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Every picture tells a story.

Well, you could have this week­end and return it to the man­u­fac­turer, eh? The giant snow­storm was fol­lowed by a big freeze — this is not news to a large num­ber of you, I know — and every­where was suf­fer­ing. The dog is irri­ta­ble, torn between his instinc­tual need to visit the out­doors reg­u­larly and its utter suck­i­tude. My poor car looks like it has lep­rosy, but it’s too cold to wash it and besides, it’s only going to snow again tomor­row and prob­a­bly the next day, too. I deprived a local mall of my busi­ness and went to one far­ther away, because the for­mer is one of those Potemkin Vil­lage lifestyle-center malls, and if there’s one thing I don’t want to do on a day with single-digit tem­per­a­tures and a howl­ing wind, it’s walk out­doors between stores.

I went to Som­er­set instead. Every lux­ury store under the sun, plus a few you haven’t heard of. None had any­thing I wanted. Every­thing seemed cheap and stu­pid. The upside: Cheap and stu­pid is now 30 per­cent off. Even Barney’s was hav­ing a sale. You could buy a pair of ugly shoes for $325, marked down from $545. I really can’t wait for Christ­mas to be over. Noth­ing like double-digit unem­ploy­ment (barely; Michigan’s now at 9.4 per­cent, but expected to go much higher, and I sus­pect that makes us No. 1) and the promise of an even worse future to extract all the fun out of spend­ing your money.

But enough about me.

Some good blog­gage today: Every so often I go Googling for Tim Goe­glein (who really should work for Google, don’t you think? He could answer his phone, “Google, Goe­glein.”), to see if he’s left a bread­crumb trail. The new Wash­ing­ton will be a hos­tile place for con­ser­v­a­tives other than Rick War­ren, but you should never under­es­ti­mate the abil­ity of peo­ple to land on their feet, change and/or find a seat some­where on the Wingnut Wel­fare gravy train. So far, nothing’s turned up, until this, a Wash­Post story from ear­lier this month, about a lunchtime gath­er­ing at a D.C. Buca di Beppo. Deal Hud­son, founder and for­mer pub­lisher of Cri­sis mag­a­zine, was host of a big table in the Pope Room, and the idea was to read Christ­mas poetry aloud to the group. That’s it. Sort of charm­ing when you think about it.

Tim’s not in the story, only in the photo (and only the top of his head, at that). But just to show you what a big tent the right wing is and remains, note that lineup in the pic­ture: born-again vir­gin Dawn Eden; nice Lutheran Tim (hands folded prayer­fully?); and Hud­son, the host. (The other two guys are Googleable, but ciphers — to me, any­way.) Eden is known for hav­ing rejected what she calls a “‘Sex and the City’ lifestyle” for ortho­dox Catholi­cism, celibacy, anti-abortion activism and a book con­tract (“The Thrill of the Chaste”). Hud­son became ex-publisher of Cri­sis after a story sur­faced about a drunken sex­ual encounter with a teenage col­lege stu­dent that led to harass­ment charges against him, i.e., unchaste behav­ior. And among the mag­a­zines Goe­glein plun­dered in his strange career as a writer was Crisis.

We are all sin­ners, and the balm of lit­er­a­ture is sooth­ing to all. Remem­ber that.

Think­ing of the Wingnut pro­pa­ganda cho­rus reminds me that Alicublog is still on the job keep­ing tabs on them all, and has a fine roundup post on Christ­mas Week at the National Review. Sample:

“Why does an obses­sive Nazi-hunter like Simon Wiesen­thal get pos­i­tive press,” (Mark Gold­blatt) asks, “while an obsses­sive Communist-hunter like Joe McCarthy is vil­i­fied?” Maybe because Wiesen­thal hunted actual Nazis, while McCarthy was happy to tar cit­i­zens rang­ing from Owen Lat­ti­more to Adlai Stevenson.

Finally, although it isn’t tech­ni­cally Hol­i­day Pho­tos Week yet, I’m kick­ing things off with a cou­ple of con­tri­bu­tions from our web­mas­ter, J.C. Burns, who is way ahead of me on the digitizing-old-photos chore. He sent two along, pegged to my com­ment about Tri-X film, but since one includes me and another fea­tures a famous mys­tery guest, let’s get it started. First, here are three of J.C.‘s women friends, c. 1979-80ish, in the court­yard of his salad-days gar­den apart­ment in Atlanta. The woman on the left is Verneda I-forget-her-last-name, the one on the right is Deb Warlaumont-now-Mulvey, my BFF then and now (posts here as deb, always lower-case), and in the mid­dle is a woman who really should have rethought that scarf. And her hair. And the shoes (Dr. Scholl’s!). And cer­tainly the glasses, although that was the fash­ion at the time.

scan-081221-0002-1

It looks like I was con­sult­ing my check­book while about to descend con­crete stairs in wooden san­dals. Which explains why I fre­quently sported bruises in those days.

The other is today’s Com­ment Thread Mys­tery, and if I had some­thing to give as a prize I would, but alas. Below is another pic­ture of Deb, along with a col­lege class­mate of ours. Same gen­eral era. He is, today, a jour­nal­ist of national rep­u­ta­tion (his offi­cial bio calls him “renowned,” but I think that’s push­ing it), who makes fre­quent appear­ances on TV. This puz­zle may favor the men in our audi­ence, but that’s the only clue I’m giv­ing you. Once his iden­tity is cor­rectly iden­ti­fied, I’ll post a con­tem­po­rary photo in an update, so we can all laugh over the dif­fer­ence. Who is our mys­tery man? (And please: Those who knew him then, or know because they read all the com­ments here, sit this one out, please? This means you, MarkH. The under­ly­ing joke of this photo is the phys­i­cal change.)

scan-081221-0001-1

Every­one have a great start to a short week. And try to stay warm.

UPDATE: Jeff TMMO wins, but I think he had help. I just don’t see how you could rec­og­nize “renowned NFL reporter Peter King” based on the jaw alone. Not when the hair is such a dis­trac­tion, any­way. (It looks like a wig, doesn’t it?) I guess it’s all that prac­tice at look­ing at the soul within, because this is what he extrap­o­lated from:

Peter King today

Whew. Con­grat­u­la­tions.

Posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 7:47 am
in Holiday photos, Media, Same ol' same ol'.

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61 responses to
“Every picture tells a story.”

  1. Kirk said on December 22nd, 2008 at 8:29 am

    Is he a sportswriter?

  2. James said on December 22nd, 2008 at 8:31 am

    “The woman on the left is Verneda I-forget-her-last-name…”

    Kruger, although I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it. Why do I use brain cells to remem­ber my brother’s friends from the 80’s? I dunno.

    Now if only I could remem­ber things like my wife’s cell­phone num­ber, or pro­gram­ming stuff I read…

  3. nancy said on December 22nd, 2008 at 8:32 am

    Kirk: Yes.

    James: You did bet­ter than me. For some rea­son I was think­ing her last name was Graham.

  4. Pam said on December 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 am

    Wow! That hair!

  5. Kirk said on December 22nd, 2008 at 8:48 am

    OK, I thought I knew, prob­a­bly because I sub­con­sciously remem­ber you men­tion­ing him. So I’ll step aside and let the oth­ers play.

  6. Hoosier said on December 22nd, 2008 at 8:55 am

    But y’all look so happy! Don’t know who he is, but he looks like a young Al Franken!

  7. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:01 am

    Looks like Peter King, mebbe? I’m going by the jaw, not the hair.

  8. brian stouder said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:03 am

    I thought that the best nn.c joke that could be made about who that per­son is — would be Mitch Albom, and on sec­ond look, it appears mar­gin­ally possible!

    SO, that’s my guess

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

    Nope, i barely rec­og­nize that cur­rent photo, Nancy; it’s the shots from above in the booth that tracked nicely with the face sans hair. I usu­ally don’t get home in time to see foot­ball until the fourth quar­ter, or [cue Al Roker voice] Foot­ball Night in America-ica-ica [end Al Roker voice]. Couldn’t be Albom, i was sure of that, don’t ask me why. My first thought was … Bob Greene? Nah, you would have had a more caus­tic aside buried in the chal­lenge if ’twere him.

  10. Dorothy said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 am

    I thought it was Al Franken, too. And I didn’t know who the hell Peter King was anyway.

    Hey the air­port reunion thing on Sat­ur­day went off fine. Josh spied his sis­ter imme­di­ately. As the lit­tle bug­ger was hug­ging me, he said ” Tell Laura she’s not doing a very good job of hid­ing.” She had been try­ing to snap pic­tures of us hug­ging, but he spot­ted her right off. Must be that Army train­ing. Here’s a link to any­one who wants to see the pictures.

  11. MichaelG said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 am

    At least those cute girls aren’t wear­ing socks with their san­dals. And Deb (deb?) in the sec­ond pic­ture looks more freez­ing to death than inter­ested in the mysto guest.

    Who would want to jump Dawn Eden’s bones? Sex is as much men­tal as any­thing else and even when she con­de­scends to allow some “lucky” gent to wor­ship at her holy tem­ple it’s not gonna be any fun because her head’s all twisted. By the way, I couldn’t get that video to start.

    The Gov­er­na­tor sent us a let­ter this AM out­lin­ing a plan for lay­offs and fur­loughs for state employ­ees. Merry Xmas from him. Michi­gan may be num­ber one, but CA is right up there at eight and a half points and rising.

    I grew up in Chicago and I don’t miss that weather or the “hawk” one bit. I’m proud to be a wuss. The WaMu ther­mome­ter I pass on the way to work showed forty degrees at 5:00 AM today. That’s cold enough for me.

  12. MichaelG said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:25 am

    Link doesn’t work, Dorothy. I’d love to see it.

  13. Dorothy said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:28 am

    Sorry. Tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties. Try now. I think I solved it.

  14. nancy said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:28 am

    Albom went to Bran­deis (and has straight hair). Greene went to North­west­ern, like the priv­i­leged rich kid he always was. I’m proud of Peter for doing so well after hav­ing been launched from such a pro­le­tar­ian state school. He was always a hard worker.

  15. brian stouder said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 am

    Dorothy — very, very good stuff; Put a lump in my throat!

  16. Randy said on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:46 am

    Here in Win­nipeg, the lifestyle mall is The Next Big (Retail) Thing, with a cou­ple of major projects in the works for 2010 there­abouts. Please note today’s tem­per­a­ture here: Minus 29 Cel­sius, plus wind­chill. A fairly aver­age day at this time of year. I can’t wait to lug my Xmas purc­ah­ses from one lifestyle affir­ma­tion to another, paus­ing to lower my toque as I lean into the wind. Good times.

    Peter King has achieved enough stand­ing to be mocked by younger, less noted sports­writ­ers:
    http://​kiss​ing​suzykol​ber​.uproxx​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​2​/​p​e​t​e​r​-​k​i​n​g​-​l​i​k​e​s​-​h​i​s​-​m​a​c​b​o​o​k​-​a​i​r​-​f​a​r​-​m​o​r​e​-​t​h​a​n​-​t​h​e​-​m​a​r​r​i​o​t​t​-​s​h​a​m​p​o​o.html

  17. MichaelG said on December 22nd, 2008 at 10:05 am

    Very nice, Dorothy. Thanks.

    What’s a lifestyle mall? It might be fun shop­ping for a new lifestyle. Mon­ey­back guarantee?

    I went to Home Depot on Sat. It was stone empty. I thought maybe I had missed the anthrax alert or some­thing. Employ­ees were stand­ing in clumps here and there talk­ing among each other. I had them stop­ping me on every aisle ask­ing if they could help. They sin­cerely thanked me for buy­ing what I did — some light bulbs, a win­dow squeegee, a cou­ple of fil­ters for the heater and a mop. It was scary.

  18. jcburns said on December 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am

    I kinda like this Peter King pic. And I too was going to guess Al Franken just to throw you all off…gee, quick con­test! And I have no Jay Mar­i­otti pic­tures. Did we men­tion that Peter was not a sports­writer in col­lege? I’m just pleased he’s a Mac guy.

  19. nancy said on December 22nd, 2008 at 10:50 am

    I don’t know what the time­line is on those two recent Peking pho­tos, John. At one point I know he was portly, but the last time I saw him on TV he looked like he’d lost some weight, so either he’s gained it back or the pic­ture you link to is older. What-ever. That’s right, though — I for­got we also matric­u­lated with Jay Mar­i­otti, who is even more loathed by the blo­gos­phere (and a lot of other peo­ple) than Peking. How­ever, based on read­ing his columns, Mar­i­otti deserves it.

    Where’s Tony Grossi these days, John? (Never mind. Google knows all. Answer: Cleve­land.) Throw in the pathetic Marty Gitlin, and that’s about the whole OU Post sports staff, right there.

  20. coozledad said on December 22nd, 2008 at 10:51 am

    In Durham, NC, they built a replica of the “Five Points” area of the old down­town and called it “South­pointe” (I may have added an extra e, but you get the idea). It’s on sev­eral acres of farm­land, and sev­eral miles away from any­thing. The streets are dec­o­rated with cal­cu­lat­edly innocu­ous bronze sculp­tures and fan­ci­ful Vic­to­rian lam­posts, from which the peo­ple who con­ceived and exe­cuted the project should hang until real vul­tures pick them clean.
    My wife and I have had to go there to eat at a “restau­rant” for a hol­i­day din­ner spon­sored by one of her old employ­ers. I had a dish of “Ital­ian” food putty. The com­pany she worked for at the time failed because its “cap­i­tal” evaporated.

  21. basset said on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am

    Basic idea of a “lifestyle cen­ter” is that the tra­di­tional enclosed mall in the mid­dle of a sea of park­ing is over… and the new approach is “mixed use,” com­bi­na­tion of retail, res­i­den­tial, and office in a walk­a­ble community.

    Some of them are indeed pretty bad, haven’t seen the cen­ter Cooz refers to but I know some oth­ers which take that approach. Done prop­erly, though, a lifestyle cen­ter can do a lot to get peo­ple out of their cars and build community.

    South­pointe, Five Points… rule of thumb in the mall busi­ness is that you cut down a for­est to make room for con­struc­tion, then name the mall after the trees.

  22. Kirk said on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:17 am

    Sounds like the French Mar­ket in north Colum­bus was a lifestyle cen­ter ahead of its time before it collapsed.

  23. brian stouder said on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:25 am

    Fort Wayne’s Jef­fer­son Pointe is very pleas­ant in April or May or June, but July-August heat & humid­ity, and artic blasts around the hol­i­days are MAJOR demerits.

    They strive to make them like lit­tle towns, with foun­tain squares and occa­sional activ­i­ties or musi­cal attrac­tions ‘on the green’ — and faux streets w/light posts (there’s one north of Indi­anapo­lis — at Carmel — which strikes me as flatly odd)

    My old-guy atti­tude is that the real goal IS to have an old style down­town, but where the land­lord owns it ALL (and doesn’t have to pay for heat), most espe­cially includ­ing the ‘police’ — rent-a-cops that don’t have to tol­er­ate the pres­ence of any­one who isn’t shopping

  24. Catherine said on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:40 am

    Dorothy the reunion pho­tos are boffo! I espe­cially liked the feigned sur­prise one.

    Re the empty Home Depot: Yes­ter­day, my hus­band went to Stats, a Pasadena insti­tu­tion of the pre-lit Christ­mas tree, orna­ments, nice wrap­ping paper type. Nor­mally this time of year the place is nuts (which is why I sent him!), but this year every­thing is 20% off and you could have shot a can­non through it with­out hit­ting any­one. Wel­come to double-digit employ­ment, indeed.

  25. nancy said on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:46 am

    Around here, Birm­ing­ham is our local lifestyle cen­ter, although it’s real — a pre-war down­town lined with upscale shop­ping and restau­rants. We went last week­end to find Smith & Hawken liq­ui­dat­ing, along with a shoe store and sev­eral other high-end retail­ers with sim­i­lar everything-must-go signs in the win­dows. (The chic pet empo­rium was seem­ingly unaf­fected; any­one need a $350 cat scratch­ing post? Alan thinks they’ll be toast by March, however.)

  26. alex said on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:55 am

    Tell Alan he’s wrong. A $350 scratch­ing post has to be good until at least April.

  27. Dexter said on December 22nd, 2008 at 11:58 am

    Peter King? I guess I really DON’T fol­low foot­ball if he’s a renowned foot­ball guy. When I saw the name I instantly thought of R-NY Con­gress­man Peter King (usu­ally called “Pete”), who was on the teevee Sun­day morn­ing bash­ing Car­o­line Kennedy . King thinks she’s just much too “Park Avenue” to deserve HRC’s trea­sured NY Sen­ate seat.
    Well, “my” Peter is first at Google, “yours” is sec­ond.
    #1
    Con­gress­man Peter King
    US Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for New York’s 3rd Dis­trict, Repub­li­can Pete King.
    petek​ing​.house​.gov/
    #2
    SI​.com — Peter King — Writer Archive
    Peter King, a senior writer for Sports Illus­trated, joined the mag­a­zine in 1989 after spend­ing nearly a decade as an award-winning news­pa­per jour­nal­ist. …
    sport​sil​lus​trated​.cnn​.com/​w​r​i​t​e​r​s​/​p​e​t​e​r​_​k​i​n​g​/​a​r​chive/

  28. Dexter said on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    I was sure it was Al Franken, too…
    http://​images​.pub​l​i​cra​dio​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​2​5​/​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​5​_​a​l​f​r​a​n​k​e​n​_3.jpg

    but…I see Al’s hair is less “wiggy”, and then there’s the school thing…Al Franken’s school was Har­vard Col­lege, the under­grad school of Har­vard Uni­ver­sity.
    I just thought…I know exactly one per­son who went to Har­vard, but about 12 who went to Ohio U in Athens, mostly my kids’ friends.

  29. LA Mary said on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    I think I’ll buy this car for my son for Christmas:

    > http://​defamer​.com/​5​1​1​4​6​6​3​/​i​s​-​t​h​i​s​-​t​h​e​-​g​r​e​a​t​e​s​t​-​c​r​a​i​g​s​l​i​s​t​-​c​a​r​-​a​d​-​e​v​e​r​-​w​r​i​t​t​en-yes

  30. LA Mary said on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    Cather­ine, I’ll have to hit Stats. I need some new lights and I was think­ing LED, and Tar­get in Eagle Rock, which was pretty busy, was com­pletely out of any sort of lights. Stats is usu­ally a place I don’t even want to drive by at this time of year.

  31. Catherine said on December 22nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm

    Yes, and then you are just up the street from the Folk Tree and their inter­na­tional nativ­i­ties exhibit, which put me directly into the Christ­mas Zone.

  32. whitebeard said on December 22nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    LA Mary, that’s my kind of car. I once had a very used Pon­tiac T1000 that I parked at LaGuardia air­port in New York City in a rush to fly to a funeral.
    When I came back a week later, some­one had bro­ken into it, looked at the vin­tage McDonald’s wrap­pers in the back seat and gen­tly closed the door.
    Even car thieves were not that des­per­ate to steal those piti­ful wheels and would rather walk.
    In today’s econ­omy it might have been a dif­fer­ent sce­nario. One of those greedy, bonus-rich bankers might have taken it to pre­tend he was down to his last stolen dime.

  33. MichaelG said on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:05 pm

    Home Depot has plenty of lights, Mary. On sale too.

    “Smith & Hawken liq­ui­dat­ing” Really? That’s too bad. They started in Mill Val­ley which is too hip to have real busi­nesses in it and then moved up to Novato. When peo­ple talk about pea­cock feath­ers in Marin County, they mean Mill Val­ley. S&H was the new age dar­ling of cool busi­ness peo­ple some years back. Books were written.

  34. LA Mary said on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    Michael, no lights at Home Depot in Glas­sell Park. I bought a tree there and looked all over the store for lights. Nada. Lots of stuff like the life size wire deer with lights all over them but zip on the tree lights.

  35. MichaelG said on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    Well, it’s nice to hear not all Home Depot stores are aban­doned although I can cer­tainly under­stand why those wire deer were left behind.

  36. LA Mary said on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    I think stuff like life sized deer are more of a com­mitt­ment than I’m will­ing to make, decoration-wise. I’m a tree a small wreath type. Some­times no wreath if I don’t see one I like for under ten bucks.

  37. John said on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    We are off to sunny North Car­olina (coo­zledad coun­try) to visit the grand­kid­dies for Christ­mas. May you all have a Joyeux Noël and eat way too much!

  38. brian stouder said on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    To you and yours also, John! (I think Rudolph with ‘his nose so bright’ is going to be needed for Christ­mas travel, this Christmas)

    edit: And btw — we’re just being cool and steer­ing around the neat pic of the pro­pri­etress, from back in her salad days; but suf­fice it to say — the cap­tion about appear­ing to review her check­book as she pre­pares to descend the cement stairs made me chuckle! (although to me, it appears that the saucey young ladies are review­ing their black book, before descend­ing upon the town!)

  39. coozledad said on December 22nd, 2008 at 3:25 pm

    John: You’re just in time. Warm­ing trend starts tomorrow.

  40. Dexter said on December 22nd, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    coozledad…are you mak­ing a Christ­mas wreath for the mules? You mule-pics are more fun than the puppy-cam!

  41. Dexter said on December 22nd, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    Jeezuss…it took me hours to thaw a frozen pipe…oh,no…I am not Mr. Handy­man — I called all the plumbers in town and got the same response from all…“you won’t be get­ting a plumber any­time today…” —so there went Dex­ter with elec­tric heaters and tape and insu­la­tion crawl­ing around and about.

  42. coozledad said on December 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 pm

    I am now..slave of mules…must slice… more apples.

  43. LA Mary said on December 22nd, 2008 at 5:36 pm

    The mules can’t eat whole apples? Do they want brown sugar and cin­na­mon sprin­kled on their apples too?

  44. nancy said on December 22nd, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    You’ve been around farm ani­mals enough, Cooze, to know that hand­ing them apples from your fin­gers is an invi­ta­tion to lose a digit. Put the goodie flat on the palm of your hand, and let them pick it up with their pre­hen­sile muz­zles. I have to relearn this les­son from time to time with the dog.

  45. coozledad said on December 22nd, 2008 at 5:47 pm

    LA Mary: They can, but it assists me in cre­at­ing the illu­sion of more apples. It’s kind of like Rock­e­feller hand­ing out a big bag of nick­els to poor chil­dren. Half got nick­els, half of them got chest­nuts.
    And they’d love the sugar and cin­na­mon, but they already could use a lit­tle den­tal work.

  46. coozledad said on December 22nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    Nancy: The mules lip every­thing first, but they do seem to be get­ting less shy, espe­cially when they’re con­test­ing the own­er­ship of the apple (or car­rot). This morn­ing was cold enough I was wear­ing work gloves while hand­ing out treats. A nearly new pair, too. Andy took the apple, and slid the glove off my hand via the third fin­ger.
    He only gen­tly bit the fin­ger, but the glove is a mess. I think he thought it was part of the treat.
    Do horses talk as much as mules?
    I swear I’ve heard one of them say to the other: “Get out my way, sumbitch, or I’ll make breath­ing hard for ya.”

  47. LA Mary said on December 22nd, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    coo­zledad, our house­hold deter­mined long ago that dogs can count but not mea­sure. A dog bis­cuit bro­ken in half is two dog bis­cuits. I guess mules are the same.

  48. LA Mary said on December 22nd, 2008 at 6:36 pm

    Some­thing to enter­tain you:

    http://​www​.boing​bo​ing​.net/​2​0​0​8​/​1​2​/​1​8​/​s​t​r​a​n​g​e​-​s​o​c​c​e​r​-​f​a​s​h​i.html

  49. Deborah said on December 22nd, 2008 at 6:43 pm

    Arrived in New Mex­ico for the annual hol­i­day stay. Flew into Albu­querque and the drove to Santa Fe for the tra­di­tional lunch at Pasquales. Was shocked at how empty Santa Fe seemed com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. The week­end before Christ­mas is usu­ally bustling with tourists and shop­pers. Not nearly so this year (thank­fully). I found a super bar­gain, a Bor­solino hat for $25 marked down from $250. On to Abiquiu where we nor­mally stay near our land. Today back to Santa Fe to renew our well per­mit for another year since we haven’t started con­struc­tion yet on our house. Again, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as usual. Except for Trader Joes. Every­one seemed to be there, it was a mad house. I think peo­ple were tak­ing advan­tage of Trader Joe’s great val­ues on party supplies.

  50. coozledad said on December 22nd, 2008 at 6:55 pm

    LA Mary: The high­light of that video for me was Todd Rund­gren in sock/stirrups.
    One more win­ter sewing project.

  51. LA Mary said on December 22nd, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    My office is torn between the Geico Cave­man guy in black and yel­low, and the last guy who is very enthu­si­as­tic. The rain­bow guy has the same hair­cut I had in that era.

  52. MichaelG said on December 22nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm

    Before Cooz beat me to it I was going to note that you can tell they’re Ger­mans because they wear socks even when barefoot.

  53. basset said on December 22nd, 2008 at 8:55 pm

    Mmmmm, NOW I remem­ber Dr. Scholls. Right.

    being the only straight male (aside from Bas­set Jr.) south of the Mason-DIxon Line who actively avoids foot­ball, I had no idea who Peter King might be. Thought that was Al Franken.

    I try to avoid Home Depot but the George Jones liquor store was heav­ing with human­ity after work tonight, as was the upscale beer store a few blocks away. (Here in Ten­nessee you have to go to a liquor store to get wine or spir­its, can’t get ‘em in a gro­cery or drug­store as you can in Indi­ana; beer you can get just about any­where but not in a liquor store. It’s a mystery.)

    No lifestyle cen­ters quite yet in my neigh­bor­hood — the mall two miles from my front door was still on dead​malls​.com the last time I looked.

    Mean­while, the inlaws aren’t gonna make it down from Michi­gan for Christ­mas, or for grandson’s birth­day tomor­row night. Twenty-two inches of snow in one week­end on top of the foot they already had, can’t be goin’ nowhere in that.

  54. del said on December 23rd, 2008 at 12:39 am

    Watch­ing LA Mary’s video post gen­er­ated enor­mous psy­chic dis­so­nance. Repul­sive as it was I was com­pletely unable to avert my gaze. I remain under its hyp­notic spell.

  55. Dexter said on December 23rd, 2008 at 1:02 am

    I see bff or BFF every­where , and I know what it means to most, but to me it means this: http://​www​.bicy​cle​film​fes​ti​val​.com/

  56. Gasman said on December 23rd, 2008 at 3:04 am

    Deb­o­rah,
    We were quite thank­ful to get the Trader Joe’s in Santa Fe. It is the best source for weird Euro­pean cheeses and cheap wine, not to men­tion afford­able veg­gie friendly fake meat (for us recov­er­ing car­ni­vores). As you know, we are get­ting a pretty good snow tonight. My mom is sup­posed to fly in from Fort Wayne tomor­row. We’ll see if she makes it on time. If you’d gone to see the Santa Fe Women’s Ensem­ble on Sun­day at First Pres­by­ter­ian you would have seen me play­ing gui­tar. Maybe some other time. My wife is litur­gist at the sec­ond ser­vice on Christ­mas Eve, that is, if we can get to Santa Fe from Los Alamos. We will put our 4-wheel drive to the test this week. Feliz Navi­dad, mi amiga. Enjoy some bis­co­chi­tos while in the Land of Enchant­ment. (Prefer­ably, with­out lard.)

    Bas­set,
    It may not count, since we live way out west, but I didn’t know who Peter King was either. I don’t think that I have watched an entire foot­ball game in my life, and that includes the year that I played high school foot­ball. I was with you all the way in think­ing that it was Al Franken in the photo. What do I know. The bizarre con­cept of sep­a­rate stores for liquor and beer is de rigeur up in Ontario (that’s in Canada, you know.) There, both the liquor and the beer shops are run by the provin­cial gov­ern­ment. They also have a sep­a­rate store for wine. Tres bizarre.

  57. basset said on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:34 am

    been awhile since I have had occa­sion to buy beer in Ontario but I remem­ber going into a state store in Sault Ste. Marie, a bare room with about half a dozen twelve-packs on dis­play behind a counter, one for each brand they car­ried, and the clerk would fetch what­ever you wanted out of the back room.

    in Indi­ana, mean­while, you can get beer in a gro­cery or a con­ve­nience store but it has to be warm, only liquor stores can sell it cold.

  58. Dexter said on December 23rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    For a look at a Cana­dian beer store, check out “Strange Brew”, from 1983, eh?
    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​0​0​86373/

  59. Deborah said on December 23rd, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    Gas­man,
    Why would I want to skip the lard? Lard makes the tasti­est pas­tries. My long dead aunt used to make the best cin­na­mon roles with lard. Guess what she died from.
    Enjoy­ing the snow in Abiquiu, although we were cha­grined to find out that our rental SUV does not have all wheel drive. Who ever heard of that? Now we know we have to ask for AWD not just an SUV.
    Nancy,
    Those Roger Ebert lines were as you said, laugh out loud funny. My sister-in-law claims to have had a few dates with Ebert when she was a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of illinois.

  60. LA Mary said on December 23rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm

    Deb­o­rah, a lot of the folks who have been buy­ing SUVs in the last ten years have not been inter­ested in AWD. They just want big vehicles.

  61. CrazyCatLady said on December 24th, 2008 at 12:49 am

    Dr Scholl’s wooden san­dals?? I just loved those! And I was a devo­tee of “Earth” shoes too. Why the hell was I so obsessed about ugly uncom­fort­able shoes? I was just the vic­tim of 70’s fads, I guess. And they were so groovy!

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