Category: Brooklyn

The passing of Michael Vale, the actor who was Dunkin’ Donuts’ “Fred the Baker” – the man who made the line “Time to make the donuts” to remind us that Dunkin’ Donuts toiled long and hard for us.

Goodbye to Monday Night Football, at least in its broadcast network format, as we have known it. New England Patriots v. NY Jets, 31 to 21. Jets ending it, the way they began MNF 35 years ago – and with the same score too. Yeesh.

US Attorney/Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is National Law Journal’s Lawyer of the Year.

In Washington State, a lawyer is found guilty for having tried to murder his opposing counsel, Kevin Jung.

Law.com posted a fascinating article on Justice O’Connor – who’s in the unusual position of being around to watch her historical position be evaluated before she leaves the Court.

Oh, and here’s a link to the Fareed Zakaria interview on NY1.com — awhile ago, but a good one.

Remember those old NJ tourism commercials, where you had Governor Tom Keane waxing poetic about how “NJ and You: Perfect Together”? Well, NJ is trying to change its tourism motto, in light of its latest self-esteem problems. Uh yeah, that’ll make you feel better:

“New Jersey: We’ve Got Three Really, Really Big Roads” apparently failed to capture the joys of driving to Atlantic City. “New Jersey: What’s That Smell?” seemed downright mean. And would “New Jersey: You Got a Problem With That?” really attract tourists?

Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey officially rejected all of these slogans – and many more – before unveiling five finalists in the state’s tagline contest last week. He said he believed the five were as majestic, charming and light-hearted as New Jersey itself.

Two of those slogans seemed to tilt toward romance – “New Jersey: Love at First Sight” and “New Jersey: The Real Deal.” Mr. Codey said he wanted the finalists to reflect the state’s “big heart” and “passion for life.”

“If nothing else,” he added, “it should get us a second date.”

And yet, if the final five slogans are a Rorschach test, New Jersey, despite its nickname “The Garden State,” does not seem to have fully overcome its awkward struggle with low self-esteem. Residents said that the three other finalists – “New Jersey: Come See for Yourself,” “New Jersey: Expect the Unexpected” and “New Jersey: The Best Kept Secret” – open the state to a wide range of stinky or driving or “Sopranos” jokes, which are already far too common among visitors and bad comedians. [….]

Several people also toyed with what visitors might discover if they came to see New Jersey for themselves and were to “expect the unexpected.” Some said they would most likely run up against the state’s high insurance rates and property taxes. Others predicted heated encounters with drivers who beep their horns at the first sign of a green light, and perhaps, in the cities, violent crime.

“When a person says ‘unexpected’ in my neighborhood, everyone says, ‘Uh-oh, what’s that mean?” said Julius Simmons, 31, who was hawking DVD’s on Market Street here. Since outsiders already have a negative image of New Jersey, he said, some of the slogans “might give people the wrong idea.”

Even the two sentimental taglines, evoking the cherished “I Love New York,” seemed ripe for humor. Darrell Armstrong, 28, who was on Broad Street here with a smile and friendly banter as he sold hats, gloves and stuffed bears, took one look at the list of finalists and laughed.

” ‘Love at first sight,’ ” he said. “Yeah right, until you find out how expensive it is to live here. It’s definitely not a deal.”

Like many people in New Jersey, Mr. Armstrong said he doubted that any of the slogans would bring many more tourists to New Jersey. That would be just fine with Mark DeMarco, 49, a shopper at the Mall at Mill Creek in Secaucus. “We have enough people here as it is,” he said. “You ever try to put a towel down on the beach at Atlantic City?”

Other residents, however, observed that the slogans’ supposed flaws were somehow appropriate because they allow for interpretation. New Jersey, they said, is characterized less by an individual city, like Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, or a specific tourist destination, like Cape Cod. What sets the state apart is its range of places to visit – from beaches to orchards – and its attitude.

This is a place where people rarely put on airs, where they shout from car windows, gobble pizza while wearing a tuxedo, sing and joke about getting out even as they fondly recall why they have stayed home. [….]

Taking a nap on the public furniture of NYC. Yeah, right. But, if they make the benches looks as comfy as they do in this photo in the article – well…

Let’s make the last week of 2005 a good one…

Did a lot of driving today (more accurately P did a lot of driving, I just tagged along) — picked up P’s mom at Starrett City, went to the Ave. U chinatown to buy hotpot supplies. Lunch at Pho Hoai Restaurant, 1906 Avenue U (recommended!); back to Starrett; back to Brooklyn Heights to pick up pies and my folding table and the Christmas gifts. Back to Starrett City for the actual hotpot dinner. Back to Brooklyn Heights for Midnight Mass. Suffice to say, a lot of travelling. Tomorrow, I’m cooking a very Puerto Rican Christmas dinner — I’m going to try to pull of a pernil (roast pork marinated with garlic), Spanish rice, and a few Chino-latino dishes. P’s family is coming over also.

Best wishes to all for a healthy Christmastime, and time to start working on my traditional end of the year entry…..

One year after the tsunami. Various ceremonies. But, what is in the aftermath?

Johnny Damon, shaved and not stirred (there’s a picture of him shaved somewhere in that link).

“Doonesbury” of late has been interesting – B.D. is slowly making his way to the V.A. hospital for counseling. Mike’s daughter Alex has spent this week writing the most ridiculous college application essays (one about her ex-boyfriends and how dumping them has taught her Important Life Lessons; one on page 318 of her autobio (umm, that might be the UPenn application, I believe), where she imagines winning the Nobel Prize and thanking her fill-in-the-blank college alma mater; and one where she forgot to edit and plugged in “I’ll be so proud to be at Yale,” when it was an essay for another school entirely). Someone wrote in to the Doonesbury FAQ, accusing Garry Trudeau of not being pro-Christmas, so the “Doonesbury” website posted Christmas strips of the past. Cool stuff – ranging from the 70’s (wherein Kim Rosenthal Doonesbury as a toddler spending her first Christmas as a Vietnamese adoptee sang a non-Christmas diddy while everyone else in Doonesbury world sang Christmas songs – wait, weren’t Kim’s folks Jewish – why do they have a Christmas tree for?) to the poignant Gulf War Christmas (where Boopsie’s thinking about B.D. in his first tour of duty in the Gulf) to the Dec. 2001 Christmas (B.D. on guard duty at World Trade Center’s remains).

NY Times’ Christmas editorial:

You don’t really have to be in the mood for the Fourth of July. No one ever talks about having that Memorial Day spirit. Even Thanksgiving can be distilled, without too much disrespect. But Christmas is something different. Feeling is the point of it, somewhere under all that shopping. To think of Scrooge is to think of his conversion, the cartwheeling of his emotions after his long night of the soul. But the more interesting part of the story is his dogged resistance to feeling the way everyone thinks he’s supposed to feel – about death, about charity, about prize turkeys hanging at the poulterer’s.

Most of us know how we want to feel this time of year, whatever holiday we are celebrating. We want to feel safe, loving and well loved, well fed, openhanded, and able to be moved by the powerful but very humble stories that gather in this season. We would like to feel that there is a kind of innocence, not in our hearts, since our hearts are such complicated places, but in the very gestures and rituals of late December. We would like to feel that we are returning to something unchanged, some still spot in a spinning world. Whether you believe with an absolute literalism or with a more analogic faith, whether you believe at all, whether you are Christian or Jewish or Muslim or merely human, the word we would like to feel most profoundly now is Peace. [….]

One night will not do it, nor will one day. Peace does not simply appear in the sky overhead or lie embodied one morning in a manger. We come into this season knowing how we want it to make us feel, and we are usually disappointed because humans never cease to be human. But we are right to remember how we would like to feel. We are right to long for peace and good will.

Merry Christmas to all! Wishes for Peace and Good will on Earth.

Well, at this hour, the state mediators apparently got the union and MTA management together, and NY Times’ Sewell Chan and Steven Greenhouse’s article was a good read – plus, I came out feeling a lot more impressed with the power of mediation as a form of alternative dispute resolution:

Jerome Lefkowitz, a labor lawyer who helped draft a state law that provides for mediation and arbitration in contract disputes involving police, firefighters and transit workers, said he felt the law had helped people find a path of reason.

“Mediators must have the facility to listen to what the negotiators are saying and to hear priorities and demands that may not be articulated explicitly,” he said. “When they start making progress, more tradeoffs follow pretty quickly, once you can break the ice.”

Mediation as assisted negotiation is pretty helpful. When you’ve got sides that can’t exactly negotiate together, why not get someone to help with the negotiating?

At least stop the speaking badly of each other. That sure didn’t help. But, now that the strike is over, let me cross my fingers in hoping that the subway lines will be up and running by morning, with decent frequency and not too much slowness. (on the other hand, with the Xmas/Hanukah rush, there might actually be less riders anyway!). Mind you, if the N isn’t working on time in my end of Brooklyn, then I’ll really know that MTA is a screw up.

But, I do think that the Brooklyn Bridge walking has been great exercise (besides the stiffness of my muscles and other mild pain). I could see myself doing it more often in the future as exercise (so long as I know there’s a subway on the other side to get me to my end of Brooklyn). Or at least when it’s not so cold (or hot either). Umm, yeah. Sure… (excuse me as I return to the land of denial…)

Yankee fans are awaiting the arrival of Johnny Damon. But, he’s still wearing a red shirt… (still attached to the Red Sox?).

NY Observer does a profile on another NY Asian American: Fareed Zakaria – a fascinating inside look on this foreign affairs specialist. (check it out before the Observer takes the article down for something else). NY1.com had an interesting One on One taken on him too. I should link it, once NY1’s website isn’t as strike-heavy as it has been of late.

So glad tomorrow’s Friday…

Today, I went back to work after having a mini-vacation on Monday and Tuesday (requested and approved long before I thought the MTA strike was going to happen). So, I got dropped off at the Brooklyn Bridge and walked this morning, making the classic NYC MTA strike trek. The walk wasn’t so bad (the uphill direction from Tillary to the first part of the bridge was a tough part and it was sooo cold). I made good time, even for a slowpoke like me.

The evening walk was also not so bad. Again, I made better time than I had expected. At one point, I walked next to a bunch of young people and I happened to overhear their conversation. The girl mentioned something about “If I pop my kneecap, it’d be assault and battery right?” and someone mentioned “torts” and “negligence” – and I was sorely tempted to ask them if they were 1L’s who was escaping or taking a torts final exam. However, I didn’t get to blurt my question since I started lagging behind on the bridge and the kids were moving ahead.

Brooklyn Boro Pres Marty Markowitz cheered people home on the Brooklyn side of the bridge at the evening rush. He invited people to go to Boro Hall and take a bathroom/coffee break. I got a ride back home, once my folks finally met up with me in downtown Brooklyn.

All this walking is going to cause me stiff muscles.

NY Times’ Jennifer Steinhauser reported on Day 1 of the strike, with all the now-familiar soundbites. But one cute quote from her article:

Commuters will also be hoping for a better commute than yesterday’s evening rush madness at Pennsylvania Station. Tens of thousands of confused Long Island Rail Road passengers sought entrance to the station but were directed to one of four entrances – all of them clogged with humanity – that often did not correspond to their departing train.

“How do I get in?” said one woman to the officer. Another passenger, a man, called out “Liz? I think I lost my wife.”

Poor guy. I wondered if he did catch up with his wife amidst the mass of humanity at Penn Station.

NY Times’ Sam Roberts profiles on Taylor and the Taylor Law:

[….] But few names have gained as much currency in the annals of New York lawmaking as George W. Taylor, who gave his name to the state’s famous Taylor Law, which bars public employees in the state from striking and exposes their unions and members to heavy fines.

“This is one law where the legislators didn’t fight to have their name on it,” he later recalled.

Dr. Taylor, a mediator, arbitrator and University of Pennsylvania history professor, was the chairman of a panel appointed by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller in response to the 12-day walkout by New York City transit workers in 1966.

“I am determined,” Governor Rockefeller said, “that this should never happen again.”

The Taylor Law was passed after workers defied the Condon-Wadlin Act, which mandated the automatic dismissal of striking public employees and barred rehired workers from getting raises for three years. The penalties were regarded as so punitive that they proved unenforceable.

In fact, special legislation introduced by the governor later in 1966 granted transit workers amnesty from most of the penalties, as had been done the year before for city welfare workers.

In 1967, the Taylor Law, while recognizing the right of public employees to bargain collectively, also provided for fines and other penalties against striking unions, their leaders and, as amended in 1969, individual workers. A flurry of strikes ensued after the law was passed as organized labor tested its provisions and a number of unions were penalized. [….]

In all honesty, though, I’m hardly pro-MTA (I rant far too often over their lack of logic and service problems) and I could see how the union has its point – how can you call it a union if you have a two-tier treatment toward the membership? I can appreciate it in the abstract, but it’s hard to see how these two sides can come to a settlement when there’s so much lack of trust. It takes two to tango, after all – so striking means no negotiating and no trust means no deal too. And, who is truly representing the interests of the riders? I can’t say that I trust either side – there are too many (self-)interests involved.

Also, the Day 1 wall-to-wall strike coverage on tv was certainly interesting. I felt a little uncomfortable with how Channel 11 news seemed to air far more anti-labor sentiments and I liked that Channel 7 seemed more even-handed, airing quotes from both a pro-labor commuter (or more anti-MTA) and an anti-labor commuter.

Is it me or does the disparity look a little disparate? NYC court employees had to hoof it to work; Big Law Firm people could take the firm’s specially chartered shuttle bus or the telework from home (especially since Big Law Firm can afford to let work be done from home). At least it’s the holiday season, so there aren’t too many trials scheduled.

Have you done your Christmas cards yet? Or has e-greetings really taken over?

Johnny Damon, ex-Boston Red Soxer, is now a Yankee. He’s part-Asian, is a self-proclaimed Idiot, and has to shave now that he’s coming to NYC (since Boss Steinbrenner doesn’t like excess facial hair).

Now, let’s see how Day 3 of the Strike will go. Hmm. When can we say “out” to this strike?

Day 2 of the strike. P is riding into the city now with a coworker who is driving in at 3:30 am to avoid the HOV-4 rule. It took her 3.5 hours to get home yesterday: upper East Side to Penn Station, LIRR to Jamaica, then Flatbush, then a walk downtown. P’s brother-in-law is a subway conductor who is going on the picket line today not for the money, not for the pensions, but against “sharecropper managers” (his term) that don’t know how to treat their workers well. He’s going without the support of the union’s parent organization, the International.

I like to think that I’m a pretty sympathic guy, and I don’t like people enduring unnecessary hardships. I also understand how people in the public view tend to suffer the slings and arrows of their critics (and how every president since Reagan ends up picking up an independent counsel or two in their second term whatever they do). However, I have not seen so many instances of skirting responsibility in the last 24 hours:

• One co-worker: “All my friends that could give me a ride moved to New Jersey, so I can’t get to work.” Just about everybody else at work came up with a plan.
• Another co-worker: “I can’t find a taxi that will drive me over the bridge.” My boss walked all the way from Grand Central over the Brooklyn Bridge – 6 miles.
• TWU Union Leader: “we won’t sell out our unborn”, meaning snatching defeat from the hands of victory after the MTA started caving from their “final offer”. Could have kept on pressing….
• governor: “the professionals at the table will resolve this”. What professionals? What table? He’s kidding, right?
• president: to paraphrase — yes we wiretapped without warrants, even though previously we stated a warrant was always necessary. We didn’t break the law, and even if we did, we told a handful of Congresspeople, so that made it all good and legal, right? Do they have a problem with it? They can’t tell you, and you can’t find out.

This is ridiculous.

We’re T+1 hour and still no call for a strike from the transit union leadership. From what I can gather, the union doesn’t really want more salary — they just want to be treated better by the middle management. The MTA doesn’t want to cut any benefits for current employees, just for future employees. NY1 reports that the MTA sweetened the final offer of 3% each year for the next three years to 3, 4, 3.5% for the next three years, and moved the retirement age to 60 from 62. There must be some clever negotiator that can come up with a place where they can agree?

The Bush administration is taking it on the chin with the domestic spying scandal by members of his own party. It’s hard to think that members of a party whose core belief is in smaller, non-intrusive government can go along with unlimited warrantless clandestine wiretaps. The legal reasoning behind the wiretaps, as described in the PBS Newshour, is basically the Constitution gives inherent authority to the President as commander-in-chief, and that Congress ratified that in the Afganistan resolution, and that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is outdated and not responsive to modern needs. The opposing side is that the Fourth Amendment is still applicable in wartime, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, by its own terms (50 USC sec 1822) is the exclusive statutory authority for this type of search. The fact that one searching “under color of law for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information, executes a physical search within the United States except as authorized by statute”, commits a felony (50 USC 1827) raises the stakes even more in this political battle.

Now that I have heard the Attorney General’s articulation of the legal reasoning, I don’t believe that it survives the “laugh test”. The ultimate judgment will be when Congress holds its hearings on the matter — I seem to recall in one commercial Con Law outline that the power of the President is strongest when Congress is acting in concert, and weakest when he is acting in opposition to Congress.

Time’s People of the Year goes to the Global Givers: Bill & Melinda Gates and Bono for their work for the poorest countries (the Time website has it “Bono, Melinda and Bill Gates”, which kind of looks like Bono was adopted into the Microsoft family), and “Partners of the Year” to Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush for their tsunami and hurricane relief efforts.

Saw the Brooklyn Youth Chorus in their annual holiday performance. Someone at work had tickets that were shared with us. They were magnificient. Pictures on the flickr strip above.

Excellent Turkish food on Montegue Street: Kapadokya Turkish Cuisine, 142 Montague Street. Our old sushi favorite Nanatori on 162 Montague Street was great as usual. I guess I’ve officially became a regular there because I get recognized by the manager, and we always get seated in the window (business always picks up for her after we sit there).

Off to the boss’ holiday party tonight…

On Friday night, co-workers and I went to the Atlantic Chip Shop. Good stuff – I can’t believe how much fried food I could dare to eat! I somehow resisted the fried Twinkie.

I finished reading “The Rule of Four.” Check out the official website as well. Fascinating book, a DaVinci Code-meets-A-Separate Peace. The friendships of the characters, four seniors in their final semester at Princeton in 1999, grappled with their loosened-tightened bonds while one friend, Paul, is trying to finish his thesis on a mysterious Renaissance book – reminded me a lot of how the friendships in “A Separate Peace” were developed and torn apart and re-established and reflected. The mystery was very strange. I liked how the co-authors were themselves friends from college (one from Princeton, and the other from Harvard, who took on their dreams of being authors).

Christmas stuff in the works – shopping? Card-distributing? Um, yeah! I’m on it, really!

Such sad news: Actor John Spencer of “West Wing” – Leo, the prospective Democratic Vice President – passed away from a heart attack. He was a good watch and a great supporting actor who was able to balance out the rest of the cast.