Those of us who are from New Jersey have never questioned why there is a magazine called Weird NJ. It is a land of odd characters, strange ironies, and who-knows-what happening deep in the woods (whether’s it’s occult practices or body dumpings). In order to keep my own head filled with useful weirdness, I frequently check in online with my old newspaper, The Press of Atlantic City, where I found this story. Essentially, the mayor of Atlantic City went missing for two weeks — just got in his car and drove away — and now has returned to resign. The getting in the car and leaving part we can all understand — it’s the returning to resign part I can’t follow.

Mayor Bob Levy had claimed to be a Green Beret in Vietnam who had won several medals in the commission of his duties. None of that was true, as you can read here. The Press of Atlantic City did a stone-cold expose, Levy had a mental collapse, and now he’s gone. I seem to recall former mayors of Atlantic City serving prison time while remaining mayor. In this day and age, I have to wonder what has happened to the sheer ballsiness of Atlantic City mayors. It’s a sad day for would-be Huey Longs everywhere.

A side note that some of us may enjoy about The Press of Atlantic City.

When I was a kid, the paper was called The Atlantic City Press — a pretty good name, when you think about it. Everyone I knew had a beloved nickname for it — The Atlantic City Mess — because it was riddled with errors. (Although to my eye The Los Angeles Times has many, many more errors of commission and omission on a daily basis and, let’s be fair, many more resources.) About when I was in high school, the paper changed its name to The Press because their distribution covered much of southern New Jersey, which put them in competition with the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Courier Post, and because, honestly, nobody wanted to be associated with Atlantic City any more. Shortly after that, casino gambling was voted in, Atlantic City started a turnaround, and the error of the name change became apparent. So rather than switch back, they tagged “of Atlantic City” onto the end of the moniker. So now it’s a badly named newspaper.

I worked there from 1977 or so, when the offices actually were in Atlantic City, until 1980 (by which time we had moved to the unaptly named Pleasantville), starting at age 14 as a classified ad taker and moving my way up to full-time classified ad sales until having a falling out with management. We were trying to unionize, and management decided to make an example of the kid. I was asked to fight that but chose not to, and shortly afterward went into business and then to college. (I had graduated high school early.) A few years later, the Press was hiring copy editors, they did a recruitment from the literature program I was enrolled in in my college, and I took the test and passed. (The only one to do so.) That put me back at the Atlantic City Press, this time as a copy editor, then senior copy editor, then production editor. I was 24. Every day that I was there, as you can see by the above unconscious misuse of the the newspaper’s name, I wished it would just fix its damn name. But I loved the paper and the job with all my heart.

By the way, on the off chance you don’t believe the next presidential election is really over, and if you aren’t entirely crazy about the current field of candidates, you could always do your utmost to draft a guy who already won that race before.

Yesterday’s LA Times had a nice profile of “Love and Rockets” creator Gilbert Hernandez. If you enjoy his work, as I have for a long time, you’ll want to read it. Here it is, minus a good photo of the artist look surprisingly urbane in a book-lined study. (I guess there is still a reason to look at the print edition of the Times: to see the photos they don’t put on the web.)

Scott Timberg, the writer of the piece, makes a strained comparison between the Hernandez brothers (Gilbert and Jaime) and Lennon and McCartney. In each case, two men were involved; I think the comparison ends about there. We know the story of Lennon and McCartney well enough, so there’s no need to rehash that here, but let’s note at the outset that the two men worked together. I don’t recall Gilbert and Jaime ever doing a piece together — what they did were two separate strips that were published together in the same title. Even if John and Paul had taken the same route — and they came close, with the white album and “Abbey Road” — they at least played on each other’s songs. I’ve met Scott Timberg once or twice and seem to recall his having a Beatles fascination, so I can only assume that’s the origin of this pointless comparison. Pointless because the Hernandez brothers haven’t even broken up — they were solo artists and they remain solo artists. Pointless because I can’t find any way in which Jaime is “the McCartney” and Gilbert “the Lennon.”

Just because someone puts something into print doesn’t make it true. It also doesn’t mean there’s any wisdom in the metaphor.

This AP story caught my attention:

Man faces long prison term over doughnut theft

FARMINGTON, Mo. – It’s a hefty price for a pastry: A man accused of stealing a 52-cent doughnut could face time in jail.

Authorities said Scott A. Masters, 41, slipped the doughnut into his sweat shirt without paying, then pushed away a clerk who tried to stop him as he fled the store.

The push is being treated as minor assault, which transforms a misdemeanor shoplifting charge to a strong-armed robbery with a potential prison term of five to 15 years. Because he has a criminal history, prosecutors say they could seek 30 years.

“Strong-arm robbery? Over a doughnut? That’s impossible,” Masters told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from jail. He admitted that he took the pastry but denied touching the employee. “There’s no way I would’ve pushed a woman over a doughnut.”

Farmington Police Chief Rick Baker said state law treats the shoplifting and assault as forcibly stealing property. The amount of force and value of the property doesn’t matter.

“It’s not the doughnut,” Baker said. “It’s the assault.”

Masters said he didn’t even get to enjoy his ill-gotten gains: He threw the doughnut away as he fled.

You may recall this as eerily similar to the major plotline in “Les Miserables,” in which Jean Valjean is sentenced to five years’ hard time for stealing a loaf of bread. This is the entirety of the AP story, while “Les Miserables” is only slightly shorter than the 30 years’ war. Proving once again that whether or not truth is stranger than fiction, fiction tends to be longer.

One further difference: Jean Valjean is a noble figure who later shows mercy to his tormentor, Javert, and who steals the bread to feed his starving family; he is someone struggling against whom the ills of French society and, as such, represents a plea on behalf of the author for justice and reform. (A la Dickens.) In the story of the boosted doughnut, we have a lout who has already done hard time who stole a doughnut rather than pay 52¢ for it and shoved around a clerk who tried to stop it. Some people just can’t learn a lesson from the justice systm, and this person sounds like one of them. Whether or not he does 30 years for the misappropriated pastry, I’m sure law enforcement hasn’t heard the last of him. That he didn’t get to consume the cruller makes the irony all the more delicious.

You may not have noticed, but judging from the news coverage the presidential race is over.

I know, you thought there was going to be an election of some sort in 2008. And, barring some reason to cancel it trumped up by Dick Cheney, there will be. But as someone who reads the way the mainstream media is covering this, I’m not sure why we’re going to go through all that. Because apparently Hillary Clinton has already won. She’s pulled ahead in the Iowa poll, and that has put an end to it all. And the other day, Newsweak’s Howard Fineman started picking her running mate, three months before the first primary and a full 11 months before the general election.

Hillary has won not only the primary, but also the general election. That’s because the GOP can’t find a good candidate, the bubble speak goes, because the leading candidate (Giuliani) can’t win.

All of this is disgusting.

It’s disgusting to believe what they would have you believe: that a handful of people in Iowa are truly going to select the next president. If I were in Iowa, at this point I would seek out the candidate furthest from the top of the polls and do everything I could to get that person a higher perch — just to knock the conventional wisdom and give some more time to the process. Front-runner Mike Gravel, anyone? God knows I’ve enjoyed his videos.

More than that, it’s disgusting to watch what has happened to political coverage in the past 30 years. Note to the media: It isn’t a horse race, and it isn’t The World Series of Poker, which ESPN is allowed to cover in this way. It’s about the next four to eight years of this country — and a lot of other countries. It’s about things like effective response to terrorism, and balancing a budget, and protecting resources, and leaving a better world than you found.

Why is it being covered like a horse race? Because announcers need sporting events to make their living.

I’m not especially predisposed against Hillary Clinton, although I don’t think she has a depth of qualification for this position. (The current inhabit did, to some degree, as governor of a large state — and look how that turned out.) But I don’t think the 2008 election is settled, no matter what seemingly every single bit of news would have me think. And I think it’s a more serious matter than their coverage reflects.

Fair warning, this event that I’m emceeing is approaching sold-out status.

It’s your choice to hang out with not just a witty syndicated radio comedienne who happens to be running for vice-president, but also a major scribe for “Superman” who’s running for Congress. True Renaissance people, both of them!

You have been invited. And warned.

One of the recurring, albeit underlying, themes in my plays is the examination of human behavior: Can people change? Because we are animals, must we at root behave like animals? Are we to some degree naturally moralistic, or are these  morals constructs created by us to civilize behavior? I don’t usually set out to write about these things. Usually I set out to write about people in conflict in some way, or sometimes (rarely) I have a beginning notion or perhaps some latest outrage in the news gets my juices flowing, but often this central question of “what does it mean at core to be human” comes up.

I was reminded of this again the other day when I got an email from a friend who had seen my play “Next Time” in Fullerton on an evening I happened to be there. (And, if she’s reading this, I apologize for not responding yet to the email. But I will.) Among other things, she said she was glad to see another one of my plays that deals with ethics. I hadn’t realized this was another of my plays that deals with ethics, so to speak, but upon reflection I’ve realized she’s right; at one point the protagonist’s inner self (and, therefore, himself) questions all the behavioral systems he’s set up, pointing out that there’s no proof that anyone or anything else exists. (That point of view, it occurs to me as I’m writing this, is the perspective of a sociopath; I’ve written a few of them, too.) In my play “Animals,” a character named Social Realist gives us a tour of mankind’s base brutality through the prism of four interconnected lives (a man, a woman, a “Bad Friend” who may have had an affair with the man, and a contract killer), as well as his own experience when young of seeing a dog eat all her own pups.

Given my subconscious interest in this topic, this news story jumped off the web at me. In essence, according to this research as reported in the current issue of Science, humankind is more ethical and less self-interested than its closest cousin, the chimpanzee.

Key finding #1:

Economists used to say that people are self-interested and rational, maximizing whatever payday is within reach. But recent studies have blown that idea to smithereens. When people are given the choice of accepting or rejecting the split of some spoils that a partner offers—say, how to divide the $10 that researchers have given them in an experiment—they reject offers perceived as unfair. So if you offer me $2 and propose to keep $8 for yourself, I’ll walk away and leave us each with nothing—stupid, considering that I’m rejecting $2 in free money, but consistent with the emerging idea that humans have a strong, evolved sense of fairness that trumps immediate self-interest. Something like this probably underlies people’s tendency to punish cheaters, free-riders and noncooperators. The game has been played uncounted times in labs, and the basic finding is that proposers typically offer 40 to 50 percent of the pot, and responders walk away from any offer less than 20 percent.

I find this true in my own life, as I’m sure you do. Today we had some work done at our office by a professional firm and, before leaving, their workers subtly shared with my business partner that if we ever needed more work of the same sort done these guys would gladly come without telling their employers and charge us less. When I heard this, I was outraged. Not only are they moonlighting as direct competitors to the people who employ them, they’re doing it within their employers’ customer base. That’s doubly, or triply, cheating. Is it in my self-interest to be outraged? No, because the value proposition they offered would save us money. Nevertheless, I would never call these guys privately to come work for me, and I’m thinking about how to anonymously alert their employers.

Evidently, chimps see this sort of thing differently:

In a study being reported today in Science, researchers had 11 chimpanzees at the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center in Germany play this “ultimatum” game. One chimp, the “proposer,” sat beside the “responder.” The proposer pulled out a tray as far as he could. The tray held two dishes with raisins, separated by a see-through divider: one for the proposer and the other for the responder. The proposers first chose which tray to pull out; if the responder liked what he saw—and he could see how many raisins he and the proposer would each get, by seeing how many raisins were on each side of the divider—he accepted the offer by pulling the tray the rest of the way out. Both chimps would then chow down. If the responder did not like the offer, he refused to pull the tray the rest of the way out, and neither chimp got a snack.

If the dishes held the same number of raisins, the responder chimp almost always accepted a 50-50 offer and rejected a 100-0 offer. Unlike people, though, they rarely rejected 80-20 offers—only 5 to 14 percent of the time. And unlike people, who fume when confronted with unfair offers, the chimps almost never took umbrage, throwing a tantrum at an unfair offer a mere 2 percent of the time.

There has long been a debate over whether chimps are able to sense fairness, much less tolerate unfairness. These results suggest that chimps behave “according to traditional economic models of self-interest, unlike humans, and that this species does not share the human sensitivity to fairness,” the scientists write. As scientists find fewer and fewer fundamental human traits to be unique (see the previous post on tool-using animals), at least we can keep hold of this one.

There are two lessons for me in all this:

1. I guess there’s more hope for humankind after all, because chimp wars are truly vicious and the issue of fairness never intrudes.
2. Economists think people act like chimps (but we don’t). Now I better understand the origin of Reaganomics and its present-day ilk.

A profile of an American falsely accused of terrorism who has been fighting the system and the Patriot Act the past three years — and winning.

Maybe our Constitution is retrievable after all.

If you haven’t had a barking exchange with a ticket agent and can get to Minneapolis airport, it’s safe to use the men’s room again. Authorities are putting in full-length dividers. But now that even Larry Craig knows not to go there for anonymous sex, isn’t that like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped?

According to this story, you’d better bow and scrape if you don’t want to get screwed by an airline ticket agent and sent to Siberia while your luggage heads to a lost-and-found auction. Some of us thought just buying a ticket entitled you to decent service. Guess not.