The local news has been following the murder trail of a John Kenney, of Carmel Valley, who shot his neighbors over a property dispute. It is the apex of the downward spiral of upscale white folks.
The facts of the case are that in 1999, Kenney bought property next door to the home of Mel and Elizabeth Grimes, presumable he built a house or there was already a home on the land. In 2005, the Grimes built an artist’s studio and carport without permits from the county (illegal) and this forced them to cross a small portion of Kenney’s land. (It would later be discovered that the disputed land was a public easement.) This lead to a deterioration of relations between the two parties which lead to a physical altercation between Elizabeth Grimes and Kenny in June, 2005 that sent him to the hospital. Both parties then sought restraining orders against each other. A year later, Kenney files a $1 million dollar lawsuit against the Grimes over the altercation claiming injury and emotional distress. On January 29th, 2007, Kenney orders a 1-ton boulder and has it placed on the disputed spot of land which then partially blocked the Grimes carport. Later that evening Mel Grimes went out with a sledge hammer to begin hacking away at the boulder and his wife called 911. Kenney went down to confront Grimes and at some point (so says his defense lawyer) Grimes threatened Kenney with the sledge hammer at which time Kenney pulled a .45 out of his waistband and shots Grimes. Elizabeth Grimes runs outside and begins to attack Kenney while he is on his cell phone talking to a 911 operator. Kenney then shoots Elizabeth Grimes and then shoots Mel Grimes one more time and then fires a second shot into Elizabeth. His hands are shaking so badly that he accidentally discharges a round as he attempts to safety the weapon. The Sheriffs deputies arrive and arrest Kenney. He pleads not guilty and we’ve sat through two long trials since then.
The Jury is still out.
This is typical of Carmel and Carmel Valley in the early 21st Century. You have the Grimes, Mel being a defense attorney and his wife living out – way the hell out – in Carmel Valley so that they can have a large home for a relatively reasonable amount of money. Then you have Kenney, a former chemist for a construction company move in next door presumably for the same reason. No problem, everyone’s entitles to live where they please. Then you have the Grimes build a carport and artist studio without permits. The permit process is in place so that your neighbors have a chance to speak about any concerns they may have about what you might do to your property and see blue-prints and so on. In the process one might have to revise plans based on negative feedback but the permit process is in place to head off disputes that can lead to ugliness. The fact that Grimes was a lawyer makes this move inexcusable, I cannot speak to his motives but it is my opinion that he figured that if the County caught him in his misdeed that he’d pay a fine and schmooze his way out of it. He didn’t account for his neighbor.
He did not account for his neighbor.
So they essentially illegally expand their house. It angers their neighbor, Kenney, who complains to Monterey County but Grimes gums up the works with legal tricks and nothing is done about the illegal modifications to the home. I assume that there are some ugly events in between the construction and the shooting that have not been mentioned but at some point Kenney suspects his neighbors of dumping trash on his front yard so one day he decides to sit in his car with a camera and try and catch them in the act. Elizabeth Grimes sees Kenney in the car with the camera and storms the car and yanks the camera from around Kenney’s neck and then whacks him with it. That’s when the restraining orders were filed.
So you can keep score, Elizabeth Grimes attacks an old man and sends him to the hospital.
A few weeks later Kenney is at church attending a meeting when Elizabeth storms in and starts yelling about how Kenney is no Christian and she had to be forcibly removed from the church. So Kenney definitely feels physically threatened by the Grimes and abandoned by the Sheriffs department.
To further keep score, you have an attorney and his wife illegally put an addition to their home which upsets their elderly neighbor and they respond by throwing trash on his lawn and assaulting him. They had no problem using their position in society to break the law and terrorize an old man because he dared to speak up against their unlawful act.
Not only did following the law not cross their minds, they could care less about how their neighbor felt. The idea of sitting down and talking like adults never entered their minds and compromise was out of the question. Kenney felt helpless but he too would not back down and bought a gun.
All over ten square feet of land that belonged to neither of them.
That is where we are at today. I want things my way and everyone else can fuck off. I was here first, you can move away! I’m a lawyer and I can cheat the laws of the state to get my way. My neighbor is shit out of luck. In Carmel there was no postal delivery for almost 70 years and everyone was content to get their mail at the post office. Then some idiot who spent $1.7 million more than he needed to on a house on San Antonia street decided that he was too important to play along and demanded mail deliver to his home. Soon other rich idiots joined in so that today there is sporadic mail delivery in Carmel which has spoiled a really nice town. They are giant four-year olds with money.
They need a good spanking.
Next time: What ever happened to being the bigger man?
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Observing The Well Off White At Borders..
I have always loved bookstores. When I was a kid if it wasn't the Thunderbird it was Books Inc. or Waldon's. I also loved the library starting from when the Monterey Library would park it's "Bookmobile" in front of our house once a week. The idea that I could read about anything that interested me is magic and the idea that everyone does not do this leaves me shaking my head. I've discarded hundreds of books as I began to run out of space in my room and I've had to stash books that I cannot bear to part with in storage containers in my closet. Books about ghosts, the Titanic, Little Big Horn, the KGB/CIA and tons of military-related books make up my personal library. So I need a book fix on a regular basis and God was kind enough to put a Borders in Sand City and that's on my way to and from work. So I will stop into Borders at least twice a week to see what's new.
I began to notice something around 1997.
I was standing in the "New Age" section scanning for new ghost titles when this weaselly little man just leaned right in front of me for a few seconds and then pulled out a book. Since I was in the "New Age" section I blew it off as an encounter with a local weirdo. A few days later I was at the magazine rack and a well dressed woman just shoved her way in front of me to grab a magazine about dogs. I then became aware that people were just cutting people off at one moment while blocking the isle in another. These were all white and wealthy people acting like apes.
[ for those of you who may be confused as to why this bothers me I will bring you up to speed. It's all about manners. When I was nine years old my mother spend a lot of money so that I could attend a dance school. I have no clue as to why she did this because I never had expressed any interest in dancing and I was so traumatized by this that I refuse to dance today, even at gunpoint. However, this dance class was filled with the children of wealthy Pebble Beach and Carmel Valley people. Half the time was spent on etiquette, proper greetings and how to act like young ladies and gentlemen. Later, as I worked in a beauty salon for a couple of summers I was taught further proper manners and learned that these manner pay off in many ways. I also have learned from my Gangsta friends that bad manners will get your ass kicked because they will just assume that if you are a douche then you MUST be looking for a fight. So instead of pushing your way past people you first say "Excuse Me", or "Pardon me" and then allow the person to get out of your way. Also a well mannered person will keep their wits about them so that they don't block people who need to get through. If you insist on living with your head up your ass then you are a douche bag.]
So here I am surrounded by white upper and upper-middle class people who are acting doltish. Once I had become aware of this I began to go to Borders just to watch people just as Jane Goodall watched Chimpanzees. I was amazed at how rude and brutish the upper crust had become. I would focus on the biggest offenders and watch them as they returned to their cars. Sure enough they'd often had Pebble Beach tags or stickers on their windshield indicating a gated community or the City of Carmel.
Many of these people are completely worthless. One of my favorite places to eavesdrop is near the information desk. I only need to be there a few minutes before some twit arrives at the counter to torture the staff with his boundless bafoonery:
Twit: "Yes, I'm looking for a book"
Information: "What's the title?"
Twit: "I don't know, it has a red cover"
Info: "Do you know who the author is?"
Twit: "Yes, that famous guy"
And so on and so on. The twit was so impressed by that famous guy that he ran down to buy the book but not impressed enough to pick up a pen and write the title and the name down. Needless to say that next the twit becomes frustrated by the young girl at the information desk because she has no clue what the hell he's talking about. On a good day, a four-star twit will track down every employee in the store and ask them if they know what book he's talking about.
Then there are the people who either won't hold the door open for you or can't bring themselves to say "Thank You" for holding the door open for them. SAY THANK YOU, it won't cost you a dime. White people are the ONLY people who are this thoughtless. All other ethnic types will say thank you or something else nice. When a person cannot say thank you for a another person's selfless act they need an ass kicking and I fear that one day I will put one of the large on-sale coffee table books that Borders displays near the front door to a more creative use.
Everybody say it with me now: T H A N K Y O U!
Try it, people will think you're the Pope.
Then there are the white people on their cell phones talking real loud as if they are on Iwo Jima in an artillery barrage. Cell phone etiquette is a who other thread but if you don't think that everyone within earshot isn't secretly hoping that the IDF has planted C-4 in your earpiece then you are a lost cause. Again this is an issue almost exclusive to upscale white people. I see other non-white people on their phones but they're usually talking in a normal tone and volume of voice.
Borders selection of on-the-shelf titles is revealing as well. Their "Self-Help" section is four times as large as their "Do it yourself" section. There are almost 200 titles relating to Nazi Germany and Hitler both in the military and European history sections. The Nazis are equalled only by titles in the "Gay Studies" section, which dwarfs the African-American and Native American Studies sections. There are currently 17 titles about Che Guevara but only one on Zapata. U.S. History is dominated by the Civil War, JFK, Lincoln, Reagan and Lee Harvey Oswald. The Science Fiction section is four times as large as the Science section. In fact, there are more books on Witchcraft as there are about Platetechonics. The magazine rack is full of women's magazines, men's fitness magazines, computer magazines, craft magazines, sports magazines, movie magazines, political commentary magazines but only carries a small section of history and news magazines.
The also have a good newspaper selection and even though there is a sign that asks "Please purchase newspapers before reading" you can always find some guy there reading a news paper(usually a large one like the NY Times) and take a wild guess what ethnic background he is! Plus you can always count on the guy to not bother returning the newspaper to a saleable state before he shuffles off to somewhere else. It is remarkable that in a time when newspapers are fighting to survive that a person whole loves to read them cannot bring himself to plunk down .50 cents or $5 for a Sunday edition. When they all eventually fail my guess it will be these white cheapskates who will cry the loudest.
The issue here is the devastation of thoughtlessness that now pollutes the white upper-class . Behavior that in the 1960s that would have been thought oafish, tacky and rude are seemingly acceptable. It's not exclusive to Borders at all, I will chronicle my expeditions into other upper-class white bastions such as Trader Joe's and the bike/walking path. However I won't make you read 20 or 30 posts until I get to my underlying theme. I've always hated the phrase "New Money" because it was mostly used by other "New Money"-types to insult those who's success had opened the door to exclusive places; that said "New Money" best describes the makeup of this hoard of dufuses.
There problem isn't that they're wealthy it's that they're pretending to be something that they are not. They have made money the center of their lives and eschewing the accouterments that once marked the upper class ( etiquette, good taste, patients and reserve). Old-school wealthy folks saw money as a tool or a means to an end but not as the sole point of living. They understood that money comes and goes and that wealth can vanish in an instant. They tended to embrace life and enjoy people whereas today these new types are too self-centered. If you aren't rich then you can't do anything for them and they'll tell you to fuck off. In the old days the old-guard would at the very least offer you a polite smile and a kind word. They'd never judge people by wealth because they were in the unique position to know that wealthy people could be jackasses as well. This new breed is not only lost but they have begun to undermine our social and economic fabric as they exclude undesirables and embrace questionable economic practices.
But that's another post.
I began to notice something around 1997.
I was standing in the "New Age" section scanning for new ghost titles when this weaselly little man just leaned right in front of me for a few seconds and then pulled out a book. Since I was in the "New Age" section I blew it off as an encounter with a local weirdo. A few days later I was at the magazine rack and a well dressed woman just shoved her way in front of me to grab a magazine about dogs. I then became aware that people were just cutting people off at one moment while blocking the isle in another. These were all white and wealthy people acting like apes.
[ for those of you who may be confused as to why this bothers me I will bring you up to speed. It's all about manners. When I was nine years old my mother spend a lot of money so that I could attend a dance school. I have no clue as to why she did this because I never had expressed any interest in dancing and I was so traumatized by this that I refuse to dance today, even at gunpoint. However, this dance class was filled with the children of wealthy Pebble Beach and Carmel Valley people. Half the time was spent on etiquette, proper greetings and how to act like young ladies and gentlemen. Later, as I worked in a beauty salon for a couple of summers I was taught further proper manners and learned that these manner pay off in many ways. I also have learned from my Gangsta friends that bad manners will get your ass kicked because they will just assume that if you are a douche then you MUST be looking for a fight. So instead of pushing your way past people you first say "Excuse Me", or "Pardon me" and then allow the person to get out of your way. Also a well mannered person will keep their wits about them so that they don't block people who need to get through. If you insist on living with your head up your ass then you are a douche bag.]
So here I am surrounded by white upper and upper-middle class people who are acting doltish. Once I had become aware of this I began to go to Borders just to watch people just as Jane Goodall watched Chimpanzees. I was amazed at how rude and brutish the upper crust had become. I would focus on the biggest offenders and watch them as they returned to their cars. Sure enough they'd often had Pebble Beach tags or stickers on their windshield indicating a gated community or the City of Carmel.
Many of these people are completely worthless. One of my favorite places to eavesdrop is near the information desk. I only need to be there a few minutes before some twit arrives at the counter to torture the staff with his boundless bafoonery:
Twit: "Yes, I'm looking for a book"
Information: "What's the title?"
Twit: "I don't know, it has a red cover"
Info: "Do you know who the author is?"
Twit: "Yes, that famous guy"
And so on and so on. The twit was so impressed by that famous guy that he ran down to buy the book but not impressed enough to pick up a pen and write the title and the name down. Needless to say that next the twit becomes frustrated by the young girl at the information desk because she has no clue what the hell he's talking about. On a good day, a four-star twit will track down every employee in the store and ask them if they know what book he's talking about.
Then there are the people who either won't hold the door open for you or can't bring themselves to say "Thank You" for holding the door open for them. SAY THANK YOU, it won't cost you a dime. White people are the ONLY people who are this thoughtless. All other ethnic types will say thank you or something else nice. When a person cannot say thank you for a another person's selfless act they need an ass kicking and I fear that one day I will put one of the large on-sale coffee table books that Borders displays near the front door to a more creative use.
Everybody say it with me now: T H A N K Y O U!
Try it, people will think you're the Pope.
Then there are the white people on their cell phones talking real loud as if they are on Iwo Jima in an artillery barrage. Cell phone etiquette is a who other thread but if you don't think that everyone within earshot isn't secretly hoping that the IDF has planted C-4 in your earpiece then you are a lost cause. Again this is an issue almost exclusive to upscale white people. I see other non-white people on their phones but they're usually talking in a normal tone and volume of voice.
Borders selection of on-the-shelf titles is revealing as well. Their "Self-Help" section is four times as large as their "Do it yourself" section. There are almost 200 titles relating to Nazi Germany and Hitler both in the military and European history sections. The Nazis are equalled only by titles in the "Gay Studies" section, which dwarfs the African-American and Native American Studies sections. There are currently 17 titles about Che Guevara but only one on Zapata. U.S. History is dominated by the Civil War, JFK, Lincoln, Reagan and Lee Harvey Oswald. The Science Fiction section is four times as large as the Science section. In fact, there are more books on Witchcraft as there are about Platetechonics. The magazine rack is full of women's magazines, men's fitness magazines, computer magazines, craft magazines, sports magazines, movie magazines, political commentary magazines but only carries a small section of history and news magazines.
The also have a good newspaper selection and even though there is a sign that asks "Please purchase newspapers before reading" you can always find some guy there reading a news paper(usually a large one like the NY Times) and take a wild guess what ethnic background he is! Plus you can always count on the guy to not bother returning the newspaper to a saleable state before he shuffles off to somewhere else. It is remarkable that in a time when newspapers are fighting to survive that a person whole loves to read them cannot bring himself to plunk down .50 cents or $5 for a Sunday edition. When they all eventually fail my guess it will be these white cheapskates who will cry the loudest.
The issue here is the devastation of thoughtlessness that now pollutes the white upper-class . Behavior that in the 1960s that would have been thought oafish, tacky and rude are seemingly acceptable. It's not exclusive to Borders at all, I will chronicle my expeditions into other upper-class white bastions such as Trader Joe's and the bike/walking path. However I won't make you read 20 or 30 posts until I get to my underlying theme. I've always hated the phrase "New Money" because it was mostly used by other "New Money"-types to insult those who's success had opened the door to exclusive places; that said "New Money" best describes the makeup of this hoard of dufuses.
There problem isn't that they're wealthy it's that they're pretending to be something that they are not. They have made money the center of their lives and eschewing the accouterments that once marked the upper class ( etiquette, good taste, patients and reserve). Old-school wealthy folks saw money as a tool or a means to an end but not as the sole point of living. They understood that money comes and goes and that wealth can vanish in an instant. They tended to embrace life and enjoy people whereas today these new types are too self-centered. If you aren't rich then you can't do anything for them and they'll tell you to fuck off. In the old days the old-guard would at the very least offer you a polite smile and a kind word. They'd never judge people by wealth because they were in the unique position to know that wealthy people could be jackasses as well. This new breed is not only lost but they have begun to undermine our social and economic fabric as they exclude undesirables and embrace questionable economic practices.
But that's another post.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Classy Rich People I Knew
To start this all off I need to illustrate what I base my observations on. My intellectual foundation for what constituted "Class" in those few folks I'd met in my life that I now use to measure the decline in that social stratus now.
The First person I only knew as Mrs. Firestone. Mrs. Firestone was married into the Firestone Tire family and I knew her from All Saint's Church in Carmel. Mrs. Firestone was cool. She drove a Volkswagen Beetle (yes, it had Forestone tires) and was a fixture in the kitchen during the many pot-luck diners. She was kind and outgoing and I never saw her make anyone feel like less of a person because they didn't have as much money as she. She quietly helped out those in the church who were in need but never wore that on her sleeve.
The next man was an interesting guy named Johny Urnstead, I apologize if I've misspelled his name. Johny was a flaming homosexual who was a trust-fund baby rich from Texas oil. Johny was friends with one of my sycophant bosses and would come into the restaurant that I worked in. Johny was insanely wealthy. He always made a point to remember every one's name and always asked me how my mother was. Johny was flamboyant and enjoyed life. He also never rubbed his wealth in your face and never made people feel as if they were lessor than he because they didn't have millions in the bank.
Clint Eastwood is someone who's been part of the Carmel landscape since the 1960s. I've met and talked to him a number of times as it's impossible not to bump into him around town over the span of a single year. Clint is a good neighbor. He stands in line at the market (when he could have his goodies delivered), if there is nobody at his office he will go up to the post office and stand in line there and while he's in line he makes a point to say hello to people he recognizes. He refuses the star treatment while in town. Clint donates tons of money to the Carmel Youth Center and when Arnold Schwarzenegger was clearing out his year-old gym equipment Clint got him to donate it all to the Youth Center. The coolest thing Clint has done was buy an artichoke field on the south side of the mouth of Carmel river to use as a flood plain should the river overflow. The Mission Fields area on the other side of the river had flooded in 1996 and while the county wanted to buy the fields as a flood plain they didn't have the money. So Clint stepped in an (with his ex-wife, Maggie) saved the day. Yes, Clint got a substantial tax break from the county but it paid for itself within three years when the river threatened to flood again.
There are more but these folks stand out.
Let me make this clear, none of those people ever invited me over to their homes for parties and they never wanted to be my friend. I'm also sure that not everyone has had positive experiences with these people either. That's not the point. These three embody the way things used to be in the land of the wealthy, they never pushed people around unless warranted and they were always polite. They invested in the community both because it benefited them and because it was the right thing to do. Yes, they all belonged to exclusive, member's only clubs where I could never go but that's acceptable to me because I have nothing in common with them nor their friends. They never rubbed their wealth in the faces of the community, almost never dressed flashy unless the situation demanded it.
They all three said "Please", "Excuse Me" and "Thank You". Something that you rarely hear today in the current habitat of the wealthy white person.
Next entry: Borders Bookstore - Oasis of the Wealthy and Upper-Middle Class.
The First person I only knew as Mrs. Firestone. Mrs. Firestone was married into the Firestone Tire family and I knew her from All Saint's Church in Carmel. Mrs. Firestone was cool. She drove a Volkswagen Beetle (yes, it had Forestone tires) and was a fixture in the kitchen during the many pot-luck diners. She was kind and outgoing and I never saw her make anyone feel like less of a person because they didn't have as much money as she. She quietly helped out those in the church who were in need but never wore that on her sleeve.
The next man was an interesting guy named Johny Urnstead, I apologize if I've misspelled his name. Johny was a flaming homosexual who was a trust-fund baby rich from Texas oil. Johny was friends with one of my sycophant bosses and would come into the restaurant that I worked in. Johny was insanely wealthy. He always made a point to remember every one's name and always asked me how my mother was. Johny was flamboyant and enjoyed life. He also never rubbed his wealth in your face and never made people feel as if they were lessor than he because they didn't have millions in the bank.
Clint Eastwood is someone who's been part of the Carmel landscape since the 1960s. I've met and talked to him a number of times as it's impossible not to bump into him around town over the span of a single year. Clint is a good neighbor. He stands in line at the market (when he could have his goodies delivered), if there is nobody at his office he will go up to the post office and stand in line there and while he's in line he makes a point to say hello to people he recognizes. He refuses the star treatment while in town. Clint donates tons of money to the Carmel Youth Center and when Arnold Schwarzenegger was clearing out his year-old gym equipment Clint got him to donate it all to the Youth Center. The coolest thing Clint has done was buy an artichoke field on the south side of the mouth of Carmel river to use as a flood plain should the river overflow. The Mission Fields area on the other side of the river had flooded in 1996 and while the county wanted to buy the fields as a flood plain they didn't have the money. So Clint stepped in an (with his ex-wife, Maggie) saved the day. Yes, Clint got a substantial tax break from the county but it paid for itself within three years when the river threatened to flood again.
There are more but these folks stand out.
Let me make this clear, none of those people ever invited me over to their homes for parties and they never wanted to be my friend. I'm also sure that not everyone has had positive experiences with these people either. That's not the point. These three embody the way things used to be in the land of the wealthy, they never pushed people around unless warranted and they were always polite. They invested in the community both because it benefited them and because it was the right thing to do. Yes, they all belonged to exclusive, member's only clubs where I could never go but that's acceptable to me because I have nothing in common with them nor their friends. They never rubbed their wealth in the faces of the community, almost never dressed flashy unless the situation demanded it.
They all three said "Please", "Excuse Me" and "Thank You". Something that you rarely hear today in the current habitat of the wealthy white person.
Next entry: Borders Bookstore - Oasis of the Wealthy and Upper-Middle Class.
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