{"id":1198,"date":"2014-03-12T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T06:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2014-04-06T20:36:36","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T14:36:36","slug":"they-played-oompah-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/?p=1198","title":{"rendered":"They played oompah style"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only a few weeks ago, I wrote a column titled, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Your computer is toast.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It described my elation over having acquired a genuine computer to help me teach journalism classes at Highlands.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wrote about inviting my then-Highlands student son, Adam Stan to my office to show off the new arrival. He assures me to this day \u00e2\u20ac\u201d about 30 years later \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that he meant no disrespect in likening my new acquisition to a slice of soggy toast. And he assured me of his sincerity by giving me his own tour of much more up-to-date hardware in the lab he used.<\/p>\n

Crestfallen, I carried the pain of such a put-down for years, but Adam was right. The computer my department had acquired, built during the Punic Wars, was indeed toast by comparison. My consolation, however, is that what he showed me then, in 1985, now is toast, of antedeluvian quality compared to the equipment Highlands uses now.<\/p>\n

A former Las Vegan, Al Sacoman, came across the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153toast\u00e2\u20ac\u009d column and accordingly forwarded me a photo of a computer lab that resembled an operating room. The gentlemen in the photo wear suits \u00e2\u20ac\u201d none of those warmups with sweatshirt, with a laptop balanced on our navels, in their parents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 basement.<\/p>\n

Sacoman, a graduate of West Las Vegas High School, mentioned that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been around computers for about 50 years. My first reaction to that bit of history was that five decades ago, what Al must have been working with and on would have been an abacus.<\/p>\n

Al lives in Camp Hill, Pa; he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been married 52 years, has two sons and three grandchildren. And he says he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153programmed mainframe computers to laptops and everything in between.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s retired now.<\/p>\n

His name came to mind in yet another context: Does anyone remember a group called the Hungry Five? Al, a member of that comical group, recalls some of the members of that era: Frank Garcia on tuba, Bobbie Segura on drums, Johnny Vess on clarinet, Ben Gonzales and Elias Monroe.<\/p>\n

The ever-popular West Las Vegas band director, Litra Romero was their director.<\/p>\n

According to Sacoman, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We were five Chicanos playing German oompah music, dressed like hobos.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, they got our attention. In those days, several teachers at West, Robertson and Immaculate Conception schools sponsored programs and dances in the summers, usually at McFarland Hall. The idea was to encourage more mixing among the students.<\/p>\n

There were usually friendly competitions. And to my recollection, the Hungry Five took the lion\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s share of the awards. (If you believe Aesop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fable, you realize lions don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t share but get all of the goodies. Yet some dictionaries today define the expression also as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the greater portion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Look at this shocking video!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I did, but there was no shock. Didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even wince.<\/p>\n

Let me explain:<\/p>\n

On Facebook, to which many computer owners seem addicted, companies often run illustrated ads with this kind of message: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The shocking truth about fish oil,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Save money on insurance with this ridiculously easy trick,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A shocking revelation: She needs you \u00e2\u20ac\u201d now.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

So, in my more naive days (actually very recently), I peeked. Nothing shocked me, even at this young age, and I discovered nothing ridiculously easy. No tricks.<\/p>\n

What you see is not what you get. The scantily clad woman in the teaser ad magically disappears on the first mouse click, and instead we go to a web page that features a talking head showing us how we can easily acquire wealth, or a body to make even Schwarzenegger envious.<\/p>\n

Most galling are the ads for language lessons. I own a set for French and for German courses, and I approve; I find them effective, but the come-hither techniques these companies employ to get you to open the door, are, well, galling. Did it occur to the suppliers that some people might be interested in what the company has to offer, without the gratuitous coquetry?<\/p>\n

My favorite is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shocking\u00e2\u20ac\u009d way we can learn a foreign language. I began the German regimen weeks ago and became convinced it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fine program. But what is the shocking reason people attempt to learn such a language? Maybe there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a subliminal message. Remember in the olden days when there were reports of companies embedding invisible messages in their products?<\/p>\n

You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re at a drive-in theater, for instance, watching the commercials between the main features and suddenly you develop a craving for Coke or popcorn. Some research tended to bear out the idea that a hidden message was intensifying your desire to gulp down that soft drink. Unfortunately, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been much research debunking that theory.<\/p>\n

The come-on for the shockingly easy way to learn language is a photo of the upper portions of a woman whose endowments would make Dolly Parton seem anorexic. And before I clicked on the woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s image, I wondered about several things: Has the promoter of this set of language CDs come up with some technique by which we speak fluent Deutsch through osmosis?<\/p>\n

Few things are shocking, really. I wondered, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Did the Dallas Cowboys win a game,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Did the Denver Broncos grow a defense?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d No, none of the above. I even wondered about those ineffective ads of yesterday that promised we could learn any foreign language in our sleep. To those who bought the language kits way back then, I ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that working out for you?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You said \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcconceited\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcconceded,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the woman shouted as I went to work last week. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great that one reader noticed my intentional use of the wrong word, a sound-alike.
\nDon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be surprised if a few more such usages appear in future columns. It would be great if there were many more avid users of the language, but regrettably, too many people flaunt the rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only a few weeks ago, I wrote a column titled, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Your computer is toast.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It described my elation over having acquired a genuine computer to help me teach journalism classes at Highlands. I wrote about inviting my then-Highlands student son, Adam Stan to my office to show off the new arrival. He assures me to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1199,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}