Saturday, October 6, 2007

The “Pankey Chair”

.I'M HANGIN' AROUND this morning ‘cause I’m on brat watch: my sister-in-law, Susan, is at the hospital, giving birth to two girls. I’m supposed to come runnin’ with my camcorder after the blessed event is completed.

.So here I sit. I’ve been catching up on my reading.

.But wait! I’m looking out my window and I see two deer out on my patio. Very cool. I took some pics.

.Back to my reading:

1. HORNY IRVINE COPS. What’s with the cops in this town, anyway? About a year ago, DtB followed the story of IVC’s “sexy yet corrupt” police chief. (He was let go amid rumors of conduct most foul, and, no, I'm not talkin' about his love life. See IVC’s top cops.) That story led us to an old story about the Irvine PD and its stunning sex-related scandals of yore. (As far as I know, presently, the IPD is squeaky clean. But since I know a bit about inductive logic, I’ve gotta say: it ain't likely.)

.On Thursday, the OC Reg reported that

.A jury awarded more than $1 million in damages Wednesday to a [LAPD] police detective who claimed she was wrongly demoted for complaining about alleged sexual misconduct by her boss…The jury deliberated for several hours before finding that the Police Department retaliated against Ya-May Christle for complaining about former Deputy Chief Michael Berkow....

.OK, this is confusing. Why is this story in the OC Reg? Luckily, a June Reg article clears things up:

.Berkow was brought to the LAPD in 2003 to reform its disciplinary system. The former Rochester, N.Y., officer and Irvine, Calif., police chief initiated investigations that led to dozens of officers being fired for misconduct…He became police chief in Savannah in November.

.So it’s like this: years ago, former New York cop Berkow became Irvine’s Police Chief. Then he went off to the LAPD to head that department’s Professional Standards Bureau. Whilst firing LAPD cops for their professional misconduct, Berkow had “a three-year affair with a female sergeant under his supervision.”

.But of course he did!

.Then he left to become the top cop in Savannah.

.Did you ever get the notion that cop culture is flat rotten?

2. THAT OTHER FUBAR SOUTH COUNTY DISTRICT. The OC Weekly has a fine article about the Wild CAPO school district saga. In some ways, the excesses and vices of CUSD officials parallel those of the SOCCCD. Check it out.


3. THE GAY BOMB? Yesterday, Inside Higher Ed reported that
• ["F*CK BUSH"] J. David McSwane, who wrote the now notorious editorial about President Bush for The Rocky Mountain Collegian, will keep his job. The editorial contained two words, one of them starting with an F, and set off many calls for McSwane to lose his position as the top editor at the student paper at Colorado State University.…[The] board declined to fire McSwane.

• [CHEMICALLY INDUCED GAYNESS] Nobel Prizes will be announced next week, so that means it’s time for the annual Ig Nobel Prizes, which were awarded Thursday night. This year’s winners were honored for research on the side effects of sword swallowing…, how sheets get wrinkled…, bed bugs…, extracting vanilla fragrance from cow dung…, rats’ inability to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards or Dutch forwards…, the “gay bomb” that may be used some day to make enemy soldiers find each other irresistible to each other…, problems in alphabetization created by the word “the”…, and the impact on appetite of a self-refilling bowl of soup….

• [SPILLED MOLASSES AT CAL] About 40 protesters at the University of California at Berkeley assembled an eight-foot high Trojan Horse and spilled molasses on the sidewalk to protest the university’s new research collaboration with the energy giant BP….
4. A NEW BUST OF ST. RONALD. Finally, the OC Reg reports that
"Dutch" is getting a new home in Orange...A bronze bust of President Ronald Reagan will be unveiled Oct. 10 on the Chapman University campus…The Reagan bust was chosen by donor Libby Pankey to commemorate the new Edgar and Elizabeth Pankey Chair in Media Arts.
I like that. The “Pankey Chair.” Didn't Buckwheat call Spanky "Pankey"? Indeed he did.

Evidently, the list of busts at Chapman includes the following “renowned figures”:

Martin Luther King Jr. [OK, but obvious]
Cecil B. DeMille [an infamous rat bastard who made big, dumb movies]
Ella Fitzgerald [OK, she was good]
Milton Friedman [greed is good, too, evidently]
Abraham Lincoln [freed the slaves and all]
Mozart [OK, but they must be using a randomizer]
George Washington [snooze]

Still waiting for that call. In my family, kids and pups and kittens are called "schlenkies."

Wow. Two more schlenks.

P.S.: why I admire John Ford but not Cecil B. DeMille (movies aside)
[Director John] Ford's attitude to McCarthyism in Hollywood is expressed by a story told by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. A faction of the Directors Guild of America led by Cecil B. DeMille had tried to make it mandatory for every member to sign a loyalty oath. A whispering campaign was being conducted against Mankiewicz, then President of the Guild, alleging he had communist sympathies.

At a crucial meeting of the Guild, DeMille's faction spoke for four hours until Ford spoke against DeMille and proposed a vote of confidence in Mankiewicz.... According to Mankiewicz, Ford's words were:

"My name's John Ford. I make Westerns. I don't think there's anyone in this room who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. DeMille—and he certainly knows how to give it to them.

But I don't like you, C.B., and I don't like what you've been saying here tonight.”
—From Wikipedia entry for John Ford

I love that story. Peter Bogdanovich tells it best.

Oh, and Ford's motion? It passed.

UPDATE:

The Schlenkies have arrived! Two healthy girls, and no C-section! All is well, I'm told. I'm outa here. —Chunk

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...