Author: Glenn Hauman

Stories unwritten

I just feel like lamenting the lack of an ULTIMATE AVENGERS anthology,
like the X-MEN anthologies I contributed to. I really wanted to do the
“Wonder Man: Inside the Actors Studio”, just for the questionnaire at
the end:
“If Heaven exists, what would you like God to say to you when you
arrive?”
“I could tell you what he said… no, I really can’t. What I expect him
to say is ‘What, you again?‘
“

Sacrilege

It’s one thing to be mean-spirited. It’s another to be cheap. But how
low a human being do you have to be to assault the rabbi who just
performed your child’s wedding?
My friend Rabbi David Honigsberg forwarded what happened to him recently:

A couple of weeks ago, on June 14, I was in York, Pennsylvania, for
a wedding rehearsal dinner and a wedding at which I was co-officiating.
The minister, Rev. Deborah Mandour, knows me from Kabbalah workshops
she’s attended and had asked me to join her for this celebration. I met
with the couple in late February of this year and we settled on my fee,
my expenses, and the fact that they’d need to give me a hotel room for
two nights. I should mention that my fee for weddings is hundreds of
dollars less than most clergy I know and that I always try to keep my
expenses down. In this case, I estimated my expenses to be $100 for car
rental, tolls, and gas.
Flash forward to the rehearsal dinner on June 13. At that time, I spoke
to the groom, Scott, and told him that the expenses might be $25 more
than we’d agreed upon, since I had under-estimated mileage (the car I
rent has only so many miles/day on the contract). He said that he’d
talk to his mother. Fine. Next day, the wedding went perfectly,
everybody very happy. Scott’s father, Dennis, gave me a lovely card. I
opened it to find the check for my fees, but not my expenses. I quietly
approached Scott and asked about this and was told, “That’s what was
agreed upon, that’s all you’re getting from me.” I quietly approached
Scott and told him that I didn’t want to put him the middle of things
but that I needed the check for my expenses. Shortly afterwards, his
new wife, Leslie, gave me the check. All was well with the world.
So I thought.
Just before dinner, Dennis told me that he wanted to talk to me,
outside and that I should follow him. At this point, I expected that he
was going to tell me that I should have come back to him about the
expenses, not involved, Scott, something like that. Instead, he grabbed
me by the suit collar, threw me to the ground, pulled on my tie to try
and choke me, telling me that the fee had been agreed on and “you don’t
know who you’re dealing with.” The pull on the tie ripped all of the
buttons off of my shirt. Dennis’ family pulled him off of me and I went
back into the ballroom, grabbed my bag, and left. Dennis and another
guest were outside, near my car. I can’t recall what Dennis said to me
but I said, “Listen, you ‘re finished with me, I’m finished with you,
let’s just leave it at that.” After asking me to repeat that (I did), I
got into the car; but Dennis wasn’ t done with me, yet. He came over to
the car and hit the driver’s side windshield with his fist, cracking
it. The other guest, when I got out of the car to ask who would cover
the damages, came over and kicked the door, denting it, while they told
me that I was a thief and that I was taking advantage of “the kids.”
I drove back to the hotel, called the police, made a statement, and the
officer left to drive to The Outdoor Country Club where this had taken
place. By then, Dennis has left (not to go back to the hotel, but back
to Brooklyn, where he lives). The officer came back to the hotel and
told me that everybody “had their story straight” and would testify
that I threw the first punch. If I were to have pressed criminal
charges, they’d have done the same and I would have been arraigned,
that night, in York, PA.
Instead, I said that anything else I did, in the court system, would be
dealt with in civil court. I stayed the night at Rev. Mandour’s home.
The next day, I swapped the car for an undamaged one and drove back to
New York.
On Monday, June 16, I cashed the check at a Washington Mutual, just in
case Dennis had decided to put a stop payment on it, and deposited the
couple’s check. I found out that this would be a difficult case to
prosecute because there’s just not enough money involved for a law firm
and, besides, I have no bruises, nothing to show for the trauma (but I
do have pictures of the car, and my hands, to show that they suffered
no damage from hitting anybody). I’ve told my story to a reporter from
the Philadelphia Daily News and there might be other outlets
interested, as well.
End of story.
Except that it’s not.
Found out on Wednesday, June 25, that Scott and Leslie put a
stop-payment on the expenses check which they’d given me. This did come
as a surprise and I wrote Scott and Leslie a letter saying as much,
adding that Pennsylvania and New York press were interested in my
story:
“Note that the press in New York and Pennsylvania have expressed
interest in this story and I’m telling my side of it to protect my
reputation from your untruths.”
When I returned from another wedding, this past weekend (at which I was
told that I’m “saving Judaism,” a much nicer thing to hear than “You
don’t know who you’re dealing with!”), I had mail waiting for me from
Scott and, forwarded to me, from Leslie’s mother.
It seems that, according to Scott, I should have talked about expenses
at our first meeting (which I did) and should never have approached him
during the dinner or the reception. I was told that “It’s people like
yourself that give a terrible name to religion.” and “It really is a
shame you give the name you do to the Jewish religion. Beyond that,
it’s a shame you represent any religion at all. I would think a
religious man like yourself would know how to act as an adult.”
If I go to the press, Scott will “let it be known that we paid for the
ceremony $500 (agreed), 2 nights in the hotel $89 a night (agreed), and
out of the goodness of our heart we paid for a plate for you at our
wedding, which you now owe us $60 for.”
Obvious, clergy exists to serve them in all ways, how and when they
say, and nothing else. And anything they give the clergy is due to
their own personal largesse and not due to any rights the clergy might
have as human beings
Other pertinent quotes from the letter:
“Let me also make clear, the negative references you made towards me
and my wife in this email makes me want to finish the job that my dad
started. I will be up in New York fairly often so if you feel the need
to take me up on that offer, drop me a line. Other than that never send
me another email, or I will file charges of harassment.”
I also find it interesting that Leslie’s (the bride’s) mother feels
that it must be a perfectly acceptable thing which was done to me, as
SHE says, in HER letter:
“The last detail to address is the “press release” item. We know that
the reason Scott’s father was upset had everything to do with his
relationship with Scott, and nothing to do with the money itself. We
know that the Rabbi had a long drive and was anxious to get his payment
and go home [this totally ignores the fact that I was staying the night
in York, again]. All of our understanding aside, although I can’t speak
for New Yorkers, I can speak for Pennsylvanians. Any story that goes
“family hires Rabbi for son’s wedding, Rabbi asks for more money during
the reception, groom’s family assaults Rabbi” has only one way to play
in Peoria – I mean Pennsylvania – and it won’t reflect poorly on either
one of you two.”
Scott also wrote, “We are already in the process of filing a complaint
about you and making sure you do not handle any more ceremonies.”
Now, I have absolutely no idea who he’s complaining to, of course but I
don’t think this will go far at all, especially since I never signed
the license (my co-officiant did). The full text of any of the letters
(mine, Scott’s, Leslie’s mother’s) is available to anybody who’s
interested in seeing them.
I repeat: what sort of a man assaults the rabbi who just performed the
marriage of your son minutes before?
Ladies and gentlemen; offer your prayers not only to Rabbi Honigsberg
for help, but to Dennis Smith of Brooklyn, NY for salvation. And for
that matter, your prayers should also go to Scott and Leslie, because
if there’s a surer way to insure your marriage gets off to a bad start
in the eyes of the Lord, I can’t think of it.

How I spent my last two summer vacations…

Finally, I’m back blogging again, because it’s finally up.
For the last 18 months or so, I’ve been working on exploiting a new
type of auction logic (patent pending). When none of the big players
nibbled, I decided to go and build the thing myself (by myself I mean
me and the amazing Michael Dinowitz, the guy who wrote the book on ColdFusion (actually, I think he wrote about six, but who’s counting?))

The results are now up at http://www.lotauctions.com.
The observant among you have already seen the banner ad in the sidebar.
How does a LotAuction work, exactly? Have you ever had a collection of
things that you wanted to sell, but you didn’t know if you’d make
better money selling the collection in individual pieces, or as a
whole? This kind of thing happens a lot in online auctions, and before
LotAuctions came around, there wasn’t a good answer for that kind of
problem.
For example, you might have a comic book miniseries consisting of four
issues. Issue number three was written by Stephen King, so it’s
especially valuable. Do you get the best price by selling the series as
a whole? Or will you get a better price by selling each issue
individually, and hope that the Stephen King Issue sells for a high
price? You don’t know in advance- that’s why you have the auction in
the first place.
With LotAuctions, you can choose to list your series both as a
collection and as four separate items, at the same time. This way,
bidders can make the choice for you — and no matter what, you’re
getting the best deal. Buyers get a break on bulk or the ability to
cherrypick, and seller maximize the money they can make.
In addition to our lot-grouping software — something not currently
offered by any other online auction company — LotAuctions has
attracted attention for its anti-sniping overtime bidding feature, our
volume rebates and lack of listing fees, and one heck of an affiliate
program.
Take a look and have fun. Reasonably soon, large hunks of my comic
collection will be going live, and there’s at least one defunct comic
store that’ll be putting their complete inventory online…

Book Scanning Robots…

The NY Times
tells us about “a Swiss-designed robot about the size of a sport
utility vehicle was rapidly turning the pages of an old book and
scanning the text. The machine can turn the pages of both small and
large books as well as bound newspaper volumes and scan at speeds of
more than 1,000 pages an hour.”
This just might break the bottleneck…