning to be a better douche bag!

Anti-Social Networking: Off-Line and Out-Of-Line

I was at a bar recently, watching an old friend’s band play, when I ran into a bunch of other old friends, people I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade.

There were well wishes and fond-remembrances all around. But then some of my old chums chided me for my reclusive lifestyle.

“Why aren’t you on Facebook?” one friend asked. “Are you, like, morally against it?”

No…not really. Well, maybe a little.  I see the benefit of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. It’d be nice to keep in touch with friends, share info, photos, video, etc. But I have some reservations. Here are a few:

Time Sucker – Like anything worthwhile, social networking sites are only as rewarding as the effort you put into them. That takes time, and who has that to spare? If I had an extra hour a day, I’d spend it working on projects I already don’t have enough time for. I wouldn’t spend it sending messages to an old grade-school chum, filling him/her in on everything that’s happened in my life since kindergarten. Sorry if that makes me a bad person, but time is precious. I’ll catch up with old classmates at the next reunion, or the next time a friend’s band comes to town.

What if you don’t respond to an old chum’s request to be added to your buddy list? Then you’re a big jerk. Suddenly you’re saddled with a social responsibility you didn’t ask for, and if you’re not careful you can turn an old friend into a new enemy.

False Friends – What is a friend, anyway? Social networking sites produce a new kind of friend, the “cyber-friend.” A main goal of social networking seems to be amassing a sizable friend-list, and getting “added” to the friend-lists of others.

It’s cool having “hundreds of friends” on your page, but if you never interact with these people beyond a few text exchanges are they really friends? A friend is someone you spend time with, share experiences with. Good friends are often those you’ve shared a particularly bad experience with. A friend is someone who helps you, whom you support in return. It’s more than clicking “Add A Friend”.

I worry young computer users have a different definition of “friend,” and may find themselves lacking the social skills to form rewarding relationships with real people. I’m old school. I made friends the old fashioned way, pre-Internet, when you had talk to people, look, listen and form a bond. You had to make friends. It took effort, but it was worth it because you found people who liked you for you, not because you lengthened their buddy list. Computers make our lives easier in so many ways, but I’m not sure making friends is one of them.

The Many Faces of Rob Errera – Like most people, I’m a different person at different times. I’m an Editor-In-Chief sometimes, a columnist others. Sometimes I’m a property manager, landscaper, Ebay reseller, musician, writer. My kids see Daddy, their teachers see Mr. Errera. In the privacy of our bedroom my wife calls me The Gangster of Love (and, on occasion, The Space Cowboy).

Who gets represented on my Facebook or MySpace page?  And do I really want all those various facets of my life commingling? We’ve all been to weddings, funerals, or some another big event that produces an awkward moment, like your poker buddies chatting with your boss, wife or mother. A social networking page creates this powder-keg of awkwardness 24/7.

I have friends who shut down their Facebook/MySpace accounts after a few months for one or more of the reasons listed above. It’s easy to join a social networking site, but difficult to un-join, from what I’m told – yet another reason I’m hesitant to enter the social networking fray.

Starting a blog is on the to-do list, however, since, unlike most bloggers, I’ve got plenty of rich content to share. More than two decades of TODAY columns await worldwide exposure. It’ll be an awesome blog.

Of course, I’ll need a FaceSpace page to promote it…

#####

originally published in Wayne TODAY, August 2010

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iPod, therefore, I am

My ear buds were dying.

I was midway through my morning commute when the left speaker cut out. I jiggled the wire and it came back for a few minutes, but by the time I got to work I was down to one channel again. I’d have to pick up a new pair on my lunch break. Going without my iPod for the commute home was not an option.

I’m a Johnny Come Really Lately when it comes to digital music. I didn’t own an iPod until last year, but now that I have one I’m addicted to it. In fact, I’d say my iPod has not only reawakened my musical spirit, it has quietly changed my life in some rather profound ways.

I’ve always been a music lover (as well as a knock-around musician) but somewhere around the turn of the millennium the music all but stopped for me. My band had dissolved, and life tossed other priorities my way—a home renovation, a marriage, and then kids. Once kids were on the scene, my main source of musical entertainment was Baby Einstein and Sesame Street. If we wanted to rock hard we’d put on The Wiggles live album or Wake Up Jeff.

Yeah, I had a cabinet filled with hundreds of CDs but when was I going to listen to them? In the middle of night when the kids were asleep? During the ten-minute ride from my house to the bus stop?

I resisted the iPod craze for a long time. I’d never been a “Walkman guy,” either the cassette tape or CD versions, and the whole iPod/MP3 player thing just seemed like an extension of that. Lack of space finally nudged me into the digital age; I needed to clear out my CD cabinet to make room for computer equipment. So I started the long process of importing my CD collection into iTunes and I picked up a used iPod shuffle on eBay.

I was immediately hooked. For starters I could load 17 hours of music onto a device the size of a matchbook. And the sound was awesome. Nothing beats listening to music on headphones, which block out all ambient sound and allow you to hear every nuance of the music. I’m sure music purists will disagree, but a good pair of “ear buds” put music inside your head in a way that standard headphones never can (especially not those cheesy, foam-eared, Walkman-style headphones.) When was the last time I listened to music on headphones? In college? High school?

I didn’t realize how much I missed listening to music – not watching music videos, but listening to music— until I got an iPod. It was like a cool drink on a hot summer day. It was more than merely refreshing. It was like getting something back that was crucial to my well being, like a vitamin that had been missing from my diet.

My iPod quickly transformed my dreary New York City commute into an almost enjoyable experience. If it’s a rainy day and the subway platforms are dank and crowded you’re going to need some Metallica or Tool to make it through. Nothing beats checking out the celestial paintings on the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal while listening to Radiohead. The other day James Taylor accompanied me on my morning bus ride. Hey, it’s good to know that I’ve got a friend.

I’ve upgraded to a bigger iPod and now I’ve got my entire music collection on there. Rock, jazz, classical – there’s something for any mood. And that’s the beauty of the iPod – it allows you to select a soundtrack for the movie that’s your life. It used to stress me out moving with a herd through buses and subways and crowded city streets. But it’s kind of fun now that I’m in my own private “sound bubble.” Music has a way of transporting you to different times and places and my iPod allows me to be in Times Square, present day, and Europe ’72 with the Grateful Dead simultaneously. Groovy, man.

I find myself walking more since I got my iPod, and in the last six months I’ve dropped 30 pounds and saved a couple of bucks on subway fare. And I’ve started writing and recording music again for the first time in years. It’s like a reawakening of my music appreciation has stirred my creative juices as well.  Thanks, iPod!

Of course, the isolating effect of the iPod is also its greatest drawback. People already have a hard enough time connecting with one another in modern society; we don’t need another gadget that further detaches us. And, yes, you shouldn’t wear one while driving, or in class, and you shouldn’t play it too loud, blah, blah, blah. Anything can be abused. But if you’ve ever sat next to a crying baby at an airport or next to a loud-mouthed cell phone user on a bus, then you already know that a digital music player can transform an otherwise unpleasant or mundane experience into something quite magical.

reprinted from WAYNE Today, September 2008

A Dignified Death For Man And Man’s Best Friend

Our dog Barnabus was dying.

 

My wife and I both knew it, though we didn’t want to say it aloud. We’d been involved with animal rescue for many years, and we knew what the final stages of a pet’s life looked like: the loss of appetite, the incontinence, the restless wandering. No matter how Barney stood, lay, or sat, he couldn’t seem to get comfortable.

 

Barney was the fifth dog we needed to put to sleep. My wife and I aren’t serial killers…we often adopt elderly dogs and they sometimes don’t remain in our family as long as we’d like them to. Euthanizing a pet doesn’t get easier the more you do it, but it gets easier to recognize when the end is near. We waited too long three of the four times we needed to do this before. We knew our pets were sick and suffering, but we didn’t want to say goodbye.

 

Barney was with us for nine years. We adopted him from the Jersey City animal shelter when our son was only three months old. We saw a beagle on the Jersey City shelter’s web site that we wanted to adopt. But when we got to the shelter, we found the beagle had already been euthanized. We asked who was next to go, and were directed to a skin-and-bones shepherd mix crammed in a tiny cage.

 

“He’s been here ten days. His time is up.”

 

A few minutes later Barney was riding in the backseat of our Geo Prism, on his way to a new home. For the next nine years, he was one of the most faithful, most loyal, most loving dogs we ever lived with. He was gentle with our kids, protective of our home, and tolerant of the other dogs that came to visit (and stay!) It didn’t take Barney long to learn that this was his home, too, his kids, his family.

 

We never knew Barney’s exact age. He was at least three or four years old when we adopted him. The last few years he was on arthritis medicine. He struggled so much getting up and down the steps to the back yard the last two winters, I wasn’t sure he’d make it to spring. But he did.

 

Except this spring Barney started having intense seizures. He had several over the course of a week, but then they stopped for more than a month. We hoped we were in the clear, but then they started again, worse than ever. We seemed to lose a little bit of Barney with each seizure – it took him longer to regain his composure after an attack, and he remained disoriented and confused after his last serious seizure.

 

We decided to put Barney to sleep on June 3, the same day that Dr. Jack Kevorkian died. The irony was not lost on my wife and I.

 

Kevorkian, aka “Dr Death”, pioneered the right to die for terminally ill humans. He is reported to have helped more than 130 patients take their own lives, and is the inventor of the Thanatron (Death Machine) device, which can kill a patient by injecting a mix of chemicals in to the bloodstream, and the Merictron (Mery Machine) which causes death through inhalation of carbon monoxide.

 

A strong advocate of “right-to-die” legislation, Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 for helping a late-stage ALS patient take his own life. Kevorkian was paroled in 2007, and continued to be an advocate for patient’s rights until his death.

 

Barney brought joy and love into our family for nearly a decade. The last loving gift I could grant him was to end his suffering, and let him go gently into that good night. How sad that I could give this gift of peace to my dog, but not my father when he was suffering from the final stages of cancer 15 years ago.

 

Kevorkian was famously quoted as saying “dying is not a crime.” Maybe forcing a dying person to live in pain and suffering should be. If so, our government would be guilty a million times over.

 

Barney had another seizure in the waiting room of the vet’s office. The doctor helped me carry him into the examining room, and gave Barney a shot of valium to stop the seizure. We discussed it for a few minutes, but the vet didn’t disagree with my decision. Clusters of seizures, coupled with Barney’s other behavioral changes, pointed to a probable brain tumor. The doctor put another needle into Barney’s arm, and before he had even finished injecting all of the pink fluid, Barney was gone, resting in peace.

 

I walked out to the waiting room a few minutes later carrying Barney’s collar and leash. A girl waiting with her cat took one look at me and started crying. I felt strangely apologetic. I’m sorry my dying dog bummed everybody out. He didn’t mean it. He was a good dog – a great dog — and this was really the best option, an option that should be available for man and beast alike.

 

Good night, Dr. Kevorkain. Thanks for teaching us all about dying with dignity.

 

Good night, Barnabus. Thank you for teaching me how to live with grace and appreciation.

Why This Blog Sucks

Why does this blog suck so badly?

Well, it’s not updated often enough, for starters. Why? Because I’ve been busy.

Don’t believe me, read on. It’s been a crazy year. Then Google me, or look for my ebooks on Smashwords or Amazon — I’ve got a couple of new ebooks coming out, and more planned. Told you I’ve been busy!

Bad Luck, Invisible Dangers, and Obvious Miracles

reprinted courtesy of Wayne TODAY, March 2011

Talk to anyone who has been in a serious car accident, or survived some other life-threatening situation, and they’ll usually finish their harrowing tale with the phrase, “It’s a miracle!”

I always doubted this sentiment. How can such bad luck be seen as a miracle? Is it miraculous your luck wasn’t worse?

But I look at miracles differently now.

Last month my wife had a stroke. It wasn’t a tiny TIA (transient ischemic attack) either. One neurologist called it “a big hit on the right side,” a major CVA (cerebrovascular accident). If you looked at her MRI, you’d expect her to have paralysis, lost of speech, and brain function.

But she doesn’t. Laura’s lost some sensation on her left side, and dexterity in her left hand, but her mind and speech seem unaffected. She’ s not “fine,” as she likes to remind me, and she’s got a lot of difficult therapy ahead of her. But relative to the size of her stroke, her condition is, well…miraculous.

Our network of friends immediately stepped up and pitched in following my wife’s stroke, and we’ve never felt more grateful for their support.

“You scared the hell out of everybody,” I told her. “You’ve got everyone thinking about their own mortality. Everybody wants to know how this could happen to fairly healthy woman in her forties.”

But the cause of my wife’s stroke remains a mystery. Tests show no heart irregularities or blockages in her cerebrovascular system.

It was just one of those things. Bad luck, with a miracle on the side.

I was surprised by how deeply news of my wife’s stroke affected everyone, especially my friend Ross, who really only knows my wife casually. I had to repeatedly reassure Ross that Laura would be okay, and was expected to make a full recovery. Maybe it was the sudden-ness of it that caught Ross off guard.

But maybe it was something else.

Two weeks after my wife’s stroke, Ross had a massive heart attack. He coded on the table, but was revived. He’s also expected to make a full recovery.

Another miracle, like being helpless in the jaws of a shark that spits you out instead of eating you. You’re left feeling both attacked and blessed.

We build our lives around people and places, careers and hobbies, ideals and attitude. But no matter how simple or complex we make them, our lives are still glass structures built on sand, a house of cards in windstorm. Life is a fragile, delicate thing, which is exactly what makes it so precious.

Plan, structure, and organize your life all you want (you should — like any mechanism, you have to constantly tinker with life in order to keep it running smoothly) but understand that life can change in an instant. Look at northern Japan, where people are struggling to put their lives back together in the wake of an earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear crisis.

Some dangers, the worst ones, are invisible and impossible to predict: blood clots, malignant cell growths, shifting tectonic plates deep beneath the earth. All you can do is plan, prepare, and live each day to the fullest.

And be aware of — and grateful for – the miracles you catch along the way.

END

Commuter Blue, Commuter Pink

Welcome to the New Year! Well, not so new, really, but I’m slow blogging. Below is another example of how my opinions change over time. The first column is from September 1996, shortly after I took my a job in New York City. It’s a major bitchfest about my commute. The second post is from September 2008, shortly after I got an iPod, which revolutionized my commute in new and exciting ways.

The first week it was exciting.

The second week it was cute.

The third week it was bland.

The  fourth week it was tiresome.

By week five, it was down-right grim.

I’m talking about the daily commute to my new job in New York City. We’ll talk more about the job itself in future. Today, we’ll examine the ordeal of “getting there.”

The day begins with a 20 minute drive that usually takes twice that long because of traffic. Then it’s time to get on a crowded bus and hopefully find a seat. If not, you wind up standing, trying to keep your balance and prevent sprawling flat-out in the aisle while the bus wheels around hairpin turns. This bit of fancy footwork takes another 20 minutes.

Arriving in Port Authority Bus Terminal is were the real fun begins. There are two choices for someone in my shoes (namely, me) – if you’re early enough, the weather is cooperative, and your legs feel strong, you can take the leisurely 25 minute walk across town. If not, it’s time to face, (gasp.) the subway!

You’ve probably heard a lot of terrible things about the New York City subway system. Now that I’ve been a rider for several weeks, I feel qualified to say, EVERYTHING BAD YOU’VE HEAR IS TRUE! The subway “adventure” begins with an ominous decent down several crowded escalators. Then it’s a brisk walk through a long underground tunnel that has the air capacity for twenty people, but always contains about two hundred. The walk is brisk because YOU CAN’T BREATH DOWN THERE! I’m amazed every time I pass through this dank dungeon that I don’t see the skeletons of commuters who didn’t make it piled up against the walls. I guess the PA Transit Authority comes by ever half-hour or so and clears them away.

At the end of the tunnel is another series of stairs and, finally, the subway trains. I’ve been told the trains are “much cleaner” than they used to be, but to me they still seem like a human Pietre dish; I’ve seen just about every kind of body fluid and secretion within the confines of these “meat wagons.”  Riding the subway is an adventure in itself. If there are no seats, you become a “strap-hanger” (the “straps” are actually stainless steel rings which always feel disturbingly greasy.) Strap-hanging makes standing on the bus look like a walk in the park. With quick starts, abrupt stops and unexpected twists and turns, you’re fortunate if you don’t wind up in the lap of some guy who looks like he’s been riding the trains for days, and has forgone the luxuries of bathing or using public restrooms.

It’s time to move up after the subway: two escalators and a flight of stairs. Sometimes the crowds are so thick, you could probably lift your feet off the ground and still make it to the exit doors of Grand Central Station. From there, it’s a two-block walk to the office (and these are those long avenue blocks.) After an hour-and-a-half of traveling, you’re finally at the office. In another eight hours you’ll reverse the process in order to get home again. Oh, joy.

I know I shouldn’t complain about the commute. Thousands of people do it every day. A friend of mine has been commuting to New York City for eight years. He tells me you get used to it after a while. My theory is, the bus and subway fumes kill enough brain cells to make it tolerable.

In the midst of this dismal commute, there is a brief moment of enjoyment. It comes during the darkest segment of the journey, during the “tunnel walk” from Port Authority. Hanging above your head, every 15 feet or so, are little phrases. Together they make a poem. It goes:

“So tired

If late

Get fired

Why bother?

Why the pain?

Just go home

Do it again.”

The first time I saw this I was expecting to see a Nike logo or Pepsi ad following it, but none came. I realized it was simply an eloquently phrased public service announcement, a commuter’s prayer. It summed up the desolate chore of earning a living. It made me smile, then laugh out loud (nobody seems to mind when you do this in New York City.) Sure, I hate the commute into work everyday, but so does everyone else. I was miserable, but I had lots of company.

Anyway, the commute has certainly altered my lifestyle, (as well as lightened my wallet.) I have to go to sleep by 11 p.m. or I won’t be able wake up for the journey the next day. In fact it’s getting late now. You’ll excuse me but I have to get up tomorrow and “do it again.”

reprinted from WAYNE Today, September 1996