Meet Al Muller!

The following is not political and may be given to some rambling, so if I start to lose you, jump down to the last couple paragraphs. That's where the big payoff is!

Al Muller passed away last week at the age of 84. He'd spent about a half a century teaching and contributing to the local theater community, from high school shows, to the community college stage and Stockton Civic theater. Mostly flamboyant musicals. Click the link for more.

His resume is lengthy, I won't try to reproduce it here. His energy was boundless and his enthusiasm infectious. He was a good husband, father to five daughters, mentor to many and a good man.

I knew "Uncle Al" when I took some classes from him at Delta College. I had been bitten by the drama bug in junior high school, took classes and appeared in a number of high school productions. I was continuing my studies in the dramatic arts when I met Al. I took his classes and he directed a number of plays I was in.

I suppose, because he had a larger talent pool to draw from, the roles I got in college were not as prominent as those I had in high school A couple were memorable. In West Side Story, I was cast as Lieutenant Schrank, the character Simon Oakland played in the movie. I believe Al cast me for two, maybe three reasons:

1) I was tall (6'3") and had to play an adult while all my peers were playing teen-aged hoodlums.
2) It was not a singing part!

More memorable to me was when he cast me in Mame. I played Mame's banker...an adult with no singing part. (You know, I'm starting to see a trend here!) Who doesn't remember Auntie Mame's banker?? It was a brief, transitional role. The curtain drops, and moments later, the banker steps out with a brief exposition, thus furthering the story, while behind the curtain, actors change costumes, stage hands set up for the next scene.

But after I was cast, I had some reservations about one of the lines. Didn't know if I could say it. It contained, shall we say, some less than delicate language. I went to Al with my concerns. Now, I guess he could have said, "Well, if you can't read the line as it is written, then we'll get somebody who can!"

But that wasn't his style. He sat down with me and we discussed it. Just one line from a minor character, but people weren't minor to Uncle Al. I can't recall exactly what he said to convince me, but it must have worked, because I was there every night saying it. Probably something along the line of 'it wasn't really taking the Lord's name in vain, but more of a bowdlerized version'. Punctuation, as it were, as noted in the Brief History of Profanity.

You've heard, "There are no small parts, only small actors"? Looking back at my "small part", it seems a little strange. The curtain comes down, I step in front of it, holding what appears to be a telegram, and immediately get hit with a spotlight...couldn't see a soul in the audience if I'd tried! I broke the news to the audience, in my angry banker voice, that Mame's husband had died..."fell off a goddamn Alp!", turned on my heel and walk offstage.

That's it. I don't think I was seen again until the curtain call, but for that brief moment, every eye in the theater was on me. No scenery to distract, no fellow cast members...just me and my phony telegram was all there was to see. I didn't think about it that way at the time. Might have scared the spit out of me! (See? I told you I'd ramble!)

This was back in the early seventies. I saw Al a few times off and on since then, at Civic Theater performances, where he was either directing or supporting the person who was. I do remember attending one cast party at his house, along with scores of other people.

I last saw Mr. Muller in 2013, where his family and San Joaquin Delta college were honoring him by naming one of the theaters after him, reception to follow. A brief video of the ceremony can be found below. People flew in literally from coast to coast to be there to honor him. I listened to the speakers, Al included, but I really didn't remember much of what was said until I reviewed the video. During the reception, we ate, chatted with a few college friends, and, as expected, people were lined up to talk to Al and congratulate him.

I figured he had a lot closer friends and acquaintances than I, so I hung back and waited until there were only a few people queued up. When it was my turn, his face lit up with a smile, and unprompted, he called me by name. It had to have been over thirty years since I attended his classes or tread the boards with his actors, but he remembered me. We had a nice chat. Forgive me, I can't remember about what, after congratulating him for a well deserved honor.

We spoke for a bit and he asked me if I was back in town. I said I was, and he expressed a desire to get together for lunch some time. You could tell he was sincere, and not just a "Let's do lunch" kind of thing. I, too, thought that would be great, so we shook hands and yet somehow life got in the way. One thing after another, the way it has a habit of doing. In retrospect, I wish I'd said something like "How about Tuesday 12:00? You pick the spot and I'll buy! Or is Thursday better?"

But I didn't. Tempus fugit. That was the last time I saw him. He was a great guy and a good man,  almost a force of nature to be reckoned with. Many people will miss him. I doubt we'll see the likes of such a man again. Sometimes I'll say on Mother's Day or Father's day "Love 'em while you've got 'em". The very same applies to friends. Trust me.

Rest in peace, Mr. Muller.

An online guestbook in the Stockton Record can be found here.

Quote du jour

"The city secured an Arch Road pump substation by surrounding it with $11,000 worth of wrought iron fence.
Thieves disassembled the fence and made off with all 40 sections of it."

-Michael Fitzgerald, on public property thefts around Stockton, CA

Stockton Schools See Short Sale of Short Buses

Dateline Stockton: A Grand Jury has criticized the Stockton Unified School District for its purchase of "31 never-used special-education school buses", for around $2.05 Million and then "sell them a year later...with little documentation".

A million here, a million there...pretty soon it adds up to real money! Seems to me the school district should have kept at least one of the short buses to transport their board members to their meetings!

Trouble in Marijuanaville?

It is a long and widely accepted theory that pot smokers, being the mellowed out folk that they are, are not likely to commit violent crimes as, say, a drunk might? Here is some anecdotal evidence to the contrary:

Pot-smoking jail escapee tries to grab officers' guns

Police used a safe-wrap restraint system and a spit mask to subdue a pot-smoking Honor Farm escapee who fought with officers and tried to take their guns Wednesday afternoon in downtown Stockton, authorities said.

A bicycle patrol officer approached a man who was smoking marijuana in the first block of North American Street shortly before 3 p.m., police said. The man lied about his identity and then attempted to run away, officers said.

Run away? I thought the mellowed out weed smoker was just supposed to sit there with a goofy grin on his face and say, "Gee, Officer! It crawled into my hand! Honest!!

The officer and two backup officers attempted to detain the man... At that point, the man, identified by police as 22-year-old Matthew Cook, punched one of the officers, a witness said.

“The guy started punching the officer and the officer started punching him back,” Ruben Mendoza, 30, said. “I think that guy must be on drugs or something because it took three officers to get one guy down. That was a strong guy.”

During the fight, Cook tried to grab three officers’ guns, but he was unable to unholster any of their weapons, police said.

So, he tried to take the officers' guns away because he must have wanted to stick daisies in the barrels?? Might he have been on other drugs in addition to marijuana? Sure. But what we do know is that he was smoking marijuana out on the street, in a state where it is not legal. (Which could support the claim that marijuana damages brain cells). He punched the officers who were trying to subdue him and he tried to take their guns away from them.

At this point, it's merely anecdotal, not necessarily indicative of any larger trend. But the next time one of your pro-pot buddies gives you the line about how mellow and nonviolent pot smokers are, tell them about Matthew Cook.

Oh, and Matthew: Didn't your momma ever teach you it was impolite to spit??

Stockton Bank Robbery Shootout News Conference: Hostage Hit by Police Gunfire

Misty Holt-Singh
News from Stockton, today, confirms that the hostage Misty Holt-Singh's fatal injuries came from police gunfire.

STOCKTON- Misty Holt-Singh's fatal injuries came from Stockton police firing on bank robbers who had taken her and two other women hostages, Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones said in a news conference this afternoon. Holt-Singh was used as a human shield by the surviving bank robbery suspect and was struck about 10 times, police said. "Singh's injuries show the cowardice of the surviving bank robbery suspect who is now in custody," Jones said this afternoon.

Stockton PD is looking at their procedures to see if they need to be revised in any way. The semi-automatic rifle taken from the suspects has been linked to other crimes.

One Last Casualty in Stockton Bank Robbery

Last Monday, I drove by the Bank of the West branch where the robbery, chase and tragic shootout began here in Stockton last month. The first thing I noticed was the lack of cars in the parking lot. As I drove closer, it was apparent that the branch had been closed. That morning, the Record had run an interview with one of the witnesses in the bank, and the story they ran showed a sign on the door that the branch was "temporarily closed". My sister told me that she had heard a statement from the bank, that they were planning on closing the branch anyway, and this just precipitated the move.

You certainly can't blame them. The memories for those involved or a gruesome fascination of those who weren't would be an elephant in the room for anyone trying to conduct business as usual there.

There was an impromptu "shrine" in the shrubbery by the front door, with bouquets of artificial flowers left there by those commemorating those who died.


A notice on the door directs people to the next nearest branch. Memories have begun to fade. A year from now, on a slow news day, some (all?) local TV station will run a "one year anniversary" story about it. Nothing left to be said until the surviving human vermin that committed these acts go to trial.

Hanging's too good for them.

Stockton - In Black and White (With Red and Blue Lights)

Some small excitement this afternoon - I was driving home on Pacific Avenue when I saw a black and white police car, Code 3, pulling a u-turn, apparently the first responder to arrive on the scene of a bank robbery, blocking the parking lot and waving off a customer who was walking across the parking lot to the bank. Two more patrol cars then passed me going the other way, in the next block, and by the time I got home, I could hear a multitude of sirens. The following photo may indicate the reason why:

The chase, with three hostages involved and bullets flying stretched from here to nearby Lodi and back, lasting nearly an hour, finally coming to a halt about a half mile north of the bank. I count over two dozen black and whites in the photo.

Two of the three hostages were shot and released, condition unknown. Reports so far: three perps, three hostages, one person shot to death - apparently a hostage shot by the robbers. Reports have shots fired at police, striking police cars and houses of bystanders.

Will update as more details are confirmed.

Update: One suspect dead, two injured. Second fatality still not confirmed, but is assumed to be one of the hostages. No update on injuries to other two hostages 5:35 PDT

Update: According to News 10, all three suspects were shot, one fatally. Two suspects taken to hospital 5:41 PDT

Update: A bullet hole or two in the stolen getaway car... 6:27PDT

Update: According to News 10, a second suspect died of gunshot wounds 10:05 PDT
photo via KTVU

Update: As of 8AM this morning, Thornton road was still taped off and barricaded


At least 20 Stockton Police officers are on paid administrative leave after firing their weapons during Wednesday's fatal shootout

Update: Saturday 7/19 Report from Stockton Record that there may have been a fourth subject who dropped the robbers at the bank in a black sedan. Under the law, abetting a felonious death could make him eligible for the death penalty when apprehended.

Stockton, California: Down, but not Out!

Stockton, California, as you might know, was the first major American city to declare bankruptcy during the Obama Recovery. This honor was stolen from them by the city of Detroit, larger and mismanaged by Democrats for years. Another of Stockton's claims to fame was its annual Asparagus Festival, which was moved from a scenic parklike setting (in an actual park) to downtown Stockton for the last couple of years, and this year, in the midst of a major drought, a virtual monsoon hit during the weekend of the festival, proving once again that if you want to make God laugh, simply tell Him your plans.

After the drenching downpour discouraged nearly everyone who even thought about going to the festival this year, they didn't even break even. Faced with debts and a bankrupt city, unable to bail them out, the Asparagus Festival folded its rented tents and began to sell off the deep fryers, woks and asparagus margarita glasses which were its staples. Hey! don't knock the asparagus margaritas! They were pretty good! Along with the steak and asparagus sandwiches, deep fried 'gras and hundreds of other delicacies.

All good things must come to an end. But, suddenly, there is a ray of hope for Stockton, via the social media. On the Stockton P.D.'s Facebook page, they posted the Dreamiest Mug Shot, Ever!™ Yes, TMZ and a host of others have proclaimed Stockton's very own incarcerated Jeremy Meeks as the latest online celebrity heart throb.

East your heart out, Beverly Hills!

Stockton, California: The Best and the Brightest

My current hometown of Stockton California has taken a lot of abuse of late. The largest city in the US to go into bankruptcy, taking it "on the chin" from late night comedians like Jay Leno:

"Stockton's so broke, Lindsey Lohan wouldn't shoplift there."

"Stockton's so broke, a North Korean missile would raise property values."

So, there's a nice little human interest story to balance the scales a bit. It involves a fourteen year old girl and her science project. Most of us at fourteen might have stuck some wires in a potato to power a clock, or something, but Gianna Chien had something a little more sophisticated in mind.

"A California teen discovered the magnets in iPad 2 tablets and covers are capable of interfering with cardiac rhythm devices, like pacemakers, according to the Heart Rhythm Society. The research, conducted by 14-year-old Gianna Chien of Stockton, Calif , was presented Thursday at Heart Rhythm 2013, the Society’s 34th Annual Scientific Sessions.

“iPad 2s use magnets to help secure the cover to the tablet. Since people hold tablets so close to their chest, I wanted to see if these magnets could affect cardiac device performance,” said Chien, who initially organized the study as part of a school science fair project.

Cardiac rhythm devices can be affected by magnets and radiofrequency energy in products ranging from cellphones to MRI machines, the Heart Rhythm Society reported. When cardiac devices are near magnets, they switch into “magnet mode,” which could potentially disrupt function. With the help of her cardiologist father, Chien asked 26 patients with implantable cardiac devices (ICDs) to hold the iPad 2 at reading distance. At this length, the iPad caused no electromagnetic interference.

However, when participants placed the tablet on their chests, as if they had fallen asleep with the iPad there, “magnet mode” was triggered in 30 percent of patients' ICDs, the Heart Rhythm Society reported."

Wow. No telling how many lives might have been saved, or how many Apple engineers are getting to work overtime to redesign the magnetic functions of the ipad2, or how many of Apple's lawyers are formulating the costs of a recall vs. the cost of potential litigation. All from a fourteen year old Stockton girl.

And you want to hear the funny part? Her project wasn't considered the best. Two other people tied for first! The breakthrough research on the effect of ipads on pacemakers came in third!

Some day, when they've put Leno in a home, and he's laying in bed watching reruns of his shows on his ipad, he can thank a Stockton girl that his pacemaker doesn't switch off. You're welcome, Jay!

Update:
Stockton's brightest and Best, II. The day before, there was a story about two 16 year olds, a 17 and an 18 year old, from my old high school, who built a working prosthetic arm for less than $20.00

STOCKTON - Yael Castillo slipped on a prosthetic arm the other day and flexed the device's two prongs to pick up tennis balls and toss them into a bucket, to lift a can of soda and drink from it, even to grasp a pen and sign his name.

Was there anything he couldn't do with the artificial limb? "Maybe use a touchscreen phone," Castillo said.

The prosthesis cost $19.44 to build. It was designed and constructed by Castillo and fellow Stagg High School students Brooklyn Omstead, Anthony Nichols and Gabriel Zuniga. Today at University of the Pacific, Stagg's prosthetic arm just might pick up one more thing. It might grab the Math Engineering Science Achievement, or MESA, state championship.

"For less than $40, they had to design something to replace the arm and hand," explained Stagg's MESA teacher, Andrew Walter.

Cross posted at LCR.

Barack Obama is "Fighting for You"...Above His Weight Class!

This week, I saw what was to be an unfortunate comparison for the Democrat contender for the Presidency. BTW, is the opposite of "Rocky", "Stoney"?

Many of you know, I live in Stockton California, at one time, and perhaps to date, the largest city in the country to declare bankruptcy. As such, I guess we are a microcosm of the country at large. Anyway, in the mayoral race here, the top of the ticket citywide, the Mayor is running for re-election. Not running on her record, because, after all...we're bankrupt! Crime is on the rise. We don't have enough money to pay for all the police we need and many experienced officers are taking their time and talents elsewhere. Cops are leaving about as fast (or faster) than we can hire them. This makes crime suppression and criminal apprehension a challenge at best.

So, she can't really promise a lot of pork, since there's little to dish out. She can't run on how wonderful things are since she's been mayor, so what does she do? She adopts the campaign slogan that she is "fighting for our city". Wow. I feel better already!

And then I got to thinking that I'd heard that someplace before. Obama's closing statement at the first presidential debate he said he was "fighting for us"! No offense, Mr. President, but if you throw Pee Wee Herman in against Mike Tyson, it really doesn't matter how hard he's fighting for us, if he doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.

Obama must have focus grouped this word, since it's a regular part of his stump speech.

"Mr. Obama used the word "fighting" thirteen times in the speech, which he delivered at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, and the word "fight" an additional nine times." Jan 2010

Video from Jan of 2012: in addition to repeating the lie that he's "signed a "trillion dollars in spending cuts", even though the federal budget only gets larger every single year under Obama, and that he will wake up every single day (before he heads to the golf course) to think about how to make this country better, Obama promises to "spend every ounce of energy I have fighting for you". Jan 2012

Again, Pee Wee Herman can spend "every ounce of energy he has" against Mike Tyson, but the results will be the same. Even Clueless Joe Biden is getting into the act!

@JoeBiden tweeted, in what has been called "the most focus-grouped tweet in the history of Twitter", "Barack and I are in this because we'll never stop fighting for you."

Why does Team Obama tell you they are "fighting for you"? Simple. To distract you from the actual results of any "fighting". Presumably, Obama has been "spending every ounce of energy he has" fighting for us, for the last four years and where has it gotten us? In 2008, candidate Obama told us that, as president, he would go through the budget "line by line" to discover and eliminate any waste in government spending. Other than cuts to the military, can you point to even a single line of that budget he has cut? Instead, it has grown to Brobdingnagian proportions under his "watchful eye"!

And when he tells us of his "vision" for America, one filled with flowery words and empty platitudes...didn't he have the exact same vision four years ago? What's changed that makes you think he will be any more successful the next four years than he was the last four?

And do you honestly think the country can survive four more years of high unemployment, higher gas prices, higher energy and food costs? Please don't "vote like your 'lady parts' depend on it" Vote like all your parts depend on it.


Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Of Course There Will Be Death Panels!

Not the USS Stockton

For the record, I live in Stockton, California. Yes, that Stockton, California! The largest US city ever to declare bankruptcy. After a couple of days of waving our giant foam fingers and shouting, "We're number one!", the time has come for a somewhat harder look at what's going on.

Last night, the news coverage was filled with accounts of many of the people who are going to be hurt by the city's plight. Many retirees showed up at City Hall, fearful of what was going to happen to them, on a fixed income, if their benefits were reduced and their health care costs were to increase.

Rather than dissect, at the moment, how the city and its retirees got into this mess, or how they're going to get out of it, and at what cost, I see the City of Stockton's bankruptcy as an example of what happens when the resources are inadequate for the demand, and unfortunately, a microcosm for what looms large for both the state of California and the nation as a whole.

But first, a little trip down Memory Lane. Anyone here remember "Situational ethics"? Situational ethics was a supposedly Christian theory put forth in the 1960s by an Episcopal priest Joseph Fletcher. As I recall, it started gaining favor in school curricula in the 1980's.

Situational ethics taught that what might be unethical in one situation might be perfectly acceptable, should the "situation" call for it. It is a bad thing to tell a lie, but if you were in Germany in the 1940's and Anne Frank was hiding in your attic, it was permissible to lie to the Nazis if they asked you if you were hiding any Jews. So far, so good.

And then, there was the infamous lifeboat scenario: There are fifteen of you in a lifeboat with only enough food and water for twelve. If you all stay on the boat, you are all going to die. Therefore, in this situation, wouldn't it be better to throw three people overboard so that twelve might live?

They made it easy for you, too. There was usually a rabbi or a priest on board, in his seventies or eighties, and, after all, he'd lived a good long life. Better to throw him overboard than your freckle faced fifteen year old niece, right? (The holy man always has to go first, otherwise, he might introduce some morality into your situational situation and muck up everything!*) There'd usually be at least one more elderly person in the boat, because euthanizing the elderly is not something we can teach our children soon enough! So, Granny goes over the side. In some cases, there might have been a handicapped person, or one with Downs syndrome, and since their quality of life isn't all that great, and who knows how long someone with Downs syndrome might live anyway, into the water with them, too.

At this point, having killed the elderly, the infirm and the retarded to save your own skin, may I point out the irony in a comparison between you and the Nazis you were lying to in the previous example? Perhaps here we could contrast, too, those four chaplains on the troop ship USAT Dorchester in 1943, who gave up their own life jackets when there weren't enough to go around. It is quite a different thing to volunteer to give up one's own life as opposed to having some committee decide it for you.

In bankruptcy, there isn't enough money, simply not enough resources to pay all the bills and keep all your promises. In the lifeboat, there aren't enough resources to keep everybody alive, so Father Flanagan and Granny go in the drink. In the proposed government takeover of the healthcare system, which hopefully will have a stake driven through its heart tomorrow, you cannot add millions of people to a shrinking system in a bankrupt country, full of bankrupt states, cites and towns, and expect that there will be enough resources for everyone.

Granny will have to go. Maybe she'll get a pill instead of an operation, like Obama suggested, but rationing would become a way of life in healthcare.

Unless we can get some national leadership in Washington to grow the economy again, get out of the way of mining and manufacturing, and create new wealth, new resources, rather than trying to ration what we have now, we will go the way of Greece. (And Stockton)

Our Founding Fathers were made of sterner stuff and meant us for better things. Unless you want to see the misery of those people in Stockton multiplied from coast to coast, it is time for genuine change in the White House. Vote for change this November.



*I kept thinking..."A preacher, a priest, and a rabbi go into a lifeboat..."

Cross posted at LCR.

"We're Number One!"... in Misery

Stockton Waterfront

I heard about this on the radio this week. Thanks to William Teach over at Stop the ACLU for posting about it. According to Forbes, my fair city of Stockton California is one of eight California cities to rank on "America's Most Miserable Cities", and not only did we make the Top Ten, we're Number One! (Cleveland, OH, about twenty miles from where I just moved back from a year or so ago, is #10.)

Located in the state's Central Valley, Stockton has been ravaged by the housing bust. Median home prices in the city tripled between 1998 and 2005, when they peaked at $431,000. Now they are back to where they started, as the median price is forecast to be $142,000 this year, according to research firm Economy.com, a decline of 67% from 2005. Foreclosure filings affected 6.9% of homes last year in the Stockton area, the seventh-highest rate in the nation, according to online foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac.

Stockton's violent crime and unemployment rates also rank among the 10 worst in the country, although violent crime was down 10% in the latest figures from the FBI. Jobless rates are expected to decline or stay flat in most U.S. metro areas in 2011, but in Stockton, unemployment is projected to rise to 18.1% in 2011 after averaging 17.2% in 2010, according to Economy.com.

Frying pan and fire, anyone? Thank you, Liberals!

For those of you who may not be familiar with California geography, here is a map locating Stockton. (About eighty miles inland from the ocean)



More pictures can be found here.