Author: BillSaysThis

Asset Protection Shysters

I’ve been hearing an ad on the radio, mainly on KFOX, for at least the last few weeks encouraging people who want to become independently wealthy to sign up for a program to learn to be an “asset protection consultant.” There are billions of dollars to be had floating around helping other wealthy folks involved in lawsuits. One lawyer, Flyod Tapia, thinks such schemes are fine and dandy as long as “lifetime, incumbent judges and bleeding-heart juries [hand] out ludicrous decisions.”

Not something that really appeals to me but it did make me curious. And so when I googled the phrase this morning, right at the top was this page on a scambuster website. What a shock, eh? One might think that a station owned by the mighty Clear Channel Communications would be a bit more selective in who gets access to its air time but then again, probably not.

Today’s movie: Chariots of Fire

One of the films I remember most fondly from college days (appropriate, eh?), I was surprised that TS1 had never seen Chariots of Fire and when it popped on the TCM schedule there was no doubt we had to watch. This story of a few British runners in post-WWI years won four Oscars in 1982 including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Soundtrack–everyone knows that seminal new age theme on piano and synth by Vangelis.

Chariots of Fire is the true story of Eric Liddle (played by Ian Charleson) and Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) who ran for gold in the 1924 Olympics despite great personal obstacles. Liddle, a devoutly religious man, would not run his qualifying heat because it fell on a Sunday, while Abrahams, who was Jewish, faced anti-Semitism. The bulk of the film sets up the climactic races in Paris and, aside from a single race well before that, the two protagonists really never meet or interact. The movie tells of the mental and athletic preparations as parallel stories.

I find it very interesting that none of the primary group of younger actors (Charleson, Cross, Nigel Havers, Nicholas Farrell and Daniel Gerroll) really went on to have substantial Hollywood careers. Of course John Gielgud and Ian Holm (Bilbo Baggins in the recent LotR movies, for instance) were different but they were older and firmly established by this point. Cross did make a few pictures and big TV miniseries but the rest of them basically went on to British TV, which is sad as the evidence here is that they were capable of more.

This film takes time and trouble to develop the lead characters by way of a series of set pieces, some focused on running while others explore the conflicts which give meaning to their achievements. Abrahams is set off against both his Cambridge chums as well as Holm as his (naughty boy!) professional coach while Liddle mainly has conflict with his equally religious sister.

Hugh Hudson, who did such a fine job directing the movie, also never did much more. I really wonder why that was. The studios are reputedly such strange, dangerous and incestuous places but one would think that Hudson would have earned more than such schlock as Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and Revolution (the Al Pacino Revolutionary War flick) but there you go.

recommended

My online buddy Rogers linked this morning’s eBay fraud story over on his very cool Drudge Retort site and caused the biggest burst of traffic this site has every seen. (Of course it would have been nice if a few of those visitors clicked the Google ads but whatever.)

Cars, cars are not trucks

Today is definitely a sad day for my family because, for the second time this week, close friends of my parents were involved in a serious road accident. Last Friday one married couple was hit head on by a driver who drifted into their (oncoming) lane at reasonably high speed; both of them are still in intensive care and one still in a coma.

Worse, yesterday afternoon another couple, a wonderful, caring husband and wife I’ve known since I was 15, were killed in a major pileup on the NJ Turnpike, their car crushed between a truck and a bus. I remember the Trotts so fondly and their older daughter Susan was responsible for me meeting my first wife. They will be missed.

eBay fraud hits Bill

Checking my email this morning I found one from some guy who’d searched me out after smelling something off in an eBay auction of a 1979 Fender Telecaster. Same kind as I own. I guess he did a little googling and found my Telecaster for Sale page, then wrote to check things out.

Sure enough, this bottom feeder is attempting to sell my guitar, is using my guitar’s serial number and the photos right off my web page! Damn! I sent an alert to the eBay police but not sure what, if anything, will happen as the automated response was less than crystal on that score. Seemed strange to me but there wasn’t even space in the reporting form to include more than the auction number, no place to include an explanation. Still, at least I’ve done my part and hopefully no one will be taken by this apparent crooked deal, which “Ends Mar-11-04 10:34:56 PST” anyway.

eBay screen shot, click for larger view

Update: Well, not sure what will happen but someone did in the end submit a bid above the $700 minimum set by the seller (shahards) and was declared “the winner.” I do wonder, though, if he wasn’t part of the seller’s fraud network (or even another account of the same person) and simply gave a shill bid in order to improve the seller’s rating. Guess it’s not really my problem any more.

I was over at Michael’s at Shoreline this afternoon and driving home along Shoreline Boulevard the real nature of the vacant commercial real estate space flood here in Mountain View. Looked like nearly every commercial building had a For Lease sign out front except for the Computer History Museum. Which of course used to be Silicon Graphics’ main office building.

European soccer today

In one of those mindboggling foreign thingies, David Beckham’s contract with Real Madrid contains a standard buyout clause. That is, it specifies the minimum amount another club would have to pay the Spanish side for his contract. But what sets my eyes spinning is the amount: £140 million or, in US currency, $257.555 million!

Later: Just finished watching Beckham’s old club, Manchester United, host Portuguese champions FC Porto in a Champions League clash. This was the second leg of the round, with Porto winning 2-1 at home two weeks ago. ManU took a 1-0 lead after 32 minutes on a sweet header by Paul Scholes but, two minutes from the end of regulation, their defense was way out of position on the rebound from a 25 yard free kick and one of Porto’s men put it net. Porto goes through to the CL quarterfinals on the aggregate score 3-2.

What was really sad, even though I’m no ManU fan, is that the referee, a Russian named Valentin Ivanov, took the game away. Just before halftime Scholes appeared to have scored a second goal but it was waived off by the sideline assistant referee who judged that Scholes was offside; however, the replays showed clearly that he wasn’t and it should have been game over, Red Devils up 2-0. Then late in the second period Ivanov made another game changing error, calling a foul on Christian Ronaldo for diving when the midfielder was clearly fouled badly by a Porto player and in fact had to be carried off the playing area on a stretcher–at first the announcers thought the referee was reaching to give Ronaldo a yellow! All in all, on a night when they didn’t show brilliance but did play well, a major loss for Manchester United.

Still saying nothing

There are a lot of people speaking up against the burgeoning move to expand marital law to all those couples in our society who want it. But the wave continues to rise. Yesterday alone, governments in Seattle and Asbury Park added their voices to the mix and, locally, the San Jose City Council will discuss recognizing marriages performed elsewhere as qualifying for married benefits packages.

Writing in the NY Times, Don Browning and Elizabeth Marquardt attempt to make the negative argument by separating it from purely religious concerns but, while their use of the English language is quite elegant, the two go on for hundreds of words without saying anything definitive. In other words, more hot air. The core of their essay is the following quote:

Even in ancient secular systems, legal marriage was seen as a way to help society regulate and achieve a complex set of desires and goals: sexual activity, procreation, mutual help and affection, and parental care and accountability.

But looking at that sentence closely, one has to wonder which part does not apply to homosexual couples and does apply to all heterosexual couples. All apply just as well to all couples except, perhaps, procreation and even that is not simple; the authors do mention that many homosexual couples are raising children and it is certainly quite simple for any of them to have children either through cooperation with a member of the missing gender or adoption.

Accordingly, this open-minded heterosexual’s search for a substantive rationale opposing legal recognition of loving unions will have to continue.