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I smell Oscar.

The pay-per-view choices on Sat­ur­day night at our house came down to “Milk” or “Pineap­ple Express.” I know I’ve been say­ing I want to see “Milk,” but I was kinda sorta hop­ing Alan would be lured into the Pineap­ple camp by the pres­ence of Danny McBride, star of our new favorite HBO com­edy, “East­bound & Down.” Alas, he voted for “Milk,” and so “Milk” it was.

And it wasn’t bad, if you don’t count against it that it prompted a new vow from my cor­ner of the couch: No more biopics, at least not of peo­ple whose story I already know. I don’t know how many more two-hour chunks of my life I want to give over to these earnest, med­i­c­i­nal sto­ries squashed into stan­dard three-act struc­ture, per­haps tarted up with a few invented anec­dotes or imag­ined jux­ta­po­si­tions. (Milk, dying, looks poignantly out the win­dow of City Hall at the opera house where he’d seen “Tosca,” another oper­atic assas­si­na­tion tragedy, only the night before. Oh yeah, I’m down with that.) Or maybe it’s just that it’s dif­fi­cult to make pol­i­tics cin­e­matic. All those maps and papers and clip­boards. Direc­tors and writ­ers fall back on the most movie-like thing about pol­i­tics — a man lead­ing a march and/or deliv­er­ing a speech through a bull­horn before a cheer­ing crowd — until you get sick of the story entirely and start appre­ci­at­ing things like the set design and wardrobe. Loved Emile Hirsch’s glasses — I had my own pair, back in the day. Loved the ringer T-shirts, a look I could never endorse. Loved the 501s and flan­nel shirts. Loved Josh Brolin, and loved that the script didn’t dwell over­much on Milk’s the­o­ries about Dan White’s closet sta­tus. In the end, there’s noth­ing more dan­ger­ous than a fail­ure with a gun.

And as some­one whose ini­tial aware­ness of San Fran­cisco, as a child, was as the cen­ter of the hip­pie move­ment and the neces­sity of wear­ing flow­ers in one’s hair, it was inter­est­ing to see what that replaced, the city’s working-class roots, now thor­oughly buried by yup­pi­fi­ca­tion. Milk’s voiceover men­tioned in pass­ing that the Cas­tro was once an Irish-Catholic neigh­bor­hood, and I’m all, really? I had no idea. And per­haps because the polit­i­cal story wasn’t exactly a page-turner, I started think­ing about cities like that. White rep­re­sented the resent­ful long-time res­i­dents being pushed aside by the wave of the future, Harvey’s peo­ple, the gay men who col­o­nized a place where they could kiss their lovers on the street and not get their asses kicked for it. I thought of a com­ment I read on a blog recently, from a reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive in San Fran­cisco who feels per­se­cuted because he has four chil­dren and another on the way, and, I dunno, peo­ple glower at his dou­ble stroller, or some­thing.

I thought of the hun­dreds of places in the U.S. where a per­son like that might feel right at home, but of course it’s unlikely that per­son would want to move to Salt Lake City or Fort Wayne or Hol­land, Mich., because a) it’s not home; and b) there’s a strong pos­si­bil­ity he likes feel­ing per­se­cuted, just like Jesus. I guess what we all want is to feel at home wher­ever we live, whether we’re there because of cor­po­rate vicis­si­tudes, fam­ily oblig­a­tions or choice.

I also thought of the peo­ple on the short end of all such gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, who wake up one day to find their neigh­bor­hood is fill­ing with peo­ple rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from them, who move in and say, “Finally, I have found my true home.” My guess is they’d feel like Pales­tini­ans.

And then I recon­nected with the thread of the movie, and dis­cov­ered the Briggs amend­ment was still keep­ing Har­vey Milk awake at night. Tried not to think, I could be laugh­ing at pot­heads right about now.

Lance Man­nion spent Sat­ur­day night being dis­ap­pointed by another hol­i­day movie release. It was that kind of week­end.

Sigh. I’m think­ing about movies to avoid think­ing about the econ­omy. I’m try­ing very hard not to despair. But I am start­ing to won­der where we’ll be in a year. We’re both work­ing hard — every­one I know is work­ing hard — and you have to believe work leads to some­thing good, but of late I’m start­ing to con­sider light­ing a match to the whole place and going on wel­fare some­where with a sunny cli­mate. Kind of like AIG.

A lit­tle blog­gage for you to bat around on a Mon­day? Let’s see what we can do:

I found this via Meme­o­ran­dum, as I don’t usu­ally read the Sun-Times. Most of you are aware that the big trend in city man­age­ment these days is to sell off the assets to pri­vate con­cerns. These schemes are easy to sell, because the num­bers are so eye-popping and it fits in with the gen­eral idea that gov­ern­ment can’t do any­thing right and pri­vate busi­ness will find new effi­cien­cies. Yes, we’re told, the price may go up in the short term, but ser­vice will be hugely improved.

This worked with the Indi­ana Toll Road. Nine-figure sum to maintain/improve other roads in the state, fol­lowed by toll increases. But the plazas were improved, and lanes added, and reg­u­lar com­muters would find the roads eas­ier to use.

But what can you do with a park­ing meter? How can you improve ser­vice at a park­ing meter? Well, you can’t. Chicago pri­va­tized its meters last month; Carol Marin explains:

…A month ago, when the City of Chicago pri­va­tized park­ing meters, rates were imme­di­ately jacked way up, and you now have to feed 28 quar­ters into the meter to park a car in the Loop for two hours. In exchange for a 75-year lease, the city got $1.2 bil­lion to help plug its bud­get holes.

But by hand­ing over munic­i­pal park­ing meters to a pri­vate com­pany, the city has given its cit­i­zens a colos­sal case of sticker shock. The cost of most meters will quadru­ple by 2013.

Detroit park­ing meters take plas­tic, btw. I love it so much I don’t even pay atten­tion to the per-hour cost.

Just for laffs: One of Josh Marshall’s read­ers finds a small tragedy deep within the Mad­off vic­tim state­ments, sub­mit­ted by e-mail.

Some­thing I read in the Free Press this morn­ing: The annual exhibit of work by stu­dents and staffers at Pewabic Pot­tery has been attract­ing metro Detroi­ters since the ’70s. The just-opened show is loaded with edgy and provoca­tive cre­ations… All in favor of ban­ning the words “edgy” and “provoca­tive,” espe­cially as they describe ceramic, raise your hand.

(You wait. I’ll go to this show, and find a dis­play of din­ner plates with giant holes in the mid­dle.)

And so it is Mon­day, which for me means: Time to study irreg­u­lar Russ­ian plu­rals. Dosvi­danya.

Posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 8:37 am in Current events, Movies. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


55 responses to
“I smell Oscar.”

  1. Connie said on March 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 am

    Move to Hol­land Michi­gan? The home town I couldn’t leave fast enough, and wouldn’t visit if not for a brother, father and bff there.

    An MSNBC crew showed up at one of my branch libraries yes­ter­day to inter­view unem­ploy­ment fil­ers. This, my busiest branch in the midst of a two week re-carpet project, and open yes­ter­day only to fil­ers. The rest of you had to set­tle for the book­mo­bile in the park­ing lot. Think we’ll be on Olber­mann?

    Huck­abee did his show here this week­end as well. I guess with the third largest unem­ploy­ment rate IN THE FRIGGIN COUNTRY, we will con­tinue to get this kind of atten­tion.

    Dos­vadanya tovar­itsch.

  2. Kirk said on March 23rd, 2009 at 9:52 am

    So Hol­land, Mich., really sucks that much? Never been there, but the brew­ery there cer­tainly does some fine work.

  3. nancy said on March 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 am

    My point is, it’s the sort of place a reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive with a mil­lion kids would find quite wel­com­ing. Oth­ers (Paul Schrader is its most famous ex-resident, with Con­nie com­ing in a close sec­ond), not so much.

  4. brian stouder said on March 23rd, 2009 at 10:03 am

    Well, we had a free Starz week­end, and Pam and I watched that Steve Car­rell movie – not Get Smart (which was good!) – but the one where he’s a wid­ower and goes to his parent’s New Eng­land sum­mer home, and meets Miss Right, who is involved with his brother, etc etc – very funny stuff! But for much of the week­end, the girls were taken with Tyra Banks sadis­tic lit­tle model com­pe­ti­tion show, which drove me to read through 2/3′s of Ms Lippman’s new book Life Sen­tences (an excel­lent book, btw).

    Speak­ing of which, the closer of this post – “Time to study irreg­u­lar Russ­ian plu­rals. Dosvi­danya.” makes me think that some­time in the next chap­ter or two, we’ll find that Madam Telling Tales has been re-assigned to, say, Miami, fur­ther to her highly clas­si­fied work (as an inde­pen­dent con­trac­tor) with the National Secu­rity Agency

  5. alex said on March 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 am

    The pri­va­ti­za­tion of Chicago’s park­ing meters means the cit­i­zen will have even less recourse, I imag­ine. I used to appeal tick­ets when meters were mal­func­tion­ing — which they do con­stantly — and usu­ally pre­vailed. Here’s how the meters work. You start drop­ping quar­ters in and you get noth­ing, or maybe the meter will give you fif­teen min­utes for every other quar­ter. You man­age to get two hours on the meter for more than it should have cost. You go do your busi­ness, mak­ing sure you come back well before the meter is set to expire. And when you arrive you find the meter expired and a ticket on your wind­shield show­ing the meter expired an hour pre­vi­ously.

    If I could have a quar­ter for every one that I lost in a Chicago park­ing meter I could prob­a­bly retire.

  6. MichaelG said on March 23rd, 2009 at 10:21 am

    Well, the Opera House is just across Van Ness from City Hall. I don’t know where in the build­ing Milk’s office was, though. The thing about Milk was that he was very con­scious of the fact that he had been elected to rep­re­sent every­one, not just gays. He was an excel­lent super­vi­sor (SF is a com­bined city and county and the elected lead­ers are called “super­vi­sors” as in board of) and was well liked by all. The mayor, George Moscone was from one of the old time Ital­ian fam­i­lies. Also a fine man and well liked by all. I have no inten­tion of watch­ing the movie mostly for rea­sons already cited. I lived in SF at the time. I’ve never enjoyed movies made about times and or places where and when I was present. They just never work out.

    In Sacto they’ve replaced all the down­town meters with cen­tral, mid­dle of the block things the size of vend­ing machines that take quar­ters and credit cards. You pay for a dollar’s worth of time with your Visa because you don’t have enough quar­ters and the stu­pid machine doesn’t take dol­lar bills even though every coke machine in the world does. It spits out a lit­tle ticket that you put on your dash. Walk­ing a half block to the meter thing and back to your car with your stu­pid lit­tle ticket and then back up the street to your des­ti­na­tion is espe­cially enjoy­able in the win­ter rain. The whole deal pisses me off. I can just envi­sion the sales­man ped­dling the cursed things to a bright eyed city offi­cial cit­ing all the advan­tages to the city. There are cer­tainly none for the cit­i­zens.

    Time to lighten up. Great post about crime in New Jer­sey by the incom­pa­ra­ble Ken Levine:

    http://​ken​levine​.blogspot​.com/

  7. Julie Robinson said on March 23rd, 2009 at 10:24 am

    Chicago also likes to change park­ing rules in non-metered areas with­out post­ing a new sign. Months later they send a ticket. Our daugh­ter has had this hap­pen to her a few times and appeal­ing does no good, of course. It’s insid­i­ous.

  8. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 23rd, 2009 at 10:29 am

    Gran Torino would be the answer to your movie and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion related ques­tion, i’m think­ing.

  9. Connie said on March 23rd, 2009 at 10:52 am

    Well Kirk, it depends on if you are into Calvin­ism and Dutch­i­ness. Lots of great restau­rants, shops, and beaches though. Per­haps I should say, a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

    I just spent an hour with a reporter from ProP­ub­lica. Inter­est­ing orga­ni­za­tion. The usual ques­tions though.

  10. Laura said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 am

    You need to see The Times of Har­vey Milk. It’s far supe­rior to Milk, and it will only take about an hour or so of your life.

  11. LA Mary said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:13 am

    There are plenty of places in the LA area where you could have eight kids and be a fun­da­men­tal­ist or what­ever and no one would give you a dirty look. I used to feel I was get­ting the stink eye for not hav­ing a bunch of kids and being a church goer.

  12. John said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:18 am

    Didn’t Luke Jack­son have an issue with park­ing meters?

  13. nancy said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 am

    Small town. Not much to do.

  14. brian stouder said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:23 am

    What we have here is (not) a fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate

  15. Rana said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:26 am

    No plates with holes that I could see, but there is a lov­ingly ren­dered rab­bit and an inter­est­ing green sculp­ture.

    http://​www​.pewabic​.com/​e​x​h​i​b​i​t​i​o​n​-​c​a​l​e​n​d​ar.htm

  16. nancy said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:30 am

    That one rab­bit looks like it’s poop­ing. Edgy! I am pro­voked!

  17. Sue said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:43 am

    Brian, I must very respect­fully dis­agree with you regard­ing the Steve Car­rell movie. I watched it with my daugh­ter, and after the “meet cute” moment where the female lead has this long, extremely irri­tat­ing mono­logue regard­ing all that she must have in a book (or books, or what­ever), we both wanted to kill her.
    But what do I know about art of any kind. My idea of a visit to an edgy pot­tery place is the out­let store for Haeger Pot­tery in East Dundee, IL. A not-very-noticeable defect that cuts the price in half – very provoca­tive.

  18. kayak woman said on March 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    Well, I will miss the Ann Arbor “Snooze”, which I have read every day for the last almost-30 years:

    http://​www​.mlive​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​a​n​n​-​a​r​b​o​r​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​s​f​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​3​/​a​n​n​_​a​r​b​o​r​_​n​e​w​s​_​t​o​_​c​l​o​s​e​_​i​n​_​j​u​l.html

    (test­ing to make sure that link closes itself, looks like it did)

  19. Mike said on March 23rd, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Hav­ing recently lived in an Atlanta sub­urb that went from 90% white to 90% Hispanic/Middle East­ern in four short years, the Pales­tin­ian ref­er­ence is right on. Our best friends were the Nicaraguans next door and Baha’i Per­sians three doors down; but still, the neigh­bor­hood did change. ‘Twas inter­est­ing, and some­what enlight­en­ing. Still though, glad we moved when we did, at the top of the mar­ket.

  20. jeff borden said on March 23rd, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    The City of Chicago has, for all intents and pur­poses, declared war on the car. It has noth­ing to do with keep­ing the streets safer or help­ing busi­nesses or cut­ting down on pol­lu­tion or eas­ing traf­fic flow. It’s about gen­er­at­ing more rev­enues.

    A silly lit­tle decal on the lower right side of the wind­shield costs $75 annu­ally. If you live in an area with per­mit park­ing, as we do, the spe­cial sticker is another $25. If you want to buy a packet of tem­po­rary park­ing stick­ers, so your friends won’t get tick­ets when they visit, they are $1 apiece and sold in blocks of 10. The price on these stick­ers rise, by the way, if you drive one of the more obstreper­ous of the SUVs. (This sticker is over and above the $78 per year charged by the state.)

    Grow­ing num­bers of inter­sec­tions are equipped with “red light cam­eras,” which snap pho­tos of any­one in the inter­sec­tion when the light turns red. The device is unable to dis­cern if you are one of those fools blast­ing through at 75 mph or if you are a polite dri­ver who pulled into the inter­sec­tion to make a left turn and were still hang­ing there when the light changed.

    Cop­pers increas­ingly are pulling over motorists for using cell­phones with­out a head­set. This is a $75 ticket and while you might agree with this on prin­ci­ple, why is it a mov­ing vio­la­tion to be on a cell­phone and not to be fid­dling with your GPS device while careen­ing down Lake Shore Drive?

    This would not be so hard to take if the roads were smooth, but we are home to pot­holes that are wheel and tire killers. (I was out $158 for a right front tire last win­ter that devel­oped a huge side­wall bulge when I hit a hole on LSD. The wheel is slightly bent and still leaks a lit­tle.)

    These kinds of fees are always in play and likely to rise in direct pro­por­tion to the tum­bling econ­omy. Already, our gov­er­nor is talk­ing about hik­ing the license plate fee.

    I love Chicago and I love cars but they do not go together well.

  21. del said on March 23rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    As for Hol­land, Michi­gan, my sister-in-law was on a Lake Michi­gan beach there and another woman intro­duced her­self and asked, “What are you?” . . . as in, what is your reli­gious affil­i­a­tion. So there’s your master-status, as they say.
    Also, about 10 years ago I met a guy at a bar in St. Clair Shores. He’d lived in Hol­land for 19 years with his ex-wife. He described the peo­ple there as clois­tered; and said he never felt like he was at home there.

  22. Kirk said on March 23rd, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    Clos­est I ever have been to Hol­land is Saugatuck, which, I imag­ine, is also a world away.

  23. Sue said on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    I say we all go there for the Tulip Fes­ti­val and see for our­selves.

  24. Danny said on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:07 pm

    Clos­est I ever have been to Hol­land is Saugatuck, which, I imag­ine, is also a world away.

    Saugatuck? It took me four days to hitch­hike to Sag­i­naw.

    Brian, we saw “Dan in Real Like” a few months back. We really loved the scene where the daugh­ter screams that he is a “mur­derer of love.”

  25. Connie said on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    Saugatuck is truly a world away. Even though it’s just one exit down the free­way.

  26. del said on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    Danny, I’ve come to look for Amer­rrrrica.

  27. del said on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    A girl from the nearby Bible-belt Michi­gan town of Way­land once turned to my 18 year-old-self and announced, point blank — “Del­mas, I like you, but it is my firmly held belief that you shall per­ish!”

    Ouch. Not of her “faith,” you see.

  28. alice said on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    Thanks Del & Danny for the ear­worm. I had to rush off & google “Gabar­dine”.

  29. John said on March 23rd, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    “when I hit a hole on LSD”

    Earth to Jeff, lay off the hal­lu­cino­gens while driving…just a word to the wise!

  30. jeff borden said on March 23rd, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    I knew that ref­er­ence to our beloved LSD would pro­voke some sort of rejoin­der. You don’t need any­thing to enjoy Lake Shore Drive, which may be the loveli­est urban road­way in the nation and, if not, cer­tainly one of the loveli­est. Lake Michi­gan to one side. . .Chicago to the other.

  31. Dorothy said on March 23rd, 2009 at 2:26 pm

    Ummm, John – the LSD he was refer­ring to was Lake Shore Drive. I ain’t a Chicagoan but at least I knew that!

  32. alex said on March 23rd, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    If you want to buy a packet of tem­po­rary park­ing stick­ers, so your friends won’t get tick­ets when they visit, they are $1 apiece and sold in blocks of 10.

    Yeah, I know about those. I parked and went to my friend’s third-floor walkup to get one. As I looked down from the third floor, a wrecker was yank­ing my car and drag­ging it off. This was on Roscoe just west of South­port at around 5:00 PM, right before a Cubs night game. I spent the rest of the evening try­ing to get my car out of impound­ment, which cost $150 (and that was some years ago). We called the alder­man to bitch but got no sat­is­fac­tion.

  33. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 23rd, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    Many vari­eties of same joke –

    Per­son (may insert reli­gious celebrity name here if you wish) dies, enters Pearly Gates, meets St. Peter who offers a per­sonal tour. Much amaze­ment and mild, but quickly sub­sid­ing dis­may, as neigh­bor­hoods along the Streets of Gold are pointed out by Pete — “There’s the Luther­ans, these man­sions are the Pres­by­te­ri­ans, down that side street are the Zoroas­tri­ans, and the Tibetan Bud­dhists are up that moun­tain over there, but they don’t believe this is really real, so we don’t talk to them much.”

    [Per­son­ally, i think that in the Heav­enly Realm is pre­cisely repli­cated that glo­ri­ous drive from Jack­son Park to Streeter­ville, albeit with­out pot­holes. Surely there are no pot­holes in heaven. Plus Michi­gan Avenue, and Lower Wacker par­al­lel­ing the River of Life. And of course Wrigley Field!]
    Fur­ther along, they walk past a high, thick wall, and Simon Peter makes a hand motion to the new arrival to be very quiet, shush­ing off any attempt to speak aloud. When they’d got­ten down another block, head­ing closer to the Great Throne and the River of Life, St. Peter explains in a low voice, with a thumb back over his shoul­der, “That’s the Dutch Reformed.” Why the wall, his guest asks? “Well, they think they’re the only ones here. We hate to ruin it for them . . .”

  34. Connie said on March 23rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    Yup. Dutch Reformed. The biggest rea­son not to live in Hol­land.

  35. John said on March 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Sure, I knew it was Lake Shore Drive, but it ruins the joke! “Objects in mir­ror may appear to be groovier than they are!” “Watch out for danc­ing bears!”

  36. Joe Kobiela said on March 23rd, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    Jeff B,
    How in world does Lil Dick Daley keep get­ting elected up there in Chicago??
    I know how cor­rupt and pow­er­ful the Machine is, but how in the world does he do it time after time. Can’t the peo­ple find some one to run against him? I read John Kass in the trib and just find it mind­bog­gling, what Da Mare gets away with. I still can’t believe what the man did to miegs field.
    Pilot Joe

  37. jeff borden said on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:19 pm

    Joe,

    Mayor Daley never really has any oppo­nents. The GOP is lit­er­ally a non-entity in Chicago proper –some years back the win­ner of the Repub­li­can may­oral pri­mary was a nice enough fel­low who also worked the week­ends as Spanky the Clown– so there is no oppo­si­tion from them. The occa­sional shin­ing star who emerges tends to leave town or get nerfed to the side in some way or another.

    Addi­tion­ally, the busi­ness com­mu­nity is largely sup­port­ive of the mayor. This may sound counter-intuitive given our tax rates and fee sched­ules, but it’s true. Most city ser­vices func­tion pretty well and Daley’s obses­sion with keep­ing the city look­ing good through ginor­mous num­bers of tree, shrub and flower plant­i­ngs and aggres­sive lit­ter and graf­fiti con­trol are greatly appre­ci­ated.

    Alex, you got caught in a whole `nother thing, bud. There are posted signs all around Wrigley Field about park­ing on game days/nights. Res­i­dents are issued a sticker, but there is noth­ing set aside for would-be vis­i­tors. My ref­er­ence is to the large num­ber of neigh­bor­hoods where you will see white and red signs not­ing that only cars with stick­ers for Zone 67 are allowed to park. These areas are often by L sta­tions, to pre­vent sub­ur­ban­ites from clog­ging res­i­den­tial streets by park­ing for free and hop­ping the train, or by neigh­bor­hoods with an active nightlife/restaurant/club scene, where locals need them to assure a place to stash the car. My street was once near a Social Secu­rity office, which attracted so much traf­fic the res­i­dents sought per­mit park­ing long before we ever arrived. In fact, that S.S. office is now gone, but the per­mit require­ments remain.

  38. alex said on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    Jeff B, at the time my car got towed res­i­dents were allowed to give guest passes dur­ing night games. My prob­lem was my car got snatched by over­ag­gres­sive enforce­ment before I even had a chance to put the pass on my dash. After that expe­ri­ence, my friend gave me a pass to keep in my car so this wouldn’t hap­pen again (and it didn’t).

  39. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    Joe K — am i right to sus­pect that the likely prob­lem in that Mon­tana crash tragedy is that the pilot miscalc’d the fuel con­sump­tion and just ran out of gas on approach? That’s sure what it sounds like to me . . .

  40. brian stouder said on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    I always assume crashes like that one relate to cen­ter of grav­ity and/or over-loading (peo­ple and lug­gage)

    and didja see the FedEx crash video? The big bounce looked bizarre, until one notes that there was a 50mph wind (cross wind?) – ter­ri­fy­ing stuff

  41. jeff borden said on March 23rd, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    The guy from NTSB on CBS Radio News ear­lier said the air­plane in ques­tion was built in Switzer­land and had a total capac­ity of nine (9), so the over­load­ing ques­tion might be ger­mane.

  42. Dexter said on March 23rd, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    nance: Kenny Fuckin’ Pow­ers got the girl, for a while, any­way.
    After much dis­cus­sion on XM 212′s Ron & Fex Show today, I now am in the camp that those were not April’s tits. (Sorry for the graphic-ness, here, folks—but it’s that kind of TV show).
    It was a body-double pos­ing for the “great rev­e­la­tion”.
    I went to “On Demand” and stud­ied on the mat­ter for a long time, back and forth, forth and back…tell-tale moles and skinny arms on the body dou­ble sort of make it easy to deci­pher that a body dou­ble was indeed used. And wasn’t that a GREAT cast? “Ste­vie Janowski” was too much! This was like a real-actor Simp­sons , X-rated.

  43. nancy said on March 23rd, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    Def­i­nitely not April. If it had been, they’d sim­ply have tilted down. The cut was the give­away, not the moles and arms. (But if it gave you plea­sure to “research,” that’s fine and no one should make Dex­ter feel guilty about it.)

    My favorites were the minor char­ac­ters. Ste­vie was sub­lime, and I loved the blonde slut, too. “This is my evenin’ wear!”

  44. Sue said on March 23rd, 2009 at 5:04 pm

    Well well, a con­vic­tion for the Streets and San branch of the Chicago City Hall hir­ing scan­dal. Inter­est­ing and amus­ing com­ments in the arti­cle, includ­ing from Sanchez: “I just did my job the way I was sup­posed to do it”. Oh yes, indeed you did.
    http://​www​.chicago​b​reak​ingnews​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​3​/​a​l​-​s​a​n​c​h​e​z​-​c​o​r​r​u​p​t​i​o​n​-​t​r​i​a​l.html

  45. jeff borden said on March 23rd, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    Alex,
    I share a pack­age of Cubs tick­ets with three other peo­ple, so I see about 12 or 13 games per sea­son. The bicy­cle is the way to go. I’m often home before the post-game show is over and while many of the 39,000-plus are still stand­ing in line for buses or Ls or taxis. I pre­fer lock­ing up to a park­ing meter or street sign, but the Cubs for the last few sea­sons have been doing a bike valet ser­vice, which is quite pop­u­lar.

  46. Sue said on March 23rd, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    Jeff and Alex: Or you could head to Wrigley North (Miller Park). Too bad all the Cubs games are already sold out, but there are still some tick­ets avail­able for the Sun­day game of the Brewers/White Sox series (June 14). We have a crowd of 15 meet­ing there. We will be wear­ing a vari­ety of Sox, Cubs and Brew­ers apparel and will travel in a pack and pro­tect each other.

  47. jeff borden said on March 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    Sue,
    Miller Park is a great sta­dium. I’m prob­a­bly in a minor­ity for hav­ing enjoyed the old County Sta­dium too, which sold super cheap brauts with red sauce, or super cheap com­pared to Chicago. I remem­ber strolling around the sta­dium and com­ing upon a dis­play of some Hank Aaron mem­o­ra­bilia behind a glass case on the wall. Included were Hank’s rub­ber shower thongs, which we were help­fully told he wore for XX num­ber of sea­sons while with the old Mil­wau­kee Braves.

    That said, Miller is a great place for base­ball. I will have to check out the Chisox-Brewers, which was a great feud until the league realigned and put the Brew­ers back in the NL. This is the year when the NL Cen­tral is play­ing the AL Cen­tral in intra-league play, so I’m work­ing to get tick­ets for the Indi­ans vs. Cubs in June. I gen­er­ally root for the Cubs, of course, but old loy­al­ties die hard, so I’ll be there with my Chief Wahoo attire.

  48. Sue said on March 23rd, 2009 at 7:22 pm

    I saw the Zam­brano no-hitter there last year. We scram­bled to get the tick­ets because it came up so fast. It was the most fun I have ever had at a ball game; all Cub fans with sev­eral Brew­ers fans there and oh yeah a few fans from the oppos­ing team. It was like the biggest liv­ing room in the world, every­where you looked was “fam­ily”.
    I think of a com­par­i­son of Wrigley and Sox Park (sorry, can’t remem­ber what it’s called these days) with Miller Park in the same way as a com­par­i­son of O’Hare and Mitchell. Miller Park/Mitchell are acces­si­ble and down­right cozy com­pared to their Chicago coun­ter­parts.

  49. Dexter said on March 23rd, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    jeff­bor­den: I also ride to games, but I have never lived in a MLB city…I drive and park for free in some city park or use legal street park­ing , some­times a few miles from the sta­dium, and I ride and lock my bike.
    Do NOT try just chain­ing up any­where near Pro­gres­sive Field in Cleve­land, though.
    They installed a few bike racks near the Ninth Street entrance (and around towards Quicken Loans Arena) and they will impound any bicy­cles chained to poles and fences…I was warned sternly by Cleve­land cops about this.
    For Sox games, I park the car in a free lot on Hal­sted and ride and lock the bike right beside the main entrance. I lock onto a rail­ing.
    For Cubs games, I park near Lin­coln Park on a free park­ing street and lock right beside Wrigley, just anywhere…lots of choices.
    In Detroit, I park near old Tiger Sta­dium, ride up Wood­ward from Michi­gan Ave. Bikes are OK to chain to a nice wrought-iron fence.
    In Cleve­land, on Sat­ur­days there is free street park­ing by The Flats and then a nice steep hill to climb as you head to the ball­park.
    I still haven’t tried my sys­tem at GABP in Cincin­nati.
    For UM foot­ball games, park­ing is free and plen­ti­ful in Burns Park and then a short ride to sta­dium.
    Only once did every­thing go to hell: I had a bike chained to a light pole on Plum Street, right across from Tiger Sta­dium. I used an indus­trial “Yale” lock I bought from a cat­a­log at work…extra large and seem­ingly safe. I also had bought a thick link-chain and had painstak­ingly heat-treated it myself at work , sent it along with a load of parts, and it had a very intensely hard case built up.
    “They” stole the lock, chain, and bike and never left a trace.
    Once in Cleve­land I caught three very young thieves try­ing to remove my sad­dle, but I had rid­den an old cruiser that day, and the seat post was bolted down tight, and they appar­ently were adept at steal­ing only quick-release sad­dles and posts. They ran in three direc­tions when I yelled at them…very quickly and very well orchestrated…they were def­i­nitely expe­ri­enced.

  50. Jim H said on March 23rd, 2009 at 8:01 pm

    Well, thanks to Jeff B, I couldn’t get Aliotta, Haynes and Jere­miah outta my head for most of the after­noon. Then Alex men­tions overzeal­ous park­ing enforce­ment and it’s Steve Goodman’s ode to Lin­coln Tow­ing. Now with talk of the upcom­ing base­ball sea­son, I’ll prob­a­bly be ask­ing “Do they still play the Blues in Chicago…” all night long. Jeff – I used to enjoy County Sta­dium too, and the food was a large part of that.

  51. MarkH said on March 23rd, 2009 at 10:27 pm

    I’ll leave fur­ther com­ment­ing to Joe K., but it does appear that over­load­ing was a cul­prit in the Mon­tana plane crash. Which might have led to unin­tended fuel short­age as the plane worked harder to main­tain alti­tude. More here from a local writer:

    http://​www​.newwest​.net/​c​i​t​y​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​b​u​t​t​e​_​p​l​a​n​e​_​c​r​a​s​h​_​v​i​c​t​i​m​s​_​w​e​r​e​_​h​e​a​d​e​d​_​f​o​r​_​s​k​i​_​v​a​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​C​3​9​6​/L396/

  52. Jolene said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 pm

    Lord, there were three fam­i­lies on that plane. Two of the women were sis­ters and, between them, they had five chil­dren. Some­where, there’s a cou­ple who lost their two daugh­ters, two sons-in-law, and five grand­chil­dren. The things life brings.

  53. Joe Kobiela said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:08 pm

    It is way early to spec­u­late on the Mon­tana crash, but a Pila­tus is a BIG sin­gle engine turbo prop, The cabin is around the same size as a king air. They can be out­fit­ted for 12 pas­sen­gers. The youngest kids would have prob­a­bly been on the par­ents lap,which is legal, from what I have heard thru the grape vine, is he had fuel on board and had taken off and landed at another air­port. Could have had a c&g prob­lem but I doubt it, he diverted to Butte which is a half hour closer, I won­der if he was feel­ing sick and then had a heart attack.The way the wit­ness said the plane was act­ing, it is a pos­si­bil­ity. As far as the fed ex plane, it looked like he got caught in a down draft, due to wind shear, bounced and had his cargo shift to the rear caus­ing the plane to climb and then stall. Cross wind is a pos­si­bil­ity.
    One thing to remem­ber with a plane crash is never lis­ten to the media, very rarely due they get it right.
    Pilot Joe

  54. Quote of the day (not Tim Geithner edition) « Blog on the Run: Reloaded said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:26 pm

    [...] Quote of the day (not Tim Gei­th­ner edi­tion) Filed under: Quote Of The Day, You’re doing WHAT with my money?? — Lex @ 10:24 pm Tags: AIG, Nancy Nall Nancy Nall: [...]

  55. Jolene said on March 23rd, 2009 at 11:42 pm

    James Fal­lows, who is a pilot and avi­a­tion ana­lyst as well as a writer, is keep­ing track of details re the Mon­tana crash as they emerge. He has links to sev­eral inter­est­ing arti­cles re the peo­ple, what wit­nesses said, and what NTSB peo­ple are say­ing (not much).

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