Every so often, I tell our Wayne State students that everything you need to know about writing an engaging feature story can be learned by reading Detroitblog. I think I’m going to be doing it again soon.
I have to leave and run my car off to the broken-windshield place. Until I get back and get sufficiently caffeinated, enjoy. I promise: You will.
jcburns said on March 31, 2010 at 9:21 am
Broken windshield place? That doesn’t sound good. Unless you’re trying to buy a broken windshield for some sort of conceptual art piece.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 31, 2010 at 9:28 am
Another reminder that John Waters and David Lynch are documentary filmmakers.
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nancy said on March 31, 2010 at 9:29 am
Not to worry. It’s only a crack.
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John said on March 31, 2010 at 9:39 am
Jeff (TMMO), you are so right. Drop Jay Thunderbolt and his crew in Baltimore and you have the makings of a John Waters’ Classic!
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judybusy said on March 31, 2010 at 9:57 am
Thanks, Nancy! Now I’m all set to get to work–I know this line will provide quiet chuckles all day: “I make my money off of boobs, so the breast cancer thing, coughing up a couple bucks seemed like good karma to me.”
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Dorothy said on March 31, 2010 at 10:20 am
Summer’s skin color matches the wood paneling. Ick! Or maybe she’s turned a weird shade of yellow from all the cigarette smoke, too, just like the walls.
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Julie Robinson said on March 31, 2010 at 10:43 am
And is that yellow stuff on the carpet fungus?
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prospero said on March 31, 2010 at 11:25 am
I actually broke a windshield with my head once. But I suppose that’s fairly apparent. Stone cold sober, trying to prevent a hopeless drunk guy from killing somebody. But what’s Michael Steele’s excuse?
When Mr. Steele took over the committee last year, it had $22 million in cash on hand. This month, records show, that amount is $9.46 million. .
Not all Republicans are moralistic spoilsports. They like to have a good time at lowlife sex clubs called Voyeur as much as the next guy, so long as you aren’t. I swear, this guy (or his posse, since you know he’s OG) has jacked the GOP. Next stop: Club Thunderbolt, n’est-ce-pas?
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John said on March 31, 2010 at 11:33 am
My daily sandwich shop has made CNN. The Old Mystic General Store is the blue building on the left in the video. The proprietress, Finny, was in early this morning trying to clean up but I’m guessing that it will be next week before she reopens.
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MichaelG said on March 31, 2010 at 11:40 am
I almost didn’t click figuring it would be a link to the Petal Pushers about whom I had read the other day. Glad I did. It’s a great story.
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LAMary said on March 31, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Hey, John, I know Mystic. And Stonington. The ex’s grandmother had one of those huge Victorians on Elm Street in Westerly. We used to go the the Knick to hear Roomful of Blues. Were you in that area 25-30 years ago?
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John said on March 31, 2010 at 1:05 pm
The Knickerbocker recently reopened and Roomful of Blues still play there. We moved to here in the summer of 1987 so I’m guessing that we did not cross paths. But once again, LAMary comes through with her extraordinary life experiences.
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Scout said on March 31, 2010 at 1:16 pm
This guy’s life would make a great movie. What a character! I love how he expresses himself… one of my favorites (plus the set-up):
>Weirdest of all are the framed certificates on the wall from the Republican Congressional Committee’s Business Advisory Council, naming Thunderbolt as an honorary co-chair and lauding his business acumen. One is signed by Newt Gingrich, the other by Tom DeLay.
He thinks they’re tied to a breast-cancer fundraiser he attends and donates to. “I make my money off of boobs, so the breast cancer thing, coughing up a couple bucks seemed like good karma to me,” he says. “So I happened to go to their breast cancer thing, I got invited and for some odd reason they put me at a table with a bunch of Republicans. I never sent them a dime but they sure do like to send me shit.” <
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LAMary said on March 31, 2010 at 1:22 pm
I was last in Westerly in 1990 showing off the new baby to the great grandmother. The baby is now 6’3″.
I saw this on the Knickerbocker website:
“Many great names have played The Knick over the years: Coleman Hawkins, Big Joe Turner, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Roy Brown, Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Nicholas, and of course, the extremely hot and talent-laden, Roomful of Blues.”
I was there for Big Joe Turner, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and the unmentioned Jr. Walker and the All Stars. As well as at least a dozen Roomful of Blues nights. You could get killed by flying feet there. People danced in a very serious way.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 31, 2010 at 1:32 pm
It’s LAMary’s world, and we’re all just paying user fees.
(But most of us are marked “uncollectable: past due.”)
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LAMary said on March 31, 2010 at 2:16 pm
You know what it is? I was lucky enough to have a good friend tell me to say “yes” to things more often back when I was eighteen and sullen. He’s still my best friend and we recently discussed this advice and if we want our own kids to follow it. I say yes, I do. With any luck I’ve equipped them with the tools to make it work.
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nancy said on March 31, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Having read my Flannery O’Connor, I try not to stereotype good country people, really I do, but when I read this…
A member of the Hutaree militia charged with federal crimes was upset because she thought that President Barack Obama had signed into law this month a bill would spend $20 billion to help the terrorist group Hamas settle in the U.S.
There was never any such legislation, but Tina Stone believed it was the truth, according to her Facebook account.
…it’s hard not to.
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Rana said on March 31, 2010 at 2:31 pm
That’s a great article – it reads almost like a short story, with all of the character details.
I am amused by the petty wrassling in the comments, too.
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brian stouder said on March 31, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Didja notice that the aptly named Stone woman cannot even keep her delusions straight? The Freep story reports that the fake e-mail blast darkly claims that “$20 million” was appropriated for Hamas, and she changed that to $20 billion!
Rana, I skimmed the comments and my eyes quickly glazed over. The “hot potato” game there, regarding who owns these ridiculous terrorists, is hardly any more elevated on the radio airwaves and cable news shows.
The Flying Monkeys of the Rightwing airwaves are busily trying to prop up a strawman argument that they’re Shocked! Shocked! that anyone would think that the lunatic fringe has been whipped into a bloodlust by ANYTHING they may have heard from Fox or Rush or Sean or Glen.
And yet, these are the same charlatans that positively foamed at the mouth over ACORN and Rev Wright and birth certificates; they would have us believe that any fair-minded observer would have to agree that our future president was palling around with TERRORISTS back in the day, when he wasn’t sittin’ in his darkie church having his deep-seat HATRED for America carefully honed by his preacher-man, by God!!
Pay no attention to the morons and hate mongers at the Tea Party rallies! THEY don’t represent “the REAL Tea Partiers”, any more than President Obama represents “the REAL America”….except I must have missed where any of these over-paid Right Wing Flying Monkey sons of bitches ever specifically and unequivocally repudiated stylized blood-dripping anti-Obama signs (Obama as Joker leaps to mind), or all those “Water the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots” signs, or the proudly intimidating brandishing of fire-arms at public protests, or the “Death Panel” big-lie, or the spitting, red-faced hysterical anger constantly on display.
And I don’t recall any fine distinctions being drawn by the lip-flappers between “the Left” and the folks who carried signs calling Bush Hitler back in the day, for example.
But, oh no no!! These lunatics with fantasies about starting another fratricidal civil war have NOTHING!! NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the daily drumbeat of vitriol and stage-whispered accusations of unAmerican, disloyal, subversive, revolutionary interlopers at the pinnacle of American political power.
These heavily armed morons in the woods are self-actuated and independently acting on whatever delusions they dreamed up themselves. Never mind about that guy who drove to Washington DC and died trying to shoot his way into the Pentagon.
Disregard the nonviolent Lu-Lus who infiltrated a United States Senator’s office in Louisiana so as to sabotage her phone lines.
Pay no attention to the guy who flew his goddamned airplane into a busy IRS office in Texas during the work day.
These things happen all the time, and have nothing to do with the increasingly shrill invectve from the Right, for example. Hell no – no sireee, nope!
Look away! Look away! Look away, Main Stream land
PS – I’d never really looked at the lyrics of “Dixie”. This website offers several versions of the song –
http://www.countrygoldusa.com/dixie.asp
and their first one has this interesting verse:
Old Missus marry Will, the weaver,
William was a gay deceiver
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
and then after the refrain we come to
His face was sharp as a butcher’s cleaver
But that did not seem to grieve her
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
Old Missus acted the foolish part
And died for a man that broke her heart
Look away! Look away!
Look away! Dixie Land.
Ain’t it always that way?! The poor crackers ALWAYS played the fool for the gay deceivers!
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basset said on April 1, 2010 at 12:50 am
I remember hearing an alternate version as a mere youth in Martin County:
“Way down south in the land of traitors
Rattlesnakes and alligators
Run away, run away, run away, Dixieland…”
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John said on April 1, 2010 at 8:02 am
When I grew up in Virginia (the Sixties), they still stood up when Dixie was played.
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