48 responses to
“Leftovers and mixed grill.”

1. alex said on June 9th, 2009 at 10:24 am

   Con­fronta­geous. Wow, that’s right up there with the first exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Dan Quayle Museum, whom I inter­viewed in 1992 when an old church was being gut­ted to house the town of Huntington’s Quayle mem­o­ra­bilia collection.

   He told me there was still a lot of “demo­la­tion” work going on.

2. Dorothy said on June 9th, 2009 at 10:34 am

   I think I want to be a per­ma­nent mem­ber of the audi­ence at the Jon Stew­art show.

3. brian stouder said on June 9th, 2009 at 10:55 am

   It’s too much fun for a sto­ry­teller to exam­ine these lit­tle tragedies and comedies

   Well, and then there’s the black humor in the big-league stuff, as for exam­ple this story

   http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​3​1​1​81226/

   the first sen­tence of which is

   A vet­eran detec­tive was charged with mur­der Mon­day in the slay­ing of her ex-boyfriend’s wife in 1986 — a crime that went unsolved for more than two decades as she rose through the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment ranks.

   but then, the sec­ond sen­tence tells us (with empha­sis added)

   Detec­tive Stephanie Lazarus, 49, could be sen­tenced to death if con­victed of break­ing into the victim’s con­do­minium on Feb. 24, 1986, and repeat­edly bit­ing, beat­ing and shoot­ing the woman.

   and much fur­ther in, we are informed that

   The case file men­tioned Lazarus because she had once dated the victim’s hus­band, John Ruet­ten, but inves­ti­ga­tors did not pur­sue her as a sus­pect until DNA tests recently showed the attacker was a woman.

   hmm­mmm. It took ‘em DNA to think that bit­ing might have pos­si­bly pointed to a ‘woman scorned’?

   Any­way — I’d have guessed that any­one who’s read a mur­der mys­tery might have twigged to that a lit­tle sooner than 20+ years later — but maybe not!

   Plus — I wanna know if the woman dumped the guy she (allegedly) killed for, or if he dumped her

4. MichaelG said on June 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am

   Harry Bosch wouldn’t have missed that bite clue.

5. Danny said on June 9th, 2009 at 11:15 am

   A cou­ple of months ago, an old high school acquain­tance (D we’ll call her) and her hus­band were vis­it­ing San Diego and we met for din­ner and to chat about old times in Bal­ti­more. So D tells us how since high school she has worked at one of the records divi­sions for the county police depart­ment and that it took her a while to get over the shock and embar­rass­ment of see­ing police reports and the like come across her desk regard­ing so many of our for­mer class­mates. In fact, her very first day on the job she had to process a report of a DUI arrest for a fairly good friend of ours (I attended K-12 with this guy) and she couldn’t help but take a peek and read some­thing that went like this:

   Sus­pect pulled over for sus­pi­cion of dri­ving under the influ­ence. Dur­ing ques­tion­ing, admit­ted he had had sev­eral drinks that evening and when asked if he had eaten any­thing in the last three hours, sus­pect responded, “yeah, I’ve been eat­ing pussy”

   D almost died laugh­ing that day and we all cracked up and agreed that that def­i­nitely sounded like our friend. The guy has since changed, but that was him then.

6. Sue said on June 9th, 2009 at 11:30 am

   “Dis­putes between neigh­bors are the most inter­est­ing”. I never, never, never trust any­one who says “I just want what’s right” or “It’s because I care so much”. In my expe­ri­ence, neigh­bors who use those two phrases are out to make trou­ble, and they are very cre­ative in their meth­ods. In addi­tion to hir­ing a prop­erty inspec­tor when they are think­ing of buy­ing a house, peo­ple should hire some­one to scope out the neigh­bors. There are some insane peo­ple out there, and the odds of mov­ing right next door to one are greater than you think.

7. Jenflex said on June 9th, 2009 at 11:47 am

   Or, let’s not for­get, hav­ing them move in next to you. I’ll never for­get our first intro­duc­tion to our new neigh­bors, who not-so-obliquely accused me of break­ing and enter­ing when I went to return the for­mer inhabitant’s key, along with a bag of fresh toma­toes. That was the last time I tried to be nice. They are hope­fully and thank­fully mov­ing “on up” to the house that I have no doubt will bank­rupt them. Good riddance!

8. CW said on June 9th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

   As Nancy men­tioned, dogs, par­tic­u­larly when it involves their filthy busi­ness, pro­vide a fer­tile medium for dis­putes between neighbors.

   A month or two ago, in the west sub­urbs of Chicago, a guy who was angry over the repeated trans­gres­sions of his neighbor’s dog con­fronted the dog’s owner one night as the sec­ond guy and his dog were out for their evening stroll. As the dis­cus­sion esca­lated, the sec­ond man, who was car­ry­ing a camp­ing lantern, whapped his neigh­bor in the head with it. Sec­ond neigh­bor charged with bat­tery, and also sued by the first neighbor.

9. Sue said on June 9th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

   Here’s my fave: one neigh­bor com­plained to the City about the tall grass/weeds on his neighbor’s prop­erty. A let­ter was sent. The prop­erty owner thought it was another neigh­bor, and pro­ceeded to care­fully place days’ worth of dog crap along the prop­erty line with that neigh­bor. The neigh­bor took pic­tures of the mess and went to the police depart­ment, say­ing that although he was afraid of the neigh­bor, he wasn’t going to be trapped in his house all sum­mer, unable to leave because of the smell. Another let­ter was sent about remov­ing the dog mess. Of the three neigh­bors, guess which one con­sid­ered him­self the victim?

10. beb said on June 9th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

    I was up way too late last night and saw Jon Stew­art intro­duce the prud­ish “Fox and Friends” crew to the bawdy “Fox and Friends crew” of a half hour later in the pro­gram (or was it ear­lier?) You could almost put together a daily show of “Fun with Video­tape” con­trast­ing what peo­ple are say­ing now with what they said earlier.

    Then I stayed up even later because Stephan Col­bert was broad­cast­ing his SO show from Bagh­dad. He was styl­ishly attired in a suit of camophalge mate­r­ial and sported a golf club in hom­mage to Bob Hope. Did a won­der­ful bit on “The Word” — why you are here? which con­cluded the only rea­son they were still there was because no one had the balls to declare vic­tory — and then he declared vic­tory. Col­bert did a bit on his 10 hours of Basic Train­ing. He had Gen. Odier­nos on as his guest. The Gen had a hard time explain­ing why vic­tory hadn’t been accom­plished and peo­ple sent home. ‘There’s still work to be done’ isn’t much of an answer. Then Pres. Obama came on by satel­lite and ordered the Gen to shave Col­bert. I am both amazed that the Pres­i­dent would agree to do a bit of com­edy like that and dis­turded that Obama did his bit with a com­pletely sin­cere face. It both­ers me when a Pres­i­dent can act too well. Makes you won­der when he’s not acting.

    I sure would like to know who’s pick­ing up part of Kilpatrick’s new house’s rent. I’m sure Kym Wor­thy would, too. When does he get it through he’s head that he’s a dis­graced politi­cian with mas­sive bills to pay? I’d like to see his pro­ba­tion revoked and Kwame sent back to prison for sev­eral years.

    But that’s just me being con­fronta­gious. Is that easy to spell than belligerent?

    Has there ever been any Catholic school any­where that didn’t abuse stu­dents to some extent? Cruel nuns with their steel rulers smack­ing kids on the wrists and telling them they were worth­less and going to hell. And that’s how the good Catholic schools in Amer­ica are described.

    Since I haven’t had to haul the air con­di­tion­ers out of the base­ment yet, I’m enjoy­ing the cool sea­son we’re hav­ing. Maybe the pool katie will be going to is heated. I’m not ready for 90 degree days.

11. jeff borden said on June 9th, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    Actu­ally, you could pretty much do the whole “Daily Show” based on the round-the-clock lunacy that is Fox News. Wasn’t it one of the Step­ford Hosts on Fox and Friends that described the “dap,” or fist bump, as a ter­ror­ist fist bump when done by the Oba­mas? And Glenn Beck is a walk­ing comedic oppor­tu­nity every hour of every day.

    The genius of FNC lies not in any great news­gath­er­ing oper­a­tion. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to recall a big story or devel­op­ment that has bro­ken on Fox by FNC staffers. But by tai­lor­ing a net­work to be reac­tive to the day’s events and staffing it with flash­point per­son­al­i­ties like Beck, Han­nity, Cavuto and O’Reilly, you needn’t bother with bust­ing ass to break good sto­ries. It’s com­pelling enough view­ing to just let your hosts weigh in on those events.

12. mark said on June 9th, 2009 at 1:19 pm

    Cold sum­mers. Just another con­se­quence of global warm­ing. If we don’t all change our habits soon, sum­mers will be so cold we will have to turn on the fur­nace, and all the nasty car­bons that come with that will speed up the global warm­ing, which will only make the sum­mers colder.

    It’s a vicious cycle.

13. ROgirl said on June 9th, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    For some rea­son I’ve been think­ing about par­al­lels between the lives of Kwame and GWB. They were both from promi­nent polit­i­cal fam­i­lies, came into office around the same time, despite dis­ap­point­ing first terms got reelected, fucked things up, and split for Texas when it was all over.

    And one’s a con­victed felon.

14. moe99 said on June 9th, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    Don’t worry mark, Seat­tle is hav­ing an extremely hot, dry June. Cli­mate change means chaos basically.

    And to tie ends up on the “Cedant arma togae” quote, wikipedia thinks it is some­thing a bit more than you thought, Jeff tmmo:

    http://​en​.wik​iquote​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​Cicero
    Cedant arma togae, con­ce­dat lau­rea laudi.
    Yield, ye arms, to the toga; to civic praise, ye laurels.

15. Catherine said on June 9th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    Mark, the sci­en­tif­i­cally sound, con­ser­v­a­tive and more accu­rate phrase is “global cli­mate change.” Using this term is use­ful because it reframes the dis­cus­sion to focus on what is observ­ably happening.

    And as long as we’re com­plain­ing about weather, here in Pasadena it’s 58, the solar-heated pool is down to the mid-70s (after being low 80s a few weeks ago), and it was driz­zling when I did the school run. OTOH, that’s par for the course this time of year — the infa­mous June gloom.

16. Hexdecimal said on June 9th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    Stay­ing with the weather theme, here in the Phoenix metro area some have taken to wear­ing sweaters due to the temps only reach­ing the low 90s. It was just late last week that it was hoover­ing in mid pre-teens (111)

    brrrrr.…

17. jeff borden said on June 9th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    Here in Chicago it is again gloomy, wet, breezy and the tem­per­a­tures are not far above 60. This fol­lows one of the worst win­ters in our 20 years here, so it is even more dis­heart­en­ing. I still have many flats of impa­tiens, bego­nias and ger­ber daisies to plant, but the fre­quent down­pours are mak­ing it tough. In fair­ness, it is good sleep­ing weather. See? Chicagoans are noth­ing if not adaptive.

    Regard­ing cli­mate change, whether it is a reg­u­lar cycle the globe is going through or some­thing man made, there are things hap­pen­ing that can­not be denied. I don’t see how any­one can dis­pute some­thing weird is afoot when polar ice caps are melt­ing, glac­i­ers are break­ing off into warm seas, once snow-capped peaks are vir­tu­ally denuded (the photo com­par­isons of Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro are par­tic­u­larly scary), etc.

    Then again, I’m not Sen. James Imhofe…and thank God for that small favor.

18. Dorothy said on June 9th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    jeff the Big Boss at the paper where my daugh­ter works refuses to believe there is any such thing as “global warm­ing” or, as Cather­ine so aptly put it, “global cli­mate change.” I think he has his head up his ass. How can any­one deny the melt­ing of the polar ice caps??

19. MichaelG said on June 9th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

    Here in Sacto it’s 68 mov­ing toward a progged 76 against an aver­age for this date of 87.

    Cather­ine is right. Some places like North­ern Europe are going to get colder, a lot colder. The West Coast is expected to get warmer. The Napa Val­ley wine cli­mate is sched­uled to move to WN. Buy some vine­yard prop­erty now, Moe. Beat the rush.

20. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 9th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    Ave, Moe. My Loeb vol­umes are as deeply buried as any of the books i can’t quite bring myself to hand off to a yard sale, but never unpack from their boxes three moves ago. I still think toga in that con­text means more like “robed and hon­ored ones” than “vox pop­uli, vox dei”.

    Alex, i think he meant the young men’s aux­il­iary of the Masonic Broth­er­hood, DeMo­lay, com­ing in to help, hence “DeMo­lay­tion.” No?

    Speak­ing as some­one who gets to dab­ble in pale­oeth­nob­otany (your new word for the day!), you should see the pollen species vari­a­tions for cen­tral Ohio over the last 12,000 years. Cli­mate is cycli­cal, and we’re still try­ing to get the hang of the down­beat so we can dance to her tune. Sunspot ser­e­nades, orbital oscil­la­tions, and the vol­canic erup­tion tango really gets things heated up. Add in a cer­tain mea­sure of anthro­pogenic inputs, which is really what we’re argu­ing about as to scale, and you have an ecosys­tem polka chal­lenge set to a juke­box that skips, just as Frankie Yankovic really gets going.

    Anthro­pogenic inputs clearly shift the wave­form, but hockey sticks aside, we can’t make cred­i­bly many of the claims that are put out as “what the sci­ence sup­ports.” “The sci­ence” is a phrase worth being quizzi­cal about — but the sci­en­tific con­sen­sus can justly be described as say­ing that we are wise to push the global car­bon diox­ide ppm back towards 350. I’m not con­vinced that we “must” get it back to 350 at all costs, but i’m on board with Bill McK­ibben enough to say i don’t want it march­ing blindly past 400.

    See http://​www​.350​.org for info.

21. coozledad said on June 9th, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    Nah. There ain’t no global warm­ing. Sci­en­tists are just a bunch of idiots. They should read National Review instead of por­ing over cli­mate mod­els.
    The North Car­olina Coast is a per­fect exam­ple of how the will­fully igno­rant behave. Sci­en­tists inform devel­op­ers that coastal ero­sion will take a swath of van­ity beach­houses out to sea. Devel­op­ers say sci­ence is bull­shit. Sea washes up to front door of lib­er­tar­ian douchebag’s vul­gar­ian tem­ple of ass­hat­tery, douchebag gets on phone to gubbn’mint. “I want new sand in my front yard.” Tax­payer funds sand pump­ing for pur­blind dick-swinging shite.
    You see how this works? I can’t count the num­ber of times I’ve seen these idiots bitch­ing about gov­ern­ment inac­tion in the wake of hur­ri­canes when they were told up front about the risks. Global Warm­ing is the same.
    I’ve always felt that if you believe your gut is smarter than con­tem­po­rary sci­ence, then man up and let your gut fix you when you’ve got a brain tumor. Anec­dote says some peo­ple will sur­vive a light­ning strike, so go stand in a fuck­ing storm already. What have you geniuses got to lose?

22. jeff borden said on June 9th, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    Coo­zledad,

    I may be mis­taken, but my sense when I lived in Char­lotte was that North Car­olina was far more proac­tive regard­ing beach­front devel­op­ment than South Car­olina. I stayed in hotels in North Myr­tle Beach where the waves lit­er­ally lapped at the foun­da­tion at high tide. My rec­ol­lec­tions of N.C. beaches, foggy as they are by time and my likely level of ine­bri­a­tion at the time, were that the hotels and con­dos were far back from the beach.

    Nonethe­less, I com­pletely agree with your premise. When you build your dream house on an erod­ing beach, in the paths of hur­ri­canes, in a flood plain, or an area prone to wild­fires, your insur­ance pre­mi­ums should be suf­fi­ciently enor­mous to cover your losses with­out tap­ping the wal­lets of your fel­low citizens.

23. Danny said on June 9th, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    Jeff, unless you’re cussin’, you don’t care. You … you … global warm­ing denier!

    Hmmmpf!

24. Danny said on June 9th, 2009 at 4:00 pm

    Jeff B and Cooz, you apply­ing that same argu­ment to those who build below sea-level in New Orleans? ‘Cuz I pretty sure a lot of peo­ple there didn’t have insur­ance either and they’ve been warned about lev­ees break­ing since delta blues musi­cians Kansas Joe McCoy and Mem­phis Min­nie wrote the song in 1929. And then every­one got a nice reminder from Led Zeppelin.

25. moe99 said on June 9th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

    I vaca­tioned in Fripp Island S. Car­olina in 1991 and there was quite a bit of gov­ern­ment dredg­ing new sand in to pro­tect the new condo devel­op­ments. Can’t expect that it has changed over the years.

26. coozledad said on June 9th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    Some of the van­ity homes of the Lower Ninth Ward. I don’t see liv­ing here as so much a mat­ter of choice, but of exi­gency.
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​y​Z​L​O​t​cUXq_k

27. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 9th, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
    If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
    When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
    Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
    Lord, mean old levee taught me to weep and moan,
    Got what it takes to make a moun­tain man leave his home,
    Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.
    Don’t it make you feel bad
    When you’re tryin’ to find your way home,
    You don’t know which way to go?
    If you’re goin’ down south
    They got no work to do,
    If you don’t know about Chicago.
    Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
    Now, cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
    When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.
    All last night sat on the levee and moaned,
    All last night sat on the levee and moaned,
    Thinkin’ ’bout me baby and my happy home.
    Going, gon’ to Chicago,
    Gon’ to Chicago,
    Sorry but I can’t take you.
    Going down, going down now, going down.

28. Connie said on June 9th, 2009 at 5:39 pm

    Sue is right about hir­ing a neigh­bor inspec­tor. When we moved into this neigh­bor­hood, all the neigh­bors warned us about the boys next door. They were right. Although one of them was the cause of our favorite local news head­line: “Drunken bur­glar breaks into wrong house.”

    Pool here is down from its pre­vi­ous high of 72. Shiver.

29. caliban said on June 9th, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    Nancy’s an import from the authen­tic fly­over, but she at least evinces, if she doesn’t really get Detroit. I would have thought the demise of Tiger (nee Briggs) Sta­dium was worth a cold eye and horse­men pass by.

    I went to Vero Beach six months in utero, and I’ve got pho­tos of my preg­nant mom play­ing catch with Karl Ersk­ine and Jackie and Roy Cam­panella. When I moved to Boston in 1974, I despised the omphilop­tic assump­tion that the uni­verse emanated from the Red Sox. Mostly, I despised the arro­gance of the place, the overt racism and the ascribed god­hood of that crypto-racist left­fielder that shot pigeons with Uncle Tom Yawkey.

    In ’75, there was a new day for the Sox and the Nation. I went to Fen­way and it hit me like tiprap in a can­vas bag that this place was almost as cool as Tiger Sta­dium. I love Fen­way, the way that peo­ple love Arles or the banks of the Seine, as a con­nec­tion to art so totally idio­syn­cratic and bril­liant, it’s more or less holy.

    So I thought about Tiger Sta­dium. Espe­cially, when it got to the World Series. Which team should I despise? Reds, the prod­uct of Bowie Kuhn’s PR, like Michael Jor­dan just gets to cheat rules, (and boy, if you saw the win­ning bas­ket against the Lak­ers go away on Pau Gasol just bla­tantly grab­bing the rim, you have to think com­misin­ers just screw play­ers and coaches over. Some idiot on Jim Rome’s show actu­ally claimed Gasol had to have moved the rim for a call to be made.)

    So any­way, I watch Fred­die and Jim Edd and Dwight Evans for a whole sea­son, and I grew up in Detroit. And it’s obvi­ous, this is the best out­field since Willie Hor­ton, (no not that guy Repub­li­cans black­ened to cre­ate the South­ern Strat­egy, the guy with biceps twice the size of Hulk’s.), Mickey Stan­ley, Jim Northrup. My per­sonal opin­ion, and no joke peo­ple ought to reconside3r this Yaz crap. Jim Edd it was
    So here I stand. Fen­way aint Tiger Stadium.diculous

    And now I’m con­sid­er­ing how amaz­ing was that out­field and that ball­park. Tiger Sta­dium ruled. Two things that hap­pened to me at Tiger Sta­dium: My brother Chris was excep­tional at ath­let­ics. So was every­body inRest of us were very good.

30. caliban said on June 9th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

    youre the most major­league liar

31. caliban said on June 9th, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    Look you dum­nasses. I’ve beem screwed over

32. caliban said on June 9th, 2009 at 5:55 pm

    And if you like base­ball Fred­die is so good it’s ridicu­lous, and JimEdd is

33. caliban said on June 9th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    Do any­way. It’d noteve close the­seRed­Sox idiots come close to Fred­die and Jim Edd.
    Are you all just fuck­ing nuts? Yuve screwed the poock

34. Jeff Borden said on June 9th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    Danny,

    As always, an inter­est­ing point worth con­sid­er­ing. I would counter with the argu­ment that New Orleans was founded and built before there was as much under­stand­ing as there is today about the fool­ish­ness of erect­ing cities below sea level. You could prob­a­bly make the same argu­ment for large parts of Florida. Isn’t a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Miami below sea level?

    The colonists should’ve paid more atten­tion to what the natives were doing before they started build­ing. I’m gonna bet that any indige­nous Indian tribe in the delta would’ve known bet­ter than to build their vil­lages in a flood plain. And I’ve never heard of the Semi­noles build­ing their com­mu­ni­ties on the beaches of Florida. The local tribes in what is now the canyons of Los Ange­les used to burn off the under­brush every year because they knew those canyons were fire­traps, par­tic­u­larly when the Santa Ana’s blew. In fact, Mal­ibu canyon is sup­pos­edly one of the most fire-prone locales in the world. But the new­com­ers either ignored or dis­missed the wis­dom of the locals. Hap­pens all the time.

35. mark said on June 9th, 2009 at 6:49 pm

    I’m not reject­ing sci­ence. In 1974 Time mag­a­zine warned of the “New Ice Age” and the indis­putable sci­en­tific evi­dence of global cool­ing. A few years ear­lier, Paul Ehrlich and his crowd warned about the hun­dreds of mil­lions who would starve to death dur­ing the sev­en­ties and eight­ies due to the pop­u­la­tion explo­sion. All just a mat­ter of sci­ence. Like erosion.

    You guys be trendy if you want. I’ll con­tinue to search for the shiv­er­ing, mal­nour­ished mul­ti­tudes until Al Gore down­sizes to a 2000 sq. ft. home.

36. moe99 said on June 9th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Guess we bet­ter tell the Dutch to evac­u­ate too.

37. joodyb said on June 9th, 2009 at 7:10 pm

    OK. i give up. I con­fess I read it all! Who is he talk­ing to?

38. Scout said on June 9th, 2009 at 7:22 pm

    Maybe there’s some tweet­ing going on? Birds in the jet engines?

39. Deborah said on June 9th, 2009 at 7:26 pm

    Did any of you read Roger Ebert’s lat­est post about Vin­cent P. Falk the guy who roams the Chicago loop wear­ing really flashy col­or­ful suits? I see this guy all the time down­town. Always thought he was just an eccen­tric street per­son. It’s a great post, love the way Ebert writes.

    Another thing I like about Ebert is the way he pops in and out of com­ments, like Nancy does. I don’t read com­menters on other blogs besides these two, I’ve tried oth­ers but they don’t hold my interest.

40. alex said on June 9th, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    Beats me, joodyb.

    I wanted to add my two cents’ worth re: bad neigh­bors, upthread a ways.

    Tonight got a delight­ful ear­ful from the head of a house­hold I avoid like the plague because they’re dys­func­tional, ask pry­ing ques­tions and are much too pre­sump­tu­ous in all regards. I man­age to keep them at arm’s length for the most part, just by being short with them and cussing gra­tu­itously. Well, the unem­ployed alco­holic free­loader who’s been crash­ing there the last few months hadn’t been doing any chores. So they were on his case and he got on the rid­ing mower and took a few laps, tak­ing out a dri­ve­way reflec­tor in the process. Head of house­hold is near blind, prob­a­bly fairly deaf and most cer­tainly what I would call dumb. One time he crashed a vehi­cle through a show­room win­dow when he took it in for ser­vice. Watch­ing him back out is always delight­ful, reflec­tors or no, because he’s senes­cent as hell and doesn’t know what he’s doing. Except, evi­dently, when he’s got a bug up his butt, because he out­right bragged that he retal­i­ated for the man­gled reflec­tor by crash­ing his mini­van into the freeloader’s Jeep, ha, ha, ha. So this is the back­story of the scream­ing matches and peo­ple storm­ing off burn­ing rub­ber that I had to endure on an oth­er­wise lovely Sun­day after­noon. And from quite afar, I might add.

41. If you can’t beat ‘em, ridicule ‘em « Blog on the Run: Reloaded said on June 9th, 2009 at 9:05 pm

    […] Nance notes, it’s prob­a­bly safe for work if you use head­phones. Comments […]

42. Jolene said on June 9th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    A 35-year-old mag­a­zine arti­cle and a pop­u­lar book aren’t much of a counter to most of the cli­mate sci­en­tists in the world and the exten­sive mod­el­ing of cli­mate change con­ducted dur­ing the inter­ven­ing years, mark.

43. beb said on June 9th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

    Cal­iban must have been ingest­ing some­thing because he started off strong and ended up in the ditch with both wheels spinning.

    Most base­ball parks used to be idio­syn­cratic but over time they’ve all been replaced with soul­less mon­strosi­ties filled with cor­po­rate boxes.

    What made Tiger Sta­dium such a great sta­dium was that seat­ing began almost ontop the play­ing field while the upper deck offered such a great view it was bet­ter than tele­vi­sion. The down­side to all this was that the numer­ous sup­port poles in the lower deck area cre­ated a lot of obstructed-view seats. But as long as you knew where they were and bought tick­ets early you could avoid these seats. The park itself was a mar­vel with close in walls in Right Field but end­less depths in Cen­ter Field. If you played the field right it was a hitter’s par­adise. If you couldn’t work the cor­ners you were an easy out.

    But it’s all over. They’re tear­ing down the press box, itself a won­der­ful place were foul tips could bean the broad­caster. I liked the plan of tear­ing off the upper deck and con­vert the sta­dium into an exhi­bi­tion field for school and col­lege level play­ing. But there was no money for it. The place will be scrapped clean and left till some­day an investor wants it. Pigs will fly before that hap­pens. There’s a lot of crap — build­ings — which have been given his­toric des­ig­na­tions. A lot I couldn’t care less about. Tiger Sta­dium, how ever, was other keeping.

    (Except, maybe, for the restrooms where there were no uri­nals, only a horse trough to pee into.)

44. LA Mary said on June 9th, 2009 at 9:50 pm

    Ugh. Don’t even get me started about my next door neigh­bor. She’s godawful.

45. basset said on June 9th, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    Speak­ing of drunk men on rid­ing mow­ers… I buy most of my wine at the liquor store George Jones was headed to when he had his famous riding-mower escapade. (Short ver­sion — he lived maybe a cou­ple of miles away, had a load on and wanted more, Tammy took his keys so he jumped on the mower and headed up High­way 31, which is also the main north-south street through down­town Nashville.)

    This store’s a cou­ple of miles out from the city cen­ter, about equidis­tant from the governor’s man­sion and the hood. Put it this way, there’s a bak­ery next door, a small-engine shop down the block, and a Jaguar dealer across the street.

    I go there because I don’t get any wine-seller atti­tude, no strange ter­mi­nol­ogy, none of that I-am-an-anointed-sophisticate-and-you-are-laughably-ignorant busi­ness that wine snobs and fly fish­er­men… par­don me, fly fish­ers… seem to enjoy. They sell a lot of remain­ders and odd lots by price; I just stroll in, look at the shelf that fits my sit­u­a­tion (three for $10.99, $15, or $21), pick out some inter­est­ing labels, and stock up. Some of what they have I’ve seen in other stores at four or five times the price, some I wouldn’t clean paint­brushes with, but you take your chances.

46. CrazyCatLady said on June 10th, 2009 at 12:59 am

    I will always remem­ber the amaz­ing thrill of walk­ing into Tiger Sta­dium and glimps­ing the great green grass, the per­fectly man­i­cured dia­mond, the pitcher’s mound of dirt, and the smell of grilling onions, pep­pers and sausages they sold. So close to the action. You could hear the crack of the bat. Kaline’s cor­ner. Never again will there be a place like that. And never again will I see a Tiger game in person.

47. Dexter said on June 10th, 2009 at 1:21 am

    I saw the MTV ass-in-face and I did not believe it was con­trived. Has MTV or Cohen admit­ted it was staged? I saw “Bruno” crash hard into the air makeup unit and go into a wild spin and plead to be low­ered, and I thought it was just an acci­dent how he landed on eminem’s lap. If that was a set-up, kudos to the direc­tor.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Here’s the kind of story that makes the local news all the time. This is a mes­sage from my brother’s friend Sarah, Mundelein, Illi­nois:
    The tur­tle that crossed the road

    I’m glad to report that the tur­tle (the size of one of my hub­caps — and I’m truly NOT kid­ding) which was cross­ing east to west Rt 83 today, made it suc­cess­fully across the road. For those of you famil­iar with this road between Mid­loth­ian and Haw­ley, you under­stand the amount of traf­fic on this road at any given time of day and what a remark­able thing it was to not be hit. Out­side of sea tur­tles, this was the largest tur­tle I’ve ever seen in the wild. It cost me a warn­ing ticket since I got out of my car and held up traf­fic in order for it to pass. One of Lake County’s finest was in the north­bound lane wait­ing, but it was SO worth it. It was sim­ply an amaz­ing thing to see at a moment I wasn’t expect­ing it as I was lost in thought about other things that seemed vastly more impor­tant. Isn’t life just like that some­times? As I was watch­ing it lum­ber along, sin­gu­larly focused on reach­ing the swamp on the other side and obliv­i­ous to all that were wait­ing, the thought crossed my mind that some­times our bur­dens and per­ils pale in per­spec­tive to oth­ers. It was a timely mes­sage, at least for me and just wanted to share it.” –end–

48. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 10th, 2009 at 8:08 am

    Absolutely worth a ticket. Sounds like it must have been a snap­ping tur­tle leav­ing a dry­ing pond look­ing for a bet­ter water supply.