One of Maggie’s work friends gave her a CD from her recent wedding and I was listening to some of it on my ride home tonight.  Most of the CD contained slow, country ballads that I quickly skipped over, but I did stop and listen to Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice.  In the years since its release, I’ve usually only heard this song or played it during compilations like this wedding CD, and even those times were few and far between.  It’s a little unfortunate, all said and done, because at the time, I thought it was the greatest thing to hit the suburbs since Skidz(tm) and overalls with one strap hanging off.  Vanilla Ice was white, he could rap, he could dance.  He wore fresh threads and kicks, and rolled around in his Mustang 5.0 with the ragtop down so his hair could blow.  It was everything that a suburban white boy with too much time on his hands could aspire to in 1990.

Then it all came crashing down for Vanilla Ice and suburban youth everywhere when The Dallas Morning News broke the story that Vanilla Ice’s handlers had fabricated his entire biography.  Reporter Ken Parish Perkins discovered that not only was Vanilla Ice’s real name a definitely not street sounding Rob Van Winkle, but he had also not been raised on the inner city streets of Miami and attended Palmetto High.  Winkle had, in fact, been raised in suburban Texas and graduated from R. L. Turner High School, a member of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District.  Radio jocks had a field day with the revelation and white kids hung their head in shame.

The problem wasn’t that the 19-year old Vanilla Ice didn’t live up to the tough guy, street cred bio that had been sent to program directors and the public seldom saw, but that it looked like being a white kid from the suburbs was something to be ashamed of.  I’ll be the first to admit that life in an affluent suburb doesn’t require the level of street smarts and mental and physical toughness that an inner city may require.  Trouble didn’t just find us, we had to go seek it out and bring it home.  And that’s just what we did and what most suburban kids do when they have too much time and too little responsibility.  We thought we could hang with the toughest of them and that we were so cool, but now one of our own was caught in a lie about who he was.

The effect was profound and set back white rap for years.  It destroyed Vanilla Ice’s career and pushed Rob Van Winkle, who plausibly claims to have been lead astray by an overeager record company, over the edge.  The drop from fame and turn to infamy caused Van Winkle constant agony that eventually led to serious drug abuse and two suicide attempts even as he continued to attempt to reinvent himself and restore his failed recording career.  As the years went on, Van Winkle got angrier and angrier.  In 1999 he appeared on an MTV program titled 25 to Lame where he smashed a videotape of Ice Ice Baby in a symbolic move that represented the station’s commitment to never airing the video again, not a particularly bold move considering the limited amount of time the network actually dedicates to airing videos.  Van Winkle smashed the tape with a baseball bat and then continued to smash the set until the program quickly cut to commercial and he was removed from the set.

Years later, Rob Van Winkle appeared on VH1’s Surreal Life, another non-music program on a once music network, with recently deceased Tammy Faye (Baker) Messner.  Van Winkle’s anger was a constant topic of discussion on the show, particularly his attitudes toward his former image and his former self.  He was particularly incensed at his artist-rendered portrait on the wall from the Ice Ice Baby years.  During one cast excursion to a karaoke bar, cast mate, Trishelle asked him to perform his signature song.  At first, he was adamantly against performing, but was eventually convinced to take the microphone.  Van Winkle was ready for the worst, but the crowd really took to him, cheered, and sang along with the lyrics.  It was as though a dark cloud had been lifted from his persona and the initially hesitant Van Winkle embraced the moment and put on a great show for the crowd.  In the course of several minutes, he appeared completely transformed and was pleasant and happy for the rest of the Surreal Life season.

The following year, I caught Vanilla Ice again on TV on the short-lived Hit Me One More Time, an NBC program that featured one-hit wonders competing against one another by performing their signature selection and then a cover of a modern song.  Ice took the stage and performed an updated and completely remixed version of the song to resounding applause.  His follow up with a cover of Destiny Child’s Survivor cynched his win for the night.  The victory showed that Van Winkle could only succeed and shake off the stigma of disgrace by acknowledging his past and accepting who he was and is.  It was a lesson that took him fifteen years to learn, and one worth remembering.

"Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.”
Vaclav Havel

Those in the Washington D.C. area are asked to attend a special fundraiser for Jin Nam and Soo Chung, the couple who recently prevailed in their defense of the notorious case of the $54 million pants.  Tickets for the event, to be held on July 24 at the at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and co-hosted by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform and the American Tort Reform Association, can be had for $75.  The money will be used to help pay for the legal bills the Chungs accumulated during their two year ordeal.  If unavailable to attend, you can also make a donation through the web site or print a flyer to help spread the word.

As of today, the legal defense fund for Custom Cleaners in Washington, D.C. is up and running.  For those unfamiliar with Custom Cleaners, they are the dry cleaners being sued by a customer for $67 million dollars over a pair of pants.  As if that’s not bad enough, it gets worse, much worse.  Although the owners, Jin Nam and Soo Chung, admit initially misplacing the pants, they found them several days later, but the customer still wasn’t satisfied.  They even offered to replace the pants, but the customer demanded a new suit and kept increasing his demands and eventually sued.  Through their attorney, the Chungs repeatedly attempted to ward off the lawsuit, which has continually grown for the past two years, by making repeated offers to settle, reaching as high as $12,000.  The customer still wasn’t satisfied.  Instead, he feels he is entitled to $67,292,000 which includes emotional damages ($500,000), legal fees ($542,000), ten years of car rentals to drive to a different cleaners ($15,000), and just for good measure, he wants the Chungs to be fined $1,500 per violation per day that they had signs on their walls offering “Same Day Service” and “Customer Satisfaction Guaranteed” ($1500 per violation x 12 violations x 1200 days = $21,600,000).  Oh yeah, and he wants these violations to be multiplied by three, because after all, including their son, there are three Chungs ($21,600,000 x 3 = $64,800,000).

By now, you may be wondering how someone convinces an attorney to represent him in this suit which has grown to include thousands of pages of legal documents, a witness list of 63 people, and an attempt to expand the case to a class action suit.  It’s not so difficult when you represent yourself.  Worse, Roy Pearson is not only a member of the bar he’s also a sitting judge.  ATRA, the American Tort Reform Association, feels that the size and scope of this $67 million lawsuit over a single pair of pants is clear demonstration of Judge Roy Pearson’s inability to demonstrate “appropriate judicial temperament” and should not have his term, which expires this year, renewed.

However, whether or not Judge Pearson’s position is renewed, or whether or not his lawsuit is eventually dismissed, its effect on the Chungs, Korean immigrants, has already taken its toll.  “I’ve been in the dry cleaning business for 14 years, but this has never ever happened before. If anything happened to our customers’ clothing, we would always compensate them accordingly and fairly,” explained owner, Jin Nam Chung. “It’s affecting us, first of all financially, because of all the lawyers’ fees,” he continued.  His wife, Soo Chung tearfully added, “I would have never thought it would have dragged on this long.  I don’t want to live here anymore.  It’s been so difficult.  I just want to go home, go back to Korea.” And who can blame them?  “It’s incredibly preposterous that he’s [Judge Roy Pearson] making so much out of something so insignificant,” said their attorney, Chris Manning. Fortunately, an overwhelming number of supporters have contacted Manning, of Manning and Sossamon, PLLC, that they have established a legal defense fund site where concerned citizens can offer support through PayPal or contact the Chungs with words of encouragement. 

www.customcleanersdefensefund.com