58 responses to
“On hiatus.”

1. Dexter said on July 11th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

   Open thread? Here’s my post from the last thread:

   Ivan Lebamoff was defeated by Bob Arm­strong and became mayor of Fort Wayne in 1975.
   I don’t really know much about local poli­cies before Arm­strong, but dur­ing Armstrong’s term, until 1979, Fort Wayne was a crazy place . Maybe it all started under Lebamoff’s watch, I don’t know, but the vice was unchecked. I heard enough from my work-buddies …for one case, the God­fa­ther Club…guys would be dared to per­form oral sex on the dancers and the dancers would comply…I don’t know what else went on, except I heard many sto­ries of guys flash­ing the dancers with no reper­cus­sions. I men­tion this because I did hap­pen to be in The Cats Meow club down­town in the Fall of 1974 when some dancers from The She Club came in and dur­ing a break between band sets these two girls played the juke box and shed all cloth­ing …tot­lally nude…and danced around on the edge of the stage, but within three min­utes cops came in and busted them for indecency…so I believe most of the XXX stuff went on under Armstrong’s lead­er­ship.
   One of the two papers did a spe­cial on the mas­sage par­lors, fer chris­sakes!!
   They named the addresses…amazing! One line from the story read some­thing like ‘ …if those walls could talk, the sto­ries they could tell…’ Jeezuss! How trite! I seem to remem­ber they were all over town, from North Clin­ton to Waynedale. I thought the mayor that fol­lowed Arm­strong cleaned all that shit up, but if Nancy didn’t even start at the NS until 1984…guess not.
   Oh well. Of course the sto­ries were abun­dant, as the guys told of their weekends…one sim­ple moth­er­fucker came in with a token for a “round the world”, cour­tesy of some parlor’s management…he showed it to us guys ask­ing what it meant. “Pack your bags, youn­gun,” I told him.
   “You’re going on a trip!”

   But the story that lasted as bar gos­sip for twenty years involved an older employee, a man who was addicted to the whores at the par­lors. He got the clap and gave it to his wife.

   She made him buy her a new car and then all was hunky-dory.

2. coozledad said on July 11th, 2008 at 10:44 pm

   Y’all have a good vaca­tion. If it stays as hot as it is here next week, I’ll just keep sit­ting here and hit­ting refresh.

3. brian stouder said on July 11th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

   Have a great, rest­ful vaca­tion, Nance!

   We just got back home today.…I must say that Sue’s Wis­con­sin is a beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful state. The Dells were very nice, etc etc — but to me one of the gen­uine high­lights of the excur­sion was the drive from the Dells to the House on the Rock. One inevitably ends up on the cur­vey, undu­lat­ing sec­ondary roads (instead of the bor­ingly straight inter­state routes) in the lovely rolling emer­ald Wis­con­sin coun­try­side west of Madi­son — and it was an enthralling experience.

   And — I think it was Julie who fore­warned us about the shake­down on the Duck ride, which was pre­cisely as decribed. Still, the ride was great, and we got 1/2 off the price, so I bought TWO books (Pam would have for­given one!).…and then our Duck (Jane) wouldn’t start up again…so the Tow Truck Duck came to us (clev­erly named “Chesty Puller”!).

   Quick thing I learned when I bought a Bara­boo newspaper.…The dry bed of Lake Del­ton has drawn many peo­ple with metal detec­tors, and do you know what they’ve been find­ing num­bers of? Hand guns! And one cou­ple found a very large safe — with the door cut off — buried 20 feet beyond the boat ramp. The Lake Del­ton Police took that away. (we saw a Black Hawk cir­cling around sev­eral times dring the week; pre­sume­ably FEMA? — as the state and the affetced coun­ties and cities decide who pays for what)

   And — Paul Bun­yans was GREAT!!

4. moe99 said on July 12th, 2008 at 2:02 am

   Brian, I worked with Lew Puller, Jr. at DoD and played bridge with him and his wife Toddy on sev­eral occa­sions. He was a great guy, but haunted by his own Viet Nam demons that even­tu­ally destroyed him. I’m sure being Chesty’s son was also a burden.

   I’ve got an entry up on my very ill tended blog in case some of you have a han­ker­ing to read some­thing not quite as well-written as those of present com­pany dur­ing Nancy’s absence (have a great vaca­tion Nancy and Alan):

   http://​tinyurl​.com/​6ac4oq

5. brian stouder said on July 12th, 2008 at 10:36 am

   moe — great story! — and I’d make the fol­low­ing addi­tion to the moral of the story:

   “.…or a part­ner in a law firm”

   Being a son of THE Marines’ Marine must have been a lit­tle like that Robert Duvall movie The Great Santini

6. coozledad said on July 12th, 2008 at 11:48 am

   I sec­ond Brian on that story, moe. I think another pos­si­ble moral is it might pay to have peo­ple shack up for at least a cou­ple of years, to fig­ure out if they can stand each other, or if they’re even cut out for the pro­saic life.
   I was a part­ner in one trial run where I was vir­tu­ally cer­tain I would wake up one day with a kitchen knife buried between my shoul­der blades. I don’t think the woman was par­tic­u­larly vio­lent by nature, but she did pos­sess above aver­age upper body strength.
   It’s more that when we stopped get­ting along, we stopped com­pletely.
   Excuse me while I have a cold sweat think­ing about it.

7. moe99 said on July 12th, 2008 at 11:49 am

   Thanks Brian. Went in and added “or an admi­ralty lawyer” because he left the part­ner­ship a year later as a result of his divorce. It was ter­ri­bly sad – the wife was/is an alco­holic and he tried to get cus­tody of the kids but lost after a long drawn-out trial that finan­cially ruined him. And she pun­ished him by turn­ing the kids against him. One hopes that even­tu­ally they will make their peace with their dad when they become adults. This war is not over, even yet.

8. Danny said on July 12th, 2008 at 12:01 pm

   Nancy, you all have a won­der­ful vaca­tion! Remem­ber to fit a hike in at Muir Woods is pos­si­ble. The nat­ural beauty out here can be astonishing.

   Dorothy, here’s hop­ing you house sit­u­a­tion resolves itself very soon. So sorry to hear that.

   I know in these polit­i­cally charged times, peo­ple can hold strong opin­ions, but I think Tony Snow was one of the good guys. RIP, Tony.

9. Gasman said on July 12th, 2008 at 1:57 pm

   Danny,
   I’m not sure that I agree that Tony Snow was one of the “good guys” or not. I’m not putting him in the camp with extrem­ist con­ser­v­a­tives like Helms & Cheney, but he was more than will­ing to be a shill for the Dark Side. He was enough of a jour­nal­ist to real­ize that this White House lies sim­ply because it can. They lie even when they don’t need to, it’s just who they are. If we believe Scott McClel­lan, they even lie to their own press sec­re­taries. Yet, Snow eagerly signed on to be part of this admin­is­tra­tion. Snow had to real­ize that he was part of that great dis­in­for­ma­tion machine that treated the Amer­i­can peo­ple as cat­tle that needed to be led by the nose, yet he will­ingly chose to be a team player. Ulti­mately, such a view is at it’s heart antag­o­nis­tic to democracy.

   His trips in and out of the revolv­ing door con­nect­ing the media and Repub­li­can advo­cacy should once and for all dis­pel any notion of the “lib­eral” press. In my mind, Snow merely con­firmed the overly cozy — maybe even inces­tu­ous — rela­tion­ship between the con­ser­v­a­tives and the media, espe­cially on the TV side. Do “good” men act as cheer­lead­ers for those who would trade the integrity of the con­sti­tu­tion for tem­po­rary par­ti­san gain? Doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily make him evil, but it cer­tainly makes me doubt­ful about his inher­ent “goodness.”

10. MichaelG said on July 12th, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    May the three of you have a great vaca­tion! And may the air­line gods be with you!

11. Dexter said on July 12th, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    Coo­zledad,
    I fell asleep on the couch, hardly a sin or break­ing of any mar­riage vows, but enough of a vio­la­tion of she-code to war­rant a hard kick to the base of the neck . I had been sound asleep , it was 2:00 A.M. and I woke to a woman scream­ing at me about some­thing.
    Not want­ing for a knife attack or a sailing-through-the-air pan, I assessed the damage…instant bad headache, see­ing “stars”, and a what-the-hell thought pat­tern, I was out the door in three sec­onds flat, into the 1968 black VW Bug, and I started dri­ving away. I had nowhere to go but I sure the hell wasn’t going back there that night, so I just set course west­ward for Chicago, 165 miles to the west. I drove to Fuller­ton Beach and walked around, then went to a diner, and then drove home to my sweet wife. It was as I had not left, and the entire inci­dent never hap­pened.
    Some­how we stayed together for another year before she opted to leave with a man for the Com­mon­wealth of Vir­ginia.
    Good bye .

12. Dexter said on July 12th, 2008 at 8:20 pm

    Be kinda leery of the walk-away crab­meat cock­tails sold from carts at Fisherman’s Wharf…they are about five bucks but well…one cost me a thou­sand dol­lars worth of misery.

13. brian stouder said on July 12th, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    Dex­ter — I was born in 1961, so I vaguely remem­ber my mom and dad being happy when Zeiss went out and Lebamoff came into office; and I fur­ther recall when the News-Sentinel weilded gen­uine power in this town, and was solidly Repub­li­can, and pub­lished well-timed (just before the elec­tion) front-page above-the-fold pic­tures of city trucks on Lebamoff Cap ‘N Cork park­ing lots — doing paving work(?).…thinking back on it, what­ever the deal was with the pave­ment, it was surely brassy to run marked city trucks out there!

    I remem­ber Bob Arm­strong per­son­i­fied a Fort Wayne archetype.…a gen­uine Frank Burns (as in MASH) sort of Fort Wayne per­son­age, includ­ing the rodent eyes and the reced­ing chin.

    I would have been 18 in 1979, and I recall Steve Shine toy­ing weith the idea of run­ning (“Steve Shine in ’79″) — and I recall DIS­lik­ing Win Moses intensely (the whole Sharon Lapp fiasco came to pass, and back then I ascribed the mis­han­dling of that inves­ti­ga­tion to him) .…and when the News-Sentinel went after him over cam­paign finance vio­la­tions, and he did the plea deal with the pros­e­cuter wherein he resigned, only to suc­cess­fully play the “Reelected-by-Precinct-Committee-People” gam­bit (Kwame oughta try that one!) I was never going to like him.

    But he did han­dle the loss of IH as well as any­one could, plus the big flood back then.

    By way of say­ing, I vaguely recall big crack­downs on mas­sage par­lors in the news…all I know is that when I was 18 or 19, my bud­dies and I had no trou­ble get­ting into Mad Antho­nys or Poor Johns or Gib­son Girl and seing the naked women dance, while we ordered up $8 pitch­ers of beer. And they left noth­ing unex­posed, through the course of their per­for­mances, if you tipped them.

    (I think my whole nudie bar phase lasted one sum­mer, and then the shine was off of it; as soon as you start to think about how the indi­vid­u­als up there came to be up there, let alone what their career path could pos­si­bly be, that’s the end)

14. beb said on July 12th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    I was also going to men­tion the pass­ing of Tony Snow but Danny beat me to it. I’m with Gas­man, tho in think­ing that Snow was a bad man. For most of his career he posed as a jour­nal­ist but con­stantly advo­cated con­ser­v­a­tive, even extremely con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tions. That doesn’t just make him a bad jour­nal­ist, it’s why he is a bad man.

    Was he as bad a Jesse Helms? Helms was upfront about his racism while Snow hide his behind a wink and a nod. The smil­ing devil is always worse then the one with the pitchfork.

    But to lis­ten to the media eulo­gize Snowyou would think he was a saint.

    Nancy picked a good time to go on vaca­tion, Sat­ur­day in Detroit was hot and muggy. Not a pleas­ant day to be outside.

    Speak­ing of vaca­tion, a cou­ple years ago we went to Chicago to visit the muse­ums. One night my wife and I were sit­ting on a two floor patio at our hotel watch­ing a storm come on off the lake. To the north of us were the sky­scrapes of the Mir­a­cle Miles, brightly lit by a vari­ety of lights. As we watched low level clouds would blew through the ‘scrap­ers momen­tar­ily obscur­ing them in gauzy mist. It was so incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful. A high­light of our week there.

15. Bill said on July 12th, 2008 at 11:41 pm

    Another great way to spend a sum­mer night in Chicago. We saw it last night and it was ter­rific. BTW, Mau­dits Son­nants trans­lates to “Accursed Chiming”

    http://​leisure​blogs​.chicagotri​bune​.com/​t​h​e​_​t​h​e​a​t​e​r​_​l​o​o​p​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​7​/​m​a​u​d​i​t​s​-​s​o​n​n​a​n​t.html

16. Gasman said on July 13th, 2008 at 12:11 am

    brian,
    We’re about the same age, as I grad­u­ated from Hard­ing H.S. in 1980. I remem­ber a cer­tain whore­ato­rium on Wayne Trace right near the old Clark gas sta­tion. The build­ing was a restau­rant, var­i­ous other busi­nesses, a res­i­dence, but most mem­o­rably a house of ill repute. I espe­cially liked their sign out front which read, “Park­ing In Rear.” No kid­ding. Being the wag that I am, I REALLY wanted to add “or for $20 more, any other orifice.”

    Back to Tony Snow. Let’s hope that the media for­goes the week­long sack­cloth and ashes rou­tine that they gave us after Tim Russert died. It was bizarre and embar­rass­ing. At least with Snow they can’t pre­tend like his death was a surprise.

    beb, I’m more in your camp than my pre­vi­ous post might sug­gest. I was merely try­ing not to speak too ill of the dead. I won’t miss him.

17. Dexter said on July 13th, 2008 at 12:12 am

    I can’t remem­ber any devel­op­ing weather pat­tern that brought joy to me, only fear. One such episode occurred about fif­teen years ago in Kissim­mee, Florida. By good for­tune our motel had a car­port , sav­ing our vehi­cle, sorta…a vicious storm blew up and you know how how you hear of baseball-sized hail but never see it? — I didn’t see it either. What I saw were mil­lions of ten­nis ball-sized chunks of ice smash­ing into every­thing. Right beside the Lar­son Lodge where we were was a Mer­cury car deal­er­ship. Every car had severe hail dam­age , I’d guess seven of every eight cars had total glass destruc­tion and con­se­quent water dam­age. Water got so deep it flooded into my car engine, but I was able to hire a wrecker and had it towed to get it dried out and fixed…it took a whole day. The hail looked like snow for a few sec­onds in the veg­e­ta­tion areas but instantly melted. All over Kissim­mee peo­ple were dri­ving with busted-out glass.

18. Danny said on July 13th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    CNN’s Ed Henry gives a pretty good remem­brance of Tony Snow. In con­tentious times where demo­niza­tion and vit­riol rule the day, he was a dis­tinctly cool, well-humored and intel­li­gent voice. This arti­cle regard­ing a recent speech Pres­i­dent Clin­ton gave on the increas­ing polar­iza­tion in this coun­try kind of res­onates with this idea that we ought to act more civilly to one another regard­less of our disagreements.

    As many of us have noted, this is one of the rea­sons, Nancy’s blog has worked well as a com­fort­able home for many of us over the years. We dis­agree, but in gen­eral, we do so respect­fully and some­times we even (gasp) come around to one another’s way of think­ing on things.

    That said, you two, gas­man and beb, are total a-holes who are full of it.… Just JOKING.

    Seri­ously, though, I do dis­agree that Snow was a shill. He was very crit­i­cal of this admin­is­tra­tion and I truly believe that he got involved to help influ­ence it for the good. And beb:

    For most of his career he posed as a jour­nal­ist but con­stantly advo­cated con­ser­v­a­tive, even extremely con­ser­v­a­tive posi­tions. That doesn’t just make him a bad jour­nal­ist, it’s why he is a bad man.

    Um, wow. There are so many whom fit this indict­ment in the “Lib­eral” sense that it would be ridicu­lous not to men­tion them. David Gre­gory and Helen Thomas come to mind. And fur­ther­more, it is incor­rect to say that Snow posed as a jour­nal­ist. He mainly did con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­tary. Big, big difference.

19. moe99 said on July 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Frank Rich has a sober­ing piece up com­par­ing the Bush Administration’s crimes to those of the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion in today’s New York Times.

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​5tmvz9

    Any­one asso­ci­ated with the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion with very few excep­tions, does not come out look­ing good, shall we say.

20. del said on July 13th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Today’s Detroit News includes the fol­low­ing edi­to­ri­als on its website:

    Tony Snow was a Fam­ily Man First.

    America’s Mil­i­tary Power Works — With Lit­tle Thanks.

    Mil­i­tary Les­son: Willpower Often Works.

    Obama Sends Shiv­ers to Liberals.

    Is there any news­pa­per in the coun­try that spews such unvar­nished pro­pa­ganda, left or right-leaning, anywhere?

    My neigh­bor lived in a house with Tony Snow and liked him as a per­son but dis­agreed with his pol­i­tics. Snow seemed to me to be cool, and well-humored too. But very unwise.

21. Danny said on July 13th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    Hey, del. Long time, no see. I was won­der­ing where you’ve been. Hope your sum­mer is going well.

    Hey, when you men­tion your neigh­bor “lived in a house” with Tony, what was it? A col­lege frat house or a room­mate sit­u­a­tion for young politi­cos in DC? Just won­der­ing. And any humor­ous anec­dotes that you could share from that?

22. caliban said on July 13th, 2008 at 8:41 pm

    Any­thing you say.

    Can’t say, What you say.

23. caliban said on July 13th, 2008 at 8:42 pm

    Before and after

24. coozledad said on July 13th, 2008 at 8:42 pm

    I’m just sorry to see larger mar­ket papers hew­ing so close to the administration’s line. The small town papers have mostly been snapped up now, but that was a given.
    The closer you get to DC and New York, there’s a new species of jour­nal­ist insider cult that hinges on food and bev­er­ages, and appar­ently, being able to actu­ally sit in the pres­ence of the new Repub­li­can.
    When my grand­fa­ther started hoard­ing food under­neath his bed, and would occa­sion­ally offer us ancient chicken legs, or boxes of mildewed Christ­mas candy, we knew how to respond.
    And the thought never crossed our minds that the cor­rect response was to suck his dick.

25. Dexter said on July 13th, 2008 at 11:55 pm

    I watched Gen­er­a­tion Kill, Part One, and con­tem­plated blog­ging about it over at The New Pack­age, but didn’t feel like rant­ing.
    My war started for me in 1970…a long time ago, and this war is a whole ‘nuther ani­mal. A cou­ple things were just like my per­sonal Viet­nam, though…racist US mil­i­tary per­son­nel and blow-hard first sergeants who thrived on chick­en­shit like shir­tails and “moose-stashes”.
    I’ll watch the series but this is my first and last com­men­tary about it.

26. Gasman said on July 14th, 2008 at 1:32 am

    Danny,
    My com­plaint about Tony Snow was that by will­ingly being part of this admin­is­tra­tion, he know­ingly and actively became part of the White House team of liars. I defy any­body to name a sin­gle issue that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion has been entirely truth­ful about in the entire time in office. I’m will­ing to bet, you name the issue, and I can fairly eas­ily doc­u­ment a pat­tern of decep­tion. Snow knew of their men­dac­ity and signed on any­way. That is not a ring­ing char­ac­ter endorse­ment. Con­ser­v­a­tives (and many lib­er­als) were mad as hell at Bill Clin­ton for far more incon­se­quen­tial lies. Why the dou­ble standard?

    Snow may have been good look­ing, charm­ing, an OK garage band musi­cian, and loved his fam­ily, but he was a liar and was will­ing to know­ingly go to bat for and pro­tect other liars. I still main­tain that lying is a char­ac­ter flaw not to be over­looked, espe­cially when these lies have real con­se­quences. These lies have cost lives, weak­ened our rep­u­ta­tion abroad, and weak­ened our democ­racy at home. I don’t think that I need to jus­tify why I am as mad as hell at any­one and every­one who has helped to try and paint a smi­ley face on the excesses of George W. Bush.

    If lying about a blow-job is an impeach­able defense, what should be the response to what Bush has done?

    One fur­ther thought on the ridicu­lously over­wrought sen­ti­men­tal­ity regard­ing the death of Tim Russert. Will MSNBC/NBC be devot­ing 1/10th as much air­time to the death of Dr. Michael DeBakey, pio­neer­ing heart sur­geon and med­ical inven­tor? Who actu­ally con­tributed more to soci­ety? DeBakey’s work has saved tens of thou­sands of lives, yet what is the total of air­time alloted to his pass­ing? There will be no empty chair ret­ro­spec­tives, no mourn­ful music, no tele­vised memo­ri­als. Part of the hand­wring­ing after the deaths of Russert and Snow seems to be due to their sta­tus as TV per­son­al­i­ties, not any objec­tive mea­sure of their rel­a­tive con­tri­bu­tions to human­ity. Dr. DeBakey’s work was far more impor­tant and so was his passing.

27. moe99 said on July 14th, 2008 at 1:42 am

    Amen, Amen brothers.

    How about a song or two from the past?

    http://​youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​S​Y​X​I​V​O​n​z​Y​V​U​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​elated

28. Gasman said on July 14th, 2008 at 2:15 am

    My above post should have read “impeach­able offense” not defense. Oops. My bad.

29. alex said on July 14th, 2008 at 9:23 am

    Bad or no bad, Gas­man, I think you cap­tured my sen­ti­ments as regards the pass­ing of both Snow and Helms. It’s been a good week. I won’t say God rest their souls because they haven’t any.

30. coozledad said on July 14th, 2008 at 9:24 am

    That was nice, moe. That stuff still sounds edgy to me.
    Oddly, it reminds me of “Last Kind Words” by Geechie Wiley.
    http://​youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​o​g​3​s​Y​XJW-Ow

31. del said on July 14th, 2008 at 9:40 am

    Danny, my friend is a lawyer at a big Detroit law firm and lived in a flat in Grosse Pointe City with Tony Snow when he was with the Detroit News. They weren’t in the same unit but my friend went to his wed­ding and said Snow’s wife was lovely. That’s about it.

32. moe99 said on July 14th, 2008 at 10:16 am

    CD: Your youtube led me to this:
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​9​3​v​6​e​o​T​j​p​i​g​&​a​m​p;NR=1

33. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    Alex, they all gots souls, you just dis­agree on where they end up. (i’m a mod­i­fied lim­ited unre­con­structed uni­ver­sal­ist, so i dis­agree with your dis­agree­ment either way!)

    Glad Nancy sur­vived being j’poosa-ed; happy to report i sur­vived church camp. Wait­ing for the post filed by b-berry from Fisherman’s Wharf …

34. alex said on July 14th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    Jeff, I’m a believer in uni­ver­sal sal­va­tion. To the extent I believe at all.

35. Dexter said on July 14th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    I used to work with a woman whose hus­band got all kinds of fre­quent flier miles…they would fly to Alaska on a long week­end just to catch a salmon…one time they just decided to fly into San Fran­cisco Inter­na­tional and take a whirl­wind tour of The City. She said she was dis­ap­pointed when Alca­traz tours were booked solid well in advance.
    So they flew back the next week­end , tick­ets booked, and toured the for­mer home of pel­i­cans and Robert Stroud.
    Hey, I’ll fly when I have to, but c’mon! geez!

36. beb said on July 14th, 2008 at 9:34 pm

    This was inter­est­ing, “Nakes at the Pyra­mids,“
    http://​news​.yahoo​.com/​s​/​m​c​b​_​j​e​r​u​s​a​l​e​m​/​2​0​0​8​0​7​1​4​/​w​l​_​m​c​b​_​j​e​r​u​s​a​l​e​m​/​n​a​k​e​d​a​t​t​h​e​p​y​r​a​m​i​d​s​;​_​y​l​t​=​A​s​2​j​R​R​O​M​A​b​n​W​_​K​9​y​A​i​8​f​L​v​QUewgF
    although the pic­ture attached to the story is strictly “G” rated. For those who don’t RTFA, many par­ties reserve time tour­ing the pyra­mids, occa­sion­ally for their own eccen­tric pur­poses. One group did in fact reserve time inside the bur­ial cham­ber so they could con­duct their rit­ual naked. Hope they were on the look out for scorpions!

    My dad served in the middle-east dur­ing WWII, assem­bling air­planes for Rus­sia. As part of his demo­bi­liza­tion his group was sent to Egypt. Since he didn’t drunk, gam­ble or whore around there wasn’t much to do except wan­der amid the antiq­ui­ties with a like-minded sober friend. He has pic­tures his friend took of him stand­ing on some of the sphinxs in one of the great tem­ples. Dad also men­tioned climb­ing to the top of the Great Pyra­mid. He was going to carve his name on the top, only he couldn’t find a clear space left.

    These days you are not allowed to climb the pyra­mid or casu­ally stand on the antiq­ui­ties. Were atti­tudes dif­fer­ent about antiq­ui­ties back then, or could G.I.’s get away with anything?

37. ellent said on July 14th, 2008 at 10:49 pm

    Beb — atti­tudes toward antiq­ui­ties were dif­fer­ent, and still are in many places. I vis­ited Petra (the scene in Indi­ana Jones and the Last Cru­sade where they come through the canyon and tem­ple that holds the grail is revealed was shot there) about 10 years ago, and tourists were allowed to climb any­where, even if it was quite dan­ger­ous. Lots of graf­fiti inside the build­ings. Smelled a bit like some peo­ple had peed on the inte­rior walls. Lots of ancient Greek and Roman ruins in Cyprus, Syria, and Jor­dan were the same way. Nearly unat­tended and you can do what­ever you want. I have mixed feel­ings about it. Sad, in terms of the ran­dom dam­age caused by cal­lous vis­i­tors. Cool, in terms of how close you can actu­ally get to such amaz­ing structures.

38. brian stouder said on July 14th, 2008 at 11:07 pm

    I apol­o­gize if sev­eral posts sim­i­lar to this one sud­denly appear; I seem to either be afoul of the proprietress’s fil­ters and safe­guards, or else in some other way unable to post.

    That said — what about the ridicu­lous New Yorker cover?

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​2​5​6​73296/

    Given the some­what over-done reac­tions that some have for peo­ple with dif­fer­ing polit­i­cal agen­das, how do we view this low-brow affront, from the left­ist New Yorker? Is it too-clever-by-half, or dryly humor­ous — or sim­ply Obama­pho­bic tripe that will be posted on gas sta­tion walls and pool halls across the coun­try, as an emblem of truth?

39. Dexter said on July 15th, 2008 at 12:04 am

    brian , I have been view­ing Barry Blitt’s illus­tra­tions for many years and I am a 40-year sub­scriber to The New Yorker.
    Blitt illus­trates Frank Rich’s NYT columns weekly and of course he con­tributes reg­u­larly to the mag­a­zine.
    I truly don’t get all the com­mo­tion. My God, even Randi Rhodes ( Air Amer­ica) says it will be taken lit­er­ally by too many poten­tial Obamites.
    I think it’s hilar­i­ous and is strictly pok­ing fun at all the crap the anti-Obama fac­tions are spread­ing around…so what if 26 % of red­necks think Obama is a Mus­lim? If they think that, they are so unin­formed and plain stu­pid that noth­ing will instill the truth into their skulls.
    I won’t even get my copy in the mail for 4 more days, but I have that cover many times already.
    It is just like the lie-machine con­vinc­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic that a war hero , who risked his life on very dan­ger­ous river boats in Viet­nam, was really a cow­ard who phonied-up his Pur­ple Hearts. That still bugs me.
    I knew it was com­ing, though, I have seen these tac­tics before. It’s amaz­ing how peo­ple will believe what they want to believe.

40. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 15th, 2008 at 12:26 am

    I’m with Gene Wein­garten — the prob­lem with the car­toon is that it ain’t funny. Where’s the laugh? Now, put John and Cindy in exactly those out­fits and back­ground, and i’d laugh, plus it would affirm Obama’s non-relation to all the silly low-brow myths the car­toon tries to debunk. But as it is, ’tis creepy.

    Oh, and i sit typ­ing tonight at my in-laws in Indi­anapo­lis, after hav­ing spent 36 hours try­ing to talk my esposa’s pater out of his insis­tence that “you can’t rule out” that he’s a secret Mus­lim. And he can’t even tell me where he got the idea from, either.

41. moe99 said on July 15th, 2008 at 2:07 am

    Remem­ber that Saul Stein­berg cover of the New Yorker from back in 1976 – where the map of the US is entirely dom­i­nated by Manhattan?

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​6ejvue

    Well that’s the fish­bowl view and atti­tude that is present in the cur­rent cover. The New Yorker does not get that the rest of the coun­try is not as sophis­ti­cated in their under­stand­ing of Obama and racism and hatred of Moslems. They are tone deaf on that and it is hurt­ing Obama with just the sorts of folks in the heart­land where either most of us live or still have rel­a­tives there. I fully expect my Sat­ur­day con­ver­sa­tion with my mother will be to try to empha­size that yes, Obama is a Chris­t­ian, not a Mus­lim and he is a patriot and would be very good for the coun­try. Some­times it feels like being the lit­tle kid with his fin­ger stuck in the dike. But one has to try.

42. alex said on July 15th, 2008 at 5:41 am

    I don’t see what the fuss is all about, except that a lot of peo­ple obvi­ously don’t “get” the New Yorker’s sensibilities.

    I thought it was funny as hell and I’m dis­ap­pointed in the Obama cam­paign for being so humor­less about it. They’re already show­ing grave signs of siege men­tal­ity and the race to the fin­ish has barely begun.

    If Barack had han­dled this with the same good sense and grace that he showed dur­ing the flap over his min­is­ter, this could have been a “teach­able moment” and put to rest the silli­ness about him being a secret muslim.

43. brian stouder said on July 15th, 2008 at 8:37 am

    I want to agree with Alex about ‘the joke’ — but this whole thing is try­ing to remind me of some­thing, and I haven’t recalled it yet; a case where a clever polit­i­cal name or phrase was proudly used by one group, and was turned into a deri­sive term by another — heed­less of the orig­i­nal cleverness.

    If a bull­shit broad­side like this was put out by the oppo­si­tion press (say Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor), the ‘clever satire’ would dis­in­te­grate, yes? Or, to make the par­al­lel, if the Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor had a cover with a high-heeled Cindy McCain busily pump­ing Bud­weiser into her breasts while McCain tries to pull one foot back out of his grave, and with some Manchurian pup­pet mas­ter pulling his wires from above (etc etc) — some might say “it’s funny” while oth­ers would won­der if this wasn’t an inter-nicene hit job by some ele­ments of the right against others.

    Alex has a point though; it would have been a beau­ti­ful riposte if Obama had held up that New Yorker rag (ala Harry Tru­man) with a big smile, while stand­ing at some suit­able Chicago backdrop

44. del said on July 15th, 2008 at 8:52 am

    I agree with you Alex. And moe99 you recalled the New Yorker cover from 1976? Beau­ti­ful. In ’76 I was a 12 year old liv­ing the life of one of the Bad News Bears — a movie that we recently rented and remains on our man­tle. The kids won’t be see­ing it as I showed some of the scenes pri­vately to my wife (who picked it up) and they were too raw. The movie’s rated PG13 but has been rad­i­cally edited. All sorts of curse words have been taken out, along with Tatum O’Neal’s ref­er­ence to “putting out” as an incen­tive to get the even­tual star player to join the team. She did, how­ever, tell of an 11 or 12 year old friend who was on the Pill. Sex­u­al­ity is often on the minds of the tween­ers. Some­thing else I remem­ber about 76? A Merv Grif­fin guest billed as “Chesty Mor­gan and her 76er’s.” The mind of a 12 year old boy.

    I’m read­ing the book on Nancy’s night­stand, The Year of Mag­i­cal Think­ing by Joan Did­ion. It’s very good though I’m some­what put off by what one critic referred to the stud­ied “self-important ennui” of her writ­ing — a bit too much, we were being pro­filed in Peo­ple Mag­a­zine, or, I was talk­ing to my edi­tor, Louden Wain­right, etc.

    Thanks for the pyra­mid stuff Beb. I could not find a link on youtube to the stu­dio ver­sion of the B-52’s Mesopotamia, but that is the song it brought to mind what with your ref­er­ence to naked­ness and pyra­mids. The sex­ual dou­ble enten­dres in the song are rich.

45. Connie said on July 15th, 2008 at 9:56 am

    Totally unre­lated. I am read­ing “1 Dead in Attic: After Kat­rina” by Chris Rose, colum­nist for New Orleans Times-Picayune. It is a col­lec­tion of his columns after Kat­rina and I am find­ing it com­pelling reading.

    Not totally unre­lated if you count last week’s posts on favorite columnists.

    Four more days till Glen Lake.

46. Gasman said on July 15th, 2008 at 10:37 am

    On the New Yorker cover: At what point does satire become indis­tin­guish­able from the igno­rant views that are osten­si­bly being pil­lo­ried? It reminds me of some­one wear­ing a sheet say­ing, “This isn’t what I wear, but what the igno­rant folks wear.” How­ever, if the sheet is being pub­licly dis­played, isn’t the racist mes­sage being given a forum anyway?

    Other than con­de­scend­ingly mock­ing those who actu­ally believe such non­sense, to the extent that it is even per­ceived as satire, it is highly unlikely to achieve its goal of chang­ing any minds. Such men­tal pyg­mies are inca­pable of crit­i­cal thought and will con­tinue to believe such ridicu­lous hyper­bole. The cover is already being used as “evi­dence” to but­tress their views. That was entirely fore­see­able and should have been con­sid­ered by the New Yorker.

47. LAMary said on July 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    I remem­ber we had that New Yorker cover framed on the wall of the New York Times Rocky Moun­tain Bureau office in Den­ver. Hav­ing moved to Den­ver from the NY area a cou­ple of years ear­lier, I thought it summed things up nicely.

48. Sue said on July 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am

    On a lighter note, what does the rest of the coun­try think about the Brett Favre sit­u­a­tion? In spite of what you are see­ing on TV, the folks around here are very, very quiet about their opin­ions on this one. Plus, it hasn’t really been the lead story on the news — it shows up sec­ond or even third. If you live in WI, you know that speaks vol­umes. I think peo­ple are actu­ally embar­rassed. And while I’m ask­ing, would you snap him up as your team’s starter, should he become available?

49. coozledad said on July 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    My biggest beef with the cover is that the con­ceit was stolen whole­sale, with­out attri­bu­tion, from an old issue of Nest mag­a­zine. It was a car­toon pic­tur­ing two house­holds– one Arab-American, One Jew­ish. It cen­tered on pop­u­lar per­cep­tions of how the two groups would dec­o­rate their homes. It was funny, that first time. This is clearly a ripoff, and I wouldn’t be sur­prised if there’s a pla­gia­rism suit.

50. brian stouder said on July 15th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    I think peo­ple are actu­ally embarrassed.

    Sue — I think that cap­tures the thing, exactly. He has been the admired hero for so long, and per­son­i­fied the invested hopes of so many, that this slow-motion per­sonal implo­sion of his has got to be almost unwatchable.

    Frank Deford could write a tremen­dously inci­sive, uni­ver­sally rec­og­nize­able col­umn about the human frailty on dis­play here  — if he hasn’t already (and Nance’s favorite Albom could do the Top-40 version!)

    edit: for­got to answer the ques­tion And while I’m ask­ing, would you snap him up as your team’s starter…?

    YES! If you ran da Bears or da Vikings, grab­bing the guy just for the in-your-face fac­tor would be good enough.…and if you had almost any other team (other than, say, the Patri­ots & Brady, or the Colts and Man­ning) the turnstile/TV effect would be plenty of justification

51. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 15th, 2008 at 11:51 am

    May i proudly note that Obama has tapped Unidue Purver­sity, my alma mater, as the site for tomorrow’s much needed (by both par­ties, by the whole frickin’ world) con­fer­ence on nucu­lar weapons and mate­ri­als man­age­ment, with the mag­is­te­r­ial Sam Nunn and other lumi­nar­ies gath­ered with His Barack­ness and Evan “Prince Charm­ing” Bayh at the Pur­due Memo­r­ial Union, where i proudly flipped burg­ers and made carmel corn in cop­per ket­tles for many years.

    If the tall, lanky rail­split­ter from Illi­nois is head-faking for Indi­ana, he’s leav­ing lots of R’s shak­ing right out of their shoes. Mean­while, if Obama can bring more atten­tion to the need to nail down and con­trol fis­sile mate­r­ial around the world, this GOP-er says “huzzah!”

    Brian, don’t give the Bears any ideas. Here in Indy, Obama in West Lay-flat is utterly over­shad­owed by the grim news that Lord Pay­ton has basic med­ical needs which may keep him out of … exhi­bi­tion games. Heck, they may make a plea for Favre to get a release so they can get a back-up.

52. Sue said on July 15th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    “Heck, they may make a plea for Favre to get a release so they can get a back-up.“
    Jeff, that’s the prob­lem. Brett is com­ing back as a starter. He will not dis­cuss any­thing less with the Pack­ers. Appar­ently he expects them to throw Aaron Rodgers under the bus, with the bless­ings of the whole state of Wisconsin.

53. Danny said on July 15th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    You know, one final note about Tony Snow. I reflected on the neg­a­tive com­ments from a few of you yes­ter­day and have come to the con­clu­sion that (sur­prise!!) you are all wrong. Incred­i­bly so.

    He was a gem of a human being and just because you dis­agree with him on issues does not give you license to besmirch his name. Any­one tak­ing joy in his pass­ing, I have to won­der how puny their soul must be to be to have no room in it for the truth of this man’s human­ity, but only for the empheral bull­shit par­ti­san­ship of the mod­ern polit­i­cal circus.

    Shame on you. I expect bet­ter. Maybe in the future.

    That is all.

54. moe99 said on July 15th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    So tell me Danny, do you think Clin­ton should have been impeached?

55. Danny said on July 15th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    No, moe. I do not. And I know that Tony did and sadly became invested in that process to too high a degree, imo. But he was also opposed to the bor­der fence and I was not and he brought me around on that issue. Going after employ­ers is the way to curb immi­gra­tion of the ille­gal vari­ety. The drug run­ners are another issue alto­gether that a fence will not cure.

56. del said on July 15th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    Sue, send Favre to Detroit. My lit­tle con­nec­tion to the Pack­ers (think LA Mary), my great-great uncle was a pub­lisher of the Green Bay Press Gazette (Andy Turn­bull) who co-founded the Packer cor­po­ra­tion in 1922, and, more recently, I attended a cur­rent Pack­ers’ coach’s wed­ding. Favre seems to pro­voke some ambiva­lence among the locals I’m told. They love him, but because he keeps his fam­ily in Baton Rouge he’s per­ceived as aloof.

57. Dexter said on July 15th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    Fuck Brett Favre. Strong com­men­tary to fol­low.
    (apolo­gies for style to Dick Cavett)

58. Gasman said on July 19th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    Danny,
    I don’t know if any­one is still read­ing this besides me, but I must assume that I am included in those writ­ing “neg­a­tive” com­ments about the appar­ently now sainted Tony Snow. How were my com­ments “neg­a­tive?” Merely because I was not a fawn­ing syco­phant? Because I had the audac­ity to recall his 20+ year ser­vice to the arch con­ser­v­a­tive lie machine? Thank good­ness that you cleared things up by pro­nounc­ing me wrong. You could have done so ear­lier and saved me from writ­ing so much.

    I don’t believe for a moment that there is a con­ser­v­a­tive who would be con­tent to read an obit­u­ary of Teddy Kennedy that failed to men­tion Chap­paquid­dick and Mary Jo Kopechne. How about a Clin­ton obit with no men­tion of bimbo erup­tions or Mon­ica Lewin­sky? Why were so many right wingers con­tent to gloss over the less than flat­ter­ing aspects of Snow and Jesse Helms? Could it be that it is much eas­ier to pro­nounce them great if we for­get their flaws, even major ones?

    We will all be remem­bered, like it or not, for the sum of our lives, not just the best parts. I can­not remain silent as many prac­tice a very Orwellian retroac­tive edit­ing of his­tory to suit someone’s “pre­ferred” mem­ory of Tony Snow.

    On immi­gra­tion: As some­one who lives in a bor­der state, any “solu­tion” to immi­gra­tion that does not take into account our depen­dence on cheap immi­grant labor and does not help to but­tress economies south of us is doomed to fail­ure. We’ve been addicted to cheap immi­grant labor for cen­turies. It’s not just employers.