Archive | May, 2011

Mail Theft and Unbearable Filth

18 May

May 18, 2011

The following is the federal statute governing mail theft:

Section 1702.
Obstruction of correspondence
Whoever takes any letter, postal card, or package out of any post office or any authorized depository for mail matter, or from any letter or mail carrier, or which has been in any post office or authorized depository, or in the custody of any letter or mail carrier, before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was directed, with design to obstruct the correspondence, or to pry into the business or secrets of another, or opens, secretes, embezzles, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both

Now I am not a lawyer (God forbid) but I have done my share of lying over the years so I am qualified to interpret the law.


Cue The People’s Court music while I introduce the litigants.

The Plaintiff: Me. Paragon of virtue, friend to all, lover of animals, honest to a fault, handsome too.


The Defendant: My lowlife sneaky neighbor. If I may indulge the Court’s time with some background on this mail thief? Thank you.

Try to imagine a young tanned George “The Animal” Steele. Or Tor Johnson, take your pick. Now dress him in the clothes your mechanic wears to drain the oil out of the old Chevy that never seems to get out of his garage and you start to get the idea. (Not similar clothes, those exact clothes.) To protect his anonymity, let’s call him Torvalds Sigurdsson.

Torvalds is a scrapper and-

DEFENSE LAWYER: Objection Your Honor! The plaintiff’s bias towards scrappers is well documented and we ask that you throw out his testimony.

JUDGE: Overruled. This is small claims court and lawyers are not allowed. Who let you in here?

Thank you your Honor.

JUDGE: Now get to the point before I throw this gavel at your head.

Torvalds is a scrapper and unlike the wonderful paragons of the community that you see on Spike TV this guy is a lowlife. For example, he stole the gate from my building. We had a six-foot tall gate at the entrance to the courtyard and he was seen by a witness, now dead (just a coincidence, I am sure) cutting it from its hinges and putting it into his van in the early hours of the morning.

One night I went to throw out some trash in my building’s incinerator and his disgusting sweatshirt was lying on the floor. At the best of times the floor in that room is as far from clean as you can get without quite being filthy but it comes close. This was not the best of times. The sweatshirt itself was over the line of filth. If there is a definition of “unbearable filth”- and I have wondered- this shirt was it.

So, being a good tenant, I threw out my trash and left the sweatshirt there on the floor. You think I’m going to touch that thing? That’s what the lazy part-time maintenance man is for. And knowing him he wouldn’t touch it either.

I did, however, step on it on the way out.

The next day- c’mon, you know where this is headed- Torvalds was wearing it, and my footprint was faintly visible on the bottom.

JUDGE: Move it along, this case is about mail theft.

My apartment and Torvalds’ are at opposite ends of the building. There is no reason at all for him to ever come near my door. The staircase is at his end and the elevator is in the middle.

I had been waiting for weeks for a package and just about given up hope. Remember the episode of MASH where Col. Blake has Radar order a film from the Tabasco Film Company and sign Radar’s name to the order? This was nothing like that. Really, I swear.

Anyway, I came home around noon one day and got off the elevator. In front of my door was the package I was expecting. The mailman almost never leaves packages if I am not home. He leaves a slip and I go to the post office to get it. However, since this box was very large and heavy (and not leaking some foul substance, I swear) he must have decided that he schlepped it once, that’s enough, and left it in front of my door.

OK, so far so good. Here’s where it goes bad.

When I got off the elevator the first thing I saw when I turned to my left was my neighbor lifting the box and turning to walk away.

ME: Hey, thanks! (Why was I thanking him? He is a lot bigger than me so I figured I’d put on my stupid hat and pretend he was doing me some kind of favor. I am not generally that non-confrontational, but I am generally that averse to getting the shit kicked out of me.)

TORVALDS: Oh, hey, there you are!
ME: Yeah!
TORVALDS: (Putting the package down.) I was just making sure this was for you. (Squints suspiciously at the door next to mine) I don’t trust some of the people around here.

For the record, the people who live next door are in their eighties and have been there since I was as kid.

ME: Yeah, I know. You can’t trust anybody.
TORVALDS: Look, you know the mail. Anytime you want to tell the mailman to leave your packages with me. I’ll do the same to you.

How nice. I’ll save him the trouble of stealing my mail by sending it right to him. It eliminates the middle man, but unfortunately the middle man is me and the mail is mine.

TORVALDS: Look, you have a great day!

He was talking very fast right at that point. He clapped me on the shoulder and started to move down the hall like he forgot that his birth certificate was burning on the stove.

ME: (Winning smile) You got it!
THORVALDS: (Hurrying away) You know how it is! You’re a good guy, your sister is an angel!

I don’t have a sister.

A couple of days later something else I was waiting for arrived. This was from UPS and the delivery guy came to my door. I had missed the delivery the first time he came and just to make small talk I said that I was sorry I missed him the other day. He said “I don’t know why the other guy didn’t just leave the package.” I told him I was glad he didn’t.

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American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior: Offer Denied

16 May

May 16, 2011

I usually start with the bikes but I want to begin with the lawsuit first because I am not sure that most people tune in for the bikes anymore.

You may recall that last week Paul Senior decided that since the judge ruled that Paulie was under no legal obligation to sell his share of OCC, it would be a good time to reconcile and, not too coincidentally, make an offer to buy back the stock. Subtle he is not. Nor too swift.

Sr. made Paulie an offer, Paulie counter-offered, and neither offer was accepted. Simple? No, because lawyers are involved. Paulie says that Senior’s side made the offer and then took it off the table the next day. What these two need to do is get rid of the lawyers, sit down together and hammer out a deal, then let the lawyers vet it and OK it. The problem (or one of the problems) is that Senior has mixed up in his head the resolution of the lawsuit with reconciliation with his sons and they are totally separate issues. It doesn’t help that his lawyer is also giving him advice on how to get back together with Paulie. One thing we’ve seen over the past two weeks is that lawyers can spin anything any way they want. You got your tax refund? Too bad. Firemen rescue your grandmother from an inferno? That’s a shame. Judge ruled in favor of Paulie? “Neither side won or lost.”

The truth is these two can’t be in the same room. During the filming of the current American Chopper commercial- the one where they are facing each other on bikes- they were never in the same room at the same time. Paulie filmed his part, and then Sr. came in and filmed his. Sr. thought that Paulie was avoiding him, which may be true, but he is also avoiding Paulie.

Sr. got a chance to see the Anti-Venom bike up close. He said it was nice but that it was like what OCC was making ten years ago, which may be true, but he said that it had no technology and pointed to one of the Trams Am bikes and said that PJD couldn’t make anything like it.

Technology? Really? Senior added a Trans Am tachometer to his bike. A nice touch, sure, but hardly cutting edge. And considering that the average OCC bike doesn’t have tail lights he really shouldn’t talk. Interestingly, he opened the door to a competition, which is what the promos have alluded to all season.

Gus died this week which is odd since last season when Gus had a leg amputated the news broke on the show that he died. So I guess that reports of his death were premature.

When discussing it, Sr. broke down on camera and had tears streaming down his face. It was the most human he has seemed since the show began. He said that he loved Gus because “he was always there.” That is interesting since he has talked about how he was not always there in his son’s lives and also how he pushed his sons away so they were not always there.

Gus’ death moved both Paulie and Vinnie and in the show’s emotional climax, Paulie called Sr. He didn’t text or send an email, which meant something to Sr., and told Sr. how sorry he was, offered some comfort, and ended with “I love you.” Senior seemed touched and cried again, but how much his tears were really for Gus I can’t say.

OCC made three bikes based on a trio of classic Trans Am autos and next to the cars they looked great. The build went smoothly with the exception of Senior and Phil dropping a bike off the jack. Luckily there was no damage, either to the bike or Senior’s head, which was not far from the falling heavy cycle.

PJD was still working on the pair of CrankyApe bikes and we got a few words of bike-building wisdom from Paulie: “You can’t have a bike if you don’t have a motor.” Paulie was in a deadline crunch because they are unveiling the bike in Daytona Beach and Paulie has no one to blame but himself. He miscalculated and ordered the motor too late. Luckily it came in time.

Nub did his usual great job on the paint, a mix of matte and gloss that he had never done for either OCC or PJD. As usual, he seemed a little bemused by Paulie. He realizes that though Paulie is a good designer he runs the shop a little too casually and was always “freaking out.” He did point out though that the stress didn’t carry over to the others. “Unlike OCC there is no stress here, no drama. It is a better vibe.” The bike also featured barbed wire wheel spokes that looked really nice.

Of course, it is hard to avoid stress when Mikey is running around in a gorilla suit. Yes, you read that right. Mikey showed up in a gorilla suit led by his legally blind assistant. With Mikey unable to see well in the mask it was literally a case of the blind leading the blind. Paulie ordered him to stay far away and keep his banana-throwing from the freshly painted tins.

The other bike was the one they bought on auction and rebuilt. It had everything new except the frame and motor. True, those are the most important parts of the bike, but what kind of ad is it for CrankyApe when the bike was totally rebuilt? Buy one of their bikes and spend a lot of money to fix it up? It is especially odd since they were very impressed with the bike as it was bought.

At any rate, they were still working on the bike when the trailer arrived and it wouldn’t start. They had to have a new starter delivered to Florida and fixed it there right before the unveil. It went fine, despite the handicap of Mikey in his gorilla suit emceeing.

Next week the OCC crew travels to Alaska to ruin another show, Deadliest Catch, and to get inspiration as they make a Deadliest Catch bike. Will Senior get into it with Sig? Will the Hillstrands shove Jason Pohl in a pot and sink him to the bottom of the Bering? Tune in and find out.

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