A life's lesson from the TSA. It's one more thing. I'm one more.
And then we're gonna let people over arbitrary things they can't possibly know in advance.
We're also going to talk about the idea of reopening Alcatraz, which, ah rock, I assume Katie, you grew up in the Bay Area. You've done Alcatraz?
No a million times?
Did they do? Used to do school trips and stuff? Yeah, we did.
Uh.
I believe it was summer camp where we did the trips out there.
Yeah, I went on one too. Yeah. The night tour is awesome. Oh really, I've heard. Oh I wish i'd done that.
Should have done that before they opened the back up.
Now you got to like do federal crimes to get the night tour if you know it's not going to turn into a prison again. More on that in a moment.
Get to that in a second. So my life lesson from the TSA. I've thought about this quite a bit. I know I mentioned this on their air in a while back, but I see it almost every time I fly. Now you just flew, didn't you, Katy? You observed this. I saw very starkly, side by side two people handle human beings a different way, and have attempted to commit myself to one way and not the other way. It was,
we're just waiting in line. Is a crowded day at security, and you know, the booths open up where they take your driver's license, and you're waiting in line, and there are two of them, and the one guy would say next, next, next, next, like if he didn't get your attention right away, and then the other person would say ready for the next person, Hey, honey, we're ready for you now, accomplishing exactly the same thing. One of them was furiously angry and making other people
they interacted with have worse days. The other one was happy and making other people have a better day, accomplishing exactly the same thing, although I would say probably with much less energy expelled the happy, cheerful person than the angry person. And I've seen this happen many times now at TSA. Now that I observe it, two people in line, you got the you don't have to take off your shoes versus no need to take off your shoes, sweetheart,
exactly the same message. The one is just as easy as in fact, it's easier to go with the nice one, and I've tried to employ that with my kids with everything that I'm doing now, just because it's just obviously on a million levels, a better way to live your life, certainly, yeow. And it's amazing how many people, and I've done this myself plenty of times. We're just out of your frustration or whatever. You're making your life worse, You're making other
people's lives worse. You're like probably shaving seconds off of your life by being angry. It's just completely self defeating.
So, Katie, when I was a fairly young lad, had my sainted mother go ahead, Gladys, why not?
Uh hey, glad, it's a little faster on the harm to see I just did it.
Oh lord, no, see you're still a work in progress. Yeah. So I was a fairly young lad when my I think I was explaining why I had behaved so badly and whether it was my sister or something else. I had told my mom that they just made me so mad, and and my lovely gentle mother said essentially, and I'm paraphrasing, because she made it, you know, understandable for a kid of my age is probably seven or eight. At that point, she explained she said, why would you let them have
that power over you? And I'm like, wait what she said? It's it's your emotions. Don't let other people drive you to one or the other. Be aware of the way you're feeling and and and be responsible for.
Your own feelings.
And you know I'm not Saint Francis of ASSISI over here, mister s I mean, uh, and neither is anybody else. The two great influences in my life, right to two examples, and mister Spock right. But yeah, that that guy, the TSA guy, was letting his frustration with the general public not towing the line the way he thought ruin.
His day, probably every day.
Well right, Uh, terrible for his emotions, terrible for his body. I mean just everything about that interchange is unhealthy for everybody.
And unhappiness to other people.
Yeah, well right, and as the other person illustrated so clearly, uh, it's not necessary. Now. I will also say this, having raised three children from a conception to adulthood, some people are born wound up tight and it's a lot harder for them to be the mellow, helpful, cheerful person. And I don't judge people who fall short. I've fallen short of many of my I you know, principles. That's why they're principles. They're like a north star, you try for them.
But anyway, yeah, just don't let other people control your motions to whatever extent you can.
I had a little situation at the airport coming back where, and it's like, you know, when you go to the doctor and they send you your little after visit summary, and it's it's in doctor jargon, so you usually will like write them and be.
Like, Hi, what the hell does any of this mean?
So they took our plane out of service, like ten minutes before we're supposed to board. So she comes on over the loudspeaker, Oh, yeah, if you're a traveling uh, we have taken your plane out of service. And then she followed it with we hope to be getting another plane, but if you need answers right now, please go to our website to check for further options. And we all looked at each other and went, what on planet Earth
does that mean? And I found that they're getting a little more vague, like they just don't want to like if they don't have answers, they just kind of start allaying you and like filling in language.
Oh you know that's so funny because I'm listening to you closely. I'm wearing expensive headphones, and you got done with that sentence, and I'm like, did I miss something? Yeah? What if I if I if I, If I want answers, I can what.
If I want? If you need answers about your flight now, please go to our website to find your other options. And I swear to you, every single person that was with an eyesight of me, we all made this like eye contact, like what is she to say? Immediately, forty people rushed the booth to start answering questions right, And it was that situation where one woman was very calm and talking to a couple, and this other woman, the one that was speaking the gibberish, was like, I need
a line right here in front of me. It's just like, oh god, we're going back to the.
Bar well on the boy on the choosing two demeanors. What works for me, when it does work, is if I being selfish works for me, the most selfish, which thing I can do is to go with the relaxed, cheerful out that's better for me, whether it's better for other people and it is better for other people, but it's better for me. It's not gonna speed anything up. For me to be angry about it or to make other people unhappy, that makes things worse. It makes everything worse.
Well, and just a little gentle advice for the young folks. As a guy who's engaged in many, many, many of these things, from negotiations to disagreements to solving problems, you can always go to Dick. You've always got that option. Yeah, don't start with Dick.
I almost wish I could like travel around to TSA and talk to people, because I think I could do them a favor by like pointing it out. They might be caught in it and not even realize it. You're making your I mean, maybe you've realized you can't deal with the public. Maybe you ought to find a different job, or you should approach it this way, because you're making yourself miserable and for no gain, for no gain toever. It's not gonna speed up the line. It's not gonna make your day better.
Yeah, the next time I encounter one of those people, I'm gonna go, oh, I see you start. You started with Dick today, did you?
That's what she chose right to the Dick card.
You know, Jack, you got to dress That's why people go to their driveways. That's that's a lot of TSA people.
He held back on going to Dick for a long time until finally she.
You driving you anyway, Jack, you gotta dress up as a monk, uh to go to the TSA and minister to those poor bastards.
I got the hairstyle and help them with their yeah and their struggles.
Uh.
Speaking of security and that sort of thing. I thought this was pretty interesting. The discussion was about Trump saying do we have the Trump audio Andy Michael about Alcatraz?
Nobody's ever escaped from Alcatraz and just represented something uh strong having to do with law and order. We need lawn oril in this country, and so we're going to look at it. Some of the people up here are going to be working very hard on that, and we had a little conversation. I think it's going to be very interesting. We'll see if we can bring it back in large form. Add a lot, but I think it represents something right now. It's a big hulk that's sitting there, rusting and rotting.
Very Uh.
You look at it, it's sort of. You saw that picture that was put out. Its sort of amazing, but it sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable weak. It's got a lot of it's got a lot of qualities that are interesting, and I think.
They make a point.
I have you ever launched into a rift and realized that way through this is not working at all?
I'll bet I can save it. It's a floor wax and a dessert topping.
Anyway, Trump talking about Alcatraz, it is funny that he was essentially confessing that it It's just such a great symbol of being a hard ass blah blah blah, which is what he wanted.
And it got out into the main into the bloodstream once again, that he's a hard ass on crime, which is what he wanted. And somebody probably said to him it can't be done. He thought, okay, and never thought about it again since then, right, and never will.
Right. But I found this interesting from its beginning. The San Francisco prison was an expensive pr stunt for the cinematically minded public, a way of showing that the Feds were getting tough. You perhaps remember that a constitutional amendment a stupid one banned alcohol, and it had fueled the
rise of organized crime in the nineteen twenties. At the same time, the popularity of automobiles is getaway cars turned largely local crimes like robbery and kidnapping into interstate offenses, and so all of a sudden they had this explosion in federal crimes.
So a federal prison was.
Needed that really looked the part, and Alcatraz stood ready for its close up, towering out post on a craggy aisle surrounded by white capped seas. So was it just a rocky island out there in San Francisco before Alcatraze with nothing on it?
Don't know that? Oh oh oh, it gets to that in just a second. Anyway.
Unlike other obsolete military out posts, Oh okay, there you have it, this one was in plain view of a bustling city full of journalists ready to hype its story,
which premiered in nineteen thirty four. Among the new prisons first inmates were Chicago mob boss al Capone, wasting away from syphilis, and Alvin Carpus, whose name I don't know with a K, the last person to be designated Public Enemy number one FBI impresario Jay Edgar Hoover had personally stage managed Carpus's arrest part of his image polishing project to turn a pudgy DC paper pusher into America's toughest
g man. As Hoover was, you know, a well known publicity hunt, but minus its celebrity occupants, Alcatraz was a pretty average prison, no more fearsome than other maximum security who's goals, and indeed some inmates preferred it to their previous assignments because the cells were single occupancy, and one long time inmate, Robert Stroud, was even allowed to keep Patsy's, the famous bird Man of Alcatraz of the film. But
Alcatraz cost a fortune to operate. Harsh conditions, wind, surf, and salt shortened the life spans of buildings and equipment, and as the depression ended in the Bay Area boomed, labor costs for guards and other staffers rose steeply. Virtually everything the prisoners and their keepers needed had to be ferried to the island on boats and barges, including nearly a million gallons of water per week, wow, plus tons
of food and fuel for the generators. A scant twenty five years after Alcatraz opened, the FEDS began hatching plans to close it. Prisoners were just as secure at the federal prison in Atlanta for one third the cost, a study concluded. At the time, the Bureau of Prisons broke ground on a new maximum security facility in rural Illinois, and when it was completed in sixty three, Alcatraz was relegated to its legend, which is absorbed daily by tourists
and on TV by impressionable old men. They say, hinting that Trump is one of them, and then they mentioned that, uh, the federal government already has a lock up four more, far more secure, remote, and intimidating than an Alcatraz. Ever, was the super max prison near Florence, Colorado.
Yeah. There there are people claiming that Alcatraz played on TNT like Saturday Night at eleven or something, and they think Trump was flipping through and saw it. I don't know if that's true or not.
Yeah, the rock was it Alcatraz or Alcatraz?
I can't remember. What's the one with Clint Eastwood in it where he escapes escape from Alcatraz. That's a good one with the Orangutang.
Yeah, there's no one there are no great apes in this one boxes an orangutang on a.
Gutras for his freedom.
That's right, as I recall, And everybody dances, even though the mayor is a fundamentalist. And a great.
Movie the Rock Well, I guess that's it. Everybody dances.