The Lint Screen

In case it got lost in the mail, which I believe is soon to be delivered two days a week between the hours of 1-4 PM, here is the official 2011 Scullin Christmas card wishing the best to you and yours from us and ours. The back of the card was written by son, Matt, or as we like to call him “the one standing on the right.” He did a great job. Enjoy and merry, happy.

Growing up in the late pocket of Baby Boomerdom, The Beatles were at the height of their popularity. The most common question of the day was, “Who’s your favorite Beatle?”

If your answer was John, you were an artsy rebel.
Paul, a cutesy pleaser.
If you chose George, you were the quiet loner.
And Ringo was, well, the goofy outsider.

When I was about 10, my best friend Joe would invite me and a couple other pals to his garage. He’d swipe a pack of his old man’s Raleigh cigarettes, which came with coupons for being a loyal smoker. Collect enough coupons, you could maybe get a new set of lungs.

We’d light up in his garage, wield badminton rackets as guitars and pretend that we were the Beatles, smoking ciggies and singing like in the movie A Hard Day’s Night. Now Joe, being our cordial host and supplier of smokes and the only one of us who could actually sing, Joe always picked John or Paul since those two did most of the singing. I would try to get whichever one he didn’t pick. BUT, if Ernie was there, well, Ernie would take second dibs on the basis of the fact he was much bigger than me and a bully– so as the old saying goes, “Might makes Lennon or McCartney.”

Which left being George or Ringo. My first choice of those was to be George. I was pretty awesome on lead badminton racquet, and I could muck my way through harmonies. Last choice was Ringo. Pretending to play drums with tree sticks was not so glamorous.

We’d smoke, we’d play, we’d sing. Back then, it seemed the pecking order of people I knew for favorite Beatle was #1- John, #2- Paul, #3- George and #4- Ringo. John and Paul were probably 80-90% of the picks.

George never really got his due. He was not the popular Beatle, but he did write some of the band’s greatest songs. Now Martin Scorsese will give George his due, and I for one am looking forward to it. I won’t be smoking or playing badminton racquet, but I will be missing Joe, who left the stage far too early, my youth and the innocence of days when “Who’s your favorite Beatle?” could bond you to damn near anyone.

So, do tell– who’s your favorite Beatle?

Steve Jobs has left the building. He is no longer Mr. Apple. While this day had to eventually come, it doesn’t make it any easier to take.

No other business leader has been such a visionary, and no other company is such a reflection of its inspirational leader. Jobs is Apple, Apple is Jobs, and we will see if the great company can continue going forward without him at the helm.

I suspect it will. After all, Jobs stocked the pond.

In its early days, back when IBM ruled the PC world, Apple was positioned as “the computer for the rest of us.” Us were those who could care less how the damn thing worked. Us were the technophobic crowd who merely wanted the magic without knowing how the trick was done. Us were the ones who wanted to do a task with one keystroke instead of three, and wanted to make it possible for typography to be beautiful.

That’s what Jobs and Apple gave us: easy to use computers and devices that did what needed to be done, while doing some other cool things, all while looking pretty cool.

I spend most days hunched over an Apple laptop. I listen to an iPod on foot, in the car and on the plane. I talk on an iPhone and surf the web with it, too. I rarely resist the siren call of an Apple store and lust for all the goodies within (MacBook Air, I’m stalking you). And, of course, I’ve been a fan of Apple’s advertising from the start.

Aside from those couple years when Jobs got das boot from Apple and created NeXT and turbo-boosted Pixar, the company was a reflection of the man in jeans and a black turtleneck. A man who is sick, but still generously shared his wisdom a few years back with this inspiring commencement address.

A man who was our modern day Edison with his name listed on 313 Apple patents. A man who thought differently, and asked us to think different. A true American legend, this Steve Jobs. He will be missed. Enjoy.

One day it shows up unannounced, like an obnoxious person you knew from college that you had hoped you’d never see again.

It’s a summons for jury duty; your civic duty for being a counted by the census.

I had served once before, 15 years ago. Here in Gwinnett County, Georgia, jury duty could be as long as a week. Every night I must call to see if I’m required to show up the next day. In my previous experience, I did. It was one long week and the only trial I heard was a fender bender.

I lobbied hard for the death penalty, to no avail.

So here I was again, 8 A.M. Monday. There were over 250 citizens dutifully processed and filed into the large holding room. The officials got us organized into batches of 12. That organization process took three full hours.

I was juror #17 and had the pleasure of being seated in front of two women who chattered on and on throughout the morning. One woman (juror #47) was loud, the other (juror #48) spoke in whispered tones that I couldn’t really hear. Perhaps a neighborhood dog heard her.

Juror #47 is in her early 60s, with black hair. She wore a white cotton pants suit, a blue blouse, tan flats, a blue canvas hat with flowers and tinted prescription glasses.

Juror #48 is about the same age, taller and stouter in brown polyester slacks, a white top, brown flats and a magnificent doo of bright blond hair. What follows are some of the things I heard coming out of juror #47′s active mouth:

“Timothy Geithner got his job in the Obama administration because because his parents were friends with Barack’s mother.”

“Barack was put into power by George Soros, who is his puppet master.”

“The Democrats don’t want to bring down debt, ever! They just want to tax and hurt small businesses.”

“Soros wants to make the dollar worth ten cents. He wants to topple the U.S. He’s done it to other countries.”

“All this pay to teachers and social security and medicare is a big Ponzi scheme.”

“Glenn Beck predicted the leftist activists would cause troubles in the mideast, and look what happened. Rioting in Greece– something’s going on. The left is sending activists to the middle east. All this trouble going on, then it clicked in my head– Glenn said so, too! They’re trying to keep it a secret, but Glenn was waking people up.”

“A lot of people couldn’t handle what Glenn was saying so they stopped watching him, but it was true. Then Soros put out a contract on Glenn. Glenn knew it and said it. Glenn had such courage!”

“You know, that old show ‘The Twilight Zone’– it predicted a lot of this mess. I miss that show. I wish that guy who hosted it hadn’t smoked himself to death. We could use him today!”

“Obama promised everything to everybody and it’s just deceit. The press protected him, but Glenn Beck told the truth.”

“That Michele Bachmann is amazing. Has her own kids plus 20-some foster kids and she’s in politics– how’s she do it all?!”

“The people advising Obama don’t know what they’re talking about. Herman Cain said he’d pick the right people!”

“No matter who the Republicans put up for president, the dems will dig up dirt on them. That’s what they do.”

“The democrats have made this country a laughingstock.”

“A lot of people in this country have no idea what’s really going on.”

“That’s what I liked about Glenn. He said, ‘Do your own research!’, and I did.”

“George Soros is the puppet master. He wants it left, then pulls it to the center. I’ve watched it over and over again, but now I have insider information. Soros pulls all the strings.”

So it went for a couple hours. I never knew how much I didn’t know.

After three long hours of sitting and playing musical chairs to get assigned numbers and batched in dozens, four groups of 12 were ushered into a courtroom where we faced the judge, an assistant district attorney, a defendant and his two attorneys plus a court reporter who talked into some contraption. The judge was a Georgian with a heavy accent and a propensity to mumble. I didn’t hear much of what he said. Maybe that neighborhood dog did.

The gist of our case involved marijuana. We were asked a series of questions from the prosecutor and defense attorney:
“Have you ever smoked marijuana?”
“Do you think it should be legalized?”
“If you do think it should be legalized, could you follow the judge’s instructions to obey Georgia law that says no amount of marijuana is legal– could you prosecute by the letter of the law?”
“Do you know or are you related to any law enforcement officers?”
“Do you believe that Rod Serling and Glenn Beck are angels of truth and that George Soros and Barack Obama are devils of destruction?”

O.K., I made that last question up. Sorry.

This round of questioning with all 48 potential jurors went on for a good 20 minutes. The first batch of 12 were asked to stay for further questioning while the rest of us got a lunch break.

I believe Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall famously said, “One cannot be judgmental on an empty stomach. Hey, uh, you going to eat the rest of that sandwich, or what?”

After lunch, we reassembled in the big room we’d lived in all morning, then my group of 12 was ushered back to court and into the official juror’s box. Comfy chair, padded with good leaning action. A juror could fall in love here.

Each of us was asked questions by attorneys and the judge. When it came my turn, they confirmed that I had responded marijuana should be legalized. They explained that under Georgia law, any amount of marijuana is considered illegal. Could I follow the judge’s instruction and prosecute on the basis of the law? Good question. I told the truth that while I’d like to believe I could follow the letter of the law, I felt that too much energy, time and money was wasted on these type of cases. There are more important things we should be focused on instead of pot violations. This perspective would naturally have to influence my ability to prosecute to the full extent of the law. There were nods given by questioners, and notes taken.

After a half hour of questioning, we 12 were taken back to the big room to wait another hour while two more batches of potential jurors went through hot box grilling.

Finally, seven hours after my arrival, the 48 potential jurors were brought back to the courtroom and 12 were selected as OFFICIAL jurors to serve on this post trial. I was not selected. Jurors #47 and #48 didn’t make the grade, either.

Perhaps George Soros had them black-balled.

We were dismissed and I left the courtroom. In front of me, Juror #47 found a new friend to tell her political secrets to.

Now, every night this week, I must call in to see if I am required to show up for another round on “Who gets to be a juror?!”

Today, I’m free, but I know so much more than I did yesterday. Justice was served.

Clarence Clemons is dead at age 69. Nicknamed The Big Man, he stood 6′ 5″ and weighed-in at 270. Pity his pall bearers. Pity us fans.

His mighty lungs were the engine room of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. When he picked up his mighty tenor sax, the walls of Jericho protecting the human core shook and crumpled as emotions were laid bare and spirits were lifted to the heavens. The solo Clarence plays in “Jungleland” is testament to his greatness.

With breath and finger movement, he picked our bones clean.

I had the pleasure of seeing him perform with the Boss at least 10 times. Over the years the band lost some of its intensity, but the E Streeters always delivered the goods. Front and center in my memory banks is the band in its glory days on the “Darkness” tour, playing Richfield Coliseum outside of Cleveland. I managed to get free admission to be a security person for the show. Originally, my task was to check purses for booze and weapons, but I talked my way into a better detail– guarding the rows of seats behind the stage to keep fans away.

As the concert started, I settled into my post in one of the seats on the edge of the vacancy zone and watched the show. Springsteen and the E Street Band were at their peak, and I had a fabulous seat.

And Clarence, Clarence just blew us all away.

Thanks, Big Man. With your lungs, I doubt you’ll be issued a harp in heaven.

I like Ike because although he was a military man, he knew how dangerous the power of profiting from wars could be.

Here’s a swatch from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “see you later” speech to the American people. Now it’s 50 years later, and his words are still haunting, especially in light of how they’ve been ignored. Today, we’ve got us a trillion-bucks-a-year big business in defense!

Enjoy this liberal peacenik’s rant. One can only imagine what Ike would have thought of our military industrial complex today.