It’s all but official

I just realized I’m too old for Slush Puppies. I had the worst brain freeze ever. It was so bad I needed to stop the air conditioner and roll down the windows as I drove out of Bakersfield with the temperature at 110 degrees.

… So why has the Beckham experiment failed?

About 34 years ago, soccer in the United States was saved – despite the eventual death of the North American Soccer League – by Pele. He was able to draw large crowds for his New York Cosmos club, home and away.

He was also paid an absurd amount of money for a professional athlete at the time. Where Hank Aaron was the highest paid player in baseball at under half a million dollars, Pele would earn well over a million.

Current Galaxy star David Beckham drew in big crowds for his first season in Major League Soccer and signed what is reported to be five years at $250 million.

That’s where the similarities end.

After Pele’s first season with the Cosmos and even after his retirement, the Cosmos were still able to fill Giants Stadium (with its 78,000 seats) to near, if not complete capacity for years to come. The Galaxy still have a hard time filling up the Home Depot Center that seats about 27,000.

The main problem the Galaxy are struggling with and the Cosmos never had to worry about was a salary cap. With a contract as big as his, it’s hard to field a team with quality players. Besides Landon Donovan, can you name another, current, Galaxy player? Therein lies the problem of why the Galaxy can’t win.

When the Cosmos built the team, they were able to bring in top quality international players. After Pele, they brought in Girogio Chinaglia from Italy, Franz Beckenbauer from Germany and another Brazilian named Carlos Alberto. This was a soccer club more than 20 years ahead of its time.

Of course, the Cosmos would eventually be run into the ground to the high salaries and other financial troubles their parent company Warner Communications that caused the end of the club and the league.

Ultimately, MLS and the Galaxy will survive because of that salary cap. Beckham, however, is no Pele.

… I’m now locked into a contract with AT&T Wireless for another two years now that I have a new cell phone.

It is a Samsung Impression and to paraphrase MMA fighter Georges St. Pierre, I am impressed with its performance.

The Impression is a world phone that also has GPS and a touch screen. It takes pretty good pictures and the Internet can play videos; the quality is not so good, but it gets the job done.

It is not a smart phone like my last phone, however, but I think I can do without it.

This is the first time I’m under contract with AT&T since my contract ended in 2006. That’s when I had an LG phone (that was garbage) die on me while I still had a few months left on the contract. I bought a phone without a contract then more than a year later I was given a Samsung Blackjack by my friend James. However, it was time for a change and I wanted something cool. I’m happy with this phone.

… I talked to my father recently and got around to the subject about his trip to Mexico in October. I reaffirmed to him my wanting to go.

He wants to go for three weeks. My two of my sisters that are going with him and I are now up to figure out when we are going to be with him since we can only spend a week at a time with him. We are also trying to figure out a time, when possible, to spend some overlap time with the siblings and our dad.

When I told my father I wanted to go, he told me that I should go first with him. My sister would tell me later, he wants to show you around, which I have no problem with.

From what I understand, his trip will be in two parts, a week or so in Mexico City and the rest of the time in his – and my mom’s – home state of Jalisco. Going first means I won’t be able to go to Jalisco, but that is a miniscule disappointment.

So, I’m going to the homeland of my parents in October. When I have a date hammered down, I’ll buy my ticket and I’ll be there letting my father taking me around Mexico City.

I’m excited and I’m just under three months away from that trip.

This hits too close to home

I usually don't post so often, but I just had to post this.

It comes from the website garfield minus garfield, a website that is "dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb."

So from this site, I give you this comic. It reminds me of me ... and my blog.

Here’s to a better half of 2009

Sunday (July 5) is my first day off in five days and my last one for at least the next seven, but probably longer. I’m grateful to be working however.

… First the bad news; big shock coming from me, I know.

We’ve entered a new fiscal quarter at work and surprise, surprise, there was another announcement. Vacation accrual will be on hold for another three months and everyone has to take a week off, paid this time if you have the vacation hours.

So, the news isn’t all that bad; well for me it isn’t. I’m capped on vacation hours so I can take a week off, no big deal. Unfortunately, there are some of my co-workers that don’t have enough hours to take a full paid week off. For them, they will have to furlough the rest of the time.

I had been expecting a pay cut or layoffs like many other co-workers. So this news is best case scenario.

… Work is busy to say the least. As written earlier, I’m in the middle of an agonizing stretch with an overtime shift to boot. So basically, one day off in about 14 days.

The good news with that is overtime. I worked the Fourth of July holiday so I get OT plus holiday so it’s getting paid for 6 ½ days for five days. This week, I’ll get paid for the same for working six days, however.

With the forced vacation coming up, I might be able to go somewhere.

… The Press-Telegram’s union has reached a deal with the LANG over the transfer of union employees over a year ago, me being included in that.

After fighting and fighting, the union was able to win its case over the group to the NLRB. What the means to us is the group has to pay for the extra mileage they made us drive. For others they will get money for the extra day care they had to pay for.

So soon, I’ll have extra money, and any extra money is always welcomed.

… Well, let’s talk about something work related. I’ve started up my website to keep my writing, designing and video portfolio online so I always have my stuff ready to show at a moment’s notice.

In trying to set myself apart from the pack, I felt a website was a good way to do that. As I’m trying to move out of the industry into something more public relationsish, I figure the best way I can show I can sell something is to prove I can sell myself.

So on there I have 12 stories, a couple of designs plus Photoshop work and the two videos I’ve edited together.

I had to go to CSULB and log on to its academic search engines there to find my stories. I also got a little help from a friend in Riverside to help complete the task. Once I got the stories, I was able to make .pdfs on Word when I got home.

For those interested in starting a website, here is what I did. I signed up with Go Daddy and got a domain name. I also paid for a serviced called Website Tonight that not only hosts my website, it allows me to edit it without using html coding – something I still want to learn. I expect the service to cost about $75 a year.

It was easy at times, hard at others. I was up until 5 a.m. on the first night setting it up, up until 4 the next night getting all the stories, pictures and video set up. Once I got the hang of it, it was pretty simple.

Hopefully, this will lead to something good. I just hope it happens before the next quarter because you just never know.

What I miss and what I gain

I’ve reached 100 pages of blogs on this Microsoft Word document. Never had someone had so much to say to so few readers.

… There are many things about the industry I work in that I don’t like. The co-workers I have are not the problem.

In fact, if you talk to anyone that has ever worked in any newsroom they will tell you the people you work with make the job worth it. The reason is because you never know what is going to be said next at any given time; whether a computer crashed, someone on the phone is an upset reader or someone just phrasing something incorrectly, it’s always a good time.

When I found the website overheardinthenewsroom.com it brought back a flood of memories. The site is pretty explanatory from the URL. (And if you decide to go to the site, beware, it’s not for kids.)

When you think about it, you collect a group of people that write or copy edit stories under constant deadline pressure and you’re going to have some sharp responses.

So I had all these great moments rush back to me while I’m on the site. I kind of wish this site existed when I began my journalism career because I know there would be so many moments that would be saved on there.

… One of those people that could have had his own section was my friend James. No matter the situation, he had the right response for it.

I think my favorite moment was when a golf fan was upset there were no golf results in the paper. James was really patient with him and, of course, when can only hear what James is saying and left to imagine what this caller is saying to him.

But at one point we did because of how James replied. For those that didn’t know him, he was in a wheelchair and never let that limitation stop him from achieving anything. (He did more than me, an “able bodied person.”)

So the caller must have asked James if he had ever played golf. James calmly said, “No, I don’t play golf. I’m in a wheelchair.”

Everyone in the office just started to laugh at that. After James got off the phone we asked about that caller’s response to that answer. “He was stunned. He wasn’t expecting that.”

On Friday, June 26, it will be one year that he passed away.

He was one of my best friends and incredibly he considered me one of his despite having only known me for only two years. James is the kind of friend everyone needs. Someone that will listen to you, help you out, but at the same time not be afraid to put you in your place if you needed it.

I still have the e-mail telling me to call his mom who would let me know that James had died marked as unread. I’ve read the e-mail, but a glitch on the server never marked me reading it. So there it sits, unread, mainly because I can’t believe it even though it has been a year.

His death was really the first time I experienced death to someone close to me. I’d always considered myself fortunate up until that point that I never really lost someone close to me. My grandfather passed away in 2002, but I never felt close to him, mainly because it was my fault.

More than nine months later I would lose my mother so it’s been a trying year for me.

But I know they are helping me now. I know I have angels watching over me, helping me, my friends and family when they can. They’ve blessed me when they can, especially recently, and I am grateful.

I miss James every day and know he’s doing his best now to help everyone he knows.

… One of the horrible hazards of what I do for a living is missing out on things, and in spite of all that has happened, I still let work control me more than I should.

I called my father on Father’s Day. He was home with four of my sisters visiting him. He prepared lunch for the family that was there.

No matter what I’ve gone through over the past 15 months, it pales to what my father has had to go through.

So on this Father’s Day, I see my father in a new light. For no matter what has been taken for him, his faith has carried him on.

It’s a strength that has always been there, I’ve just never seen it until now. His determination to be strong for the family is praiseworthy.

While I know it hurts like I can’t imagine and when he talks about it he cries, he knows to give up would be disrespectful to my mother.

He also knows that his children love him and that there is nothing we wouldn’t do for him.

So he knows his mission in life isn’t over. There is more that he will do in honor of my mother and I know my mother will watch over him.