Comic Books Collecting

What better time to delve on this long-forgotten activity than these days, when our typical movie fare now comes replete with comic book super heroes portrayed on the big wide screen, on multi-million dollar budgets and stultifying special effects. Quite a far and distant cry from the 50-75 cents that we used to shell out for our favorite comic books, those gritty artwork and catchy dialogues incased in balloons were more than sufficient to transport us to the fabled land of fantasy and youthful escapism.

Of course, that was then to be expected and tolerated because after all we were kids and did not know any better.

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Crab Mentality: Another Look

Marilyn Monroe and Ayn Rand


Wrote about a rather crabby "affliction" that I had noticed here in the Bay Area, usually involving FilAms. Some instances have escalated into lengthy and embarrassing legal wrangling which can't be helped but to expose a somewhat uncomfortable trait in the underbelly of this very visible immigrant community

It deserves a second look, given that it is still very much in use and in vogue, as epitomized by this column of Atty. Rodel Rodis, involving two important cases:

IN A PAST column about the Northside Community Center in San Jose, I lamented the "crab mentality" of a group (led by the Center's former Assistant Executive Director) crusading to remove Ben Menor, the Center's executive director, by getting the San Jose City Council to withhold city funding for the Center.

The group, which perversely calls itself CRABS (Citizens Rebelling Against Bogus Spending), succeeded in getting the San Jose City Auditor to issue a report sharply critical of the Center's "misuse" of city funds for programs not properly authorized.

The Making Government Work Better Committee (MGWBC) of the San Jose City Council directed the City Auditor to monitor the activities of the Center and to "provide an updated cash flow and financial analysis to help assess the financial health" of the Center and its fiscal agency, the Filipino American Senior Opportunities Development Council (Fil-AM SODC).

In its October 17, 2005 update, the City Auditor reported that the Center's figures "will show a deficit of over $49,000" for the first quarter of 2005-06. The deficit may result in the group losing its city funding and the City Council transferring control of the Center to another group.

While Ben was attending to the "needs" of the auditors, I received a call on my cell phone from San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly.

Supervisor Chris Daly, whom I had supported in previous election campaigns because of his past support for the Filipino community, called to explain why he moved to freeze $351,000 of city funds previously earmarked for the West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center. West Bay, which has been around since 1977, uses these funds for community after-school programs and for a lunch program for senior citizens to serve the Filipino community.

Concern about the Medicare scam involving Filipino seniors resulted in the formation of a Community Accountability Committee (CAC), led by Roy Recio, Joe Julian and Bill Sorro, which sought the removal of West Bay Executive Director Ed Jocson, as well as staffer Daisy Cruz. The group had gotten the San Francisco City Auditor to investigate West Bay's involvement in the Medicare scam and the City Auditor concluded that West Bay "failed to exercise due care" in subleasing their office space to the medical clinic.

An audit by the San Francisco Controller's office, however, found no evidence connecting West Bay to the Medicare fraud. The FBI also clarified that West Bay was not a focus of its investigation.

At a July 5 meeting with the West Bay Board of Directors led by Anita Sanchez and Sorhna Jordan, the CAC presented the West Board with a list of "non-negotiable demands" including the termination of Jocson and Cruz, the appointment of certain members of the CAC to the West Bay Board and a community needs assessment study.

Anita Sanchez explained that the Board could not just terminate Jocson and Cruz without due process otherwise the Board would be liable for a wrongful termination lawsuit. Supervisor Daly had assured Anita that "they won't sue" but Anita wanted to know from Daly if the City Attorney's Office would represent West Bay if sued and Daly could not make this commitment.

After September 30, the 12 employees of West Bay who were laid off by the freezing of the funds, applied for State Unemployment benefits. Dozens of Filipino parents, youth and senior citizens affected by the Daly-Ammianno freeze have expressed outrage at the power play that froze the funding of their programs.

University of San Francisco Professors Dr. Jay Gonzalez and Marie-Lorraine Mallare prepared a resolution to the San Francisco Youth Commission and the Immigrants Rights Commission supporting West Bay and demanding that the frozen city funds be released immediately.

When Daly heard of the proposed resolution, he called Mallare. "He wanted me to withdraw the resolution," Mallare said. Daly told her that he was only expressing concerns about how the "Committee" felt about West Bay. Mallare refused and steadfastly presented her resolution to the city commissions.

In any noticeable controversy involving Filams/Filipinos, the use of the term, crab mentality, is typically the default rationalization to explain away why the protagonists are all Filipinos, giving rise to the uneasy notion that FilAms/Filipinos must consider this social phenomenon uniquely Filipino. Thus, when FilAm A publicly criticizes FilAm B, it must be because of crab mentality. It has to be, there can't be any other reason why one ethnic Filipino would go after another Filipino.

However, upon closer scrutiny, aside from findings already aired in the initial blog entry, one continues to discover more elucidating information about this social behavior which clearly afflicts all societies on this earth.

Googling Ayn Rand and Crab Mentality reaps the following results.

Thus what is evident is that first of all, many would rather use the term, crab bucket mentality, rather than the shorter, crab mentality.

Also, many would tend to attribute popular usage of this term to the late Ayn Rand, Russian-American novelist, famous for the following works, Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead. Read her very soulful and moving tribute article to Ms. Marilyn Monroe who died in 1962, which stands out more as a defining and apt portrayal of this rather ungodly and despised human trait.

A revealing characterization of our human nature, though deigned to be noble, but capable of sinking to lower depths.

Got Your Fortress Of Solitude?

As is most famously known, the man of steel, Superman, has his fortress of solitude way up in the icy North Pole, where he could literally fly off to get away from it all and get re-acquainted with solitude. Do you remember that huge key housed on top of a mountain that he uses to open his fortress?
And other comic heroes are also gifted with one, or two. Wealthy Bruce Wayne aka Batman has his dark and eerie bat cave. Even the very visible and hard to hide The BlackHawks have their island getaway where they can scamper to and lose themselves, and those huge airplanes they fly, when they are not battling those nefarious Nazis. And others have less, like only their alter egos to shield themselves from the prying eyes of the world. Thus, we have Spiderman aka Peter Parker, Cap’n America, the Green Lantern, etc. And oh, those underwater heroes, like Aquaman and Submariner, Prince Namor, they have their watery getaways, too.

Now, in the real world of the rich and famous, we admiringly hear about their island paradise, getaways and hideaways, isolated coves, summer and winter homes, etc. No scarcity of choices there. Think your own and make it happen.

But in the everyday world of the average Tom, Dick, and Harry, where many of us proudly belong, we do make do with what we can find and call our own little fortresses of solitude – our little oasis, cozy nook, or secluded cell, where we can shut out the world and get away from it all.

Just finished building mine, just the other day. And I have a stubbed thumb, aching muscles, and burnt skin from the hot summer sun of Tracy, and some uninspiring pictures, to offer as evidence.

But it is all mine and built entirely with my own puny hands, from cast-off, left-over, and remnant lumber some dating back 15 years ago or as recent as the other day from a Home Depot purchase.

Yes, my own little cozy nook in the coolest spot of the entire house and yards, very much noticed and appreciated during these hot summer days and nights. Tucked in a smallish, odd-shaped left-over but secluded part of the front yard. But allows for visual contact of the front street beyond which is the nicely-maintained park where I jog regularly. But I grant taller hedges could correct any problem of ample secrecy.
Thus, a few steps away from the front door and one, or at least I, is transported within the walls of silence and solitude. Or maybe just a bit of solitude and not enough silence.

But I love it.

Bloghopping: Uplifting or Unraveling?

While my own personal blog suffers from insufficient diligence, care, and effort, I consider myself quite exemplary in another realm. I spend a good part of my time in the Internet reading other people’s blogs, opinion pieces and news writing, at times squinting down to the last ounce of comment allowed from readers.

Thus, when on-line, I click-click away giving rein to my harried mouse to bring me to places, as fast as a thought, at the very least. I diligently ready, set, start from my comparatively shallow blogroll and from there, it’s anybody’s guess where I will end up – until the IE browser or Windows behind it cries ouch or foul and freezes up on me. Then a quick reboot pit stop and back to the race.

And much like the speedway oval, one goes round and round, registering miles and miles of track, one tedious hour after another, but really going nowhere. And then stopping in the same old place where one started. None the worse for wear, but gratefully loaded each time with a busload of information, opinion, news, and other nuts and bolts that could be sorted and arranged into some kind of practical wisdom applicable in the real world where we all have to live in.

So far so good, and things appear to look good on paper.

But is it really so?

Is the now unquantifiable Internet, the exponentially expanding blogosphere in particular, the place where one goes for such a commendable and crucial task? To try to expand one’s horizons by reading and listening to all possible ideas fleetingly wafting out there in the ethereal firmament?

To seek knowledge and wisdom away or aside from the traditional deference to solitude, or the other more mystical and contemplative modes such as the deep altered states of meditation?

I have no ready answer.

But based on personal experiences derived from my regular sorties, I find troubling developments to say the least.

First to drop by the wayside is civil and polite public discourses. Most everywhere one visits, especially the partisan political blogs and their cadres of regular commentators, vile, incendiary, or hateful rhetoric is quite typical and generally accepted or implied as acceptable through silence or inaction. Even when the host blogger shows good circumspection and respectful rhetoric, comments are allowed to run haywire and thus when at times called to task, instead of the blog entry itself the comments are highlighted as objectionable or worthy of reproach. I suppose behind this seeming nonchalance by the host is maybe the self-serving goal of keeping and attracting more readers. Or a vicarious way of saying things one cannot personally articulate?

Then we have those maybe because of the anonymity and yawning distance accorded by the medium, yet who should know better because of their education and background, who somehow have lost the ability to apply logic and ethics in their blazing statements. Like making blatant and uncorroborated generalizations with obvious willful design to deface another person’s (or even a country’s) humanity, his/her intelligence, even his/her physical looks. All with the easy flourish of a keyboard stroke. And yet nary an analytical word about the issues espoused or debated. And the bigger the political figures, the nastier the rhetoric.

And what about those who are somehow intellectually dishonest for gratuitously throwing in trite or proved-false talking points, simply to depict another who espouses a different ideology in a bad light? The comment sections seemed to have been designed by default as repositories (trash bins may be more appropriate) for those so inclined.

And if I may add, I am venturing that ego may be playing a stellar role in this process. A person’s hard-wired urge to ventilate and to show to the world one’s superior intelligence and analytical capabilities? Conventional wisdom teaches us that there may be sufficient personal gratification derived from such an exercise in the case of a good number of people.

Of course, all is not gloom and doom in the blogophere. There are many commendable sites that continue to answer to the higher call of civil public discourse, fair play, and guarded circumspection especially for statements that may permanently injure a person’s reputation and good name. I could name a few, but restraint dictates. . .

And to reiterate from a previous post, as a species who do have both the responsibility and control to decide where we want to go with this newest medium/tool.

To mediocrity or crassness as exemplified by the older much-criticized media/tools we have been using for communicating with one another?

Or aim for one that celebrates the nobler parts of our nature.

Our call.

More: 60's Teenage Idol, Ricky Nelson

60's Teenage Idol, Ricky Nelson, of Ozzie and Harriet TV fame.

Believe What You Say


Waitin' School (with brother, David, on scene)


Teenage Idol