Two Tumblr Blogs: The Manna Tease & Five Word Poems

Hello. You may have noticed that itwaslost.org is updated much less frequently than in the golden era. We're not dead, and we will continue to use this ole blogger bloggity blog to log-roll and blog-roll, and occasionally post some new writing, art, or music.

However, our energies in the blogosphere are more concentrated right now at certain other projects: there's two tumblr blogs you should follow if you are a tumblererer. The first centers on music projects related to our folk duo The Manna Tease. (We've also been posting Spotify mixtapes and other delicacies in addition to our music videos, et cetera.) The address is themannatease.tumblr.com.

The second brand new tumblr blog is exclusively devoted to FIVE WORD POEMS. We published some five word poems here two years ago, inspired by the Five Word Poems of F. Keith Wahle. The new tumblr blog will post the entire series of Wahle's and mine own daily for the next year, and hopefully more to come. There is also a way to SUBMIT your own directly to the blog. Please do, if you are an aspiring five word poet. Add these new blogs to your feeds!

9/11 Was An Inside Job: the song & a new video

For the anniversary of 9/11, here's a new video of my song "9/11 was an inside job," exposing many truths:

This song was previously posted, with lyrics & chords & a rehearsal mp3 here.

The Manna Tease on facebooks here.

Henry K. Lee - The Manna Tease sing it live for the real Henry K. Lee!

The real Henry K. Lee with the real Manna Tease

On Thursday night, a band of east bay journalists had a party at the Warehouse, a divey cop bar in Oakland (quite thematically perfect.) They invited us, the Manna Tease, to come serenade them with our song "Henry K. Lee." The song was inspired by the bay area section of the San Francisco Chronicle, wherein almost every gruesome article about crime is written by one man, Henry K. Lee. My earlier youtube of it had become quasi-famous amongst colleagues of the real Henry K. Lee and other people who worked on crime news in the bay area. (It was featured on blogs here, here, here & here.) It was lovely to actually meet him, altho the real Henry K. Lee, a cheerful & charming man with seemingly few demons, is the opposite of the cheap-suit-wearing, chain-smoking man we had mythologized. We promised a better quality youtube (the original was just a camera phone rehearsal, &c.) & we now doubly deliver, with a fancier one & also the live one from the Warehouse:

Enough! or two too much! of that song. Lyrics & chords posted here. Henry K. Lee's facebook page here, & if you don't get the Chronicle, you can get his book Presumed Dead here.


Please "like" the Manna Tease on facebooks here.

I destroyed the New York Times computer at Rock Paper Scissors

Look, I pulverized the New York Times Roshambo-playing computer. (It was their "novice" computer, that learns as it goes, but still. They also have an advanced one.) I challenge anyone to beat my score in 50 games.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/rock-paper-scissors.html#

The Ballad of Henry K. Lee featured on KQED news blog

Jon Brooks posted our Henry K. Lee song on the KQED news blog this morning, and added further mythologizing to the legendary Lee:

A Musical Homage to the Chronicle Crime Reporter: The Ballad of Henry K. Lee

June 30, 2011, 10:29 am • Posted by Jon Brooks

I don't think you have to do exactly what I do every morning to fully appreciate the video below, but it would probably help.

See, it's my 6:30 a.m. pleasure each day to sift through a hundred or so articles from Bay Area media, culling the most important news for inclusion in our Morning Splash feature. Among the municipal affairs of state -- the budgets, court decisions, and political goings-on -- inevitably, included in the pool of potentially newsworthy items, is the crime reporting of the Chronicle's Henry K. Lee.

• Man found shot to death in downtown Santa Rosa - Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer (Jun 30)
  
• Fairfield, CA, market owner killed in robbery - Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer (Jun 29)
  
• Mom, daughter guilty of murdering Dublin woman, 91 - Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer (Jun 28)
  

During those groggy 6:30 a.m. sessions, it's been my indulgence to picture Mr. Lee as a Weegee-like figure, working late into the night to chronicle the region's noiresque underbelly. Haunted, perhaps, by the things he's seen, the places he's been, the dark corners of minds touched by just enough madness to murder. Yet driven by duty, professionalism -- hey, it's a job -- he carries on, carries on, cigarettes and flask at the ready for the rare moments it all becomes just a little too much...

And then I'm moving on to read about the Twitter tax break or the redevelopment fight...

Silly, I know. But someone else has also engaged in projections about the man-of-a-thousand-crime-scenes, the Berkeley-based rock duo The Manna Tease. Pretty awesome song, I think:

Lyrics and more about the song here.

And he linked to The Manna Tease facebook page and to this blog! most excellent. Thank you Mr Brooks. The "real" Henry K. Lee posted it on his facebook page and added "Thanks to KQED's Jon Brooks for this post -- and his comparison to me as a 'Weegee-like' figure! (I had to look that up on Wikipedia!)."

There were also some positive reactions from other Bay Area journalists on Twitter:

@JulieStrack: Which former @dailycal writer has contributed more to popular music -- Jann Wenner or @henryklee ?http://t.co/UCQti7T

@matthai: @MannaTease We loved it. Your song was just hilarious. Those of us who work with @henryklee have been singing the lyrics to him.

@katieworth: Amazing ballad about Chron reporter @henryklee: http://t.co/5vUmbUG. Hey @hankschulman, how come you don't have one?

@SovernNation: @Josh_Richman @HenryKLee I want one about Melrose! A guy on the street sang me a song he wrote about me once called "The Lonely Newsman"

@Josh_Richman: My career will not be complete until someone writes a song about me, as this man has done for @HenryKLeehttp://t.co/HZM35QH via @youtube

@jpanzar: A truly amazing ballad: "If it's crime and it's grimy, it's written by @henryklee."http://t.co/E36YeQ8 ... via @WgKANE

Most of those twitterers were reporters who work for the SF Chronicle, SF Examiner, Daily Cal, and others. The biggest fans of that song seem to be journalists who actually know the man himself. I wonder if I can cull some promotional quotes from those. All I've got so far is "croons... for seemingly no reason at all." -SF Weekly.

Here's the demon mp3 of the song, available for a dollar if you desire:

Song: Henry K. Lee

Hot off the presses: the Ballad of Henry K. Lee, The San Francisco Chronicle's staff crime reporter. This song is sort of in the style of early Dylan-esque straight-from-the-news folk ballads, inspired by the Bay Area section of the newspaper. Every time I open it, I notice there's like five articles about depressing crime (usually in the East Bay), "2 Teens Shot in Hayward," "2 More Beheaded in Piedmont," et cetera. And those articles are always written by one man: Henry K. Lee. (Look, the top article today written by him is called "Putting baby in oven an inexplicable horror." You can't make this up.) So he began to achieve almost mythological status in my imagination: I picture him chain-smoking cigars in a grey office somewhere downtown Oakland, reporting the grisliest crime is a day job for him. This song was written for the Manna Tease to sing (please "like" us on Facebooks!) However, we deemed some of the verses too heavy for our shows, so I recorded this more intense version now for the youtubes, and when we redo it with Minnie Molly Mary, we'll replace the "raped her at school" verse with the lighter additional verses below.

Henry K. Lee

amin G F emin
Henry Harrison, (unrelated to the president),
amin G F emin
Arrested in Oakland, driving while intoxicated.
amin G F emin
In prison he acted up, flooded his toilet,
amin G F emin
And Harrison was restrained by an over-zealous deputy.
dmim amin
They tased him to death!
dmin amin
They tased him to death!
dmin emin
And the article in the Chronicle
F G C

Was written by Henry K Lee.

amin G F emin

Henry K. Lee, Henry K. Lee,

dmin amin dmin amin
The newspaper’s gritty as this naughty city.
dmin emin
If it’s crime & it’s grimy,
F G C
It’s covered by Henry K. Lee.

April in Alameda, at the animal prison,
A canine jailbreak, Max the Pit Bull’s gone missin’!
They hunted the hound to a motel in Reno,
And his owner Melissa Perry, booked for stolen property.
And they put him to sleep!
They put Max to sleep!
And the article in the Chronicle was written by Henry K. Lee.
Henry K. Lee, &c...

A grade school in Vallejo has secrets in its classrooms.
56-year-old Jerry Johnson taught Special Educations,
His young teenage aide had a developmental disability,
Incapable of consenting, with a child’s mental capacity.

He raped her at school!

He raped her at school!

And the article in the Chronicle was written by Henry K. Lee.

Henry K. Lee, &c...

Over-caffeinated at a coffee shop, I pick up the news,
The Bay Area section has its own special blues,
If I had a dime for each sad crime told daily
By Henry K. Lee, I’d buy me a ukulele.
How do you sleep, Henry?
What are your dreams, Henry?
I worry for you, Henry, & pray you’ll never write about me.

Additional verses:

Kathleen Millikin visited a holistic clinic:
There Edward Feng sold her, quote, “Six God Tablets.”
She suffered an earache and blisters and lesions:
These “Spirit Pills” had arsenic derived from toad poisons.
The doc was a quack,
The doc was a quack.
And the article in the Chronicle was written by Henry K. Lee.

©2011 The Manna Tease

UPDATE: Here's an mp3 of it, available for a dollar if you desire:

Three Years Ago: There Were Alligators in the New York Sewers

Moving into 2008 for our feature Three Years Ago, where we re-post a hot post from EXACTLY THREE YEARS AGO:

_____________________________________________________

Jan Harold Brunvand, in his famous book on urban legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker (1981), debunks most of the teenagey scary-story myths on which he reports. One of the most bizarre ones tho, about alligators in the New York City sewers, he finds corroborative evidence proving true. The standard urban legend was that kids all over the city had bought baby alligators (imported for sale or brought back from vacation from Florida), &, when they grew too big or dangerous, flushed them down the toilets. Whereupon, they grew to giant, blind, sometimes albino, rat-eating, secret monsters (the story, like all urban legends, has many variants). Thomas Pynchon - another reclusive blind, albino monster - elaborates in an episode from his novel V (1963):

Did he remember the baby alligators? Last year, or maybe the year before, kids all over Nueva York bought these alligators for pets. Macy's was selling them for fifty cents; every child, it seemed, had to have one. But soon the children grew bored with them. Some set them loose in the streets, but most flushed them down the toilets. And these had grown & reproduced, had few of rats & sewage, so that now they moved big, blind, albino, all over the sewer system. Down there, God knew how many there were. Some had turned cannibal because in their neighborhood the rats had all been eaten, or had fled in terror.

There is also the Alligator Patrol, which hunts them down. Brunvand then describes 1960's legends about a potent "White Weed" which grows "lushly in the sewer because of the nutrients," (pg. 92), but people are deterred from harvesting because of the alligators. As I said, he dismisses as having no origin most of the legends he describes in the book. But this one, remarkably, can be linked back to newspaper stories from the 1930s (this headline from the New York Times, February 10th, 1935):

ALLIGATOR FOUND IN UPTOWN SEWER

Youths Shoveling Snow Into Manhole

See the Animal Churning in Icy Water

SNARE IT AND DRAG IT OUT

Reptile Slain by Rescuers

When It Gets Vicious-

Whence It Came Is Mystery

The article continues with the full story. Furthermore, there are public works records corroborating the existence of alligators:

According to a former New York City Commissioner of Sewers there was a problem with alligators in the sewers in the mid 1930s. In his book on the development of utilities beneath Manhattan Island, titled The World Beneath the City, Robert Daley claims that recurrent reports of alligators in the sewers finally forced Sewer Commissioner Teddy May to investigate the situation personally. May told Daley that he did find alligators (averaging two-feet long); he immediately launched a campaign to eradicate them [like Pynchon's Alligator Patrol!], & was able to announce their extermination by 1937. [Brunvand, pg. 97]

There's more info, & a host of popular culture references, at this wikipedia article: Sewer Alligators.

''It's crazy, you know,'' Diana Odetalla said. ''I don't know where alligators come from. Out of nowhere, I guess.''

-NY Times, "Alligator is Found", June 29th, 1997.

Socks with Sandals goes all the way to the top

At Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity last October, there was a man with a sign saying "Socks with Sandals" which I posted here. This is a cause I chauvinistically support. A picture was floating around the Huffington Post that showed George W Bush on vacation when he was president (it was in response to "should the President dress like this?" bullshit about Obama's casual wear in Hawai'i.) Look closely, I believe our movement has a new messiah. He's not only wearing crocks with socks, but the socks have the presidential seal on them!

I hereby Spearhead the Initiative to Introduce a Special Department of Socks with Sandals as a Special Sub-Department of the Department of Fashion (with Grainne's approval of course.)

News: Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal signed by Obama today

This is a nice anecdote at the bottom of the New York Times article about the Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal signed this morning:

The audience for the ceremony included a who’s who of gay activists, among them Frank Kameny, who was fired from a civilian job as an Army astronomer in 1957 — an act that prompted him to found a gay rights advocacy organization in Washington D.C. and to file a lawsuit which went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1965 he picketed the White House, in the first ever demonstration there by gays.

Now white-haired at 85, Mr. Kameny also served as an enlisted Army soldier; he signed up in May 1943, he said, three days before he turned 18, and saw “front line combat” in Germany during World War II. He said he was asked if he had “homosexual tendencies” and denied it. “They asked, and I didn’t tell,” he said, “and I resented for 67 years that I had to lie.”

Department of Brian Wilson: New York Times Profiles Brian Wilson

Back to Brian Wilson. He was brought in last night (game one of the World Series in San Francisco) at the very end of the ninth, let a few more runs in, and then ended the game with the bizarre score 11-7. The New York Times today includes a profile of Brian Wilson, here's a lengthy excerpt:

Relief pitchers have tended to be odd, with closers typically occupying the far end of that spectrum. Brian Wilson, the San Francisco Giants’ closer, is one of the oddest.

Start with the easy stuff, like his physical appearance. There’s the hair, part mohawk and part mullet; the tattoos; and the perpetually unbuttoned jersey.

There are the bright orange spikes, for which he was fined $1,000 by Major League Baseball because they failed to conform to the standard of being at least 50 percent black. (He brought them up to code with a marker.)

And there is his preternaturally black beard — dyed several shades darker than the rest of his hair with what appears to be industrial-grade shoe polish — which has inspired five Facebook pages and a marketing campaign. The slogan “Fear the Beard” adorns any number of T-shirts in Giants souvenir stands.

It is what is behind the beard, however, that gives Wilson his edge.

He is an entertaining interview: on Jim Rome’s radio show this summer he claimed to be a certified ninja and a mental assassin. He has explored his roots in the off-season by backpacking through Ireland (staying at hostels) and India (where he showed cricket players how he throws a 95-mile-per-hour fastball).

More recently, he earned attention for interviews that could have doubled as performance art. In one, a nearly naked man strolled across the background as Wilson was interviewed live via satellite from his house. [...]

But what gives Wilson more depth and makes him more intriguing is his manner inside the Giants’ clubhouse. There he makes extraordinary efforts to fit in, and to draw in others. Notably, he is a regular at the Latino-dominated dominoes table in the locker room. On the outstanding and colorful Boston Red Sox teams of 2003 and 2004, Kevin Millar was the ringleader who went out of his way to make sure his Hispanic teammates were involved. A half-decade later, Wilson appears to have the same instincts.

“These are your teammates,” Wilson said. “It doesn’t matter what country they’re from. It doesn’t matter what language they speak. It doesn’t matter what they wear. It’s impossible for me not to say hello to everybody, not to have a conversation. It’s the way I am. It’s the way the whole team is. You have all the different personalities on all sides, and they’re all yelling at each other and meeting in the middle.”

If Wilson has his say, the Giants will win a championship sometime in the next 10 days, the first for the organization since 1954, four years before it moved to San Francisco.

That would leave one outstanding goal for their closer before next spring training.

“I’d like to be a crossword clue one day,” he said. “I want to be in The New York Times’s Sunday edition. Right now, the clue ‘Giants great’ is always Mel Ott. I want my clue to be down, not across. The down ones are usually harder. And when I’m the clue, I’ll fill it in — just that one — and frame it.

“How sweet would that be?”

News UPDATE: RIP Adolfo Bravo!

More information was published today about the shooting across the street from my house. It doesn't actually say this, but I believe the murderers are wanted dead or alive, so proceed accordingly. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A $17,000 reward is being offered for tips leading to the conviction of the person who shot and killed a Berkeley man as he was walking home with his fiancee, police said today.

Adolfo Ignacio Celedon Bravo, 35, and his fiancee were walking home from a party when they were attacked by two robbers at Adeline and Emerson streets in south Berkeley about 3:40 a.m. Sunday, police said.

Celedon was shot numerous times and died at Highland Hospital in Oakland later Sunday. It was the Chilean native's 35th birthday.

The woman, whose name was not released, was punched and suffered minor injuries.

"I hope that this pain and this bad feeling will begin to pass within the days and the months, and finally we will remember Adolfo the way he was, a funny guy who loved life and was very happy to be in San Francisco with the love of his life, preparing to marry and looking forward to the future," said Alvaro Farru Betinyani, Celedon's brother-in-law.

The killers were described only as two black men between 25 and 35 years old. They fled in an older model, two-tone sport utility vehicle that was last seen heading west on Ashby Avenue, police said.

The city is offering a $15,000 reward, and Bay Area Crime Stoppers is offering a $2,000 reward. Anyone with information is asked to call homicide investigators at (510) 981-5741 or Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477.

News: Man shot dead across the street from HERE

Six shots across the street from me at 3:41am! (I peacefully slept thru it... My upstairs neighbor called the cops, & I woke up from the doorbell.) From the East Bay Express:

It has finally happened: The victim of an armed robbery in Berkeley has been shot and killed.

Those of us who follow crime reports in Berkeley know that armed robberies, while not frequent, are common on these streets. The UC Police Department issues bulletins about such stickups every other week or so; the Berkeley Police Department has stopped posting its daily crime logs online, but before it stopped posting them, armed robberies were reported about every week. But the sequence of events is the same almost every time: Pedestrian walks along minding his or her own business; robber appears suddenly (having walked up behind victim or head-on into victim or having jumped out of a car that has pulled up alongside victim); robber points gun at victim and threatens to kill victim; victim hands over cash or places it on sidewalk as directed; robber seizes property and departs. Sometimes the robbers sadistically punch or kick or pistol-whip the victims before departing, but don't kill them.

This has changed. An armed-robbery victim was murdered in South Berkeley early this morning. An email just received from BPD Sergeant Mary Kusmiss reads:

"City of Berkeley Police Department Homicide Detectives are investigating an early morning shooting at Adeline and Emerson Streets in South Berkeley that has left one man dead.

"On Sunday morning, at approximately 3:41 a.m., the victim, a 35 year old man who moved to the City of Berkeley in February and his fiancée were walking home after having attended a party. Two male suspects confronted the couple with the intent to commit a robbery. During the robbery, one of the suspects shot the victim. One of the suspects also punched the woman during the crime. She sustained minor physical injuries.

"The suspects got into an older model possible midsize two tone Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) and fled west bound on Ashby Avenue after the crimes.

"Berkeley Fire Department (BFD) paramedics transported the victim to a local trauma center where he was pronounced dead. BPD will not be releasing the victim’s name out of respect for those family or friends that have yet to learn of his death. In addition, BPD waits for verification of a homicide victim’s identity until it is confirmed by fingerprints taken during the Alameda County Coroner’s autopsy process.

"BPD is urging anyone who may know anything about this homicide to call the BPD Homicide Detail at (510) 981-5741 or the 24 hour BPD non emergency number of (510) 981-5900. If a community member wishes to remain anonymous, he/she is encouraged to call the Bay Area Crimes Stoppers (BACS) at (800)-222-TIPS (8477). Any information may be critical to solving this crime. Sometimes the smallest or seemingly insignificant detail can be the key to arresting the suspect or suspects in any crime."

Department of Bears UPDATE: "Near Lake Tahoe There's a Bear So Tough, Bullets Bounce Off His Head"

The famous bear in my hometown - Incline Village, Nevada - recently made the Wall Street Journal this week with the sensational headline printed above. (Bubba has broken into my parents' garage, & has previously been mentioned in our Department of Bears) From the article:

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev.—In hot pursuit of a notorious burglar along the shores of Lake Tahoe this year, Carl Lackey organized a night patrol to catch the perp. His tools included a fire extinguisher, pepper spray and two dogs that respond only to commands in Russian.

"These dogs were bred to hunt," says Mr. Lackey, 45 years old.

A 700-pound black bear known as Bubba is accused of breaking into at least 50 homes around Lake Tahoe. WSJ's Marie Baca reports on the elusive ursine bandit.

Driven from the mountains by the 2009-2010 winter—the snowiest in five years—and feeding off the garbage left by tourists, Bubba is living large on Lake Tahoe's shores. The bear has broken into at least 50 homes in search of food the past year, causing more than $70,000 of damage, and leaving stinky, basketball-size deposits as his calling card.

So Mr. Lackey has ramped up his bear-catching techniques, deviating from his usual strategy of just laying traps by going on 3 a.m. patrols. This past winter, he placed a shoot-to-kill order, declaring Bubba dangerous and saying the bear "needs to go out of the population."

[continue reading]

Three Years Ago: Shakespeare & Local Terrorism

For THREE YEARS AGO, this blog's celebration of its more-than-three-year-oldness, we repost some local drama & an interesting letter-to-the-editor:

___________________________

The local media was closely following the assassination of the editor of the Oakland Post, by some zealous bakers at a place called "Your Black Muslim Bakery" on San Pablo. They have been apprehended for other crimes, & the bakery was shut down for "sanitary" reasons. I think this guy's commentary in the Berkeley Daily Planet well grasps the scope of issues (both 21st Century & classical) in this public drama. Truly the stuff of a poetic five act play, with cookies - sort of "Merchant of Venice" meets "Chocolat".

Commentary: Your Black Muslim Bakery (Or What’s Left Of It)
By David Nebenzahl (08-14-07)

You’re gone now, it looks like for good. That’s a shame, at least for me personally. Let me explain.

For the past five years or so, my breakfast has invariably consisted of a single cup of strong coffee, home-brewed, and one of your sweet rolls. The same thing every day for five years. Actually longer: When I lived on the Peninsula in the 1990s, I used to buy these same rolls from the now-departed Palo Alto Co-op. Back then they seemed somewhat exotic, coming from a place called “Your Black Muslim Bakery” and labeled “A Taste of the Hereafter.”

In any case, they were damn good sweet rolls. I also treated myself to your excellent fish sandwiches from time to time.

So even though I will definitely not miss the actions of the thugs who were part of your organization—the terrorizing of small liquor store owners, the Carrie Nation-like smashing of refrigerated cases, the over-the-top, racist ideology, the ersatz pseudo-religious mish-mash of Islam, fundamentalist Christianity and black nationalism—even though I found myself stepping into your shop with a lot of trepidation of late—I will miss your bakery and its products (and even its historic San Pablo storefront).

I hasten to add that even though I witnessed your black-suited thugs smashing their way through local businesses on the TV news, and read about the criminal activities of your organization, I was always treated courteously in the bakery. The young people who worked there were very businesslike and treated their customers respectfully, no matter what color they were, and they all seemed genuinely concerned with running a neighborhood business properly. That, too, will be missed.

(I leave speculating about the cause and implications of the demise of your organization to others, as will be unavoidable in the weeks to come. To me, it appears to be yet another case of a well-meaning group of people, struggling against injustice, who fall victim to the usual human shortcomings—greed, hubris, religious mania and messianic visions, and plain old corruption—in a spectacular, Shakespearean drama, leading to a final implosion. You’re not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last.)

So let me ask some of you, perhaps naively: Is it possible that you might be able to regroup yourselves, shake off the dust of this scandal and reopen your bakery? Preferably in, or somewhere near, the old location (I say selfishly). If you could somehow shed the ideological aspects of the operation, and just concentrate on producing sweet rolls, fish sandwiches, bean pies, cookies, cakes, and all the other good stuff you used to make, I think a lot of people would appreciate it. I know I would.

And if running a bakery just happened to advance the cause of black economic empowerment in a depressed, predominantly black neighborhood, that would only be further to your credit.

David Nebenzahl is an Oakland resident.

The My Way Karaoke Curse

The New York Times was very sanguine today about the aura of death surrounding the singing of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" in Karaoke bars in the Philippines:

“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” [Rodolfo Gregorio] said. “You can get killed.”

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?

After raising the specter of a possible "My Way" curse, they then spend paragraphs searching for more rational explanations for the deaths related to that song - - - - quoting "My Way" experts (“ ‘I did it my way’ — it’s so arrogant,” Mr. Albarracin said. “The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody. It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.”) - - - delving thru historical and cultural background, everything short of charts & graphs to feed our rational brains' craving for natural causes. But, if I may play Mulder to the New York Times' Scully, sometimes the supernatural explanation is the best explanation - & it is the stated belief of this weblog that there is something uncannily evil about My Way Karaoke.