47 responses to
“Thawing.”

1. 

   Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5th, 2010 at 9:20 am

   Final link, I’m guess­ing – http://​www​.slate​.com/​i​d​/​2​2​43729/

2. 

   Jolene said on February 5th, 2010 at 10:12 am

   Part of the prob­lem w/ the Ice House project is lack of archi­tec­tural inter­est of the house. It’s just a bedrag­gled old box, unap­peal­ing under pretty much any cir­cum­stance, I’d think.

3. 

   adrianne said on February 5th, 2010 at 10:39 am

   This just in, from Akio Toy­oda, pres­i­dent of Toy­ota, grand­son of the com­pany founder: “I deeply regret that I have caused con­cern among so many peo­ple. We will do our utmost to regain the trust of our cus­tomers.”

   Good luck with that!

4. 

   moe99 said on February 5th, 2010 at 11:02 am

   A friend of mine, an attor­ney in CA wrote this about the Satan sheep ad:

   
   The Firona com­mer­cial will test to what extent the 11th Com­mand­ment is finally dead. R’s attack­ing each other this viciously can only help the Dems.

   I think Fio­r­ina is going to play it coy with this ad and get away with it. She has to attack Camp­bell in the pri­mary because he has the advan­tage of a long and fairly inof­fen­sive his­tory in CA. If Camp­bell buys some blue jeans and man­ages to come across as a rea­son­able “Scott Brown” type can­di­date** and more likely to beat Boxer, then he might be able to pull it off. If any­thing, though, he is too mid­dle of the road for the folks in the Cen­tral Val­ley and behind the Orange Cur­tain, which are cru­cial to the Repub pri­mary, so she has to run well to the right of him. Hence the com­mer­cial. Expect more, and soon, because she has to crip­ple him early.

   Her weak points are that she was *not* loved at HP, and she comes across as a dilet­tante who is going into pol­i­tics because no cor­po­ra­tion its right mind would hire her now. In addi­tion, she made some state­ments in sup­port of over­seas out­sourc­ing that are sure to haunt her.

   How­ever, if Fio­r­ina takes the pri­mary, Boxer will have a lot to worry about. The higher the unem­ploy­ment rate goes up, the bet­ter a non incum­bent will look, even a dilet­tante.

   ** A bit of a stretch for him, but a lot eas­ier for him than for Fio­r­ina, who can come across as patri­cian.

   I found it sig­nif­i­cant that we really don’t see Fiorina’s face at all in the ad. Under­stand­able given its con­tent.

5. 

   coozledad said on February 5th, 2010 at 11:08 am

   I’m prob­a­bly just jeal­ous of Mar­tin in some way, but he seems to be get­ting squick­ier in his old age. Is it a gen­er­a­tional thing, or have guys always started to keep a nookie score when they’re start­ing to square off against obliv­ion? I sus­pect Martin’s cur­rent monogamy has a bit more to do with things “not going well with the girls for him” as opposed to him call­ing a uni­lat­eral cease­fire in the pussy wars.
   One of the big rea­sons I think Hilary Man­tel kicks his sad ass is she doesn’t have his self-awareness deficit.

6. 

   Old-time Editor said on February 5th, 2010 at 11:33 am

   Ice House = scene from Dr. Zhivago.

7. 

   Sue said on February 5th, 2010 at 12:02 pm

   Re the Demon Sheep ad: Tom Camp­bell needs to get Terry Gilliam on board, prefer­ably with some John Cleese action as well.
   http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​9​V​7​z​b​WNznbs

8. 

   moe99 said on February 5th, 2010 at 12:13 pm

   C’dad–who’s Mar­tin?

   And now for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent:

   http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​_​p​o​p​u​p​?​v​=​9​x​w​C​G​0Ey2Mg

   I was in tears, but the good kind.

9. 

   LAMary said on February 5th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

   Mar­tin Amis.

10. 

    coozledad said on February 5th, 2010 at 12:16 pm

    Moe: A guy whose dad wrote a cou­ple of good books.

11. 

    Jeff Borden said on February 5th, 2010 at 12:24 pm

    Moe,

    Thank you for that link. I’m also water­ing up. What a story. And what a dad.

12. 

    moe99 said on February 5th, 2010 at 12:37 pm

    Ah, Mar­tin AMIS! I am a bit slow today.

13. 

    beb said on February 5th, 2010 at 12:49 pm

    When you have to take your shoes off to count the num­ber of women you’ve slept with, per­haps its time to stop count­ing. And time to keep the pants zipped.

    The “What kind of girl reads Play­boy” was inter­est­ing. I won­der some times when did Play­boy cease to be an Amer­i­can icon. In the 60s and 70s it was the Big Time. Big time authors wrote for it, all the best artist con­tributed to it, all the most famous peo­ple wanted to be inter­viewed by it. And being a Play­mate was the gate­way to all kinds of suc­cess for a lot of woman. Back them every­one talked about Play­boy. Today, I’m not sure peple know that it still exists.

    I picked up the Marge Simp­son issue last fall and was sur­prised by how think it was com­pared to the 60s. That was the first issue I’d looked at in over a decade, maybe two. I hear at one time it was being run by Hefner’s daugh­ter, which I thought was awk­ward all the way around.

14. 

    Rana said on February 5th, 2010 at 12:59 pm

    Heh. I was expect­ing some­thing more amaz­ing than the Ice House turned out to be – some­thing on a par with those ice cas­tles that you can go in and explore. This… well, it looks remark­ably like what a num­ber of the houses in the adja­cent neigh­bor­hood looked like last win­ter, includ­ing those crazy ici­cles.

15. 

    Jeff Borden said on February 5th, 2010 at 1:02 pm

    I cov­ered Play­boy Enter­prises Inc. for more than a decade, when Christie Hefner was run­ning the com­pany. She was a smart, capa­ble exec­u­tive, but PEI never really did much as a com­pany. It is pub­licly traded, but Hef main­tains the vast major­ity of the vot­ing stock, so he has final say. (Ms. Hefner has since left the com­pany.)

    There were sev­eral salient issues con­fronting the com­pany. The white bunny head on the black back­ground is a very well-known, very rec­og­niz­able logo, but it had been tar­nished by over-licensing. The brand Hef had seen as the epit­ome of the swing­ing cool cat was now stamped on every­thing from car air fresh­en­ers to shot glasses. Mean­while, the soft focus erot­ica that defined the brand was blown out of the water by the pur­vey­ors of hard­core pornog­ra­phy, which became ubiq­ui­tous with the arrival of the Inter­net and the anonymity it affords users.

    Basi­cally, Play­boy is “too dirty” for many main­stream users, but “too clean” for those who like their erot­ica explicit. It doesn’t help that poor, aged Hef remains the face of the com­pany. . .a sag­ging, elderly man juiced up on Via­gra sur­rounded by pneu­matic young women lit­er­ally young enough to be his grand­daugh­ters. . .is more creepy than cool. Young men are far more likely to pick up an issue of Maxim or one of its rivals than Play­boy.

    I’d love to see a good busi­ness school use Play­boy as a case study. What­ever you think about Hefner or the pub­li­ca­tion, it was a pow­er­ful, prof­itable brand for a good 20-plus years. But its inabil­ity to rein­vent itself, dri­ven by the deci­sion to avoid the really hard-core stuff, has left it gasp­ing and irrel­e­vant.

16. 

    MarkH said on February 5th, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    I wouldn’t make a bet, like your friend, on Fio­r­ina, moe. Boxer is going to have a tough time, no doubt, but employ­ment may be get­ting bet­ter (see today’s new 9.7% rate), and I lean more toward his descrip­tion of her as a dilit­tante and unloved at HP. I don’t think she’ll even get through the pri­mary as she reveals more of her true char­ac­ter. Here’s one of the best things I’ve read about her and what hap­pened at HP, for those who want a brief his­tory of LaCarla.

    http://​www​.time​.com/​t​i​m​e​/​m​a​g​a​z​i​n​e​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​0​,​9​1​7​1​,​1​0​2​7​5​0​6​,​0​0.html

    Also, after her fall from HP grace, she went on “60 Min­utes” to tell her story and came off as teeth-grindingly bit­ter. I bet that seg­ment is still in the archives on the CBS web­site for those inter­ested.

17. 

    MichaelG said on February 5th, 2010 at 1:45 pm

    “When you have to take your shoes off to count the num­ber of women you’ve slept with, per­haps its time to stop count­ing. And time to keep the pants zipped.”

    Why?

18. 

    paddyo' said on February 5th, 2010 at 2:38 pm

    The ice house pic on Nance’s Tri-X set­ting DOES look like the win­try love nest in “Dr. Zhivago,” doesn’t it? But the rest, meh — it is an under­whelm­ing instal­la­tion.
    I would, how­ever, go to see an instal­la­tion of two-wheelers done up that way. You could call it, oh, how about “B-icicles”?
    Mov­ing on . . .
    Jeff B, another sign of Playboy’s mor­bid­ity is what they charge for a sub­scrip­tion now. I recall a snail-mail come-on some­time last year that offered a year’s sub­scrip­tion for 10 bucks. Clearly, Hef is now giv­ing it away, so to speak.

19. 

    Jeff Borden said on February 5th, 2010 at 3:12 pm

    Pad­dyo,

    Right you are. I don’t want to be quoted on this because I’ve been too lazy and/or busy to look it up, but I’m pretty sure cir­cu­la­tion peaked at around 8 or 9 mil­lion. It was a real pow­er­house. I’m sure the adver­tis­ing rates have fallen in pro­por­tion to the steep decline in cir­cu­la­tion.

    BTW, does any­one else see the future of our Con­gress in the amaz­ingly appalling actions by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama? Here is a tough-talking con­ser­v­a­tive icon hold­ing up every sin­gle appoint­ment Obama is try­ing to make unless Air­bus gets an Air Force con­tract over Boe­ing. Air­bus, you see, has some sup­pli­ers in Alabama, which appar­ently is good enough rea­son for this combed-over patriot to hold crit­i­cal appoint­ments hostage unless a for­eign com­pany gets the deal.

    Thanks to the Supremes, this is going to be a very com­mon event, where multi-national con­glom­er­ates will drown favored can­di­dates in money to achieve their aims. And if that means that jobs that might go to Amer­i­cans are instead sent to France, well, fuck it. A red­neck cracker sen­a­tor has got to do what he’s got to do.

    The U.S. Sen­ate is a dys­func­tional cham­ber of fools and char­la­tans. Amaz­ingly, the House sounds like the voice of rea­son in our national debate these days.

20. 

    MarkH said on February 5th, 2010 at 3:26 pm

    Not really that sim­ple, pad­dyo’. Pub­li­ca­tions make their money from advertising,and rates and result­ing vol­ume in ad pages are directly tied to cir­cu­la­tion. The most eas­ily ver­i­fi­able cir­cu­la­tion num­bers come from the Audit Bureau of Cir­cu­la­tion, which is mostly from USPS mail­ing records. Since dis­tri­b­u­tion costs are a bal­ance sheet killer (about 70% of the cover price of a mag­a­zine is dis­tri­b­u­tion costs), mail subs can be a bar­gain for the pub­lisher in build­ing cir­cu­la­tion. I think you can still get Play­boy for $10/year in the mail. I would think what Hef loses on bulk mail charges, he makes up in ad rev­enues. It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve been in the pub­lish­ing busi­ness (Ohio/Living Sin­gle Mag­a­zines), so I may be off on some num­bers. But I think you already knew most of this.

    EDIT — Jeff Bor­den, what do you mean “the FUTURE of our con­gress”? Hasn’t it ever been thus?

21. 

    Sue said on February 5th, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Unfor­tu­nately, Jeff Bor­den, the Shelby tantrum is being com­pared to Nelson’s grab on health care reform in terms of self­ish­ness. So the Dems’ expected “shocked, shocked” response will lose some of its punch.
    I am won­der­ing what the final straw will be, what the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ ver­sion of an inva­sion of Poland will be. Because, really, at this point I am will­ing to believe that the Dems will accept any behav­ior from the 41-59 major­ity Repub­li­cans.

22. 

    paddyo' said on February 5th, 2010 at 3:48 pm

    Sure, MarkH, you’re right — but I wasn’t argu­ing a point, I was just remark­ing on the sticker price. Ten bucks a year is a LOT less than Play­boy used to charge. Con­trast that with, say, Peo­ple Mag, still one of the most suc­cess­ful in the busi­ness, which can still charge a pre­mium rate (com­par­a­tively speak­ing) around $95-$100 a year. I know, that’s a weekly, but if you pro­rated Play­boy to a weekly (now THERE’s a scary thought), it would still be about half that price. Time was, Hef could get that kind of price, too.
    But then, it’s tough all over for slicks, isn’t it . . .

23. 

    paddyo' said on February 5th, 2010 at 3:54 pm

    God knows if it will ever change, but did the F’-ing Found­ing Fathers really intend that so many pres­i­den­tial appoint­ments required the Sen­ate to advise and con­sent? I’m amazed at the num­ber and level of posi­tions that the Bozos on either side of the aisle get to lay their grubby lit­tle hands on. The dys­func­tional thing in the Sen­ate is its ridicu­lous set of “rules” — you know, the ones that require “super­ma­jori­ties” and the ones, as Shelby is using, that allow any sen­a­tor, for any rea­son, to put a hold on any appoint­ment. Sen­ate rules aren’t the only rea­son for grid­lock, but they damned sure get in the way. And it’s need­less.

24. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5th, 2010 at 4:03 pm

    Sen­a­tor Robert Byrd once assured me that Sen­ate rules are the only thing that sep­a­rates Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion from bar­bar­ity, and are a thing of com­plex beauty, fit to be wielded by artists of leg­is­la­tion but incom­pre­hen­si­ble to the weary plebian.

    Or some­thing like that. His accent gets thicker as he gets excited.

25. 

    Jeff Borden said on February 5th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

    Ben Nel­son is not much dif­fer­ent from Richard Shelby, but what sticks in my craw is that Shelby is a vin­tage flag-waving, tough-talking, self-styled con­ser­v­a­tive “patriot.” And at a time when the nation is deal­ing with high lev­els of unem­ploy­ment, he’s more than happy to ensure that Euro­pean work­ers get jobs that might go to Boe­ing work­ers.

    If this goober ever talks about “national secu­rity,” I cer­tainly hope a nearby sen­a­tor will beat him about the head and face with a large polo mal­let. He doesn’t give a shit. He wants more jobs in his god­for­saken state.

26. 

    Sue said on February 5th, 2010 at 4:18 pm

    From Ezra Klein:
    “Repub­li­cans com­plain about all the czars, but they are oblig­at­ing Obama to appoint more czars than any pres­i­dent in his­tory, because they fil­i­buster all his actual appoint­ments. Czars route around the fil­i­bus­ter­ing of appoint­ments, and noth­ing more.

    To put this another way, the exec­u­tive branch needs a cer­tain amount of staff. Some of that staff sim­ply has to be con­firmed by the Sen­ate. The sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, for instance. But some of that staff is in a gray area: It would be good to have them con­firmed by the Sen­ate, but if that’s too much of a pain in the neck, they can be named to posi­tions — either exist­ing ones or newly con­cocted ones — on the White House staff. Larry Sum­mers is an exam­ple of this route.

    If get­ting nom­i­nees through the Sen­ate keeps get­ting harder, you’ll see the Sen­ate con­sulted on fewer and fewer of these hires. In that way, this obstruc­tion mas­querad­ing as scrutiny will make the gov­ern­ment less account­able, not more.”

27. 

    Jolene said on February 5th, 2010 at 5:37 pm

    After many years of being a big mag­a­zine sub­scriber, I’d let some sub­scrip­tions slip. Recently, though, I bought a cou­ple of mags to read on an air­plane and nearly choked on the price of a sin­gle issue. I think it was $6.99 for an issue of Newsweek and $7.99 for a copy of The Atlantic. Yikes! I’m renew­ing my sub­scrip­tions.

    Re Shelby, yes, he is an ass­hole. I don’t think it’s too smart for them to com­pare this sit­u­a­tion to Ben Nel­son because that deal has brought Nel­son noth­ing but bad news–even in his own state. If health care is ever passed, the Nel­son deal will be undone, but he’ll be stuck w/ the effects of his back­room deal on his rep­u­ta­tion.

28. 

    Jolene said on February 5th, 2010 at 5:41 pm

    On another topic, I’m think­ing about buy­ing an immer­sion blender, but have found that they range in price from thirty bucks to more than $100. Any advice? Is there one you’d rec­om­mend? Par­tic­u­lar fea­tures or attach­ments you’d rec­om­mend?

29. 

    Dexter said on February 5th, 2010 at 5:43 pm

    The bliz­zard started a half hour ago. I gassed the car, bought the gro­ceries, picked up a few Mega Mil­lions tick­ets, and stopped into a lit­tle store to pick up the Super­Bowl snacks, and they had some really neat-o cakes, so I bought a nice round cake, frosted in white and adorned with a large “Saints” logo. It was only eleven bucks.
    As I was walk­ing the dog in the cross-blowing sting­ing hard snow, I decided to ven­ture out one more time. A straw­berry sun­dae from DQ, and what a surprise—they used fresh sliced straw­ber­ries. “Schtrrawburrees…”—and the sur­prise was so nice I began rolling my steel mar­bles around in my hand.
    http://​www​.bright​lights​film​.com/​4​2​/​4​2​_​i​m​a​g​e​s​/​c​a​i​n​e​b​o​g​a​rt.jpg

    By the way, did you know Bog­art took the role of Queeg for a pit­tance, just because he had this obses­sion to play Queeg? ‘Tis true.

30. 

    Jeff Borden said on February 5th, 2010 at 5:54 pm

    “The Caine Mutiny” is one of my favorite Bog­art films. He gives a won­der­ful, meaty per­for­mance, par­tic­u­larly in that incred­i­bly poignant scene where he meets with the other offi­cers and more or less begs them for their sup­port while they sit in silence. It’s a sequence in which the captain’s vul­ner­a­bil­ity is painfully revealed to the junior offi­cers, who are too invested in mock­ing and under­min­ing him to lis­ten. Pow­er­ful stuff from an actor too fre­quently pigeon-holed for his tough guy parts. I can’t imag­ine any­one else in the part.

    The sup­port­ing roles by Fred Mac­Mur­ray, Van John­son and the superb Jose Fer­rer are also ter­rific. The romance angle of the young offi­cer is out of place, but oth­er­wise, it’s a damned good film.

31. 

    moe99 said on February 5th, 2010 at 6:14 pm

    Word is there may be two Supreme Court vacan­cies soon: Stevens and Gins­berg. Reid bet­ter get some cojones or there won’t be appoint­ments til there’s a new admin­is­tra­tion.

32. 

    Dexter said on February 5th, 2010 at 6:28 pm

    con­tro­versy of the day: Lind­sey Vonn, ath­lete or dirty girl?–your thoughts.
    This S.I. cover has gen­er­ated a lot of radio talk today. I heard the talk before I saw the picture-cover—it’s “dirty”…dirty young woman! No…it’s just a superb ath­lete perched to destroy her competition…no—it’s just a moral conun­drum.
    http://​latimes​blogs​.latimes​.com/​s​p​o​r​t​s​_​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​2​/​l​i​n​d​s​e​y​-​v​o​n​n​-​s​e​x​-​s​e​x​u​a​l​-​p​o​s​e​-​p​r​o​v​o​c​a​t​i​v​e​-​s​k​i​e​r​-​o​l​y​m​p​i​c​s​-​w​i​n​t​e​r​-​s​e​x​u​a​l​l​y​-​s​u​g​g​e​s​t​i​v​e.html

33. 

    brian stouder said on February 5th, 2010 at 6:41 pm

    Reid bet­ter get some cojones or there won’t be appoint­ments til there’s a new admin­is­tra­tion.

    Moe – I dis­agree.

    Pres­i­dent Obama needs to STAY in the Harry Truman-mode he seems to be in now*, and in fact ramp it up. If Health Care Reform is dead now, as the pres­i­dent has said it could well be – then that’s all the MORE rea­son to turn the heat up to full-blast, and ride herd on the obstruc­tion­ist ‘Party of No/Party of Dough’ – so that there can be no doubt about the do-nothing/know noth­ing loafers and cow­ards in con­gress – right up ’til elec­tion day.

    I just read the Vari­ety arti­cle Nance linked, about the Jon Stewart/O’Relly iter­view – which was good enough; but then the com­ments sec­tion quickly took the shine off.

    I hear the same (insert vul­gar term here) every damned day, at work and on the local radio (and we’ll skip right past national radio); an “our team ver­sus their team” sort of unin­formed auto-pilot sub­sti­tute for think­ing. Today on Pat White’s local show, a caller com­plained that ‘all Obama ever does is blame Pres­i­dent Bush for every­thing’ – and that Repub­li­cans NEVER do that sort of thing – Bush didn’t blame Clin­ton for caus­ing 9/11, for exam­ple(!!), and ol’ Pat AGREED and agreed… so I called in and reminded him that Reagan/Bush-41/Dole ran against ‘the mess they inher­ited’ from Carter for TWENTY YEARS!! – and that, by the by, Pres­i­dent Bush-43 inher­ited a $200 bil­lion bud­get SURPLUS from Clin­ton (go ahead and blame his pre­de­ces­sor for that, eh?), and left a huge, spi­ral­ing debt for Obama – and a rapidly wors­en­ing eco­nomic cri­sis – to boot.

    And Pat said “yup, that’s what politi­cians do” – and went to com­mer­cial.

    (Insert long string of obscen­i­ties and curses here)

    But indeed, at the end of the day, I DO believe that vot­ers will do the right thing – pro­vided that our pres­i­dent goes onto the offense and stays there.

    *I think the return of Plouffe was the lead­ing indi­ca­tor that this IS the plan – but maybe that’s wish­ful think­ing on my part

34. 

    Jeff Borden said on February 5th, 2010 at 7:05 pm

    Brian,

    I bow to no one in my fer­vent belief that the national Repub­li­can Party is a corpse rot­ting from the head down and that the GOP is not far away from an enor­mous reck­on­ing as the tides of change erode its aging, angry,entitled, race-baiting, homo­pho­bic, over­whelm­ingly white base. At some point, this party will need to con­front all the boogey­men (and boogey­women, I guess) it has cre­ated includ­ing immi­grants, minori­ties and gays if it wants to be viable out­side the old Con­fed­er­acy.

    But the vic­to­ries in the Vir­ginia and New Jer­sey guber­na­to­r­ial races, and the spe­cial sen­ate elec­tion in Mass­a­chut­setts, are mud­dy­ing the waters. These results were not an Obama back­lash, or a ref­er­en­dum on HRC, or tor­ture. They were con­tests where attrac­tive, hard-working Repub­li­can can­di­dates defeated poor Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­dates, par­tic­u­larly in Vir­ginia and Mass.

    Yet these vic­to­ries –and you will prob­a­bly see a frig­ging Repub­li­can win Obama’s old seat this fall in Illi­nois because the Dem can­di­date who won the pri­mary has some very heavy, very ugly bag­gage– sup­ply just enough jolts of elec­tricty for this corpse to remain ani­mated and mov­ing.

    Obama, but more prop­erly the Sen­ate and House Dems, need to quit pee­ing their pants every time the GOP stamps its feet and go on the offen­sive. The GOP lit­er­ally has no new ideas –I see even the idea of pri­va­tiz­ing Social Secu­rity is being floated by some of the right-wing braini­acs– and is dri­ven these days entirely by the three R’s: rage, resent­ment and racial fears.

    Mean­while, how­ever, we need to admit that a sub­stan­tial por­tion of our elec­torate. . .way more than we want to think about. . .wish we were back in the 1950s, when women were preg­nant and bare­foot, black peo­ple knew their place, immi­grants were white Euro­peans and Amer­ica was the only indus­trial power still stand­ing. These peo­ple are not going to go away soon, but they and their sad, out­dated beliefs even­tu­ally will fade from the scene. Until then, how­ever, they can con­tinue to do great dam­age to our repub­lic. And they are doing it.

35. 

    Jolene said on February 5th, 2010 at 7:07 pm

    HBO has a new biopic re Tem­ple Grandin star­ring Claire Danes to appear tomor­row evening. Very good review in the NYT.

    For other enter­tain­ment, check out Barack Obama’s Face­book page.

36. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    Jeff B., so data that con­tra­dicts your the­ory “mud­dies the water”?

    And what do you have against Muddy Waters?

    http://​www​.instantrimshot​.com/

    Thank you, thank you very much. Every­body have a quiet week­end with or with­out snow­poca­lypse.

37. 

    Kirk said on February 5th, 2010 at 8:22 pm

    Dex­ter,
    Looks to me like a pic­ture of a skier who is pos­ing as if she is ski­ing. It’s not as though she’s fel­lat­ing a ski pole. Maybe they should have shot her ski­ing in a hoop skirt.

38. 

    Dexter said on February 5th, 2010 at 8:29 pm

    yeah, Kirk…Mark Spitz is famous for a cheese­cake shot with all his medals and junk dan­gling, but S.I. posed him like this—under water.
    http://​tinyurl​.com/​y​emducd

    Remem­ber how Spitz influ­enced us back then? I and every other guy grew mus­taches , and they stayed with the cul­ture / look for a long, long time. I didn’t shave mine until 1988.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I’m cook­ing roasted brus­sel sprouts from a mem­ory of the recipes posted here at nn.c a while ago. This will be a great mem­ory test. “LIZA! Where’s my blasted slip­pers!”

39. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5th, 2010 at 9:12 pm

    350 oven, a driz­zle of olive oil, 40-45 min­utes — and some­one sug­gested sprin­kling pine nuts over ‘em as they roast, which i haven’t tried yet.

    Why trust mem­ory when you have the frail­ties of the inter­net?

    Y’know, I tried. I looked at the pic­ture, twice, and she has admirably mus­cu­lar thighs. I could develop an inap­pro­pri­ate inter­est in them if I really worked at it, but in gen­eral — she’s ski­ing down­hill. And smil­ing. C’mon, guys. It’s called, as I recall from Swiss Valley’s patient ski patrol coaches, the tuck posi­tion.

40. 

    Joe Kobiela said on February 5th, 2010 at 11:07 pm

    I get sports Ill,and the last thing I thought was that was a sex pose. Don’t the fem­anazi have any­thing bet­ter to do. Dex­ter, a bit dicey fly­ing the mid­west tonight, Clev­land was a treat. Sur­pris­ingly smooth above 3,000 but really bumpy down low.
    Pilot Joe

41. 

    Dexter said on February 5th, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    Joe…at least you don’t have to go to DCA or BWI and be turned back because that town is shut down under a poten­tial 30 inches of snow. My daugh­ter just returned from 10 days at Long Island, Bahamas, Clarence Town…her man took a vaca­tion from Net­Jets and flew a doc­tor down in the doc’s plane; she just said it was a “small jet” but didn’t say any more about it. Smooth skies.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I couldn’t remem­ber, so I did indeed look up the recipe for brus­sel sprouts…and I added hot sauce, pre-roasting, and ruined them. Damn me.

42. 

    Rana said on February 5th, 2010 at 11:49 pm

    The thing with the Lind­sey Vonn pic­ture isn’t that it’s hoochy, it’s that it’s a posed model shot that’s been tipped to make it look like she’s “ski­ing” (see the angle of her hair?) and she’s been all made up and fluffed and pret­ti­fied… instead of acknowl­edg­ing that she’s a phe­nom­e­nal, tough ath­lete, who deserves cov­er­age of her skills, not merely her looks.

    I mean, check out this far more typ­i­cal pic­ture of the woman, doing what she’s rightly become famous for:

    http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2008/0222/20080222__LindseyVonn~p1.jpg

    Why isn’t some­thing like that on the cover instead? I mean, it is sup­posed to be Sports Illus­trated, right? Not boobs, butt, and lip­stick illus­trated.

43. 

    MarkH said on February 6th, 2010 at 11:14 am

    Ever hear of the Swim­suit Issue, Rana?

44. 

    Rana said on February 6th, 2010 at 2:20 pm

    Heh. Of course. I never under­stood the logic of that one either.

    (I sup­pose we should be grate­ful that Vonn wasn’t posed ski­ing in a bikini.)

45. 

    MichaelG said on February 6th, 2010 at 5:32 pm

    I think sug­gest­ing there is some­thing sex­ual about the SI cover says more about those mak­ing the sug­ges­tions than it does about the pic­ture.

    Rana, I can see your point but I still have no objec­tion to the way SI posed the cover pic­ture. It seems to me that the idea was to give the read­ers a good look at a star rather than to present a ski­ing pic­ture.

    One of the swim­suit issue stars is doing pretty well in the NASCAR ARCA race which is grac­ing my tube right now.

46. 

    MichaelG said on February 6th, 2010 at 5:35 pm

    Jeff B, I’ve been say­ing for years just what you’ve pointed out about the Dems pee­ing their pants. The total lack of a spine any­where in the Demo­c­ra­tic party is one of the things that has me depressed about the state of the coun­try.

47. 

    nancy said on February 6th, 2010 at 5:55 pm

    I’m get­ting to the SI cover way, way late, but I don’t see any­thing hinky at all about that pic­ture. That’s what ski rac­ers do, and that’s how they dress, and the fact she’s turn­ing her head to smile is about the only thing about it that’s even remotely sex­ual. Very remote. How­ever, I get the idea peo­ple who would bring such a thing up don’t get smiled at dur­ing sex very often. Or any other time.

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