nancynall.com » Spooky business.
«
»

Spooky business.

I over­achieved on the candy front yes­ter­day. My les­son to you: Don’t ever shop for candy when you’re hun­gry. Ah, but trick-or-treat hours are promised to be more or less per­fect, so I’m sure we’ll sell out. Yesterday’s Det­News had a story about trick-or-treat tourism, which is noth­ing new here or any­where else, but may be exac­er­bated this year by foreclosure:

In sev­eral Metro Detroit neigh­bor­hoods bat­tered by home fore­clo­sures, the spook­i­est thing this Hal­loween is the dra­matic num­bers of empty homes and “For Sale” signs. With as many as 63,453 homes now for sale in Wayne, Oak­land, Macomb and Liv­ingston coun­ties — many of them empty — once-well-lighted houses now sit vacant, and some par­ents say they’ll be seek­ing greener trick-or-treating pas­tures else­where. Sev­eral of those who stay behind are stock­ing fewer bags of candy.

Our neigh­bor­hood here, like our neigh­bor­hood in Fort Wayne, always gets a mil­lion out­side kids — it must have that mag­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of middle-class sta­bil­ity, max­i­mum den­sity and young chil­dren in res­i­dence that rings all the cher­ries. This used to bug me, but doesn’t any­more. Not every­one can be from Leave it to Beaver-ville, and I wouldn’t want to take my kid door-to-door in many neigh­bor­hoods, either.

In the mean­time, who wants a peanut-butter cup?

(Speak­ing of which, among the ten thou­sand irra­tional food fears my own lit­tle girl insists on cul­ti­vat­ing is this one: She loves peanut but­ter, hates peanuts. The other day Alton Brown had a show on peanuts, and demon­strated how easy it is to make peanut but­ter. I paused it, called Kate into the room, and made her watch how peanut-butter is made: Throw some peanuts in a food proces­sor, turn it on, presto, peanut but­ter. She watched, and said, “I still don’t like peanuts.” That’s my girl.)

Because I have a lot to do today, short shrift but good blog­gage for a lazy Friday:

While I enjoyed this piece on a math­e­mati­cian who “cracked the code” of the open­ing chord of “A Hard Day’s Night,” I wish some edi­tor would have reined in the writer who called it “the most famous chord in rock ‘n’ roll.” Oh reeeeeal­lly? Want to have that debate over a mil­lion beers? I’m sure it can be arranged.

In David Edelstein’s review of “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” he con­cludes with an unnec­es­sar­ily com­pli­cated question:

Now, I could be wrong about this: Per­haps Rogen is cat­nip to the ladies, the Daniel Craig of sex farce. But this is not a man who appears to take good care of his body, and the movie doesn’t use his lack of phys­i­cal appeal as a source of laughs — as Apa­tow sort of did in “Knocked Up.” The way Smith treats Rogen strikes me as the way he’d treat a young Tom Hanks or Jason Segel of “For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall” or Justin Long (who has an over­long cameo as a gay-porn actor) — the quick-witted nerd who could also be a dream­boat. But when Rogen sheds his clothes and climbs atop the lovely Banks and the bells ring and the fire­works explode, well … Imag­ine if James Franco played Zack, and Miri was an out-of-shape woman with bad skin and a big honker. Can there be that much of a dou­ble stan­dard when it comes to actors’ looks?

Answer: Yes.

Speak­ing of movies, the trailer for “Gran Torino” is online. This is the Clint East­wood movie shot in and around the Pointes last sum­mer (while we, iron­i­cally, toured Carmel, Calif., Clint’s home­town). The good news: It’s clearly the GP. The bad news: Looks like a fairly crappy movie, i.e. “Dirty Harry: The McCain Years.”

Speak­ing of McCain, why why why is the cam­paign doing stuff like this? I mean: Way to court the youth vote, gramps.

Anne Hull stops in at Lib­erty Uni­ver­sity to see how the war for McCain is being fought at the insular-right-wing-Christian-raised-in-a-bubble level. (Short answer: Who fuck­ing cares?) Still a good read.

Off to bake cup­cakes. Happy Halloween.

Posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 10:21 am
in Current events, Movies, Same ol' same ol'.

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

75 responses to
“Spooky business.”

  1. John said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:02 am

    My goal is not to make laws Chris­t­ian but to make gov­ern­ment as small as pos­si­ble so you can be as bib­li­cally Chris­t­ian as you so choose.

    Am I off base here but are there laws that pre­vent Amer­i­cans from being “bib­li­cal Christians”?

  2. nancy said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:07 am

    To these folks, every law they dis­agree with is a yoke of unbear­able weight that, yes, keeps them from bib­li­cal Christianity.

    When I was host­ing a radio talk show, I once had a long, ener­vat­ing chat with a caller who said he wanted to live in the early 19th cen­tury, “when gov­ern­ment wasn’t all up in your busi­ness all the time.” I started ask­ing him how, exactly, gov­ern­ment was all up in his busi­ness, and he ran out of steam almost imme­di­ately after “taxes.”

    I should avoid read­ing sto­ries like that, because they just remind me of how unchar­i­ta­ble I’m feel­ing toward the oppo­si­tion in recent days. The more peo­ple reject what they’re sell­ing, the uglier they get. I not only want their prod­uct off the shelves, I want their store shut down.

  3. Andrea said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:09 am

    John, I was just get­ting ready to post the same exact quote. I didn’t under­stand it at all!

    It must be pretty easy for Miss Ayendi to dis­miss wel­fare pro­grams and com­plain that Amer­i­cans have got­ten “soft” as a col­lege stu­dent perched in a $50K SUV.

  4. mark said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:12 am

    Why does the McCain capm­paign do this? Because they have to. Unfor­tu­nately, there are peo­ple who think that McCain does not have the right to speak with­out inter­rup­tion. This is a lesser evil than hav­ing them removed dur­ing the speech.

    Why did Obama just remove reps from Wash­ing­ton Post, Dal­las Morning-Times and NY Post from his cam­paign plane, even though all have been cov­er­ing him from the begin­ning and serve major markets?

  5. mark said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:15 am

    As a follow-up to my answer about the McCain Cam­paign: Because there are peo­ple who not only refuse to buy what he is sell­ing, but want to stop him from sell­ing to oth­ers. A “shut his store down” kind of thing.

  6. nancy said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:21 am

    Shut the fuck up, Mark. McCain’s peo­ple booted those peo­ple from his speech not because they were wear­ing Obama T-shirts, but because of how they looked. And one of them had already voted — for McCain.

    The GOP has pio­neered this bub­ble strat­egy — don’t let the pres­i­dent, don’t let the can­di­date, see heck­lers, picket signs, any­one who’s not 100 per­cent on-the-bus. You see how it’s worked for them so far. Good luck keep­ing that store open; I think you’re los­ing mar­ket share fast.

  7. jcburns said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:28 am

    Mark, they were booted before the speech started!

    “Appar­ently, they had been iden­ti­fied by those [McCain] staffers as poten­tial pro­test­ers within the event.”

    So don’t just strike the free­dom of speech…McCain’s staff engages in what amounts to prior restraint, and (the punch line) ends out tak­ing their own sup­port­ers. Peo­ple who have voted for them! How do they “have” do do this?

    There is no emoti­con for how hilar­i­ous and tragic I think this is.

  8. mark said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:36 am

    jc–

    I under­stand that. Yes, it is “prior restraint”. It is unfor­tu­nate but, for what­ever rea­son, some peo­ple go to these events to shout down the speaker. They don’t want his/her ideas to be heard.

    If it removed some of McCain’s sup­port­ers, that is kind of com­i­cal. But it is a pri­vate event.

  9. mark said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:39 am

    Nancy–

    That is the way it is sup­posed to work. Bad ideas and bad plans, so long as they are law­ful, are allowed to fail because they are bad, not because we pre­vent peo­ple from look­ing at the merchandise.

    You run the show here, so if your instruc­tion was lit­eral, my apolo­gies. I’ll run along elsewhere.

  10. derwood said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:40 am

    so…I don’t like peanuts either…but love peanut but­ter. Nuts in gen­eral should be out­lawed and never ever ever put into a cookie, brownie or cake.

    d

  11. moe99 said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:40 am

    It is not a pri­vate event, sorry Mark. It is a pub­lic event, par­tic­u­larly as McCain has accepted gov­ern­ment fund­ing for his campaign.

    Give me a cite to legal prece­dent that says an appear­ance by pres­i­den­tial cam­paign at a pub­lic venue is a pri­vate event. N. Iowa Uni­ver­sity is a pub­lic institution.

    Oh, and Mark, please pro­vide a cite for your alle­ga­tion that Obama has removed media from his plane. I could not find it doing a google search.

  12. jcburns said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:42 am

    The Onion, circa 1993:
    Une­d­u­cated Fork­lift Dri­ver To Address Nation On Rush Lim­baugh Radio Show
    Nation Eagerly Awaits Ohio Man’s Pro­found Insight Into Cur­rent Events
    (although they had him in Lima, not Hol­land, Ohio…they were off by about 77 miles.)

    http://​www​.theo​nion​.com/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​n​o​d​e​/48940

  13. nancy said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:48 am

    The press-plane story is tan­gen­tially cov­ered here, but I guess Drudge made a big to-do out of it, because of the reporters who were told their seats were no longer avail­able, all the papers had endorsed McCain.

    Said the Dal­las reporter’s editor:

    But we don’t have evi­dence that the newspaper’s endorse­ment of Sen. McCain had any bear­ing on the campaign’s deci­sion to boot us from the plane. No one from the cam­paign every men­tioned it to Todd. (And for the record, he as a reporter, and I as the edi­tor in charge of polit­i­cal cov­er­age, had absolutely no input or knowl­edge of the endorse­ment. That’s han­dled by a dif­fer­ent depart­ment on a dif­fer­ent floor. I didn’t even know about the edi­to­r­ial board’s choice until I read it in the paper a cou­ple of Sun­days ago.)

    We think the Obama campaign’s deci­sion is to some degree more a func­tion of lim­ited seats, and while we’re a large regional news­pa­per, we’re not national and we’re not in a swing state. We’ve been on the road with them at key moments, but we’ve not been along for the entire ride, like, say, The New York Times and The Asso­ci­ated Press.

    And then the punch line:

    For what it’s worth, we’ve had the same trou­ble with the McCain cam­paign. One of our reporters dropped off ear­lier this week when space became an issue, and we’re only get­ting back on with McCain tomor­row for the final week­end because they, unlike the Obama cam­paign, are adding a sec­ond plane.

  14. Connie said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:55 am

    We have turned into Hal­loween grinches since our kid left for col­lege two years ago. We turn off all the lights and hun­ker down. I live in a small coun­try sub­di­vi­sion — four streets in a square plus one cul de sac — and it was becom­ing obvi­ous that we were only get­ting “com­muter” trick or treaters.

    We encour­age dress­ing up for the hol­i­day at work. Today I am the tat­tooed librar­ian. Not a great pic, the tat­too says born to read.

  15. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    Con­nie, that’s a GREAT pic — but where’s the rest of you?

    (I mean, yes — that view of you — or any woman — is what would remain in my brain.…but always nice to have a face, too!)

    Happy Hal­loween, y’all!

  16. Catherine said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    We get trick-or-treat tourists, too, as well as high school­ers. I say bring it on. My candy bowl run­neth over, at least for right now. Why not share?

  17. John said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    Con­nie,
    Love the tat! No tramp stamp to match? Inquir­ing (and dirty) minds want to know.

  18. Connie said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Sorry John. After the pic I added some “READ” tat­toos to my hands and other places. I keep them in my desk drawer for the rare occa­sion a child vis­its my office.

    Brian, we have a house rule that he may not put my face on his blog. Which didn’t stop him from putting this up a few weeks ago: http://​elmores​.net/​r​o​u​n​d​-​h​e​r​e​/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​1​4​7​0​_​0​_​1_33_C . Aah, that nat­ural blonde, I remem­ber it well.

  19. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    Con­nie — another great pic!! For­get Mad Men — you’re one of the Bib­li­og­ra­phy Babes!

  20. Connie said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Thanks Brian. Just remem­ber the pic is 30 years old.

  21. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Con­nie — I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed — but the pic­ture cap­tures an unimis­take­able ’70’s vibe  — for those of us who were prom (or wed­ding?) attend­ing teenagers, then!

  22. Dexter said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:43 pm

    …any of you folks know what pro­to­col is if a can­di­date dies before the elec­tion? Surely the veep doesn’t step up and get the slot, right? Does the party re-convene and re-nominate?
    How long would the elec­tion be post­poned? Well, if such a thing should hap­pen, they just ought to let Base­ball Com­mish Bud Selig han­dle it. He’s good at just mak­ing shit up along the way.
    Game 5 of the World Series hap­pened to fall on a day that had pretty good weather until about 9:30 PM.
    Both teams involved jointly and indi­vid­u­ally approached Selig and said they wanted to play the game in the day­light, because it was a cer­tainty very heavy rain was a-comin’ later on.
    Selig had a shit-fit…cried how he had no say in this…the TV net­work (FOX) con­trolled it, and by god, they can damn well play in the cold mon­soon rain! And so they did…and had to suf­fer a rain­out and sus­pended game…as Selig changed all the rules along the way, and even so, did not even tell TV announc­ers Buck & McCarver what was going on.
    So, if the elec­tion becomes a bit fucked-up, call on Selig…he is quite a fixer.

  23. caliban said on October 31st, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    “Joe’s with us today — Joe, where are you? Where is Joe? Is Joe with us here today? Joe, I thought you were here today. All right, well, you’re all Joe the Plumber, so all of you stand up!”

    – John McCain at a rally yes­ter­day in Defi­ance, Ohio. The famous plumber-with-a-publicist made it to a later rally in San­dusky, Ohio.

    This reminds me of an old joke. Two morons are walk­ing along and find a dis­mem­bered leg. First says to sec­ond, ‘That looks like Joe’s leg.’ Even­tu­ally, they Joe’s dis­em­bod­ied head: ‘Joe! Joe! Are you alright!?’

    Sums up the decom­pos­ing cam­paign succinctly.

  24. Connie said on October 31st, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    Yes Brian, totally 70s, in fact the dress is made of qiana. quiana? That slick disco shirt poly how­ever it’s spelled.

  25. Dorothy said on October 31st, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    Con­nie looks like you got hitched about 11 months before we did. My 29th anniver­sary was this past Mon­day (the 27th).
    http://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​t​r​u​v​y​5​7​/​2​2​9​1​16136/

  26. Catherine said on October 31st, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    LOVE the wed­ding pic­tures! Con­grat­u­la­tions to both of you, and here’s to 30 more.

  27. Julie Robinson said on October 31st, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    Con­nie and Dorothy, we are of an era. Aug 18, 1979 for us, so also com­ing up on 30. No wed­ding pho­tos have been dig­i­tized yet, but I will say that brown tuxes were pop­u­lar back then. I couldn’t quite tell – did you also go for the ruf­fled shirt? We thought brown was quite a con­ser­v­a­tive choice, what with lime green and pas­tel blue being so preva­lent. I also eschewed a veil and went with flow­ers in my hair. Did you-all both write your own vows? I don’t seem to see that much these days.

  28. Connie said on October 31st, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    Nope. Did the clas­sic do you take this .…… vows. And the flow­ers in the hair were specif­i­cally designed to clip off from the flower band on the big brimmed hat. Which fell off every time some­one hugged me, so didn’t last much past the ceremony.

  29. Dexter said on October 31st, 2008 at 2:12 pm

    Ah, geez…all sen­ti­men­tal here…recalling my own wed­ding day…my wife decided to not go through with it , so I did what I had to do…
    http://​www​.tomhol​land​.tv/​P​l​a​n​9​/​P​l​a​n​9​-​T​o​r​J​o​h​n​s​on.jpg

  30. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    Dex­ter — that’s a mar­velous green dress (and nice party hats, too!)

  31. mark said on October 31st, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    moe–

    The fourth para­graph of the arti­cle Nancy linked to quotes the uni­ver­sity secu­rity guy describ­ing it as a pri­vate event. If you think McCain’s accep­tance of pub­lic cam­paign money changes things, per­haps you could sup­port the asser­tion that you make instead of ask­ing me to dis­prove the point. Would you be sat­is­fied if I said I just read the few thou­sand pages of fed­eral cmpaign finance laws and reg­u­la­tions and, nope, what you claim isn’t in there?

    I’m pretty sure the McCain peo­ple are pay­ing for planes, hotel rooms and pizza with the fed­eral bucks too, but I don’t think I can que up for a ride, a rest or a slice.

    Nancy also answered the issue you raised about the Obama/media story.

  32. jcburns said on October 31st, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Yeah, the Uni­ver­sity secu­rity guy, that noted con­sti­tu­tional scholar, described it as a pri­vate event.

    This is what both­ers me about, oh, the St. Paul police (AND the Den­ver police) abus­ing pro­tes­tors and the Secret Ser­vice keep­ing mem­bers of the press from inter­view­ing rally atten­dees and, well, I could go on.

    They, offi­cers of the law, seem to have no clue about the legal­ity of their tac­tics, and, in a post-9/11 world, seem very com­fort­able when asked to be jack­booted thugs…ejecting and arrest­ing with­out cause. Give them those Orwellian look­ing riot hel­mets (adding a nice layer of robotic anonymity) and march­ing orders that aren’t vet­ted, by, say, city or state pros­e­cu­tors, and then, weeks after the event and the charges are dropped, just emit an “oh, well” as another com­po­nent of our free­doms are taken away.

    I’d really like to see more law enforce­ment peo­ple stand up and say “hey, wait, these are not the laws and free­doms I’ve sworn to enforce.”

    And Mark, I saw Obama (again) in Des Moines quiet a heck­ler in the crowd…with just his lead­er­ship skills. That heck­ler was not pre-charged with a crime and screened out.

    Nor should he have been.

  33. Jolene said on October 31st, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    WaPo’s Marc Fisher had a good col­umn this week that con­nects w/ the Anne Hull arti­cle Nancy pointed to. Play­ing off the “real Vir­ginia” remark of McCain advi­sor, Nancy Pfoten­hauer, he went to a Palin rally in Fred­er­icks­burg and asked peo­ple how you’d know whether you were in the real Vir­ginia. One response:

    “when the big issue is hunt­ing. Peo­ple who are for hunt­ing and the Sec­ond Amend­ment are going to vote Repub­li­can to pro­tect against rad­i­cal social­ist com­mu­nist views. It’s also about faith: I don’t see how any per­son who believes in Jesus Christ could vote for Obama or any Democrat.”

    Nice Chris­t­ian atti­tude, eh? His web chat, held yes­ter­day, focused on that col­umn, and the dis­cus­sion was pretty inter­est­ing. Here’s a com­ment from Marc that con­firms what the polls are show­ing re Palin nar­row­ing fan base.

    At the Palin rally this week, some peo­ple car­ried signs that said “Keep Amer­ica Jesus­ful – Palin for Pres­i­dent.” But there was a real dif­fer­ence in the crowd at this Palin rally as com­pared to the one in Sep­tem­ber in Fair­fax – at that one, there was a real mix of peo­ple, both strong con­ser­v­a­tives from the home-schooling, stay-at-home-mother, church-driven polit­i­cal activism crowd as well as tra­di­tional fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives and even good old Repub­li­can mod­er­ates. But this time, it was that first crowd that totally dom­i­nated. The mod­er­ates and inde­pen­dents were gone. That may say some­thing about Virginia’s direc­tion next week.

    It also says some­thing about the chal­lenges that are going to con­front the Repub­li­can party after this elec­tion. I’ve com­mented before about the dimin­ished appeal of the party to well-heeled pro­fes­sion­als, and they have prac­ti­cally zero appeal to minori­ties, whose num­bers are grow­ing. Hard to see how they’re going to sur­vive if the only peo­ple ready to sign on after this elec­tion are Palin’s fans.

  34. Jolene said on October 31st, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    Mark, I don’t really care who paid for the event. McCain is apply­ing to be pres­i­dent of all the peo­ple. No one should be excluded in advance. Speak­ing to hand-picked crowds was a Bush 2004 tac­tic. We don’t need any more of it.

  35. John said on October 31st, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Con­nie, you are quite the looker in your photo, but then again, what bride isn’t beautiful?

    Betsy and I will cel­e­brate 29 years next Groundhog’s Day.

  36. alex said on October 31st, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    Say, Mark, whad­daya think of this:

    http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​0​/​3​1​/​p​a​l​i​n​-​c​r​i​t​i​c​i​s​m​-​t​h​r​e​a​t​e​n​s​_​n​_​1​3​9​7​2​9.html

  37. joodyb said on October 31st, 2008 at 3:35 pm

    veer­ing back to the cul­tur­ally super­fi­cial (where i mostly reside these days), in re the reviewer’s com­pul­sion to dis­sect the pre­sum­ably dubi­ous appeal of Seth Rogen, has he never SEEN Kevin Smith?
    in inter­views i’ve seen, the direc­tor clearly fan­cies him­self to be a desir­able male. for what it’s worth.

    oh! i for­got to say Qiana is a reg­is­tered trade­mark! Still! Thanks, Dupont!

  38. mark said on October 31st, 2008 at 3:52 pm

    alex:

    I only read the first three para­graphs or so; tell me if I need to read more to get the point. What i read sounded like clap-trap and kind of “prima donna”-ish. I didn’t fig­ure out what the heck the First Amend­ment has to do with it.

    Palin is rip­ping on Obama for his asso­ci­a­tions. I don’t know where the line is on “neg­a­tive” crit­i­cisms (as opposed to heap­ing praise on your oppo­nent), but i’m com­fort­able call­ing it neg­a­tive. I think Obama’s asso­ci­a­tions are fair game and they con­cern me, even if i’m in the minor­ity. Still “neg­a­tive” stuff to me. Of course I’m vot­ing much more against Obama than for McCain.

    But Palin sounds fool­ish wor­ry­ing about how the press char­ac­ter­izes her char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of Obama’s asso­ci­a­tions, and more fool­ish men­tion­ing the First Amend­ment. In small defense of her, I’ve known many bright peo­ple who held very mis­in­formed views about the First Amendment.

  39. mark said on October 31st, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    Jolene–

    I think that is a fair crit­i­cism, but even Obama’s peo­ple draw some lines about what will be allowed at his events.

    I don’t like any­body shout­ing down peo­ple who are engaged in a sched­uled pre­sen­ta­tion of law­ful, non-violent ideas. I pray Obama doesn’t win, but I wouldn’t dream of going to an event to try to dis­rupt it. The end doesn’t jus­tify the means.

    I gave the cor­rect answer to Nancv’s ques­tion. If Mccain was as glib and quick on his feet with heck­lers as Obama is, he might fear them less. Instead, he stands behind the podium look­ing help­less, and the secret Ser­vice guys tem­porar­ily stiffen, until the big mouths are hauled away. He pays a polit­i­cal price either way.

    So what is the right answer in this class? McCain woke up and said “I’m a mean Mav­er­ick this morn­ing, let’s go gen­er­ate some bad pub­lic­ity rough­ing up col­lege kids”? They did it because there is not a sin­gle func­tion­ing brain cell left in the repub­li­can party? Har-Har. And the peanut gallery goes wild.

  40. moe99 said on October 31st, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    mark,

    If indi­vid­u­als attend­ing a cam­paign event, held on pub­lic prop­erty start to mis­be­have by shout­ing, yelling or oth­er­wise try­ing to impede the crowd’s hear­ing and under­stand­ing of the can­di­date, the police have the right to swoop in and get rid of them because by that behav­ior, they are inter­fer­ing with the speaker’s first amend­ment right to be heard.

    But, if an indi­vid­ual is tossed out of the rally, sim­ply because in the sub­jec­tive opin­ion of a cam­paign flack, they ‘look’ like they’re going to cause trou­ble, then whose rights are being infringed now? I believe that if a can­di­date for pres­i­dent of the US is tak­ing fed­eral funds and is cam­paign­ing on pub­lic prop­erty at an event that is osten­si­bly open to the pub­lic (to be dis­tin­guished from a $1000 a plate din­ner type of thing), they are hold­ing a pub­lic event and as such, they have to have a bet­ter rea­son than “she looks like she is going to dis­rupt an event.” I don’t even think wear­ing a shirt or car­ry­ing a sign with the name of the oppo­nent is suf­fi­cient to keep some­one out, but I can see where that is a gray area. But I will not cede that point with­out a fight either.

  41. paddyo' said on October 31st, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    What moe99 said, double.

    Here in Den­ver the last time around — well no, actu­ally, it was AFTER, in March 2005, so shame on the GOP fur­ther — BubbleBoyBush’s road­show goons made-believe they were Secret Ser­vice (this was a sit­ting pres­i­dent, remem­ber) and barred three “sus­pect” folks from a rally in the sub­urb of Aurora, even though they had the required TICKETS (handed out by the party) to attend and had already gone through metal-detector screen­ing with every­one else…

    Their crime? Appar­ently they were seen get­ting out of a car in the park­ing lot with an anti-war bumpersticker …

    More recently, an ex-Denver Post reporter, semi-retired (part-time librar­ian), was hauled off by two of Denver’s NOT-finest from out­side — OUTSIDE! — a McCain town hall about a month and a half before the Dem con­ven­tion. The town hall was in the city’s per­form­ing arts cen­ter, a VERY pub­lic facil­ity. Her crime? She held a sign that read: “McCain = Bush” …

    Whether or not some­one wants to speak out (or “dis­rupt,” as Mark sug­gests) an event, this is sup­pos­edly a coun­try where free­dom of speech is not sup­pressed. But you know what? If some­one dis­rupts, he or she usu­ally gets “escorted” out …
    In fact, it hap­pens with some reg­u­lar­ity on Capi­tol Hill, and no big deal …

  42. joodyb said on October 31st, 2008 at 4:42 pm

    I’d agree on the gen­eral populace’s under­stand­ing of the First Amend­ment. I don’t think she is unusual in her cus­tomized extrap­o­la­tions of what the Con­sti­tu­tion can do for her. and to pick up on the ‘i’m a mean mav­er­ick this morn­ing’ con­cept, that is pre­cisely where mccain has lost peo­ple along the way. he says one bully thing and does some­thing else. ‘i’m sus­pend­ing my cam­paign — but not really.’ ‘i won’t debate unless there’s a res­o­lu­tion, but wait, ok, i will.’ not fol­low­ing through on the sim­plest of dec­la­ra­tions has eroded all his cred­i­bil­ity. and he’s done it all along. that’s not about not being Bush, in my estimation.

  43. Linda said on October 31st, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Re: Seth Rogen. NO GODDAMN FEMALE. ON EARTH. wants to see him in a sex com­edy. He is only in them because he ful­fills a male fan­tasy that hot women want shlubby losers. Not for any other rea­son. And frankly, that’s infu­ri­at­ing. In the old days, women got Cary Grant as a sex sym­bol, because it was under­stood that only hot, smart, sophis­ti­cated men in movies, as in life, got beau­ti­ful women. And not only is he homely, his char­ac­ters are losers. We once got Grant, now we get nada.

    Worse, it has cre­ated a feel­ing among young men that even if they are nobody in par­tic­u­lar, they are some­how enti­tled to beau­ti­ful women, and that said women who don’t fall over them rhyme with witch. You hear this in ‘net threads all the time.

  44. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Well, you still get Brad Pitt and Leo DiCaprio (spelling?) — who appear to be beau­ti­ful human beings, even to guys like me!

  45. Gasman said on October 31st, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    mark,
    Late to the game here, but I find it inter­est­ing that McCain screens his crowds and Obama doesn’t. Accord­ingly, Obama should be get­ting far more protesters/hecklers than McCain. Yet, all are wel­come at Obama and Biden ral­lies. Note that the story said they weren’t doing any­thing, some­one thought that they LOOKED like they might do some­thing. Where is the jus­tice in that atti­tude? I’ll bet that you look like you’re up to some­thing, so maybe we should just lock you up in advance.

    If you recall a few weeks back there was a cou­ple that were not allowed to enter a McCain/Palin rally here in Albu­querque the Sat­ur­day after the R con­ven­tion. The woman shouted, “Go Obama!” merely as friendly ban­ter to Obama sup­port­ers and for that thought­crime she was not allowed to enter the rally. That inci­dent and the one above are chick­en­shit and you know it. What hap­pened to free speech? Which can­di­date sounds more fas­cist in the way they treat the public?

    It’s also a chick­en­shit cop-out to claim these are “pri­vate” events. Non­sense. Obama’s are just as “pri­vate” yet there is no record of peo­ple being tossed out. He has even engaged the heck­lers. The McCain cam­paign is so fear­ful of dis­sent and protests that they have to throw out their own peo­ple if they don’t “look” like they sup­port McCain. Coun­try First. How is “pre­emp­tively” boot­ing peo­ple from a rally respect­ing anybody’s first amend­ment rights? Are McCain’s claims to the first amend­ment any greater than those who were booted? I would think that a lawyer could come up with a bet­ter defense than that.

    The Repub­li­cans have used up all their chits and are going to get their asses handed to them come Tues­day. They have no one to blame but them­selves. Quit mak­ing excuses for them.

  46. Linda said on October 31st, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    Brian, your point is well taken. I guess who I’m mad at is Jude Apa­tow. He gave us an attrac­tive male sex com­edy lead in 40 Year Old Vir­gin – you can’t geek up Steve Carell too much. But after that…and in com­bi­na­tion with the fat guy/hot wife combo so com­mon in tv sit­coms, it gets a lit­tle much.

  47. Jolene said on October 31st, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Lisa deMor­aes, the WaPo TV colum­nist, refers to the “fat guy/hot wife” combo as “Male Pat­tern Opti­mism,” which is a pretty funny term for what seems to be a pretty com­mon condition.

    As evi­dence, I give you the kinds of things men say in per­son­als ad, mainly hav­ing to do w/ age. Exam­ple: SWM, 45, seek­ing SWF 25 – 47. I once saw a real ad placed by a 70-year-old man who wanted to meet women between the ages of 18 and 71. I kid you not.

    That said, I think Seth Rogen is kinda cute. Juve­nile, but funny and has an unusual and appeal­ing voice.

  48. basset said on October 31st, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    so if the “Hard Day’s Night” chord is not the sin­gle most rec­og­niz­able chord in rock, I don’t know what is… you could prob­a­bly make a case for the Chuck Berry E chord, it shows up in a LOT of songs though. As far as one chord that just SAYS one song, “HDN” would have to be it.

    guess I’ll have to go buy this month’s Gui­tar Player mag­a­zine, though, because that link didn’t say what the chord actu­ally is. or was.

  49. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    bas­set, I dunno bup­kis about music, BUT — the first 5 notes of the Rolling Stones’ “I can’t get no sat­is­fac­tion” LEAPS to mind.…or for that mat­ter, the ’60’s night­club riffy begin­ning to the superb Doors’ tune Light My Fire is noth­ing if not evoca­tive (of that one song and that one group and that one era)

    And as for that (mar­velous) phrase “Male Pat­tern Opti­mism”, I recall think­ing that when I was a teenager, and we watched reruns (which were old even then!) of The Hon­ey­moon­ers; why would a beau­ti­ful woman be with Ralph Cramden?

    More recently, Ray Romano is hand­some enough, but how could such a self-centered, provin­cial dolt keep such a com­pletely beau­ti­ful and intel­li­gent wife, as played by Patri­cia Heaton?

    Hon­estly — the most com­pelling cou­ple on tele­vi­sion to Pam and I con­sists of Jon and Kate Gos­selin (might have mis-spelled that) who have a series on one of the cable chan­nels (tlc?). They have twins and sex­tu­plets, and their ‘real­ity’ show is oddly com­pelling, very funny, and has more truth than one would guess it could have.

  50. coozledad said on October 31st, 2008 at 7:57 pm

    I’ve had a cou­ple of argu­ments with some angry Repub­li­cans at the polls, and if I didn’t already have some kind of vicious cold and feel like shit any­way, it would prob­a­bly make me feel sad. As it is, I just feel like doing what I had a splen­did oppor­tu­nity to do today, which was demon­strate my imma­tu­rity to a group of young peo­ple.
    One of the local Demo­c­ra­tic party peo­ple teaches high school, and he needed our beater of a truck to use as an anchor for his Young Dems club to march in the home­com­ing parade. My wife drove, and we loaded up the back of the truck with kids shout­ing and throw­ing candy along the parade route. I hung out the win­dow of the truck tak­ing pic­tures and occa­sion­ally shout­ing stuff like “Vote for hope: Not for the dope!” and “Keep the money in the shack. Don’t send it to Iraq!” (The nice thing about parades is you’re always run­ning up on fresh vic­tims who only real­ize you’re a yam­mer­ing idiot a sec­ond or two after you’ve passed them.)
    The poor kids on the truck got the sad, sad sight of an old man who’s been in oppo­si­tion too long and has become steadily unhinged. I think they had enough of the residuum of ado­les­cent cru­elty to enjoy the spec­ta­cle of it, at least mildly.

  51. MaryRC said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    I’m with Kate. Peanut but­ter, yes. Peanuts, no.

    But it can only be peanut but­ter on bread, with or with­out jelly. Not with or in any­thing else.

    Reese’s cups — waste of choco­late. Satay sauce — waste of what­ever it is that the sauce cov­ers. Peanut but­ter cookies — bleccch.

    I think there’s some­thing about the salti­ness and oili­ness of peanuts that is mod­er­ated by the bland­ness and sweet­ness of the bread, but over­whelms any­thing else.

  52. brian stouder said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    coo­zledad — you’re OK!

  53. Gasman said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    As for the “Hard Day’s Night” chord being the sin­gle most rec­og­niz­able chord in rock, I’m not so sure. I’ve been a gui­tarist for 40 years and a record­ing engi­neer for about 28 and I’d never heard that old saw until today. I also know about using FFT (Fast Fourier Trans­fer) analy­sis and it won’t reveal instru­men­ta­tion, only fre­quency. My trained ears don’t hear a piano. I’m not say­ing it’s not there, I’m just say­ing I don’t hear it. So much of the arti­cle sounds like crap, both on a musi­cal and record­ing engi­neer­ing level.

    As a gui­tarist, I can think of a way to eas­ily get a 12 string Rick to sound like that — scor­datura, or re-tuning. Retune it for the ini­tial chord only. George Mar­tin is a clas­si­cally trained musi­cian and a record­ing engi­neer in the Euro­pean ton­meis­ter tra­di­tion, as such, he was very inven­tive with over­dub­bing, reverse play­back, and other record­ing tech­niques that were at that time cut­ting edge. Mar­tin would have been quick to use a scor­datura gui­tar. I might be wrong, but it doesn’t sound like much of a mystery.

    Has any­body thought to ask Ringo or Paul?

  54. Catherine said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:39 pm

    The Male Pat­tern Opti­mism thing is pretty annoy­ing… but Seth Rogen is pretty funny, and in my book funny is approx­i­mately equal to sexy.

    They have to really be funny, though, not Ray Romano-funny.

  55. Linda said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:44 pm

    Heard about the death of Studs Terkle today, and it makes me way sad. He would have enjoyed see­ing Obama get elected. I sin­cerely hope I don’t have to get as old as he was to see good gov­er­nance come back on a fed­eral level.

  56. MaryRC said on October 31st, 2008 at 8:50 pm

    Imag­ine if James Franco played Zack, and Miri was an out-of-shape woman with bad skin and a big honker. Can there be that much of a dou­ble stan­dard when it comes to actors’ looks?

    Yeah, I had the same response to that one too. Do male movie crit­ics (and view­ers) all look like Seth Rogan but think they’re James Franco, is that it?

    But although I’ve enjoyed their per­for­mances I’ve never par­tic­u­larly thought of Tom Hanks or Justin Long as
    dreamboat-league either.

  57. joodyb said on October 31st, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    This east of river Twin Town is full of Ray Romanos, lemme tell ya. I don’t even think the phrase ‘god’s gift to women’ is funny any more, it’s so true. oddly Old Coun­try, in the annoy­ing way.

  58. Hooiser said on October 31st, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    JTP didn’t show up in Defi­ance, OH? But 4,000 school kids did. If my kids had been shut­tled off to a McCain rally I’d be mad as hell. My tax payer $ spent on one-sided polit­i­cal clap­trap. Will as much time and money be spent ‘teach­ing’ the oppo­nents ideals? Why not? Does the Defi­ance Pub­lic School Sys­tem accept fed­eral fund­ing? Some­one should inves­ti­gate that!

  59. Jolene said on October 31st, 2008 at 9:32 pm

    I thought that field trip to the McCain rally was kind of odd, too. I don’t mind the idea of the visit, in gen­eral. One could make an argu­ment that it’s a form of civic par­tic­i­pa­tion that’s worth wit­ness­ing and that the older kids, at least, will always remem­ber it. But there must have been some pro­vi­sion for expo­sure to the other side. Have any of you Buck­eyes read or heard any­thing about this?

  60. Gasman said on October 31st, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    Did the Defi­ance School Board get approval from every par­ent? I’m bet­ting not. Sounds bla­tantly ille­gal to me.

  61. beb said on October 31st, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    Imag­ine if James Franco played Zack, and Miri was an out-of-shape woman with bad skin and a big honker. Can there be that much of a dou­ble stan­dard when it comes to actors’ looks?

    Can any­one explain Sarah Jes­sica Parker’s career. What a honker she has, and noth­ing else is attrac­tive either.

  62. MichaelG said on October 31st, 2008 at 10:46 pm

    Sad about Studs Terkel but he was 96. That’s all you get. He was one of the truly greats.

    “Male Pat­tern Opti­mism” is a ter­rific phrase. I love Lisa de Moraes.

    I like peanuts and I like peanut but­ter. Reese’s Peanut But­ter Cups are too sweet for me. My teeth curl up in the fetal posi­tion when I eat one.

    Mark, it’s amaz­ing how you and your Repub­li­can brethren will­fully miss the point. Moral­ity to you folks means “If you don’t go to jail, it’s OK”. Noth­ing about legal­ity, noth­ing about what’s good or bad, right or wrong, noth­ing about what’s hon­or­able or not. Sim­ply jail or no. Just ask that brave and hon­or­able Amer­i­can I. Lewis Libby. No mod­ern Repub­li­can would ever do any­thing merely because it was the decent thing to do. The right wing ide­ol­ogy has to be served first.

    To explain: Nancy’s point was not that it was legal or ille­gal to toss sus­pected Obama sup­port­ers; it was that the Repub­li­cans were shoot­ing them­selves in the foot in any effort to attract col­lege age vot­ers in a col­lege town. But that’s OK. You don’t ordi­nar­ily go to jail for shoot­ing your­self in the foot.

  63. Linda said on October 31st, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    Yeah, MichaelG, Studs was lucky to have lived that long. But if he could only have lived a few days longer, so see the great party that will unfold in his town.

  64. coozledad said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:00 pm

    I think this is prob­a­bly a symp­tom of my age group, but I find most women attrac­tive, unless they’ve suf­fered some grave phys­i­cal mis­for­tune. And then me and alco­hol can work some­thing out. Then there’s the whole per­son­al­ity thing. If I’m going to have an imag­i­nary rela­tion­ship with a woman, she’d bet­ter god­damned well be a Madame De Stael in the bed as well as the salon. I think I’ve lost track of this.
    What is it with folks believ­ing that image con­scious peo­ple have sex that resem­bles ours? I just have to say that women are the ones who have to do more than their fair share of of Mat­ter­horn climb­ing in the “fuck­ing the uglies” depart­ment, and that Ghandi is totally over­rated as a humanitarian.

  65. Catherine said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:03 pm

    I think we need to relax about the field trip. I’m assum­ing that per­mis­sion slips were in place and any­one who wanted to opt out, could. Any school dis­trict that doesn’t fol­low that pro­to­col is ask­ing for a world of hurt. A school in SF recently sent a first grade class on a field trip to the wed­ding of their female first grade teacher to her long­time female com­pan­ion, in City Hall. They had the pro­to­col in place and 2 fam­i­lies opted out. The asst principal’s point was, it’s a teach­able moment, so I OKed it. I think the same goes for any rally in a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Yes, even Bob Barr’s (she said through grit­ted teeth).

  66. Gasman said on October 31st, 2008 at 11:58 pm

    Cather­ine,
    Remem­ber, we’re talk­ing Defi­ance, Ohio. Not exactly the bas­tion of con­sti­tu­tional schol­ar­ship. I would not assume that they had uni­ver­sal parental consent.

  67. MichaelG said on November 1st, 2008 at 12:32 am

    Yeah, you’re right about the tim­ing, Linda.

    Inter­est­ing how as I’ve got­ten older, the things I find attrac­tive in women have grown and changed.

  68. mark said on November 1st, 2008 at 1:45 am

    Michael G.-

    Per­haps you should read the thread again. Nancy asked “why, why, why” and I gave my opin­ion as to the why. I said noth­ing about the legal­ity until moe asked me to cite legal prece­dent. I don’t think I com­mented on the moral­ity of the act at all, other than to respond “fair crit­i­cism” to Jolene’s state­ment that we don’t need another pres­i­dent who plays only to hand picked crowds. You go ahead and worry about the moral­ity of it; I’m still stuck on the moral­ity of 1 in every 100 US adults (and 1 in 10 adult black males) resid­ing in a jail or prison, geno­cide in Dar­fur, alco­hol and cig­a­rette taxes (and lot­ter­ies) that know­ingly bur­den the poor­est, and a few other things.

    And of course who can argue with your asser­tion that “No mod­ern Repub­li­can would ever do any­thing merely because it was the decent thing to do.” We all know that no sol­dier killed, wounded or even know­ingly endan­gered in the course of pro­tect­ing a com­rade or a civil­ian was a Repub­li­can. The police and fire­fight­ers that climbed up the twin tow­ers were all Democ­rats or per­haps Inde­pen­dents; the Repub­li­cans were in hid­ing or kick­ing the injured. The hun­dreds of thou­sands who vol­un­teer an hour or two each week to tutor a child have never cast a Repub­li­can bal­lot. Mod­ern Repub­li­cans don’t kiss their moth­ers good­bye, open a door for another, give a word of encour­age­ment, or say thank you with­out an ulte­rior motive.

    And I’ll bet you stand behind Obama in his desire to change the tone of our polit­i­cal dis­course. Way, way, way behind him.

  69. Connie said on November 1st, 2008 at 8:53 am

    John, thanks for the lovely compliment.

    Coo­zledad you crack me up.

    Male pat­tern opti­mism did too. I know lots of those guys.

  70. moe99 said on November 1st, 2008 at 11:03 am

    mark, go back and read the posts. you’re trend­ing into vic­ti­mol­ogy ter­ri­tory with your reshuf­fle of the facts.

  71. MichaelG said on November 1st, 2008 at 11:43 am

    I’ll stick by what I said con­cern­ing Nancy’s orig­i­nal post, Mark. Things became mud­died when you started wring­ing your hands about poor Sen. McCain’s First Amend­ment right to speak only to peo­ple who love him. I some­how missed the change of topic to Dar­fur, prison racism, drugs, etc.

    As far as Repub­li­cans and decency go, you’ve cre­ated your own reduc­tio ad absur­dum. Once again here as above, in a typ­i­cal burst of Repub­li­can rhetoric, you throw out clouds of BS to both avoid and fog the issue. Again: you say you are a lawyer. The way you con­stantly require some­body to draw a pic­ture for you makes me glad you’re not mine. I was talk­ing about Repub­li­can politi­cians, Mark, not cops, not G.I.s , not fire­men. But you really knew that, didn’t you.

  72. Catherine said on November 1st, 2008 at 11:49 am

    Gas­man, looks like the Defi­ance SD did get parental per­mis­sion. Arti­cle doesn’t say whether any­one opted out: http://​blogs​.edweek​.org/​t​e​a​c​h​e​r​s​/​w​e​b​w​a​t​c​h​/​2​0​0​8​/​1​0​/​o​h​i​o​_​s​t​u​d​e​n​t​s​_​b​u​s​s​e​d​_​t​o​_​m​c​c​a​i​n.html

  73. Crabby said on November 1st, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    George Har­ri­son said he and John played Fadd9, Paul played D on the D string at the 12th fret. I have the same model gui­tar as George was play­ing, a Ric 360/12 and Fadd9 sounds right on it (but not so much on just a 6-string). I like and play a lot of Byrd’s songs so a Ric 12 is a must-have for me for that char­ac­ter­is­tic jangle-y tone.

  74. Gasman said on November 1st, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    The polit­i­cal quote of the day is ded­i­cated to those Repub­li­cans who can­not tol­er­ate oppos­ing thought, to those who find it impos­si­ble to com­pete in the open mar­ket­place of ideas, to those who must den­i­grate their oppo­nents as social­ists, com­mu­nists, or as friends and allies of terrorists:

    “In rec­og­niz­ing the human­ity of our fel­low beings, we pay our­selves the high­est tribute.” — Thurgood Marshall

    I guess their con­duct pays them­selves the oppo­site of the “high­est tribute.”

  75. A few highlights « rurritable said on November 2nd, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    […] I tried to ingra­ti­ate myself with the kids by hang­ing out the win­dow of the truck and scream­ing extem­po­ra­ne­ous slo­gans. I also took the oppor­tu­nity to snap a few blurry […]

«
»