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Little luxuries.

I’ll say this for durable goods: There’s noth­ing like a brand-new major appli­ance to take your mind off your trou­bles, espe­cially when it’s linked to the one activ­ity that can always make me feel com­pe­tent and in con­trol — ban­ish­ing dirt and clut­ter. Sears deliv­ered our new washer today, a Bosch high-efficiency model. It uses about a table­spoon of water per load, and no more elec­tric­ity than can be gen­er­ated by a sin­gle stroke of a butterfly’s wings. The clothes are spun so thor­oughly they come out prac­ti­cally dry. If I could, I’d move it into the liv­ing room and watch the clothes go ’round, which is more enter­tain­ing than the HGTV show I watched on the ellip­ti­cal at the gym yes­ter­day morning.

It reminded me of when we bought our first house, and got a brand-new washer and dryer. It was the first time I’d ever lived in a place where I didn’t have to shlep my laun­dry some­where else, and along with the dish­washer, noth­ing before or since made me feel so rich, vir­tu­ally overnight. All those nights spent in the Solar Sudser on Broad­way in Fort Wayne left a mark — the dirty kids who would walk up to you and cough in your face, or the atten­dant with tri­chotil­lo­ma­nia who would talk on the phone for hours, nar­rat­ing events in her life, which lurched from cri­sis to cri­sis as she yanked her bald spot big­ger and big­ger. I’d sit there with my book and try to let the white noise of the swish swish swish do its job, but it could never com­pete with the cig­a­rette smoke and the yelling and every­thing else. To do one’s own laun­dry, in one’s own base­ment, while you got some­thing else done, too? Sheer luxury.

The deliv­ery man was Croa­t­ian. Some­day I’ll be able to hear an intrigu­ing accent and refrain from doing an impromptu inter­view with its owner, but that day hasn’t arrived. Besides, when some­one says they’re from “the good part” of Croa­tia, don’t you want to know which part that is? (It’s the part where the war wasn’t.) So what brings you to Detroit? The fact your home­land is entirely run by thugs? And how is that dif­fer­ent from Detroit? Ha ha ha ha ha. Enjoy your new washer, you par­ody of a bored house­wife, you.

Well, that may all change sooner than we think. Today’s the day we find out if the house­hold can con­tinue to afford deter­gent, and if so, for how long. I intend to be in my weightlift­ing class at the time. Good wishes appre­ci­ated, but our fate is already sealed. We just don’t know what it is yet.

Blog­gage to take your mind off it all:

Those Brits really know how to write a head­line, or at least a sub­hed: The worst christ­mas party injuries I see in my surgery / The com­edy stuff, such as pluck­ing shards of pho­to­copier glass from rev­ellers back­sides, hap­pens when the surgery is closed. Now that’s some­thing to read.

Gay pen­guin soap operas. A good story, actually.

The Iraqi who gra­ciously offered his shoes to our pres­i­dent? Is a folk hero.

My admi­ra­tion for Roger Ebert’s blog grows with every entry. Today, one for you par­ents out there, likely to be the only ones who’ve seen a Tru3D movie (unless you really are a Han­nah Mon­tana fan, in which case I will back away slowly).

Off to wash away my wor­ries. I’m doing darks.

Posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 8:12 am
in Media, Same ol' same ol'.

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57 responses to
“Little luxuries.”

  1. Mindy said on December 16th, 2008 at 8:29 am

    I hope your high effi­ciency washer proves to be one worth hav­ing. The one I bought sev­eral years ago, the Whirlpool Calypso proved to be such a piece of junk that it earned the nick­name of Collapse-Oh from appli­ance repair­men across the coun­try. It did a mar­velous job on whites, though. I miss that about it. Every­thing with a grease stain had to be rewashed many times. When it died I got a May­tag that does a lovely job hog­ging water and pro­duc­ing clean clothes.

    The laun­dro­mat got to be such a drag that we bought a used apart­ment sized laun­dry pair as soon as we could afford it. The washer was from the late 50s and the dryer was ten years newer. Lots of mem­o­ries with those as well, mostly involv­ing my multi-tasking hus­band fill­ing the washer at the sink and then going off to make the most of those few min­utes. One day I came home from work to find the liv­ing room fur­ni­ture float­ing. Another time the elderly land­lord down­stairs phoned to ask if a pipe in our kitchen had burst. Ah, memories.

  2. coozledad said on December 16th, 2008 at 8:47 am

    Roger’s post about read­ing would make a nice sup­ple­men­tal for a high school sur­vey course in Amer­i­can lit. Or if you attended the col­lege I did, it could net you three sopho­more credit hours.

  3. MichaelG said on December 16th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    I’ve got my fin­gers crossed, Nancy. What a hor­ri­ble thing to go through.

  4. Julie Robinson said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:10 am

    Ebert’s oth­er­wise fine essay is NSFW due to a top­less Betty Page photo. I’m sure that just increased the traf­fic. Due to a weird com­bi­na­tion of astig­ma­tism and dou­ble vision I could never really see any­thing in 3D. Or through a micro­scope, though my high school biol­ogy teacher never believed me.

    Our family’s income came from the news­pa­per world from 1981 – 2007 and it was an excit­ing ride that spanned the glory days to the gory days. After a very attrac­tive offer from the Indy Star, the DH decided to exit for the non-profit world. In the last three months Indy has gone through two rounds of lay­offs. There but for the grace of God…

    The “good part of Croa­tia” sounds like when our daugh­ter told us she was going to live and work in Bangkok’s slums for a week, but no wor­ries, because it was a grade A slum. Very reassuring.

  5. nancy said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:13 am

    Sorry, guys. I should have flagged the Ebert thing, but maybe that says some­thing about Bet­tie. She looks so happy and nat­ural in her skin she doesn’t even read as nude to me. Just…Bettie.

  6. Kirk said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:16 am

    Yeah, now that I looked, if the com­pany decides to down­size, they can go back and prove that I looked at a nekkid woman on my company-issued computer.

  7. Connie said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:23 am

    A sim­i­lar pen­guin story from the Cen­tral Park zoo resulted in the lovely kid’s pic­ture book, “And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richard­son. This story about two male pen­guins hatch­ing an egg and rais­ing a chick has been one of the most chal­lenged books in Amer­i­can pub­lic libraries in recent years. Because it pro­motes the gay agenda you know.

  8. Kirk said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:25 am

    I keep mean­ing to ask one of my gay friends if I might have a peek at that agenda. I would guess it’s taste­fully bound and in a lovely typeface.

  9. nancy said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:29 am

    Psst, Kirk: It exists. Tell no one until you get the secret handshake.

    UPDATE: A fuller version.

  10. Kirk said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:47 am

    Great stuff.

  11. Danny said on December 16th, 2008 at 10:08 am

    Yeah, FTA:

    “A num­ber of Iraqis said they were dis­mayed by what Mr. Zaidi had done. Ahmad Abu Risha, the head of the Awak­en­ing Coun­cil in Anbar Province, a group of tribal lead­ers that started a wave of pop­u­lar oppo­si­tion to fight­ers linked to Al Qaeda, con­demned the move.”

    Lis­ten, any­one who thinks that is is okay for a nation’s leader to be assaulted on for­eign soil is a looney at best and a sav­age at worst. Period.

  12. coozledad said on December 16th, 2008 at 10:19 am

    You should be happy, Danny, they’re tor­tur­ing the guy, per your def­i­n­i­tion of free­dom.
    http://​www​.talk​ing​pointsmemo​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​0​8​/​1​2​/​i​r​a​q​i​_​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​_​t​o​_​p​r​o​b​e​_​c​a​s​e​_​of.php I won­der if Bush is hav­ing films made of it so he can enter­tain his guests in the Chancellory-er-White House.

    Serves him right, for want­ing to rid his coun­try of Iran­ian influ­ence. The coward.

  13. alex said on December 16th, 2008 at 10:36 am

    Oh, the out­rage, Danny. Why this is almost as bad as sluts wear­ing white bridal gowns. And store clerks who diss Christ­mas with their “happy hol­i­days” shit. Off with their heads too.

  14. coozledad said on December 16th, 2008 at 10:48 am

    Author­i­tar­ian cultism. Never goes out of fash­ion with them, does it?
    Bush is pur­su­ing the “Don’t leave it just halfway fucked” pol­icy over there as over here, and the only peo­ple who don’t get it are his 26 per­centers.
    Peo­ple who live in mud huts, tatoo their faces and cook over dung fires have an infi­nitely more sophis­ti­cated under­stand­ing of mon­u­men­tal immoral­ity than the National Review read­er­ship.
    It’s clear who the sav­ages are.

  15. Sue said on December 16th, 2008 at 11:12 am

    I guess the blogs I read are mostly writ­ten by jour­nal­ists, because I’ve done this twice in the last week alone, but at any rate I’ll give you the offer I gave to the oth­ers (who also don’t have a dona­tion jar, hint hint): I’ll do my part by send­ing you a bag of gro­ceries con­sist­ing of Wis­con­sin cheese and Door County wine. Maybe even a Racine kringle, although I’ve never seen the attrac­tion, but they do travel bet­ter than those damn cream puffs. Send me an address and give me your preferences.

  16. nancy said on December 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    Thanks, Sue, but for now, give the cheese to your food bank. The news­room is safe from lay­offs for now, that being defined as “a few months, we hope.” Fin­gers crossed all around.

    Oth­ers in the build­ing, not so lucky.

  17. whitebeard said on December 16th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    As Nancy says “Oth­ers in the build­ing, not so lucky.” On the news pages side, copy edi­tors became proof­read­ers, so good­bye to proof­read­ers; copy edi­tors and graphic design­ers became pag­i­na­tion mas­ters, so good­bye to com­pos­i­tors; in the end two com­pos­ing room peo­ple sent off the news pages, but even before I retired in 2004 I could send directly to the platemak­ing machines from the news room. Ah, progress?

  18. vince said on December 16th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    Nance,
    You really should set up a Pay­Pal dona­tion oppor­tu­nity on your site. I know of other blogs which have them, in addi­tion the Google Ads, and they recoup site expenses more from dona­tions than the ads.

    And no, it’s not set­ting your­self up as a char­ity or mak­ing your­self out as a hard luck case.

    It would allow us to pay for a wor­thy service.

  19. moe99 said on December 16th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    George Packer has an arti­cle in this week’s New Yorker, Offi­cial Sto­ries, which may go a long way to explain­ing the source of the Iraqi’s anger and frustration:

    In the past few days, two offi­cial doc­u­ments on Iraq and the war on ter­ror have come out: a bipar­ti­san inquiry by the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices com­mit­tee into treat­ment of detainees, and a report by the Spe­cial Inspec­tor Gen­eral for Iraq Recon­struc­tion. Read­ing through the exec­u­tive sum­mary of the first and high­lights of the sec­ond gave me a dis­tinct feel­ing of nau­sea — a sense of being dragged back down into an extremely unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence in which I’d been immersed for years and that I’d only recently started to leave behind.

    No chance. A few sen­tences into each doc­u­ment and it was real and vivid all over again: the offi­cial lies and decep­tions buried under acronyms and jar­gon; the head­long folly of arro­gant pol­i­cy­mak­ers; the fate­ful deci­sions made in the shad­ows or on the fly, and the years of ter­ri­ble consequences.

    These two doc­u­ments bring very old news; there’s noth­ing remark­able about their main con­clu­sions. The nau­sea I felt came from hav­ing seen and heard almost all of it before. The Sen­ate inquiry finds that the humil­i­a­tion and cru­elty inflicted on pris­on­ers at Guan­tanamo, Bagram, and Abu Ghraib fol­lowed from direc­tives that orig­i­nated in the White House and the Office of the Sec­re­tary of Defense. The Inspec­tor General’s report (which, at 513 pages, con­tains far more reveal­ing detail than the declas­si­fied ver­sion of the Sen­ate inquiry) estab­lishes that the U.S. gov­ern­ment was com­pletely unpre­pared for the recon­struc­tion of Iraq, owing to the almost crim­i­nal neg­li­gence of those respon­si­ble, and that the years since the inva­sion have been marked by bureau­cratic con­fu­sion and incom­pe­tent exe­cu­tion, with pri­vate con­trac­tors play­ing a large role in the dis­as­ter. In both nar­ra­tives, Pres­i­dent Bush and Sec­re­tary of Defense Rums­feld are the prime cul­prits, head­ing a large cast of failed offi­cials, along with a few quiet dis­si­dents. Both doc­u­ments show, with­out quite say­ing so, that years of offi­cial state­ments amount to a long string of lies.

    Throw­ing shoes in a sense is benign in that the weapon of choice does not cause seri­ous injury (usu­ally in the Mid­dle East soft shoes are worn, not hik­ing boots) but given the shame attached to show­ing some­one the sole of your foot, it has sig­inif­i­cant emo­tional and psy­cho­log­i­cal con­se­quences. It’s like giv­ing the fin­ger used to be here in the US before com­mon cus­tom debased the effect. And Bush has been known to give the fin­ger. So, I think that given the men­dac­ity and the cor­rup­tion and the greed that have com­pletely impov­er­ished the coun­try of Iraq, the ges­ture is com­pletely under­stand­able and that Danny is over­re­act­ing for all the wrong reasons.…But I repeat myself.

  20. brian stouder said on December 16th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    I agree with Vince.

    Aside from that, Bet­tie Page naked is just good stuff (talkin’ old fash­ioned naked, not S&M naked!) — and NOW I have to find those 3-D classes!

    I think her look is so allur­ing because she is an ide­al­ized “every girl” — and not a car­tooney Pamela Ander­son Big-boob Barbie

    And Danny is right — we don’t need to cheer when Pres­i­dents of the United States get objects thrown at them

  21. Danny said on December 16th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

    I’d go even fur­ther. I don’t think that Ahme­d­i­na­jab should have things thrown at him when he vis­its here. It’s just wrong to assault lead­ers of other coun­tries on for­eign soil.

  22. nancy said on December 16th, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    Danny: Sim­plify, sim­plify. How about, “It’s wrong to assault people.”

  23. CrazyCatLady said on December 16th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    I love Bet­tie Page. I admired her beauty, her abil­ity to sew really cool cos­tumes and her beau­ti­ful hair. But most of all, I admired her as a woman who was both sexy and inno­cent, dev­il­ish yet naive. My hubby col­lects Bet­tie items. I never felt jeal­ous or threat­ened by this 50’s pin-up. She was like the Girl Next Door. She was an icon of a bygone era of ‘spicy’, not porno­graphic, pho­tos. And always was that smile that said ‘I’m hav­ing fun!’ I even was think­ing of a tat­too of her– the only woman I would ever con­sider per­ma­nently ink­ing. She is grace, she is art and most of all, she was a spirit and a sur­vivor. And she will be an Amer­i­can icon that will endure the ages.

  24. Danny said on December 16th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Danny: Sim­plify, sim­plify. How about, “It’s wrong to assault people.”

    Aw, gee-whiz, Mom. But all the cool kids are doing it.

  25. Dorothy said on December 16th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    In about a month I’m going to have a new house and all new appli­ances. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop skip­ping through the house and look­ing at and touch­ing every­thing for at least a week. I’m so freakin’ tired of apart­ment living.

  26. Gasman said on December 16th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    Nancy,

    I guess I was left off the e-mail list for get­ting THEIR agenda.

    Sev­eral years back I had a gay col­league who struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with me about the rel­a­tive mer­its of cot­ton sheets with var­i­ous lev­els of thread count. I looked at him and said, “You know, this is the first time in my life that I, or indeed pos­si­bly any other straight guy in the his­tory of the world has ever truly con­sid­ered the “thread count” of anything.”

  27. Danny said on December 16th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    No, you’re wrong here too. Thread count counts.

  28. Catherine said on December 16th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    It’s impor­tant to respect the office, no mat­ter how one feels about its occu­pant. I think the shoe per se crossed that line, in a way that ver­bal protest wouldn’t have. So, I kind of /choke/ agree with Danny. How­ever, the pres­i­dent has said it’s all good, free­dom of expres­sion, a sym­bol of how far the coun­try has come, blah blah, so maybe we all should let it go.

    And, what vince and Sue said about the tip jar. I’ll start the bid­ding: $10 in there, every time I agree with Danny.

  29. Dorothy said on December 16th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    I agree with Danny on two things today — the Pres­i­dent thingy, and the impor­tance of thread count. Once you sleep on sheets with a thread count of 250 or less (shud­der), and then try the 400 thread count (or higher), you’ll know the dif­fer­ence. And you’ll appre­ci­ate the higher count so very much.

  30. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 16th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Nice Thoreau shout-out, Nancy. May i add: http://​blogth​oreau​.blogspot​.com

  31. paddyo' said on December 16th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    I thought 300, 400 thread counts were some­thing. Then my (rather) new girl­friend spoke of ONE-THOUSAND thread counts and I got a lit­tle light-headed.

    Gotta say, they are some­thing … like the soft­est, light­est, thinnest BLANKET you’ve ever tucked your­self under.

    Did the Romans have 1,000-count sheets?

  32. Sue said on December 16th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    Pop­ping in again (feel­ing chatty today):
    Don’t think of it as a tip/donation jar, think of it as a sub­scrip­tion.
    Thread count doesn’t mat­ter if there is even a mol­e­cule of poly­ester involved. Make sure you read that while imag­in­ing a snooty voice.
    For­get Thoreau today — it’s Jane Austen’s birth­day. You young­sters can all read P&P; I’m going with Persuasion.

  33. Dorothy said on December 16th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    I have a copy of Per­sua­sion in a box in stor­age, Sue. When I get the house all set­tled and boxes opened up, I might search for that and make it my first new read in the new house!

  34. del said on December 16th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    As for the cuts at the papers, and across our econ­omy, here’s a song for us all.

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​7​q​H​A​Z​25HYqU

  35. Dexter said on December 16th, 2008 at 4:25 pm

    Pollyanna speaks:
    http://​freep​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​8​1​2​1​6​/​B​U​S​I​N​E​S​S​0​1​/​8​1​216058

    from Wiki: “IBM Pollyanna Principle…understood as a state­ment of extreme opti­mism, that machines should do all the hard work, free­ing peo­ple to think (hence the ref­er­ence to Pollyanna), or as a cyn­i­cal state­ment, sug­gest­ing that most of the world’s major prob­lems result from machines that fail to work, and peo­ple who fail to think.”

  36. MichaelG said on December 16th, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    Pres­i­dent Tru­man (you grossly under­es­ti­mate him, Brian) had a very clear under­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ence between the Office of the Pres­i­dent of the US and the man who occu­pied it. He didn’t much care about what peo­ple wrote or thought about Harry Tru­man but he was fiercely pro­tec­tive of the office. This leads to the way I feel about the shoe throw­ing inci­dent. George Bush is beyond con­tempt and deserves all the rot­ten eggs peo­ple can throw. How­ever, that was the Pres­i­dent of the United States, good or poor, hav­ing demeaned the office or not, at that presser in Bag City and I don’t like peo­ple throw­ing stuff at him.

  37. Dexter said on December 16th, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    ok…I hate to dis­rupt the festivities…but I have to, since this was a hot-topic here at NNC a while back. I tell ya…it really pissed me off. I believed in colonoscopies…now, can any of us? Is there a doc­tor in the house?
    http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​2​/​1​6​/​h​e​a​l​t​h​/​1​6​c​a​n​c​e​r​.​h​tml?em

  38. joodyb said on December 16th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

    dex­ter, i view that nyt story in the same light as the Mad­off outrage/hysteria: if you’ve been get­ting a 15 per­cent return on your invest­ments for five years run­ning, you are extremely lucky &/or someone’s cook­ing the books. there are no guar­an­tees. the promises of med­ical tech­nol­ogy and screen­ing should be taken with a boul­der of salt.

  39. basset said on December 16th, 2008 at 7:42 pm

    My son went to the same high school as Betty Page about sixty years later, Hume-Fogg in Nashville. None of the teach­ers looked like her as of last school year, though.

    Nice bosom. Won­der what kind of wash­ing machine she had?

  40. Dexter said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    basset…I never heard of Betty Page until her death, or maybe I did and it never reg­is­tered with me. I see that she was big news, but while I remem­ber where I was when I heard that Jayne Mans­field was beheaded and Mar­i­lyn OD’d…this woman flew over my radar.

  41. Dexter said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:34 pm

    Laun­dro­mat Mem­o­ries
    Cig­a­rettes, lit­tle kids run­ning amok, bright lights with a few hum­ming and blink­ing, vend­ing machines with Tide and some odd-ball brand of bleach-detergent, never mak­ing change because Dad had a small tackle box filled with dimes and quar­ters, help­ing Dad load the bas­kets into the Stude­baker, more clouds of cig­a­rette smoke waft­ing in the air, a lit­tle ancient man with a dual-bill hunt­ing cap and wool gloves stomp­ing in to warm up, then abruptly leav­ing to get where he went, and a very thin woman , very styl­ish with curled hair and per­fect makeup, black eye­glass frames, many gold bracelets, who always seemed to be there when we were, and always puff­ing away on a long cig­a­rette.
    When I deliv­ered Journal-Gazettes , our drop-off sta­tion was across the street from a diner-laundromat combo. A bak­ery deliv­ered fresh trays of cin­na­mon rolls and donuts at 4:45 AM and the diner opened at 6:00 AM, so those trays were right there, stacked on a laun­dry folding-table for 45 min­utes before the owner showed up to start the cof­fee in the diner. We paper­boys would some­times help our­selves to a few rolls and leave quar­ters and nick­els on the wax paper for the owner…he never complained.

  42. MarkH said on December 16th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    Com­pletely OT:

    I have won­dered this before, but the sub­ject mat­ter changes so fast around here, I get side­tracked and for­get to ask. Maybe this has been asked and answered many times pre­vi­ously on this blog, but I haven’t seen it.

    So, Nancy, inquir­ing minds want to know:

    Both being from the same gen­eral area in Ohio, what IS the rela­tion­ship between Alan Der­ringer and Rick Derringer?

    BTW, con­grats on Alan dodg­ing the lay­off bul­let, for the time being, of course. But, good news.

  43. nancy said on December 16th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    Both being from the same gen­eral area in Ohio, what IS the rela­tion­ship between Alan Der­ringer and Rick Derringer?

    Twins. Sep­a­rated at birth. Of course I got the brother who doesn’t get roy­alty checks.

    Truth: No rela­tion, says Alan. Rick’s birth name was Zehringer. He prob­a­bly changed it because he thought Der­ringer sounded more rock’n’roll, and Junior Walker already had a claim on “Shotgun.”

  44. MarkH said on December 16th, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    Um, yeah, I should have remem­bered that, about Rick’s name change. At the OSU cam­pus radio sta­tion we played the s*** out of Edgar Win­ter and Der­ringer in the early 70s and it comes back to me now.

    And wouldn’t those roy­alty checks come in handy today, not to men­tion the ones from old fogey appear­ances in on-line stock bro­ker commercials.

  45. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 16th, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    For the “not a dime’s worth of dif­fer­ence” crew — http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​2​/​1​7​/​u​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​1​7​t​r​a​n​s​i​t​i​o​n.html — which actu­ally makes me think that, pol­i­tics and par­ties aside, there are cer­tain impon­der­ables that don’t change from admin­is­tra­tion to admin­is­tra­tion (like get­ting the brief­ing on http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​A​rea_51 ).

  46. MarkH said on December 16th, 2008 at 11:36 pm

    Ha! Area 51, right.

    Did you all know ( or maybe I learned it here) that Google Earth has a flight sim­u­la­tor pro­gram? You can choose a light plane, or a figher jet for equip­ment and “fly” over any­where in the world? Yes, YOU can land a plane at Area 51!

    Or, at it’s des­ig­nated alleged suc­ce­sor, the White Sands Range just southeat of Moab, Utah. The pho­tos don’t show much there, though, and it’s not to be con­fused with the White Sands in New Mexico.

    Get a good qual­ity joy stick (key­board con­trols work ok, too), go to Google Earth and find your favorite loca­tion. Hit Ctl-Alt-A, have fun. Pilot Joe will love it.

  47. joodyb said on December 16th, 2008 at 11:47 pm

    i for­got to say, nancy, i am rev­el­ing in fresh durable goods as well, hav­ing his­tor­i­cally replaced washer&dryer simul­ta­ne­ously after suf­fer­ing shot sole­noids for a humil­i­at­ing dura­tion. we took the occa­sion to recon­fig­ure the laun­dry­room. the only time i can remem­ber being more in the zone domes­ti­cally was in my treehouse.

  48. Dexter said on December 16th, 2008 at 11:57 pm

    I guess wel­fare is the oppo­site of roy­alty checks. Once my unem­ploy­ment com­pen­sa­tion ran out so I went to apply for food stamps. I got eight dol­lars worth of food stamps. We had three kids. I got called back to work the next week. Amaz­ing tim­ing. I actu­ally bought corn meal and flour and beans with the $8. Sounds like “Pio­neer Days”, eh? 1983. That is all the “wel­fare” we ever received.

  49. basset said on December 17th, 2008 at 1:05 am

    IIRC Rick does have a twin or maybe just a brother, Randy, who was in the McCoys (“Hang On Sloopy”) with him… and they’re from Union City, Indiana.

    Jayne Mans­field… you might still be able to find a copy of a really inter­est­ing travel book, “Unau­tho­rized Amer­ica.” Among other his­toric loca­tions, i.e. Charles Manson’s boy­hood home and so forth, they show the stretch of high­way where Jayne Mans­field died in a car wreck, down on the Mis­sis­sippi coast somewhere.

    Oblig­a­tory Bea­t­les con­nec­tions: George Har­ri­son was once pho­tographed with Jayne Mans­field. The red Les Paul he played on “Let It Be” once belonged to Rick Der­ringer, who traded it to a music store in NYC, where Eric Clap­ton bought it and later gave it to George.

    I am a pos­i­tive fount of worth­less infor­ma­tion tonight.

  50. Dexter said on December 17th, 2008 at 1:12 am

    The flight slim is awe­some! For some rea­son Fire­fox blocked it so I down­loaded while using the IE browser…it takes a few min­utes for the entire down­load, btw. So far I flew over my house and then flew over NYC and looked at some iso­lated pho­tos of the Roo­sevelt Island tram. I know I’ll be spend­ing a lot of time fly­ing all over Europe tomor­row. Thanks, MarkH.

  51. Dave said on December 17th, 2008 at 1:36 am

    Rick Zehringer does have a brother, not twin, who did too much in the way of, ah, recre­ational activ­i­ties and, the last I knew, was liv­ing pretty much a reclu­sive sort of exis­tence in Lima, OH. But, that goes back a few years and might not be true today.

    Knew their father, who Rick always spoke highly of dur­ing his hey­day, I recall read­ing a Rolling Stone inter­view in the 70’s. His father’s view of the rock n’ roll world was a lit­tle less.

    I believe the the McCoy’s bass player, or per­haps, he was the drum­mer, was run­ning a pizza shop in Win­ches­ter, IN.

  52. MarkH said on December 17th, 2008 at 4:32 am

    bas­set -

    I stand cor­rected on the McCoys’ roots. A Cincin­nati DJ had said they were from Ohio when Hang On Sloopy was big while I was in high school. So it made sense that when I got to Ohio State, I learned it was the (un)official OSU song. Although Wiki says it’s the offi­cial rock song of the state of Ohio.

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​T​h​e​_​McCoys

    That’s some six degrees of sep­a­ra­tion on the red Les Paul!

  53. MichaelG said on December 17th, 2008 at 8:59 am

    The McCoys — wow. One after­noon in col­lege I was play­ing house with the landlord’s daugh­ter when him­self came call­ing to inquire after the where­abouts of his rent money. Poor girl was a bit spooked. “Hang on Sloopy” was play­ing at the time. From that day her nick-name was “Sloopy”.

    Dex­ter, I can’t believe you never heard of Betty Page.

  54. Kirk said on December 17th, 2008 at 9:18 am

    Please for­give the copy edi­tor in me, but her name was Bet­tie Page.

  55. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 17th, 2008 at 9:57 am

    An inter­est­ing angle on how we’ve been here before, between media eras, out of an essay in the New Yorker by Adam Gop­nik –

    “Samuel John­son arrived in Lon­don in March of 1737, at the age of twenty-seven. He was escap­ing from a failed effort to run a coun­try school, along with his prize pupil, a twenty-year-old would-be actor named David Gar­rick. Although Gar­rick made his way to the stage, and to star­dom, in short order, John­son had no luck in his dream, of becom­ing a Lon­don writer and wit, for a very long time. He had the mis­for­tune to have arrived in Lon­don in a time not unlike this one, with the old-media dis­pen­sa­tion in cri­sis and the new media barely pay­ing. The prac­tice of aris­to­cratic patron­age, in which big shots paid to be flat­tered by their favorite writ­ers, was ebbing, and the new, middle-class arrange­ment, where plays and nov­els could com­mand real money from pub­lish­ers, was not yet in place. The only way to make a liv­ing was to pub­lish, for star­va­tion wages, in the few mag­a­zines that had come into exis­tence. John­son worked as a mis­cel­la­neous jour­nal­ist, car­ry­ing his clips around and beg­ging for assignments.”

  56. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 17th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    Wow — it just is mar­velous writ­ing, let alone com­pelling reading –

    His was a hun­gry man’s hard-hearted view of life, more like Merle Haggard’s con­ser­vatism than like his later friend Edmund Burke’s. The self-classified reform­ers, John­son insisted, are in pur­suit of only their own nar­row inter­ests, not those of the com­mon peo­ple. He loved to tell the story of chal­leng­ing Mrs. Macaulay, “a great repub­li­can,” to prove her sin­cer­ity about social equal­ity by ask­ing her foot­man to dine at her table. (“She has never liked me since. Sir, your lev­ellers wish to level down as far as them­selves; but they can­not bear lev­el­ling up to them­selves.”) Life is hard, and there is lit­tle that gov­ern­ment can do to make it eas­ier. No one was less pater­nal­is­tic, or puri­tan­i­cal, about the poor and their plea­sures than John­son: give them all the gin and fair­grounds they want, they have lit­tle enough else, God knows. (“Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swal­low with­out gild­ing; yet for the poor we delight in strip­ping it still barer.”)

  57. joodyb said on December 17th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    That Adam Gop­nik got my life! Seri­ously, what a great job. He is good.

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