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You guys can drive.

You guys are hav­ing such a good time in the com­ments I’m think­ing I should just turn the wheel over to you. Surely you have more to say than I do. I just wrote eight para­graphs of an obit­u­ary of Edward Kennedy, then thought Jeez, let the man die first. Then I went back to bed for an hour. I need a very long bike ride and I plan to take it, but before I do so, let me fish this com­ment by mild-mannered Jeff out of the com­ments pre­vi­ous and hold it up to the light:

OK, i finally got around to read­ing the sec­ond page of the “purity ball” story and look­ing at the slide show. For the record, “ewwwww.”

Hav­ing typed that, i gotta type this — have y’all been to any Mid­west­ern cer­e­mo­nial of any of the fol­low­ing: Job’s Daugh­ters, Rain­bow Girls, DeMo­lay, Key Club, East­ern Star, Knights of Pythias, Civil Air Patrol (yes, espe­cially their youth dept.), Grange youth aux­il­iary, or DAR? I’ve ended up sit­ting through all these and more doing the open­ing prayer or singing a solo at the request of the new offi­cer instal­la­tion or some­thing. They’re all off-kilter rehearsals for wed­dings and even, in a dim sort of way, funer­als, and they share ele­ments of the kitschy and creepy all wound up in Enlight­en­ment sym­bol­ism and patri­otic fer­vor and a vague kind of prac­ti­cal mys­ti­cism that may use the name “Jesus” with some empha­sis but isn’t wor­ried about being Chris­t­ian at all.

What i find most fas­ci­nat­ing (as opposed to appalling) about this is how it’s another expres­sion of the “Bowl­ing Alone” phe­nom­e­non in Amer­i­can soci­ety — these are events that replace what used to be spread through a whole nine-month, Sept./May pro­gram­matic year of youth orga­ni­za­tions that you joined and worked through the offices for … 12 offi­cers for a group that had maybe 20 mem­bers at most meetings.

Those ongo­ing orga­ni­za­tions are fad­ing fast, and “events” are get­ting cob­bled together to replace them, like … the Purity Ball. Con­cen­trated kitsch and intense focus on a rela­tion­ship that needs to play out over time, not find an arti­fi­cial focus on one evening.

I still laugh at the horror-stricken look on my wife’s face when i pointed out to her, decades after, the Freudian aspect of the major ser­vice clubs in her high school for boys and girls — I kid you not, Key Club and Lock­ets. No points for guess­ing which was which!

I used to date a boy who was in DeMo­lay, if an eighth-grader car­ry­ing on a long-distance cor­re­spon­dence with a gawky geek in south­ern Ohio can be called “dat­ing.” I met him when I was in Iron­ton vis­it­ing a friend, and he came to Colum­bus for a DeMo­lay con­ven­tion. I kept say­ing, “DeMo-wha-?” and I’m still not sure what, exactly, it is, although it has some­thing to do with the Masons. For­tu­nately, they have a web­site, which explains:

DeMo­lay is an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to prepar­ing young men to lead suc­cess­ful, happy, and pro­duc­tive lives. Bas­ing its approach on time­less prin­ci­ples and prac­ti­cal, hands-on expe­ri­ence, DeMo­lay opens doors for young men aged 12 to 21 by devel­op­ing the civic aware­ness, per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity and lead­er­ship skills so vitally needed in soci­ety today. DeMo­lay com­bines this seri­ous mis­sion with a fun approach that builds impor­tant bonds of friend­ship among mem­bers in more than 1,000 chap­ters worldwide.

Jeff’s right. One thou­sand chap­ters or not, these out­fits are dying dying dying. They don’t fit with mod­ern life. Those ladies’ clubs where dowa­gers gath­ered in flow­ered hats to dis­cuss gar­den­ing and good works? Going and gone. When I was a colum­nist, every so often I’d accept a speak­ing invi­ta­tion from the Rotary or Lions or (my favorite) the Opti­mists, and it was like One Hour in Middle-Management Hell. I was fre­quently struck by the rit­u­als — the group singing, the pledge of alle­giance, the pledge of broth­er­hood, repeated loudly. (Roar lions, roar lions! Bite ‘em bite ‘em bite ‘em!)

It didn’t work out with Mr. DeMo­lay. I hope he found a nice Rain­bow Girl and set­tled into a nice south­ern Ohio life. I will always remem­ber him fondly, though, because he took me to see “A Clock­work Orange.”

Since we’re let­ting oth­ers carry my load today, let’s toss it to Michael Musto:

There seem to be more pub­li­cists work­ing the Sex and the City movie than hair­dressers gath­ered around Burt Reynolds’ nog­gin try­ing to make his shit look real.

Man, I’ll say. Is there a pho­to­graph of the Fightin’ Four walk­ing toward the cam­era in color-coordinated out­fits that hasn’t been pub­lished yet? It’s like a down­mar­ket ver­sion of “The Wire” blitz last win­ter. And the movie doesn’t open for another week! I may have to go on entertainment-section hia­tus to get through it.

Bossy has fallen in love with Rachel Mad­dow. I haven’t, although I like her fine. She’s strangely com­pelling to watch, mainly because of the dis­con­nect between her con­fi­dence in her ideas and expres­sion, and her plain dis­com­fort in her TV makeup and pearl-gray jacket. She looks like a man who wan­dered, jack­et­less, into a restau­rant with a dress code, and has to wear one out of the lost-and-found box. I know she prob­a­bly doesn’t nor­mally spend a lot of time think­ing about the semi­otics of the smoky eye, and nei­ther do I, so I’ll leave that to her makeup artist. But she was on “On the Media” talk­ing about those jack­ets, and she said MSNBC finds them for her. MSNBC doesn’t need my finan­cial sup­port, so I won’t take up a col­lec­tion, but I’d like to sug­gest they buy her another two or three of them, prefer­ably in deeper col­ors that will flat­ter her fine skin. If I were dress­ing her I’d also put in a word for a neck­lace or two, maybe some very very sub­tle sil­ver ear­rings, but that would prob­a­bly burn her flesh the way the smoky eye seems to. Bossy has unearthed a pic­ture of her in Buddy Holly frames, and she looks per­fectly nat­ural. That’s what she should wear on the air.

(When I was on TV, peo­ple were always giv­ing me advice about my turnout. I said to myself, “Boy, I hope I never waste time pick­ing apart TV-news out­fits.” Shows what I knew.)

A few of you reader folks have been say­ing, in com­ments, that I’m a liberal/socialist for sup­port­ing Obama, and I’d like to cor­rect that, although I won­der why I bother, because I sus­pect some of you would describe any­one to the left of Dick Cheney as such, but here goes: I’m not sup­port­ing the Demo­c­ra­tic ticket, what­ever it shapes up to be, for lots of spe­cific pol­icy rea­sons. I want us to start devel­op­ing some sort of solu­tion to the health-care mess, and to get out of Iraq, and to fig­ure out what we’re going to do with the part of the coun­try that has been cut out the Amer­i­can bar­gain in recent years. That’s a heavy load, and I don’t know if the Illi­nois sen­a­tor can carry it all on those slen­der shoul­ders of his. But I do know this: No one run­ning for pres­i­dent today can be worse at the job than the cur­rent occu­pant of the Oval Office. So all the talk about whether Obama’s ready or if he’s been tested or if he did some­thing in Chicago that isn’t absolutely kosher good-government best-practices seems irrel­e­vant at this point. All the can­di­dates are imper­fect, but for Repub­li­can in par­tic­u­lar to say, “He’s not qual­i­fied,” after eight years of blood-drenched fias­cos just seems, I dunno, galling. I’m not get­ting a tat­too. I’m not buy­ing a T-shirt. But I’m pulling the lever with the sense that who­ever wins will be an improve­ment, and some will rep­re­sent more improve­ment than others.

That’s why John McCain is putting as much dis­tance between him­self and George W. Bush as is humanly pos­si­ble, and that’s why, bar­ring a dis­as­ter, Obama’s the favorite to win. Yes, it’s that bad. Get the hook.

Back tomor­row. More rested, I hope.

Posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 11:21 am
in Current events, Popculch, Same ol' same ol'.

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56 responses to
“You guys can drive.”

  1. Danny said on May 21st, 2008 at 11:52 am

    In 7th grade, I won a speech con­test that was hosted by the Opti­mist Club. My speech was on envi­ron­a­men­tal waste and cleanup. What can I say, that cry­ing indian spoke to my lit­tle heart.

    Speak­ing of TV per­son­al­i­ties with whom we get smit­ten, O’Reilly recently inter­viewed Julie New­mar, who was my favorite Cat Woman from the 1960’s era Bat Man show. Man, what a beau­ti­ful woman. And funny too.

  2. Kirk said on May 21st, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    Hear! Hear! for Julie New­mar, who also played a hot robot on a short-lived TV series called “My Liv­ing Doll” and did a mem­o­rable job play­ing the devil on “The Twi­light Zone.”

  3. LAMary said on May 21st, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    She went to Mar­shall High School, home of the fight­ing Bar­ris­ters. My son just grad­u­ated from same. Lance Ito and Leonardo DiCaprio went there as well, but Leo didn’t grad­u­ate.
    I was some sort of offi­cer in the Rain­bow Girls. Sar­gent at Arms maybe? I had to sit out­side dur­ing the meet­ing. At some point I had to say, “The doors of this cham­ber are now closed and peace and har­mony are in every heart.” Years later I used to say that when I had orga­nized a group of artist friends. We all chipped in on stu­dio space and pay­ing a model, and when I would close the doors to keep the model from get­ting goose­bumps, the Rain­bow Girls line seemed perfect.

  4. Connie said on May 21st, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    I used to be a Lion, I loved the singing, espe­cially the roar lions roar one you quote. But I can under­stand how guests might have thought we were wierd.

    The thing that strikes me about DeMo­lay is that they are named after Jacques DeMo­lay, the last Grand Mas­ter of the Knights Tem­plar who was exe­cuted when Philip IV of France pretty much destroyed the Knights Tem­plar in the ?1300s? I had never heard of them — there were very few Catholics around Hol­land in my younger day. My brother in law in Flint once told me, “every­one joins DeMo­lay because they have the best bas­ket­ball leagues.

    OK, I went to wikipedia to check the first name of DeMo­lay and got all excited. The fea­ture arti­cle on the front page today is about Elderly Instru­ments in Lans­ing, Michi­gan, cer­tainly the coolest instru­ment store I have ever vis­ited, and I know my banjo and dul­cimer play­ing inlaws visit there reg­u­larly. Totally off topic I know, but some­times you have to share. In my day there they were on the main drag in E. Lansing.

  5. baldheadeddork said on May 21st, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Not sure where McCain is dis­tanc­ing him­self as far from Bush as humanly pos­si­ble. From where I sit I see him prac­ti­cally trip­ping over him­self to show the GOP base that he’ll be even Bushier on tax cuts/economics, judi­cial appoint­ments, pri­va­tiz­ing Social Secu­rity, and stay­ing in Iraq until six months after Tom Fried­man is offi­cially dead.

    I under­stand why McCain is doing this. He has to raise money and the only peo­ple who might be inclined to throw him some cash are the most hard­core of the Repub­li­can faith­ful. He has to win them over and they still think Mr. Twenty-six Per­cent is one of the best pres­i­dents evah. The prob­lem for McCain is, its not work­ing. He raised just $18 mil­lion in April — the first full month after he locked up the GOP nom­i­na­tion. Obama had his worst month in the entire cam­paign in this period and out­raised McCain by almost 2:1. McCain’s cam­paign is spin­ning the April num­bers as his best ever, but its con­clu­sive proof that the Bush money peo­ple aren’t get­ting behind him — not even after he’s locked up the nomination.

    I think one of the big polit­i­cal sto­ries of the sum­mer will be how McCain han­dles this. At some point he has to pivot back to the mid­dle if he’s going to have a prayer in Novem­ber. If he has another month like April I think he might make a big pro­duc­tion out of rebuk­ing the GOP power struc­ture and get­ting back to his mavrick­ness. No doubt the work­ing press will greet him with sprin­kled donuts and his cof­fee made just the way he likes it.

  6. Dorothy said on May 21st, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    I won the Rotary Club award for Out­stand­ing Busi­ness Stu­dent of the year when I was a junior in high school. So Danny I guess that almost makes us cousins or some­thin’! Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that.

    Julie New­mar made a much bet­ter Cat­woman than Eartha Kitt.

  7. Julie Robinson said on May 21st, 2008 at 1:09 pm

    Our gen­er­a­tion rejected the clubs of our fathers because they car­ried the taint of Viet­nam and Nixon. We dis­en­gaged from pol­i­tics, too, because of our cyn­i­cism about the corruption.

    In doing so, we left the arena wide open for the ilk of Bush/Cheney et al. May that be a les­son to us all.

    I think my children’s gen­er­a­tion will swing back to world engage­ment for pos­i­tive changes. We’ve seen this in so many of Sarah’s col­lege friends: Peace Corps, teach­ing, envi­ron­men­tal work, social and health ser­vice in the inner cities. It may be orga­nized dif­fer­ently than the Lions or the Jaycees but the car­ing ideals are the same.

    Obama may be bril­liant in awak­en­ing this or bril­liant in sim­ply tap­ping into a move­ment that was already there, if work­ing qui­etly. Either way this cyn­i­cal baby boomer has cause for optimism.

  8. moe99 said on May 21st, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    Gotta go w/ bhdork on this one. Bush loves cam­paign­ing and he is insert­ing him­self when­ever and wher­ever pos­si­ble in the McCain cam­paign. And dol­lars to donuts, he is prob­a­bly try­ing to call the shots behind the scenes, because it’s his money dammit!

  9. Danny said on May 21st, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    Kirk/Dorothy/Mary, one other thing about the Julie New­mar inter­view. They played a clip from Bat­man with the fol­low­ing dialogue:

    BM: “Cat­woman, I promise I will do any­thing to reha­bil­i­tate you…”

    CW: “Any­thing? Well, then marry me Batman.”

    BM: “That is, any­thing but … marry you.”

    As a child, I can remem­ber watch­ing that nd oth­ers scenes like it where Bat­man was resist­ing Catwoman’s advances and think­ing he was either an idiot or that his mask had slipped down over his eyes and he wasn’t see­ing things right.

  10. nancy said on May 21st, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    And then “Bat­man & Robin” came out years later, and Danny learned the truth: Bat­man? Was gay.

  11. Catherine said on May 21st, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    OK, let’s all put our heads together and come up with a script for Julie New­mar and Alan Rick­man! (Jes’ tying it all together)

  12. brian stouder said on May 21st, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    Tonight I’ll have a com­ment on msnbc/nbc’s wardrobe choices. Short ver­sion: Pam and I keep notic­ing how odd their wardrobes (for the women) are, includ­ing (espe­cially) Mered­ith Vierra on the big network’s Today Show

  13. BOSSY said on May 21st, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    For the record, Bossy loves Rachel for her mind. Although Bossy agrees her mind would look bet­ter wrapped in a choco­late brown blazer.

  14. Joe K. said on May 21st, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    How is it, that we can’t have prayer in school, or a manger on the town square, or speak about God in gov­ern­ment, yet as soon as Teddy gets a tumor Sen Byrd is on the floor of the sen­ate cry­ing to God to keep poor Ted here. Don’t get me wrong, I would not wish can­cer or a sick­ness on any­one. My wife is a breast can­cer sur­vivor and I know how hard and ter­ri­ble that is. It is just so hyp­o­crit­i­cal. It would not make a dif­fer­ence if it was a repub­li­can doing the cry­ing, No one seems to need God until there is a cri­sis, then its ok to pray on the sen­ate floor.
    Also, I know most of you on the board hate Bush, but don’t you think we ought to spread the blame just a lit­tle on the Demo­c­ra­tic con­trolled con­gress and house? They are just as much to blame as the pres­i­dent. One seems to be no bet­ter than the other to me.
    Just say­ing,
    Blue sky’s
    Pilot Joe K.

  15. Sue said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    1.My obser­va­tional expe­ri­ence with ser­vice clubs is that they are either a) an excuse to drink; or b) an orga­ni­za­tion where a bunch of big fish in a small pond get together to net­work so that mem­bers know the cor­rect con­tact per­son when they are hav­ing prob­lems with pesky build­ing inspec­tors or not-sufficiently-respectful police offi­cers.
    2.I have always con­sid­ered myself an inde­pen­dent voter, but in the last sev­eral years I haven’t been able to vote for a Repub­li­can once. Not even for County Sher­iff, for cry­ing out loud.
    3.One of my favorite movies is “To Wong Foo, with love, Julie New­mar”. Julie appeared at the end of the movie, and looked to my eyes absolutely fright­en­ing. Per­haps I’m miss­ing some­thing?
    4.Catherine, you’re not sug­gest­ing Alan for Bat­man, are you? The mask would cover his gorgeousness.

  16. Kirk said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Gee, Sue, that movie came along about 30 years after the Julie New­mar that Danny and I remember.

  17. alex said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Joe, the Demo­c­ra­tic major­ity in Con­gress is too recent to share the blame for the Bush Administration’s mess, and in fact isn’t in the major­ity enough yet to do any­thing about clean­ing it up. As for Bush’s first six years, the Dems were powerless.

    As for God on the floor of the Sen­ate, a prayer for a dying col­league is some­thing quite dif­fer­ent than evan­gel­i­cals shov­ing their brand of Chris­tian­ity down the throats of other Chris­tians and non-Christians, which is really what school prayer and newly minted cour­t­house deca­logues and butt-ugly Indi­ana license plates are all about. I wish those god-damned pigs would learn the same man­ners the rest of us grew up with.

  18. John said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    Sue…
    I agree with your assess­ment of ser­vice clubs. Soci­ety changed from the 50s to the 70s and men don’t need the guise of help­ing the com­mu­nity to go out drink­ing once a week. Also, with eas­ier credit (post-1968), you don’t have to know the local bank VPs per­son­ally to get a mortage or car loan.

    There wasn’t a 12 year old boy in Amer­ica who didn’t think Julie New­mar had “It”. Same was true for Linda Carter a decade later.

  19. Sue said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    Oh, sorry guys, I thought you were speak­ing of her as she is now, and couldn’t quite get the “man, what a beau­ti­ful woman” part of it. To me she looked embalmed and scary.

  20. Danny said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    Sue, I never saw that movie. She looked okay the other night dur­ing the inter­view. She prob­a­bly has had some work done, but from the looks of it, it was a while back. It seems like any mis­takes that were made have soft­ened since that pre­sumed work was done. She had a fairly nat­ural appearance.

  21. Joe K. said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    Alex,
    So when Clin­ton was in office and the House and Con­gress were Repub­li­can led, all the good times were not Willies doing but, the Repub­li­cans??
    Also please don’t swear at me. It makes you look child­ish.
    I like the new plates.
    Joe K

  22. kayak woman said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    Job’s Daugh­ters sure dredges up some strange mem­o­ries. I was in it back in the Juras­sic age. My grand­par­ents were involved with Masonic orga­ni­za­tions in the rugged lit­tle Yooper city I grew up in and my older cousins were in Job’s and DeMo­lay, so I guess I prob­a­bly thought it was cool ini­tially. Plus a hefty chunk of the 7th grade girls were join­ing up.

    I would never have been voted into any of the royal posi­tions. Hon­ored queen and var­i­ous princesses and what­not. But I was once drafted to fill an offi­cer job for an older girl who shared my first name. Rea­son? She was off on a nice lit­tle 9 month vaca­tion. Hmmm, maybe if we replace her with this awk­ward kid that has the same name, nobody’ll notice? Roight.

    Dur­ing that stint as an offi­cer, one of the old biddy “advi­sors” began to pub­licly crit­i­cize my pro­nun­ci­a­tion of var­i­ous words. Semi­cir­cle, for exam­ple. How the heck *do* you pro­nounce semi­cir­cle? Seems like there are a cou­ple dif­fer­ent options. I couldn’t ever get it right in any case. I fin­ished out my term very unhap­pily and never went back.

  23. brian stouder said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    To me she looked embalmed and scary.

    She had a fairly nat­ural appearance.

    sounds like con­ver­sa­tion one would hear around a catafalque

  24. Jolene said on May 21st, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    Joe, did you just stop by to pick a fight? To address your ques­tions: As Alex said, an indi­vid­ual prayer for a friend, even spo­ken out loud in a pub­lic place, is quite dif­fer­ent from insti­tu­tion­ally man­dated prayers in pub­lic orga­ni­za­tions. To make the obvi­ous point, no one is stop­ping kids from pray­ing in school.

    Who was respon­si­ble for the “good times” of the 90s? I’d say the con­flu­ence of rel­a­tive peace and the growth of a huge new indus­try, which nei­ther the Dem pres­i­dent nor the Repub leg­is­la­ture had much to do with. More dis­cern­ing ana­lysts can likely pro­vide more fine-grained answers.

    Now be nice.

  25. Jolene said on May 21st, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    On clubs: My youth­ful expe­ri­ence of club mem­ber­ship was lim­ited to 4-H. Not much dogma, but no for­mal gowns either. Mostly, lots of suf­fer­ing as my sis­ters and I strug­gled to earn the blue rib­bons my mother thought we should have. (My more tal­ented sis­ters may see it differently.)

    On clubs for grown-ups: My par­ents belonged to an Elks Club, which, I guess, had some­thing to do w/ com­mu­nity projects, but, for them, it was where they went most Sat­ur­day evenings to meet their friends, have din­ner, drink, tell sto­ries and jokes, and dance. As a young kid, I loved see­ing them get dressed up to go out. My mom looked beau­ti­ful, and my farmer dad, hand­some even in his work clothes, looked ter­rific in a suit and tie. They always seemed to have a great time. New Year’s Eve was always a big party, and they went back again on New Year’s Day for Tom and Jer­rys. We had fun too w/ the high school girls they hired to be our babysitters.

    And, yes, the club died when the cyn­i­cal baby boomer gen­er­a­tion (i.e., my gen­er­a­tion) came of age. I don’t know whether they didn’t try to attract younger peo­ple or didn’t suc­ceed, but I saw the clos­ing as a loss. Hav­ing a place to go for fun that was, fun­da­men­tally, about peo­ple rather than say, the movie or the con­cert, was an impor­tant ele­ment of com­mu­nity for them – one that is miss­ing from my big-city existence.

  26. MichaelG said on May 21st, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    I once had a minor letch for Rebecca DeMolay.

  27. Catherine said on May 21st, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    Sue, def­i­nitely no mask for AR!

    Re ser­vice clubs, if they are in fact going away, may National Char­ity League and all its witches go the same direction.

    Seri­ously: my kids and their cohort are way more about ser­vice than my gen­er­a­tion ever was. And I think they’re doing a bet­ter job of it. One big real­iza­tion is that there are many more direct ways of doing ser­vice than throw­ing a “gala” and then writ­ing a check. How about vol­un­teer­ing at that hos­pice, or giv­ing through kiva​.org & its ilk?

  28. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 21st, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    Ser­vice clubs, civic orgs, church fel­low­ship groups, coun­try clubs, sea­son tick­ets — what they all have in com­mon is the ongo­ing, quasi-lifetime implied commitment.

    That’s the “Bowl­ing Alone” argu­ment in a nut­shell. Remem­ber, the point of that book was that there are as many peo­ple bowl­ing now as forty years ago, but nowhere near as many in leagues. League bowl­ing means you go on your night, bowl for your team, sit through the ban­quet. “Bowl­ing Alone” means you go when you want.

    The “Promise Keep­ers” phe­nom­e­non was more a man­i­fes­ta­tion of that trend than it ever was about resur­gent con­ser­vatism (though it reflected the bedrock con­ser­vatism of much of mid­dle Amer­ica). Men’s groups at churches are, com­pared to what their older mem­bers remem­ber in the ’50’s and ’60’s, a tiny, tinny shadow of their once brassy ascen­dancy, and they ask nice young pas­tors “why won’t younger men (they mean under 65) come?”

    And they have their monthly break­fast and annual retreat, all included for $55 and putting up with the snor­ing guy at the end of the dorm at camp, and can’t fig­ure out why the younger men go one week­end to a sta­dium when it costs $220, plus a hotel room (one hint: you don’t share the hotel room with 19 other old guys who snore resonantly).

    I point out that these young men don’t want a low com­mit­ment, end­less oblig­a­tion asso­ci­a­tion, but they will take a week of vaca­tion to spend five days in N’Orlins muck­ing houses and nail­ing crown mold­ing up while sleep­ing on foam pads in a church base­ment. Net time invest­ment — 24/7, ver­sus two seem­ingly end­less hours once a month UNTIL YOU DIE.

    Here in Colum­bus, we’re about to lose our fine Sym­phony Orches­tra, in large part because they can’t fig­ure it out, either — sea­son tick­ets, even sliced and diced to four event series’, do not sell, nor do mem­ber­ships. But if they put on an arena event with John Williams con­duct­ing the score for Star Wars, it sells out.

    The Light Opera, on the other hand, sells expe­ri­ences and rela­tion­ships, pre­sent­ing a clas­sic bill in the style of a soap opera or “Sex and the City” along with pack­ages not for three more pro­duc­tions, but for a meal and hotel stay that night. Each pro­duc­tion has to be sold indi­vid­u­ally to indi­vid­u­als. It’s hard, but it works, and they aren’t shut­ter­ing their doors.

    Coun­try clubs can’t die fast enough, but i may be biased a bit by our Ohio habit of build­ing them on Native Amer­i­can sacred sites, but you get my point.

    Oh, and those lovely words “Jeff’s right.” Thank you, Nancy! (I had to send that link to my esposa, who was muy amused. She fig­ures some­one should tell me i’m right once in a while …

  29. caliban said on May 21st, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    What Nancy says rings true. Per­son­ally, Ive no doubt that Health Care is the sin­gle most impor­tant thing You can look at it two ways.

    Eco­nom­i­cally, this is gigunda dol­lars. Should we spend them to make sure every per­son is a per­son? My answer, as a Catholic, is yes, unques­tion­ably. I’d argue this is a reli­gious imper­a­tive and an eco­nomic one. We also buy into the last Pope, who prob­a­bly had all the intel, say­ing that Bush was full of shit and offer­ing to be a shield.

    The last and cur­rent Pope were Hitler’s vic­tims, when they were kids. although he’s been made out as some nascent pubes­cent Nazi. Well of course he was. His fam­ily was on a short line. Read Babi Yar.

    So, any­way. Yeah I’d vote for any demo­c­rat in the elec­tion approach­ing. Not because they couldn, but, because they offer intel­li­gence com­pared to the hor­ri­ble result of ide­o­log­i­cal stu­pid­ity of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion that guar­an­teed no atten­tion to domes­tic problems.

    These morons talked about drown­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in a sink, and they bragged they’d do just that. It wasn’t ever that Mr. Bones bull­shit W, it was those guys like Daniel Pipes and Cheney, the PNACenturions.

    A vote for any Demo­c­rat at all is a vote against the shadow gov­ern­ment that made a fortne for Cheney. A vote for McCain is a vote for allow­ing Cheney to make more money on stop-loss GIs of one sort or another. Who sup­ports the troops?

    One thing about the more pro­gres­sive than thou. Those of us who are life­long lib­er­als, we find this bemus­ing. We did the work. Obama’s OK. Hillary knows what she’s talk­ing about. Any Oba­ma­niac that wants to tell me Hillary is old pol­i­tics, well Howard Dean made a for­tune through the re-insurance scam he devised. If that isn’t old pol­i­tics and graft, I don’t know what might be. I do know Howard avoided Viet­nam by mogul injuries while Kerry was sav­ing his crew­men in Laos.

    Is ignor­ing the Swift­boat slan­der worse than let­ting it ride when you’re run­ning things or ignor­ing it when your the VP nom­i­nee? I’d say its a rea­son­able sug­ges­tion that Ho Dean didn’t make the slight­est effort to sup­port the guy that was clearly a bet­ter pres­i­den­tial can­di­date , and he made the way clear for Ken­neth Black­well to rob the elec­tion in Cuya­hoga County. And the same guy dis­misses Florida and Michigan?

    Cau­cuses are the sin­gu­larly most anti-democratic devices in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Bum-rush themm abd you make it seem a state has voted for you demo­c­ra­t­i­cally. A joke.

    Well. it’s the rules. But who made the rules? Who said Michi­gan and Florida don’t count? I can’t imag­ine that two huge states that would vote for Clin­ton dis­ap­pear from con­sid­er­a­tion because Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tures in both states changed the Pri­mary dates, to grease one candidate’s path to the nomination.

    If you think back to the begin­ning of the pri­maries, I’d vote for Gravel before McCain and and other ass­hole that was still in the competition.

    Any­way, It’s Barack and McCain. Den­i­gra­tio­nand crit­i­cism, two obvi­ously dif­fer­ent things. Bill Clin­ton was accused of racist com­ments. What a joke. The press accused of anti-feminism? Olber­mann and Tweetie? No doubt. On issues if you pay atten­tion, Hillary know’s what she’s talk­ing about and Barack triangulates.

    Bot­tom line is Repub­li­cans are greedy ac

    what is.

  30. caliban said on May 21st, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    What Nancy says rings true. Per­son­ally, Ive no doubt that Health Care is the sin­gle most impor­tant thing You can look at it two ways.

    Eco­nom­i­cally, this is gigunda dol­lars. Should we spend them to make sure every per­son is a per­son? My answer, as a Catholic, is yes, unques­tion­ably. I’d argue this is a reli­gious imper­a­tive and an eco­nomic one. We also buy into the last Pope, who prob­a­bly had all the intel, say­ing that Bush was full of shit and offer­ing to be a shield.

    The last and cur­rent Pope were Hitler’s vic­tims, when they were kids. although he’s been made out as some nascent pubes­cent Nazi. Well of course he was. His fam­ily was on a short line. Read Babi Yar.

    So, any­way. Yeah I’d vote for any demo­c­rat in the elec­tion approach­ing. Not because they couldn, but, because they offer intel­li­gence com­pared to the hor­ri­ble result of ide­o­log­i­cal stu­pid­ity of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion that guar­an­teed no atten­tion to domes­tic problems.

    These morons talked about drown­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment in a sink, and they bragged they’d do just that. It wasn’t ever that Mr. Bones bull­shit W, it was those guys like Daniel Pipes and Cheney, the PNACenturions.

    A vote for any Demo­c­rat at all is a vote against the shadow gov­ern­ment that made a fortne for Cheney. A vote for McCain is a vote for allow­ing Cheney to make more money on stop-loss GIs of one sort or another. Who sup­ports the troops?

    One thing about the more pro­gres­sive than thou. Those of us who are life­long lib­er­als, we find this bemus­ing. We did the work. Obama’s OK. Hillary knows what she’s talk­ing about. Any Oba­ma­niac that wants to tell me Hillary is old pol­i­tics, well Howard Dean made a for­tune through the re-insurance scam he devised. If that isn’t old pol­i­tics and graft, I don’t know what might be. I do know Howard avoided Viet­nam by mogul injuries while Kerry was sav­ing his crew­men in Laos.

    Is ignor­ing the Swift­boat slan­der worse than let­ting it ride when you’re run­ning things or ignor­ing it when your the VP nom­i­nee? I’d say its a rea­son­able sug­ges­tion that Ho Dean didn’t make the slight­est effort to sup­port the guy that was clearly a bet­ter pres­i­den­tial can­di­date , and he made the way clear for Ken­neth Black­well to rob the elec­tion in Cuya­hoga County. And the same guy dis­misses Florida and Michigan?

    Cau­cuses are the sin­gu­larly most anti-democratic devices in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Bum-rush themm abd you make it seem a state has voted for you demo­c­ra­t­i­cally. A joke.

    Well. it’s the rules. But who made the rules? Who said Michi­gan and Florida don’t count? I can’t imag­ine that two huge states that would vote for Clin­ton dis­ap­pear from con­sid­er­a­tion because Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tures in both states changed the Pri­mary dates, to grease one candidate’s path to the nomination.

    If you think back to the begin­ning of the pri­maries, I’d vote for Gravel before McCain and and other ass­hole that was still in the competition.

    Any­way, It’s Barack and McCain. Den­i­gra­tio­nand crit­i­cism, two obvi­ously dif­fer­ent things. Bill Clin­ton was accused of racist com­ments. What a joke. The press accused of anti-feminism? Olber­mann and Tweetie? No doubt. On issues if you pay atten­tion, Hillary know’s what she’s talk­ing about and Barack triangulates.

    Bot­tom line is Repub­li­cans are greedy acuisi­tors. For years, peo­ple have voted for Repub­li­cans against their inter­ests. Time to stop.

    what is.

  31. Dexter said on May 21st, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    The King of The Pompous Asses, Steve Shine, was inter­viewed two weeks ago , and Shine played the same old song, “McCain is a ‘mav­er­ick’ “, McCain is so dif­fer­ent from Bush, all that non­sense.
    The truth is what we have been hear­ing for a long while: A McCain pres­i­dency is a Bush 3rd term.
    We all have our#1 issues that we are pas­sion­ate about, and mine is the war in Iraq.
    McCain’s “hun­dred more years” com­ment was taken out of con­text, but the truth is he thinks no Amer­i­can cares that we have troops placed strate­gi­cally all over the world, and he believes no Amer­i­can will care if we have thou­sands of troops , com­bat ready, perched to fly into any place in The Region for “flash bat­tles” which in McCain’s eye is per­fectly accept­able to ALL Amer­i­cans.
    To me, this is NOT “bring­ing the troops home.“
    And to me, bring­ing the troops out of The Region is pri­or­ity one.
    But hey, that white ele­phant embassy of the US in Iraq? The stag­ger­ing finan­cial com­mit­ment to that mon­stros­ity indi­cates we will be in The Region long after we the liv­ing are dead and gone.
    Oh, <a href=“http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-1950 – 1959/1958-BMW-Isetta-300-Coupe-Green-PO.jpg

  32. caliban said on May 21st, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    Record Rec­om­men­da­tion: The Ray Davies record Other Peo­ples Lives. If you like the Kinks. This record got mediocre reviews. Don’t know why. In the first place, peo­ple claimed in print it was retread Kinks. That’s like say­ing The Old Man Down the Road stole from Run Through the Jun­gle. If you buy that your Zaentz.

    Ray Davies has writ­ten gor­geous melodies: Water­loo Sun­set, Okla­homa, USA Some mother’s Son for exam­ple. These things seem to come to him as eas­ily as AC/DC riffs. I love AC/DC, but as spec­tac­u­lar as those riffs are, what comes close to You Really Got Me?

    When he wasn’t Mick or Paul or John or Pete, he was bet­ter and ahead of them all in both lyrics and melodies. If there was a genius in th Brit inva­sion, it was Ray and the Kinks.

    So, Ray invented Punk on th melodic side, and if you lis­ten to gui­tars., Dave is ridicu­lously good. Throw­away, any­thing on any album. This is the great band nobody ever said so.

    As Justin Wil­son said, I guatontee.

  33. Dorothy said on May 21st, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    Brian I can’t stop laugh­ing at catafalque.

    Some­body reach cal­iban his meds, quick.

  34. moe99 said on May 21st, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    When I was in lawschool we formed our own legal fra­ter­nity as two of the three extant legal fra­ter­ni­ties hired strip­pers for their rush par­ties and we weren’t so impressed with that. We named it Rho Epsilon Hork, Sib­ling Soci­ety and Motor­cy­cle Gang. Every admit­tee was a pres­i­dent, because it looked good on your resume and when you grad­u­ated you were given immor­tal sta­tus. Our Chief Jus­tice was Ollie Burger (this was dur­ing the short lived hey day of Ollie’s Trol­ley ham­burger fran­chises) and in the event of a tie vote, we’d flip the Chief Jus­tice. We also used him in secret com­mu­nion ceremonies.

    The gen­e­sis of Rho Epsilon Hork stemmed from a fic­tional fel­low named Ralph Hork who used to run for stu­dent office first in under­grad and then in law school. When we ran him for 3rd year rep to the Stu­dent Bar in law school, he actu­ally got the most votes because the 3d years didn’t know who he was. His plat­form at that time, iirc, was “shoes.”

  35. Danny said on May 21st, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    moe99, that killed. Very funny! I espe­cially loved the part about “pres­i­dent” look­ing good on the resumes.

  36. Danny said on May 21st, 2008 at 6:55 pm

    Okay, Dorothy made me google. Very funny, Brian!

    And, Dorothy. I am not sure if it is “reach” or “keep out of reach” on the meds. Never sure with him.

  37. caliban said on May 21st, 2008 at 7:25 pm

    Dex­ter, Who is Steve Shine? My names John Lee Pet­ti­more. Blog­gage, is two lbs enough?

    Rea­son­able? McCain is snake oil y’all. Does he dist­tance him­self by not being an ass­hole but stifk­ing with efery idi­otic policy?Y’all ever lis­ten to Steve Earle? Any given occa­sion he makes an ass of him­self. Iran is fund­ing Al Q in Iraq. What an idiot. That would be a moron.

  38. caliban said on May 21st, 2008 at 7:40 pm

    How do you laugh at any­thing with catafalques involved? Don’t bother. What a mind­less jerk. I could tell you it was my best friend. Wasn’t. My brother’s best friend. And he was with him.

    Al Q in Iraq never existed before the inva­sion and has noth­ing to do with AQ. That’s made up. AQ in Iraq has noth­ing to do with AQ and Osama. Claim­ing any­thing dif­fer­ent is just lying.

  39. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 21st, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    Dex­ter — The Region, when cap­i­tal­ized, prop­erly refers to Indi­ana north of the Kanka­kee and west of the Golden Dome. Some limit The Region (or “Da Region”) to north of US 6 and west of IN 49, but i’m not so restrictive.

    Just to clarify.

  40. Dexter said on May 21st, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    good one, Jeff! I know what you are talk­ing about…my brother lived in that “The Region” for forty years and I have lots of fam­ily there , yet.
    Cal, Steve Shine is the Chair­man of The Repub­li­can Party of Allen County, Indi­ana. He has been an obnox­ious prick since he was a TV talk­ing head at the incep­tion of Chan­nel 55, Fort Wayne.
    Also, Cal, I have lots of Steve Earle music on my com­puter . I thought he was great on “The Wire”,also.
    Here’s some mov­ing lyrics.…

  41. basset said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:00 pm

    well, I’m not rich, old, Catholic, or drool­ing inco­her­ently at this very moment, but I am in Civ­i­tan… joined mainly because the lunches were good and sev­eral of my friends were there.

    how good? well, we meet at a famous source of what used to be called “soul food,” the restau­rant in the hood that every­one knows and can­di­dates for office have to pass through.

    cou­ple of weeks ago I went to the Red Cross to donate white cells at the end of the day after a lunch meet­ing. basi­cally you get hooked up to a machine which takes your blood, strains out the platelets, and puts the rest back.

    half an hour into the two-hour process the warn­ing bell goes off. tech comes over, checks it, resets, walks away.

    bell goes off again.

    tech asks me what I had for lunch.

    “Fried chicken and a pork chop at (name of the place).”

    “Ahhh, that’s why then.”

    Turned out I’d clogged up the equip­ment with blood-borne fat. Gotta eat healthy before phere­sis, they said, that fried stuff goes straight to the veins.

  42. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    Only 3 sec­onds between David and [insert last name here] … and it was the other guy, with the bed hair — not The Cho­sen One! I don’t under­stand pre-teen girls, appar­ently. Loved the Pips, though.

  43. brian stouder said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    Jeff, I think the sub­ject of the rise and fall of ser­vice clubs and civic orga­ni­za­tions — and secret soci­eties — would be book-length material.

    A gen­uinely odd (and oddly com­pelling) book is Steal­ing Lincoln’s Body, by Thomas Craughwell.

    http://​www​.ama​zon​.com/​S​t​e​a​l​i​n​g​-​L​i​n​c​o​l​n​s​-​B​o​d​y​-​T​h​o​m​a​s​-​C​r​a​u​g​h​w​e​l​l​/​d​p​/​0​6​7​4​024583

    The book is only 200 pages, and most of it is a digres­sion on var­i­ous sub­jects (embalm­ing tech­niques, the ins and outs of coun­ter­feit­ing, Mary’s canny exer­cise of strength, in assur­ing her husband’s bur­ial in Spring­field instead of Chicago or Wash­ing­ton [where the pow­er­ful men wanted him buried] and so on)

    In another digres­sion, the author riffs on the secret clubs and soci­eties that existed almost every­where a cen­tury and a half ago, and indeed, one sup­poses that before we had tele­vised “real­ity shows” (so called) to dis­tract us, belong­ing to a group (ded­i­cated to what­ever pur­pose) that met weekly prob­a­bly scratched the same itch, for people.

    In the con­text of Craughwell’s book, one learns about the ultra-secret Lin­coln Guard of Honor, that formed after a ring of coun­ter­feit­ers nearly snatched the mar­tyred president’s remains on elec­tion night 1876 (the deba­cle was averted by R Emmet Tryrell’s great great grandfather!)…and how the president’s remains spent the next two decades in the sub-basement of the mon­u­ment, hid­den by a pile of lum­ber and other scraps! (When Mary passed away, her remains were also secretly con­signed to the sub-basement! They couldn’t bury them there, because when they — the secret honor guard — tried to dig graves down there, they struck water!)

    Quite odd, really. (with the impend­ing demise of Fort Wayne’s Lin­coln Museum, my read­ing has dark­ened a bit. After Steal­ing Lincoln’s Body, I picked up Amer­i­can Bru­tus, about John Wilkes Booth and his hap­less band of co-conspirators. I had attended the author’s talk here in town a year or two ago, and found him to be unex­pect­edly interesting…although at the time read­ing his book about Lincoln’s killer held no attraction.)

    edit — bas­set — I too have expe­ri­enced that. Once I had had a big ol juicy steak before phere­sis, and the nurse called my atten­tion to how cloudy the bag con­tain­ing my platelets was. Usu­ally the ‘prod­uct’ looks like cloudy cook­ing oil, but this time it looked like melted butter

  44. A vagina or two too far « virgotext said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:17 pm

    […] Nancy, whose own take on The Mad­dow is also […]

  45. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 21st, 2008 at 10:18 pm

    Brian: read it, loved it, rec­om­mend it!

  46. caliban said on May 21st, 2008 at 11:47 pm

    R. Emmett Tyrell?? That’s recall­ing the evil undead. Does some­body still pub­lish that ash?

    Any­way. Nancy claims Detroit. As a gen­tle­man, I’ll grant her that, even though the Grosses are a long way from Briggs, and ‘sports­men’ from those parts used to mean some­thing more like pugs from Joliet and less like home-grown thugs.

    I’ve been a Celtics fan since I was lit­tle. I believed Bill Rus­sell was the incar­na­tion of black Jesus, and I had fist­fights with my brother who thought Wilt ruled. ( We were sort of obses­sive. We replayed Yankees-Dodgers by box-scores, rightie-leftie, includ­ing pitch­ers, with whif­fle balls and we didn’t just keep score, we kept box-scores).

    In the mod­ern era, we have Isiah, who thought Larry was just another player, whose mother couldn’t spell his name. And the twit threw the inbounds and the Hick just knew where he was inbound­ing, and so did DJ, and I was stand­ing out­side a Cam­bridge Bar because we were so blue col­lar we didn’t have cable. And Larry caught and threw it to Denis. F**k you Isiah.

    Maybe peo­ple think that’s the hick from Fre­bch Lick. He went to the small city and ate it alive. Now he is the soul of Indi­anapo­lis, but, you know, there’s Pey­ton. If the Pats didn’t cheat, who knows. . All Grown up, and cosmopolitan.

    Piston’s, not so much. Cheat (see Rasheed bump­ing with Gar­nett, offen­sive fouls moron) . I don’t know. I shouldn’t con­sider bet­ting, but I put money on the Celtics. For purists, Gar­nett buries Rasheed, Rondo out­plays Chauncey. Paul Pierce is just too good. He was bet­ter than LeBron and these guys don’t have LeBron.

    My appolo­gies, Ms. Nancy Nall, but it would seem to be the only thing impor­tant in the Motor City. Inter­est­ing, isn’t it, that the City loves its nick­name. If you say Bean­town to some­body from Boston, they look at you like you come from Area 51.

    Celts in six, and I’ll put money on it. Could they bring back Laimn­beer and let the Chief nail his ass? Pis­tons still play cheap-shot, like the Spurs, but real bas­ket­ball will beat David Stern eventually.

  47. Dexter said on May 22nd, 2008 at 1:25 am

    Jesus Christ, Cal, you have Detroit-cred, but damn, all that break­down on the Celtics / Pis­tons , and yet not a word on Zetter­berg, Lid­strom, Dat­syuk, or even a nos­tal­gic word about the reunion of The Grind Line (Maltby-Draper-McCarty), or Ozzie’s stel­lar net­mind­ing, or Holm­strom, or Jiri Hudler and his great impact even though he plays just eleven min­utes a game?
    No men­tion of Babcock’s coach­ing or Dal­las Drake?
    C’mon, Cal­iban! We’re Cup Crazy , and I live in Ohio, fer chrissakes…and I bet Detroit is going nutso, too, even though not enough Motor City denizens have enough cash to afford Cup Tix.
    By the way? …Wilt was bet­ter! I started out a Celtics fan but by 1967 Wilt won me over to the 76ers…now as an adult I’m all DEE-TROIT BASSS-KET-BALL! (but see­ing Elton John was my best Palace memory…)

  48. joodyb said on May 22nd, 2008 at 1:40 am

    Methinks LAMary is in big trou­ble for reveal­ing that secret Masonic scriptage.

  49. Terry WAlter said on May 22nd, 2008 at 2:18 am

    Hey Nancy, nice to know you’ve been read­ing my posts. I’ve always con­sid­ered you to be left-leaning, but still think­ing for your­self. As opposed to the brain dead , PC spout­ing, slo­ga­neer­ing types. Oth­er­wise I wouldn’t still be reading/annoying you. The Peggy Noo­nan col­umn did a pretty good job of sum­ma­riz­ing where I, and many other Repub­li­cans I know stand. Bush has been a pretty good Demo­c­rat pres­i­dent. NCLB-massive fed­eral intru­sion into education-check. Geezer drug pro­gram– who knows how much that’ll cost-check. Mas­sive gen­eral spend­ing & resul­tant increased national debt-check. He sure shot that Repub­li­can cam­paign talk­ing point right in the ass. Man­dated huge increase in vehi­cle fuel mileage ratings-check. Actu­ally, the hard feel­ings started back with his old man,after he stood there and lied to me about NO NEW TAXES!!! When he was run­ning for re-election, the Quayle motor­cade was com­ing by where I worked along US24. I was sorely tempted to run out and scream NO NEW TAXES, but I fig­ured I might end up in the crosshairs of a scope,so I didn’t. While you and per­haps 51% of the posters on here don’t agree with me about the role gov­ern­ment should play in our lives, it shouldn’t be hard to see how we feel betrayed. What with all the excite­ment about how the Indi­ana pri­mary mat­tered for the first time in decades, I’m sure many of you forgot/didn’t care that on the R side of the bal­lot, it still didn’t. We were force fed W. by all the big money men and this time McCain.
    Speak­ing of bad presidents,it’s easy to come up with one worse than W.- Dim­muh Carter. He cam­paigned on the mis­ery index;inflation plus unem­ploy­ment. By the time he got axed,it was 3 times as bad. And he started the ball rolling down­hill by help­ing to oust the Shah of Iran. He may have not been perfect,but he was a true friend of the U.S. More than you can say for the Aya­tol­lah or Hacked­mea­jew­to­day. Now Dimmuh’s run­ning over there kiss­ing up to terrorists,dead & alive.
    On the topic of strange rit­u­als. At my sons’ mid­dle school year end awards, one of the teach­ers presided over the cer­e­mony. He turned off the elec­tric lights and lit a can­dle. He breathily intoned about it being “The Light of Knowl­edge”. If you couldn’t hear the Far East­ern music play­ing in your head,you were asleep. Now it seems a year or so before, a cer­tain herbal plant was found grow­ing in his back yard,right there in town. He dis­avowed any insight as to how it might have got­ten there. As I recall, he was never charged with any­thing. That can­dle shone brightly for me, because before I left the cer­e­mony, I knew how that plant had sprouted where it did.

  50. Dorothy said on May 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 am

    Pen­guins are gonna win the Cup in 6 games. You heard it here first.

  51. Sue said on May 22nd, 2008 at 8:33 am

    Well, Nancy, per­haps you shouldn’t have turned over the dri­ving to us after all. It got a lit­tle uglier than I’m used to here. And go Penguins.

  52. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 22nd, 2008 at 9:22 am

    Not ugly, i trust, but some­what less than mild-mannered — two links that i hope get widely read, soon:

    Mr. Murti, whom i’ve never heard of before, pegs it — “One of the biggest chal­lenges our coun­try faces is our addic­tion to oil.” Read more at –http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​5​/​2​1​/​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​/​2​1​o​i​l.html?

    Tom Fried­man, on what Pres­i­dent Bush actu­ally DID screw up –
    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​5​/​2​1​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​2​1​f​r​i​e​d​m​a​n.html?

    “Let’s start with the most pro­found one: More and more, I am con­vinced that the big for­eign pol­icy fail­ure that will be pinned on this admin­is­tra­tion is not the fail­ure to make Iraq work, as dev­as­tat­ing as that has been. It will be one with much broader balance-of-power impli­ca­tions — the fail­ure after 9/11 to put in place an effec­tive energy policy.”

    I’m watch­ing Obama and McCain to see who can con­vince me they have an energy pol­icy that makes a lick o’ sense.

  53. LA Mary said on May 22nd, 2008 at 9:41 am

    Joodyb,
    I had to fire a nun last year because she lied on her resume. The Masonic stuff is small com­pared to that. I know I’m going to hell.

  54. brian stouder said on May 22nd, 2008 at 9:52 am

    Here’s to the unstop­pable march of the Pen­guins to the Stan­ley Cup; and Dan­ica Patrick or Gra­ham Rahal at Indi­anapo­lis; and Lewis Hamil­ton at Monaco (or, for a dark horse pick, Gian­carlo Fisichella. If there is a really [really, really]big rain­storm dur­ing qual­i­fy­ing, Fisi might could win the parade-like race in the streets of Monte Carlo); and Jeff Bur­ton at Char­lotte (mom likes Tony Stew­art best)

  55. Jolene said on May 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 am

    Erin Bur­nett, a CNBC reporter recently returned from travel in India, Europe, and else­where, made sim­i­lar points this AM re the world reshap­ing itself around us, and her com­ments were fol­lowed by sim­i­lar obser­va­tions from Zbig­niew Brzezin­ski. It’s long past time for some big-picture thinking.

  56. Jolene said on May 22nd, 2008 at 10:02 am

    Oh, and yes, good luck to the Pens. Always hope for good things to hap­pen to Pittsburgh.

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