I work a lot for others during the week, much of it for little or no compensation, and in return I ask for only one thing: Saturday. Saturday is mine, for Eastern Market visits and maybe a little urban exploration (in the bland, non-lawbreaking sense), and that’s how I ended up at the Rust Belt Market last weekend, in search of pie. This guy’s pies, specifically. But it would be silly to just pop in and out for pie, so I took a stroll through the market, which is kind of an offline Etsy — vintage clothes, handmade this, hipster that. Very Detroit-as-new-Brooklyn. Not quite the epicenter, but there is no epicenter. Still, a good place to put your cultural feelers out and get a sense of the millennial/late-X generation in their salad-days prime. What are you into, young folks? What moves you?
Just this: Food and bikes.
I’m not a fan of the writer Caitlin Flanagan, but she made an observation a while back that’s stuck with me. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but indulge me: Imagine two young women — a housewife of the ’50s and her closest equivalent today. Quiz both on their attitudes about food and sex. You’ll find the ’50s housewife has many opinions about how you should live your sex life, but honestly doesn’t care what you eat — that’s your business. Whereas a 21st century woman is likely to be precisely the opposite. Are those eggs organic? Is your beef grass-fed? Those tomatoes — locally grown? But who you sleep with, and what you do in your bedroom? Who cares?
The good news about the foodie revolution is, the world is a much tastier place. You can get a better meal, or make yourself one, today than you could a generation ago, and certainly more so than in the ’50s. For all the concerns about pesticides and hormones and feedlots and the like, the fact remains that a stroll through even an unhip, pedestrian suburban grocery chain is a revelation of food unknown to even 25-year-old me, and I like to think I got in on this stuff early. My mother-in-law thought mangoes were green peppers. Today: Actual mangoes. A good thing.
The bad news is that it can get awfully tiresome, and I think we’ve gone down this road here before. When Anthony Bourdain says Alice Waters has a touch of the Khmer Rouge about her, it’s funny because it’s true. She’s the one who suggested $4-per-pound organic grapes should not be considered out of reach in any nation where poor people buy $100 sneakers, after all.
But getting back to the good news, it’s also given rise to a generation of young foodie entrepreneurs, many flying below the radar of the health inspectors, in food trucks and market stalls, trying to change the world with empanadas or bagels or whatever. The pie guy I visited was very much of this tradition, with his artistic tattoos — a chef’s knife on his forearm, among many — and his unexpected flavor combinations. Oh, and his T-shirt: “Fuck cupcakes. Eat pie.” I bought three slices at $2.50 per — salted caramel apple, peach mango (hold the green peppers) and blueberry lemon. Elsewhere in this market you could buy artisanal coffee and other snacky things; at the Eastern Market you could buy everything, including a nosh from my favorite new stop, the People’s Pierogi Collective (their slogan includes the word “revolutionary,” but I can’t remember it now).
Elsewhere in the market, I looked through a booth that sold make-your-own necklace systems, with various charms and suchlike. It seemed half the charms had bicycle themes — chains and chainrings, spokes, wheels. I see bike-themed tattoos everywhere, too, “fixie forever” on a muscular calf, or “fuck cars,” one word to a leg, something for motorists to see as you flash past them on your fixie. Bike culture is strong in Detroit, a flat city with many miles of eye-popping sights. But it’s crazy strong among younger people, who commute on sticker-covered, beat-looking-but-fast-moving bikes and lock them to any old thing with chains heavy enough to swing at crackheads, should the need arise.
Meanwhile, there is $70,000 in county parks money lying on the table in my community, waiting for the cities to pick it up and use it to buy mainly paint and signs to designate bike routes (not paths, mind you, just routes) through the five Pointes. I predict it will sit there until it grows mold and expires, because the police chiefs are fretting about the need for a traffic study first, and why can’t we all just ride on sidewalks, anyway? The suburbs always move behind the city. Although I hear everybody enjoys pie.
So, not much bloggage today, but may I say one thing? I’m extremely uncomfortable about much of the commentary I’m hearing about whether She-Who did or did not bang a University of Michigan basketball player when she was young and single and the calendar read 1987. I’m getting the strong feeling this Joe McGinniss book is a steaming pile of crap, and I don’t care how respectable he is. If the big talker you come up with is that she slept with a black guy when she was 23, you are only Kitty Kelley with a better publicist. The discussion I heard yesterday bugged me on several levels, including but not limited to noting it happened “just nine months before her marriage to Todd,” misuse of the word “fetish” and whoa, MANDINGO!!!!!
I’m disappointed in Garry Trudeau for making this a week’s worth of “Doonesbury” and I really, really resent the way it makes me feel like defending her. That said, some of the comments on this thread are sort of funny.
The first serious review of the book I’ve seen. Doesn’t sound like a must-read.
After 10, gotta go. Happy Thursday, all. The weekend is drawing nigh.
Bitter Scribe said on September 15, 2011 at 10:41 am
Don’t miss Nancy’s last link, which is of Janet Maslin’s review of the McGinniss book in the NYT. Does she ever take him and the book apart. Joe doesn’t have a lot of luck with writers named Janet.
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MichaelG said on September 15, 2011 at 10:54 am
I kinda liked “ricotta rump”.
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alice said on September 15, 2011 at 10:54 am
Whether $heWho hooked up or not is irrelevant, to me anyway. I do think it’s funny, considering she’s the darling of the whitest political group since the Klan.
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Julie Robinson said on September 15, 2011 at 11:02 am
While it’s hard to have too much sympathy for $P, I’d be pretty uncomfortable with a writer moving in next door for the sole purpose of writing an expose on myself and family. But then, I haven’t paraded that same self and family all over the country’s airwaves. It’s just a whole lotta ugliness.
Fort Wayne foodies were not able to keep open the most recent attempt at the genre, and Chuck and Bird’s closes this weekend. Put an expensive eatery on the south side the old Hartley’s location) and see if you can stay in business. However, Old Crown in going strong on the north side and features not only their own garden produce but also fresh roasted coffee. My hubby buys their Black Dog beans exclusively, and they do smell divine.
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LAMary said on September 15, 2011 at 11:05 am
Truly, I sort of admire her for using her local sportscaster credentials to go after Glenn Rice. It’s sort of awesome. Who knew? If McGinnis chose to publish that fact thinking it would alienate her base, that’s sad. The cocaine thing is no shock. Drugs are easy to get and used by very white middle class people in Alaska. It’s part of the whole frontier libertarian thing. I’m generalizing, I know, but the Alaskans I’ve met confirm that there is a tolerance for drugs and homosexuality there that doesn’t usually line up with the rest of the political profile.
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Sue said on September 15, 2011 at 11:06 am
I was wondering when the first Kitty Kelly comparison would come up. Not surprised it was Nancy, but it took longer than I thought.
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MaryRC said on September 15, 2011 at 11:11 am
I started writing a comment yesterday about why although I can’t stand $P, I don’t consider her sex life any of my business … but as always, Nancy said it better.
And like Nancy, all this lurid gossip only makes me feel sorry for the former half-Governor and yes, I resent it too.
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Bitter Scribe said on September 15, 2011 at 11:25 am
MaryRC: Exactly. What annoys me about the McGinniss book is that Palin gets to portray herself as a martyr once again, and this time, she won’t be completely full of it.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 15, 2011 at 11:34 am
Bitter Scribe – heh. Poor Joe. You also made me think of Rocky Horror: “Dammit, Janet!”
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Maggie Jochild said on September 15, 2011 at 11:38 am
Pie rules. And that buttermilk blueberry set all my taste buds jangling. I learned most of Mama’s recipes but was too impatient to absorb her trick for flaky, ethereal crusts, a lack I regret regularly.
I too do not give a crap about the Grifter’s marriage, family life, or sexual choices. It has nothing to do with why she is a disastrous choice as any kind of leader. However, part of her “platform” rests solidly on passing judgment about the sexual choices of others, enforcing her viewpoint by law. As such, she is asking to be outed in the same manner we would out a male in her position. A tricky distinction, and without having read the book, I doubt it’s being cleanly done in this case. John McPhee could pull it off, but then, he’d never select that topic.
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MarkH said on September 15, 2011 at 11:48 am
While I agree that Palin was asking for it, Bitter Scribe nails it. Lots more free TeeVee time!
EDIT — Also, what Nancy, LAMary and Janet Maslin said.
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Joe Kobiela said on September 15, 2011 at 11:52 am
To quote a great american (Homer J Simpson)PIE,ARGH,with drool.
Thanks for the quick touch on Mrs Palin, I thought about saying something about the book but figured I would get slammed, but for cripes sakes people, its the national enquierer, not really known for highend journalism.
Flew into Smyrna Tenn last night, and let me tell you what a pretty aproach over the lake,I think its Basset that lives down there, just really neat, and I did get out before the storms.
Pilot Joe
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LAMary said on September 15, 2011 at 11:56 am
Now here’s some sexy political news:
http://gawker.com/5840460/politician-allegedly-mixes-sexual-harassment-with-racial-slurs-farting
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Jeff Borden said on September 15, 2011 at 12:03 pm
I’ll stand by what I commented on yesterday about SheWho and Glen Rice. The idea of two attractive, single people having a good time together bothers me not at all. However, she presumably was working as a journalist at the Anchorage TV station covering the Great Alaskan Shootout and that’s just plain unethical behavior for a reporter. How else would she have gotten within shouting distance of Rice if not for her press pass? And, as noted yesterday, this simply illustrates to me that Mooselini lacks any sense of ethics or even simple professionalism.
My loathing for this horrible woman is worn on my sleeve. She has helped lower our already subterranean levels of political discussion even further and is the poster child for attractive but empty-headed politicians of which there are many in the GOP field at the moment. Our nation is poorer for her being a public figure.
That said, it sounds like McGinniss really blew it. There are a few salacious details, but the review in the NYT notes the paucity of actual sourcing and the dependence on rumors, hearsay and she said/he sad. And he was a fuckwad about it, too, leaking the transcript of another book about SheWho called “Blind Allegiance,” which was written by Mooselini’s former chief of staff, presumably to keep interest in his own Palin project high.
I’m tired of $P and wish she would just go away but as all these intelligent commentators have noted, McGinniss’ book will only add more oxygen to her world and portray her yet again as a rightwing Joan of Arc, beset on all sides by vicious attackers while she tries to do God’s work. And for that, I offer a hearty screw you, Joe.
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LAMary said on September 15, 2011 at 12:12 pm
I hope this puts $P in the same category as a Kardashian. Attractive, talentless reality show star, easy to ignore and fond of boffing basketball players. Definitely not presidential material. Mabye she’ll get her own line of animal print jumpsuits at Sears, but hers will be made from real animals she personally shot.
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Deborah said on September 15, 2011 at 12:12 pm
LA Mary, only in Cicero. Oy.
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Deborah said on September 15, 2011 at 12:18 pm
What $P does in the bedroom is no concern of mine. But her ilk seem to care a lot about what goes on in other people’s bedrooms, so they reap what they sow.
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Joe Kobiela said on September 15, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Jeff Borden,
What the hell I ever do to you? You must be one bitter dude. Never said anything positive about mrs Palin, just commented on the rag that published it. Get a life man.
Pilot Joe
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Jeff Borden said on September 15, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Good point, Deborah. I also should also have noted the utter hypocrisy of a woman who advocates for abstinence before marriage for others enjoying premarital sex, whether it was with Glen Rice or Tahd.
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Sue said on September 15, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Joe, I think he means Joe McG, the author of the nasty book.
We all love you here, in spite of the squabbling.
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Julie Robinson said on September 15, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Yes, it is the Enquirer and it does sound like this book is in that category. But remember, the Enquirer broke the John Edwards baby mama story.
Maggie, my grandmas’ (plural) secret to flaky pie crust was lard, and half-lard, half-butter was the shortening recipe for other baked goods of my childhood. Of course, heart disease was also the recipe for family cause-of-deaths. I seem to remember that lard was really cheap, maybe 39 cents a pound.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 15, 2011 at 12:45 pm
And, Joe the Pilot, we all do want your screws and rivets to be securely in place.
Hey, can we talk about the Salahis?
No, I don’t want to either. Nevermind. Back to SheWhoMustNotBeIgnored! Hey, that McGinniss is quite a reporter — went to a small town in America and found people who were willing, anonymously, to badmouth a former mayor. That had to take some real investigative chops. (You really need to read Janet Malcolm’s book to see what a tool the man is. I don’t blame him, once he got a nice advance for his second book after grabbing lightning in a bottle with his unexpected first best-seller, for not wanting to go back to late-night selectmen’s meetings and county council hearings, but . . . you don’t have to completely agree with Malcolm to say, with Susan Orleans, that you have to have a taste for betrayal to really thrive in that genre of writing.)
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Joe Kobiela said on September 15, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Jeff B,
If I was mistaken my mea culpa
Pilot Joe
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Dexter said on September 15, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Detroit is a city where a fixie would be a fun machine to ride, during some times of the day car traffic is light and inclines are minimal, so a fixie would work well. I can’t feel comfortable on one, as I was raised on coaster brake one speed bikes and got my first dérailleur w/ multi cogs when I was in my twenties. Fixed gear bikes, well, that is for young folks with tremendous concentration and uncanny ability to avoid everything in the way.
There’s a big fixie thing in Brooklyn, I’ve read, and now I know Detroit is with it too. Good deal.
The thick chains for security in Detroit? That made me laugh…I posted this here a few years ago, but I’ll re-cap: Detroit. 1996. Tigers baseball game, Tiger Stadium, Michigan and Trumbull at the Fisher Freeway.
I brought a 6-speed bike, good shape but a cheaper model, for a pre-game ride and then I chained the bicycle to a light post, using a Yale professional industrial lock I had an electrician order for me from a catalog. A big lock. I used a thick link chain which I personally had case hardened at work and had tested with professional lock cutters and had not been able to even scratch.
I felt comfortable as I chained my bike to the post on Plum Street, right beside the stadium, in full view of cops and utility workers all around the area.
Oh yeah, that’s right…slick as a whistle…without a trace…no chain, no lock, no bike, and nobody saw NUTHIN’ , man. I asked a utility worker if he had seen anything…he told me “I’m eating my lunch in this truck because if I lost eye contact with it for one minute it would be gone.” Well, I certainly couldn’t argue at that point.
This was when a halfway house was being used near there to relieve congestion in Wayne County jails…hell, I should not have been so naive.
Back to yesterday when I brought up the Scarlett Johansson leaked photos, I see nobody paid any attention to this at all here at nn.c. These photos really blew up big on the web, and even though the pictures were very tame, guys were going ballistic, posting comments on many sites, not crude, just sort of pitiful worship.
This confirms what I have known for years: Scarlett Johansson is the world’s most desirable woman. Hands down, she wins.
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Dexter said on September 15, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Perry’s Merck lie.
http://craigcrawford.com/2011/09/15/perry%E2%80%99s-merck-lie/
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Jakash said on September 15, 2011 at 1:53 pm
It’s interesting to me that, after looking at the National Enquirer bits from this new book, my conclusion was that it made me feel bad for the half-term snow-job. And I thought, wow, if I feel bad for her, how will this affect people that actually like her. Now, reading NN’s comment and some of the others here, I see that there are many others that had a similar reaction. This blog is where I learned the shorthand SheWho, $P, etc. If, even here, the book isn’t going to fare well, that really says something. (One thing it demonstrates, to me, is the open-mindedness of the left compared with the right, but I suppose others might disagree.)
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adrianne said on September 15, 2011 at 1:54 pm
My reax to McGinniss’ book (after reading fairly scathing review in the NYT) is … eeewwww. There’s something really creepy about him renting the house next door and recycling old (sexual) gossip about Sarah. No need to read this one!
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beb said on September 15, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Driving up Jefferson for supper in St. Clair Shores I mentioned to my wife that this would be a great place for a bike path since there is a couple miles long spectacular view of the lake. Might be hard to squeeze a lane in there as the current road is kind of narrow, but I think the bike path merits the cost.
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Jakash said on September 15, 2011 at 2:09 pm
There’s also a thriving bike scene here in Chicago, of course. Lots of bike lanes, the lakefront path, etc. The flatness is a wonderful attribute in that regard, if not with regard to interesting scenery. Gotta say, the fixed-gear bike idea doesn’t do anything for me, though I know it’s quite popular with the tattoo demographic these days. Earlier this year, they built a “protected” bike lane on a section of one street downtown. It places the bike lane to the other side of the parked cars and has little posts separating it from the main part of the street, for more safety. This short article has a photo.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-citys-first-protected-bike-lane-completed-20110725,0,7977663.story
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Judybusy said on September 15, 2011 at 2:24 pm
That market looks like great fun. I am going to a pie party this weekend, so the pie guy’s got me thinking about doing something different. OTH, I’ve got a busy weekend so I might just stick with the browned butter raspberry tart I was planning on.
Just saw this posted on FB and thought it was too good to pass up, as bikes have made the topic list.
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april glaspie said on September 15, 2011 at 2:44 pm
What Maggie said @10, and the Teabangers are racist through and through, no matter how much they love them founding fathers fighting the evil of slavery. It’s all about the hypocrisy. Is Joe MsGinniss even remotely reputable? Has anybody ever thought so? Coulda fooled me. Outside of In Cold Blood, The Onion Field, and The Executioner’s Song, is true crime actually literature? More like porn for wierdos. The guy is a tabloid sensationalist. What would anybody expect? Still, if you set yourself up as the censor of public morals, you probably should not have been whoofing coke and jocksniffing.
I don’t get the fixie idea either, but I’m frequently hauling 30 lbs. of groceries into serious wind. What’s really loony is riding with no freewheel. That is begging for a broken ankle, or a collision with an Escalade. And those are the fixier than thou. But hell, they all like to mutilate their bodies on purpose.
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Sue said on September 15, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Jackash and bike fans, apparently it’s unamerican to advocate for bike paths when bridges are falling apart.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/15/319817/coburn-holds-faa-bill-hostage-claiming-trees-and-bike-paths-pose-%E2%80%98an-indefensible-threat-against-public-safety%E2%80%99/
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april glaspie said on September 15, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Bikes are part of a Commoniss plot.
I guess Coburn makes a really good argument for Tom Coburn as the biggest threat to national security other than bikes.
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Judybusy said on September 15, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Wow, Sue that is some serious jackassery! Love the info at the bottom that the Republicans are also holding up FEMA funding. Sorry, NE hurricane victims, you’ll just haveto hang tight a little while longer….
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Sue said on September 15, 2011 at 3:19 pm
‘That said, some of the comments on this thread are sort of funny’
Sort of? That’s a clever bunch over there. And we could have used the ‘pi’ reference to wrap everything together in our signature way. You should invite a few over.
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MichaelG said on September 15, 2011 at 4:14 pm
I don’t care either about La Palin and with whom she may share sheets. Tahd might though.
I don’t know, Dexter. I’m kinda of a Monica Bellucci guy myself.
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coozledad said on September 15, 2011 at 4:14 pm
We were just over in Durham today, definitely a foodie town. Also full of queers: working at restaurants, owning restaurants, eating at restaurants and paying taxes. Utterly unlike out here at sabbathday land, where there’s hundreds of churches within walking distance of another church and not a goddamn thing else for miles. Not.Paying.Taxes.
The Republicans in the legislature here want to go back to the down-low and the ham mac at the Golden Corral. Fuck them with a ranch dressing ladle.
I’m beginning to think that when you eat that Southern fried crap it makes your brain insulin resistant. Hell, my relatives started picking at the daisies on the quilt before they even strapped them to their deathbeds.
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Linda said on September 15, 2011 at 4:52 pm
I don’t give a fig re: she-who’s previous sex life. But the Caitlin Flanagan quote is baloney on the face of it. OF COURSE people in the olden days judged you by your food as well as your sex. Ask how many whispers there would have been about somebody in my old Catholic neighborhood if they were seen eating a hot dog on Friday–or a Hasidic neighborhood if they were seen eating shrimp any time. She is still an ignoramus.
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april glaspie said on September 15, 2011 at 4:54 pm
Aren’t this week’s Doonesbury’s more a satiric comment on the unadulterated bullshit spin that spews from FoxNews than about Palin?
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Hattie said on September 15, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I love this. The house where my mother lived is just up the street from Chez Panisse, Alice Walker’s restaurant in Berkeley. She snarled a lot about the foodies, bike riders and other Yuppie manifestations (she walked and took the bus). She did not mind being cranky and unpopular and not into selling herself. Another generation, for sure.
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paddyo' said on September 15, 2011 at 5:08 pm
I second April on Maggie @10’s $P remarks . . . which, BTW, contain my fave line of today’s comments:
John McPhee could pull it off, but then, he’d never select that topic.
Speaking of Seward’s Folly (McPhee, of course, wrote that classic book about Alaska, Coming Into The Country), I gotta say my favorite detail from what’s been excerpted from the McGinnis treatise so far is that Sarah and Todd supposedly snorted coke off . . . an oil drum.
How very, very Alaskan of them! After salmon, brown bears, caribou, moose and snow machines, is there anything more ubiquitous Up Yonder?
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alex said on September 15, 2011 at 5:48 pm
Home from the hospital! Yay!
Hey, Nance, our little old farmer’s market has some urban hipness going on these days as well. I like these guys’ pies. They come baked inside their own cool jar.
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april glaspie said on September 15, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Y’all should do yourselves a favor and check the market menus at Alex’s pie link. Lot of imagination. I’d buy a jam and marmalade sampler for sure, and caramels.
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MichaelG said on September 15, 2011 at 6:38 pm
Hattie, I lived in that neighborhood many years ago. In the ’70s it was Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. Chez was two doors or so down from the corner of Shattuck and Vine. A few years later I had a girlfriend who worked at Chez. Across Shattuck was the Cheese Board, the Pig by the Tail Charcuterie and the produce store. Can’t remember the name. Across Vine was Cocolat, Sal’s Deli and Lenny’s meats. That was Leonardo d’Meatchi, butcher to the gods. Around the corner was the very first Peet’s coffee, then operated by Alfred Peet hisself. Also the Egg Shop and Apple Press. Great omelets. There was a Safeway, a Lucky’s and the Co-op, that great bastion of politically correct librulism. Virginia bakery was down Shattuck and there was a nice collection of other restaurants and markets. It was a wonderful place to live in those days. It also didn’t hurt that I was young and in love.
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LAMary said on September 15, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Glad you’re home, Alex. Hospitals aren’t much fun.
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Maggie Jochild said on September 15, 2011 at 7:00 pm
MichaelG, I loved the Berkeley Co-ops so much I would sometimes drive across the bridge from SF to shop there in the early 1980s. I’m trying to remember the name of that little gelato place nearby, on Vine?, run by two lesbians. Aphrodisiacal.
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Rana said on September 15, 2011 at 7:09 pm
Welcome back, Alex!
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coozledad said on September 15, 2011 at 7:43 pm
There’s Lesbian owned Gelato shop in Durham: Francesca’s. A friend of ours used to call it Gelato Mighty Damn.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 15, 2011 at 8:38 pm
Second MichaelG’s preference.
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brian stouder said on September 15, 2011 at 10:26 pm
A little news regarding the Omnibus Lecture Series at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne: The young folks and I were invited out to the university’s Support Services building, so that we could offer them our perspective on that marvelous series.
The idea is that, with their 100th speaker coming up at the end of this season, they wanted to highlight how folks who attend the events have been affected. Presumeably, whatever makes it past the cutting room floor will turn up on their big screens in the prelude to Governor Mitch’s lecture, the better to encourage others to offer their reactions, too.
So – we’ll see how that turns out(!). I think our session went reasonably well, although Shelby and I learned that carrying on a conversation while a camera sits off to your left is harder than it looks (Grant had band paractice all this week, and in any event, said he didn’t want to “look like a dork” to his friends, so he was off the hook this evening)
Anyway, my friends at IPFW wouldn’t tell me who their 100th speaker will be, other than that it won’t be the President of the United States.
Presumably the 100th speaker will be very, very cool, considering that past Omnibus speakers have included a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, amongst many other notable authors and professors and actors and directors
edit: looking at the news/gossip today – can we now add “She’s touring with Journey” to the lexicon, as the female counterpart to “He’s hiking the Appalachian Trail”?
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MarkH said on September 15, 2011 at 10:52 pm
Not so sure, Brian, because the former has some truth, while the latter didn’t.
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Crazycatlady said on September 15, 2011 at 10:56 pm
Nancy, Have you biked the Dequindre Cut?? I hear it’s spectacular.
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moe99 said on September 15, 2011 at 11:00 pm
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/gordon-ramsays-dwarf-porn-double-percy-foster-dies-in-badger-den/story-e6frf7jx-1226137921668
Can we add this to the headline hall of fame?
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Dexter said on September 16, 2011 at 2:55 am
I ran the AC so much this summer I am refusing to kick on the heat now that it’s pretty cold in here now. To me, it feels damn good to be cold a little.
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Dorothy said on September 16, 2011 at 5:28 am
It’s much too soon to be this cold. I’d go back to bed but I might as well shower and get to work real early. *%@$^! charlie horse that knocked me out of bed an hour ago!
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alex said on September 16, 2011 at 7:34 am
Wow, moe—I was expecting to read that Gordon Ramsay’s dwarf porn double was eaten alive by badgers. Alas, he was just a sad sack who evidently wanted to end it all. (Sorry for the spoiler, folks.)
What a fascinating story, though. I can fathom dwarf porn and I can fathom celebrity lookalike porn, but is there really a niche that melds both genres?
My English lit neurons are firing again thanks to this story. I’m recalling the meeting of Gulliver and the giant teen-aged girl named Glumdalclitch who used him as a dildo. O, for the time when satire was funnier than real life.
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Bitter Scribe said on September 16, 2011 at 9:55 am
Dorothy, try multivitamins.
Seriously. My podiatrist recommended them after I was nearly driven mad by cramping in my feet and calves at night, especially after workouts. A Centrum a day, and I’ve barely had a charlie horse since.
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MichaelG said on September 16, 2011 at 10:11 am
So happy to have you back, Alex. You know the old saying, “Find a niche and fill it.”
Maggie, by the ’80’s I was living in SF myself. I’m not familiar with the gelato shop.
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Dexter said on September 16, 2011 at 10:29 am
Dorothy, I know the feeling. If I stretch a little before rising out of bed, I’ll get a charlie horse like that. Four years ago I was on a blood pressure med that caused cramping charlie horses at any minute. I was at a friend’s party and I got up out of my chair and the people there thought I was having a seizure or a stroke or something. I just collapsed and writhed in pain for a minute. It’s a not-fun way to start the day.
After my second public display of agony I had had enough and the doc sent me off to be scanned and wanded, probed and poked, tested and tapped. It was that damn medicine . It had a diuretic effect and was dehydrating my muscles. Great. I have erased the name of that stuff from my memory banks.
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Maggie Jochild said on September 16, 2011 at 11:30 am
Statins cause those kinds of cramps in some people, and sure did for me. I eventually switched to a non-flushing niacin which worked just as well and the cramps went away.
I find it fascinating that some folks (even these remoras) would equate treating MS with battling addiction. I guess all drugs are pharmaceutical solutions to some ailment, physical or social. And I am now gladly adding the new phrase of “touring with Journey”. The things I learn here. Mighty Damn Gelato of you all!
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