For my money, the story of the day is the discovery of Richard III’s corpse under a parking lot in Leicester, England. That the rudely stamped king, whose (literary) last words are among the most famous in Shakespeare’s canon — “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” — should end up with thousands of their modern equivalents parked on his bones for years upon years? That’s what you call irony.
I’m the least-sensitive person in the world when it comes to human remains. Treat them with respect, surely. Treat them according to the wishes of the deceased and survivors, yes. But if someone wants to be carved up for dog food? No problemo, dude — once the lights go out, we’re mainly a waste-disposal problem. But I hope Richard III gets a comfortable place with a proper marker. He got one of the great plays, and I’ve always counted him among the top two or three villains on my bookshelves.
I’m watching Alex Gibney’s latest film, which debuted on HBO Monday night — “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God.” It’s about priestly sex abuse, of course, a story that no matter how many times it’s told, only becomes more awful to hear. The crux of this narrative is about a long-time abuser at a residential school for the deaf in Wisconsin, and the details are both uniquely horrible and entirely, depressingly familiar — the church’s dithering and inaction that allowed offenders to operate for years. One of the many villains is the Pope himself, whose office handled all these cases and, again, did little to punish, deliver to secular justice, or even take seriously many of them.
A worldwide, decades-long criminal conspiracy. That will never be punished.
While we’re tearing down the once-elevated, let’s finish with this snarky riposte to that Paul Harvey “so God made a farmer” commercial at the Super Bowl:
God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn and call his state senator to complain about expensive new slurry pit legislation, spend all day with his ag lobby board strategizing about more laws against private raw milk sales, take that state senator out for steak and wine at dinner, and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board at the school he wants to eliminate with a voucher program.” So God made a farmer.
Oh, and you Beyoncé haters out there? Silence! She was fierce. One of my Facebook network was whining about how the rich cultural tradition of New Orleans was ignored, blah blah blah. I say, you want a show? Hire a show woman. And we got ourselves a show, even though the singing was a little breathy. Eh, happens.
Tuesday. This week is feeling long already.
Brandon said on February 5, 2013 at 1:19 am
Oh, and you Beyoncé haters out there? Silence! She was fierce.
Madonna was better, especially with the production and costumes.
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Dexter said on February 5, 2013 at 3:19 am
I didn’t eat anything at my little Superbowl party until halftime, so when I was getting my plate of wings and salsa and queso and chips and my Coca-Cola, I missed the first half of Beyonce’s show. She was standing on a giant LED screen and it tilted upward at one point to create those crazy visuals.
She’s been a great show-woman for years and I have no complaints, and I am grateful we didn’t have to watch a Bieber or One Direction show.
I would have simply preferred a New Orleans traditional show with horns and vocals, but I recognize this wasn’t a New Orleans show; it was an NFL presentation. Some pre-game shows showed some folks eating beignets and CBS showed us a clip about gumbo (you can never leave the roux, not to answer the phone, not to answer the phone, not nothin’) but once the game started the venue became unimportant.
I have really enjoyed many halftimes, and Prince playing ‘Purple Rain’ in the rain, actually, was the best ever.
But, even though I did see half of Beyonce’s show…meh.
I watch TCM “31 Days of Oscar” as much as I can, and I took a break from sports and watched “Cool Hand Luke” and “Bullitt” last night (this morning actually) . I only got up once, to get a banana from the kitchen, and I missed the first couple minutes of the Bullitt car chase in San Francisco.
I was an eighteen year old kid when Bullitt was shown on the big Holiday Theater screen in Fort Wayne, and I left that theater all fired up, and my 1963 Ford Galaxie 500 became a Ford Mustang GT 390 and I roared down Clinton Street looking for a Dodge Charger RT/440 to run off the road. Maybe I took Walter Mitty a bit too seriously. 🙂
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5, 2013 at 6:06 am
What do people mean, “rich cultural traditions of New Orleans ignored”? Beyonce kept removing items of clothing and throwing them into the crowd.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5, 2013 at 6:09 am
Oh, and if you haven’t seen the Ian McKellen “updated” version on film of “Richard III,” you really should. Set in a 1930s England where Oswald Moseley took over the sceptered isle with his Brownshirts, and Richard is Oswald. And one of the best public urinal scenes ever.
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Linda said on February 5, 2013 at 7:14 am
JTMMO:
Yeah, Beyonce kept stripping, but did anybody throw beads? No, so I guess that’s why it was not a N.O. cultural experience. Me, I liked her show.
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Suzanne said on February 5, 2013 at 7:37 am
My husband loved the farmer commercial; I thought it a bit much, using God to sell trucks. But then, in today’s world, God really is just another commodity, isn’t he?
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coozledad said on February 5, 2013 at 7:53 am
There’s something to be said for the days when political factions took to the field and clubbed each other into steaming chunks with broadswords. At least I want to see that version of the Lindsey Graham/Chuck Hagel exchange*.
I don’t care what happens to my corpse. I used to think it would be nice to be part of some creepy mausoleum venture. A few of the Dukes are in a basement level crypt in the university chapel. It has thick windows at ground level that admit a soft violet light.
Their slightly larger than life statues show absolutely no sign of the Victor Noir treatment, so shitloads of money doesn’t get you everything.
Buck Duke’s outdoor statue did get its face ridden decades after his death, but it was only for the school humor magazine.
*And what was Lindsey sitting on during that hearing?
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basset said on February 5, 2013 at 8:18 am
I tried to will my corpse to the IU medical school, but they wouldn’t take it, too fat – maybe the rules have changed in the past few years but at the time they would only accept cadavers of 200 lb or less. Maybe I can fertilize our tomatoes or something.
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Scout said on February 5, 2013 at 8:50 am
The partner of someone I know requested his cremains be divided into some number of little vials and given to each of his friends to scatter anywhere they wished. Little pieces of him are now all over the world. I kind of liked that idea but it probably only works well if you die young enough to have friends who still do that kind of traveling.
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Charlotte said on February 5, 2013 at 9:17 am
Love the sendup of that old f*cker Paul Harvey — the photos were lovely in that ad, but please — especially out here where all the ranchers rail against the gummint while filling up on subsidized ranch diesel, running their stock on public land, and filing for government money when the weather inevitably turns bad.
The R3 story is wonderful — now I wonder if they can find the missing princes?
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Julie Robinson said on February 5, 2013 at 9:32 am
This week is feeling long; in fact yesterday seemed like a whole week all by itself.
They played football Sunday night? I spent the early evening listening to Broadway cast recordings and making jewelry. Really enjoyed myself. Hubby was watching old Star Treks on Hulu, and after that we watched the first episode of House of Cards on Netflix. Has anyone else seen it? (The new American remake with Kevin Spacey.) Mixed emotions here and I’m not sure if we’ll watch any more episodes.
Here’s the thing about that Paul Harvey commercial; in his generation that was what a farmer did. Both sets of my grandparents were farmers, and they lived that life of getting up early, working all day, making patches to farm equipment with baling wire, never being able to leave for more than 12 hours because the cows need to be milked on a regular schedule.*
It’s the current generation of farmers, engaged in monoculture, probably corn, that lives the way the snarker imagines. But there is yet a new group rising that rejects Monsanto’s genetically engineered Roundup ready seed corn. They want to return to the small, diverse farm of my grandparents’ day, raising many different crops, using crop rotation instead of chemicals, having a few dairy cows but also chickens and goats and maybe even a pig or two. Pigs are an incredibly efficient way to turn table scraps into protein.
*That was just the men. The women spent their days preparing every meal from scratch, gardening and canning, caring for the chickens and churning the butter (so they’d have butter and egg money to trade for items at the mercantile). They were also sewing the clothing and washing it without benefit of the miracles of laundry equipment we have today. Of course they were doing all this while pregnant, nursing, and caring for a large number of children.
I am completely awed and humbled by the lives of my grandparents. All second-generation Americans, their own children were sent to college and given every opportunity for life beyond the farm. They lived the immigrants’ dream.
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Chris in Iowa said on February 5, 2013 at 9:37 am
OK, I have to say something about the farm criticisms I’m reading from people who:
A. Presumably like to eat AND not spend an entire week’s pay to buy their vittles.
B. Are unlikely unwilling — or maybe don’t know how — to grow and raise their own food.
Are some of the stereotypes being shared here true about some farmers? Yes.
But it is no more accurate to assume all of these things are true about every farmer than it is to assume all of the crazy stuff that gets said about Barack Obama is true.
I know plenty of farmers who work pretty hard at jobs that I wouldn’t want to do. They are closer to how farmers were portrayed in the Dodge commercial than they are to some of the comments I’ve read here. Generalizations are an ugly thing regardless of which side of the political spectrum is making them.
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Prospero said on February 5, 2013 at 9:38 am
Richard III, “that bottled spider, that foul bunchbacked toad” and modern day steeds? Reminds me of Donny’s and his brothers’ psychedelic foray:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXO7-aAzUO4
As Queen Meg says of Richard:
Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog,
Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity
The slave of nature and the son of hell,
Thou slander of thy heavy mother’s womb,
Thou loathèd issue of thy father’s loins,
Thou rag of honor, thou detested—
There is a Richard III Society (England, after all) that has claimed for years that Shakes invented much of Richard’s villainy and physical deformity to suck up to Elizabeth. Now the reports indicate scoliosis and a withered arm as indicators in deciding this skeleton is indeed the last Plantagenet king, along with the vicious sword wounds. The War of the Roses and the familial Plantagenet slaughter were recent enough history when the play was written that there were still festering political wounds.
Nobody in sight, on the horizon, is likely to come remotely close to the greatness of Prince’s halftime, but as long as Westerberg lives and breathes, I’m hoping for a Replacements reunion at the Super Bowl. That could be funny. No matter who they invite these days, I’m always thankful there is no more of that Up With America bullshinola. Birth of the new GOP populism.
I thought immediately of the idiocy of corn ethanol subsidies and agrarian welfare when I heard the farm commercial yesterday. The other side of the story. Conflating modern American agribidness with Grant Wood family farming is a cheap redneck trick common in political propaganda.
I was surprised by Bey’s (what her friends call her these days, apparently) voice, but the dancing? Looked like the sort of “Hey caboose, we’re on the loose” titty-bar dirty dancing thang that HS cheerleaders do, that get fundagelicals all dithered and sputtering, to me.
*And what was Lindsey sitting on during that hearing? A wet spot on his velvet Blue Boy pants? And the murdered Princes are in a butt of malmsey. Clarence’s body was found and is buried in Tewksbury with head intact, which gives credence to the drowning by wine story.
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Charlotte said on February 5, 2013 at 9:41 am
One of the things that bugged me about the original ad was that it was entirely focussed on Big Ag farming — all those photos of bare fields and guys on huge machines. Our family farm is out in Illinois farm country (mostly pasture and horses, a few fields in corn/beans — although my aunt is moving into growing hay since it’s gotten so expensive to buy), so I grew up around that kind of farming. The ad was aimed at those guys — not at my hippie farmer friends who are trying to move back to a more diversified form of farming, who are fighting against GMOs and a world drenched in RoundUp, and who would like to see the end of CAFOs. It was one of the things that pissed me off — don’t go romanticizing a way of life that yes, requires hard work, but also is deeply damaging.
But then again, they are trying to sell oversized trucks to suburbanites, so maybe it fits.
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nancy said on February 5, 2013 at 9:42 am
Very true, Chris and Julie. In my lifetime I’ve seen both models of farming — the monoculture of Indiana and the 19th-century model of urban Detroit. However, you’d have to be blind and deaf not to notice the cognitive dissonance coming from the ag sector, and I don’t think it’s a terrible sin to point it out.
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LAMary said on February 5, 2013 at 9:47 am
When I talk to the people at the farmers’ market who drove four or five hours to get to LA with their produce I’ve not nothing but respect. They aren’t the guys growing the corn that seems to go into everything, including gas tanks.
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Julie Robinson said on February 5, 2013 at 9:48 am
Oh, absolutely yes. The cousin who owns the family farm in Iowa now only grows corn. No other crops, and no livestock, as those took up too much daily time and precluded his regular trips to Vegas. I also suspect the brain cells of our current Congressman have been damaged by too much exposure to pesticides. And of course it was a manipulative evocation of a simpler time. It was an advertisement.
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Bitter Scribe said on February 5, 2013 at 10:08 am
I wish I had HBO so I could see that documentary. One of the most outrageous things I read about it was how the Church only became indignant when abusive priests began “misusing” the sacraments. One guy in particular would “absolve” a 16-year-old boy of his “sins” after raping him. For some reason that’s what stuck in the craw of his ecclesiastical superiors, not the rape itself.
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brian stouder said on February 5, 2013 at 10:25 am
I request permission to revise and extend my remarks, with regard to romantic never-never land political opinion; the allure of old times; and – for a kicker, Abraham Lincoln may not be a vampire slayer, but I think it was Abe who literally (literally) slew Richard Mourdock (who in fact DOES look a lot like a vampire)
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susan said on February 5, 2013 at 10:30 am
Regarding the Richard III “remains,” I’ll go with Charlotte Higgins, which is to say, some skepticism is in order:
I’m not saying it’s not good fun, and indeed mildly interesting, that the remains of the last Plantagenet king have apparently been found. (We should note that the bone evidence is clearly circumstantial – a skeleton with curvature of the spine and battle injuries does not a king make, though I can’t claim to know enough about DNA evidence to understand what the margin of error is here, particularly before the findings have been published in a peer-reviewed journal rather than just announced in a press conference.)
I’m just suggesting that it’s rather a limited avenue of historical research that seems to have much to do with the dread word “impact” – in which academics are supposed to show that their work has “real-world” effects, whatever that might mean, though often interpreted to include public recognition and media coverage. The affair as a whole – notwithstanding the undoubted integrity, skill and commitment of the individuals at work – seems to me to have been managed in a way that is more about fulfilling the dead-eyed needs of the Research Excellence Framework (the highly contentious new scheme for assessing university research) than with pursuing a genuinely intellectual field of enquiry …[snip]…
Watching the press conference on TV, I’m afraid (even though it was designed for attendance for people just like me) give me the chills. Yes, it raises awareness of the University of Leicester. Yes, it shows people the work of archaeologists and other experts, and draw interested people in to the discipline (not least potential students). Yes, no doubt it will help the department secure funding (which is surely what all the jamboree was about, in the end). All of that is fine. But it’s not really history, not in any meaningful sense.
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Deborah said on February 5, 2013 at 10:45 am
Both of my parents grew up on farms. My mother’s childhood home had no indoor plumbing, even when we visited when I was a kid we used the outhouse, it creeped me out. My grandfather on my father’s side was a lousy farmer, he was a musician at heart, traveled around performing and eventually lost the farm, which was given to them by my grandmother’s parents. Both sets of my grandparents were fairly old as I remember them because my parents married and had children late for the standard of those days. So I never saw them working long hard days.
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adrianne said on February 5, 2013 at 10:46 am
Beyonce rocked! The sniffing naysayers need to get a life. Wretched excess DEFINES the halftime show at the Superbowl, and I enjoyed the gals of Destiny’s Child being catapulted onto the stage.
After the “God made a farmer” commercial, David’s only comment: “What product are they trying to sell?”
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nancy said on February 5, 2013 at 10:52 am
I think there’s a pop-cult master’s thesis in stadium halftime shows, and if I were writing it, I’d credit the Chinese. In Beijing in 2004, they really showed the world how to put on a show that FILLS THE DAMN SPACE. Of course, the real audience is the folks watching at home, but the more you can underline that this performance is taking place on a football field, the better.
The person whining on Facebook suggested they should have had the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, because that’s really an act that gets people swingin’. I try not to use internet slang *too* much, but that’s a statement for which the term “facepalm” was invented.
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Prospero said on February 5, 2013 at 11:11 am
The folks that did the DNA testing on the skeleton have an identifiable direct descendent of Richard Plantagenet for comparison. The likelihood of a true match is likely above the Ivory soap purity standard. When Shakespear wrote the play, much of the villainy he ascribed to Richard was also claimed by Richard’s political defenders to have been committed by Tudors. I read an account that said that the corpse displayed a withered arm. I’ve now seen a photo, and the skeletal arms show no deformity. The scoliotic spine is unmistakable, though, and severe. I supppose this could be Piltdown King, but it seems authentic to me, from the deformed spine to the deep broadsword wounds to the DNA analysis. Hell, there are huge numbers of people that don’t admit to the idea that the plays were written by W. Shakespeare of Stratford. Hell, many of those same people insist that God dictated the KJB directly to the secret Catholic Shakespeare and the public catamite Kit Marlowe. I always preferred Richard II to Richard III anyway.
Since my very first NFL game in Tiger Stadium, I have always wished they would just have some HS or Pop Warner kids play football at halftime.
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jcburns said on February 5, 2013 at 12:08 pm
The amazing thing about the farmer/Paul Harvey spot for oh yeah, RAM trucks was they seemed to ADD analog noise and tape hiss to the soundtrack, although modern processes could probably have dialed almost all of it out, they went the other way. And then it’s also interesting to see how many people describe it as “still pictures” when every shot had almost a painfully slow move or faux-dimensional thing going on it. And with that I say…..good day!
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john not mccain said on February 5, 2013 at 12:32 pm
have to disagree on the mckellan version of dick 3. although he is excellent the inexplicable casting of benning and downey ruin it for me. they are both good actors – especially downey – but they need to the hell away from shakespeare.
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Deborah said on February 5, 2013 at 12:33 pm
I googled and watched the Amy Poehler Best Buy ad, the farmer ad and the Clysdale ad, I thought the farmer ad was the best of that bunch although Amy was pretty funny. I don’t see how it would be funny again and again though. The farmer ad is pure nostalgia, and as Julie says of course it’s not real, it’s an advertisement for heaven’s sake.
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Dexter said on February 5, 2013 at 12:39 pm
I remember listening to Paul Harvey on my smuggled-in Motorola transistor radio in study hall class back as far as 1962.
I never really caught on that he was a shill for every corporation and right-wing military cause and build-up until I got a little age on me.
So after hating him for a few years, I mellowed and just enjoyed his cornball stories and his unique style and voice.
Hey jc, yesterday a radio producer said he used to be at the controls for his station’s Paul Harvey broadcast. At the end of the show, every day the producer would add a little more time in between “This is Paul Harvey…Good Day !” Finally he had stretched that pause out a full SIX seconds…”This is Paul Harvey, [one, two , three, four, five , six]..Good Day!” Nobody ever realized he was doing it.
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Dorothy said on February 5, 2013 at 12:40 pm
My favorite was the Doritos ad – the little girl enlisting her dad to play Princesses with him.
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alex said on February 5, 2013 at 12:58 pm
So how did the facial reconstructionists figure out that Richard III wore troweled-on makeup like a drag queen? 😉
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Bob (not Greene) said on February 5, 2013 at 1:04 pm
And, Alex, they also know he sounded like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbS2WJdav6c
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Dexter said on February 5, 2013 at 1:10 pm
hey nance…I just stumbled onto a story reading that the Canadian penny was done, finished, ka-put as of yesterday. I am sure you get Canadian pennies in your change a lot more than I do, and I get them in change many times. Will we be prosecuted as counterfeiters when we use Canadian pennies at the stores now? I wonder how they ever got all the pennies recalled by a certain date…are they actually worthless in Canada now? I hit a few websites trying to research but kept getting redirected to ads that paralyzed my computer temporarily.
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Lex said on February 5, 2013 at 1:14 pm
In general I’m with you regarding human remains, but I admit to having been very, very tickled to find Galileo’s mummified middle finger at a museum in Florence, pointing in the general direction of Rome.
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coozledad said on February 5, 2013 at 1:19 pm
Bob(not Greene), Alex: He looks a little bit like the singer for The Undertones.
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Prospero said on February 5, 2013 at 1:20 pm
Professional buffoon Rich Lowry was getting those old $Palin shivers up his backbone from Raygunite old fart Paul Harvey’s recitativ”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/339805/paul-harvey-s-triumph-rich-lowry
Years ago, I wrote a Paul Harvey parody for HS speech class, concerning the Pledge of Allegiance. Fish in a barrel. The “Rest of the Story” was the fact that the author of the Pledge, Francis Bellamy, was a Utopian Socialist, that Bellamy’s colleagues’ racism and sexism caused him to leave out the word “equality” from the “liberty and justice for all” part, that “under God” was an edit by the KofC in support of McCarthyism, and that Harvey himself had attempted to infiltrate the high security Argonne National Laboratory and escaped prosecution through the efforts of his BFF J. Ed Blowjob, who would have put the actual author of the Pledge in Club Fed in a heartbeat. I thought it was pretty funny at the time. Unfortunately, the speech teacher was a retired Marine Corps chaplain who held it against me for years. Bastard put me in Saturday jug a lot.
Good one, Alex. I think they got that bit from Lord Larry. Mr. Carson played Hastings in that McKellan Richard III.
Were Canadian pennies ever worth anything. Kids in Detroit back in the 60s insisted that only people from Hamtramck would bend over to retrieve a Canadian penny from the sidewalk. There was also a joke about a counterfeiter that mistakenly made some $9 bills. He took them to Hamtramck to try to pass them by asking for change and was asked “Three $3s alright?”
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coozledad said on February 5, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Meant to post this video- Feargal Sharkey back in the day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgqa3cVOxUc
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Sherri said on February 5, 2013 at 1:34 pm
I liked the whisper-fight in a library Oreos ad. Godaddy, on the other hand, managed to find a new low. I refuse to ever use godaddy solely because of their ads.
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paddyo' said on February 5, 2013 at 1:56 pm
Alex, I think Hollywood could tap Leonardo DiCaprio to portray the facially reconstructed Richard III — the eyes, the eyebrows, the smug-smooth zip-lipped smile. Plus, Leo knows how to shout “I’m the king of the world!” from some other movie I seem to recall . . .
When somebody I know sent around a copy of the first story yesterday confirming the bones’ identity, he wrote this in the email subject line:
“Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious by this noble DNA“
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Peter said on February 5, 2013 at 1:56 pm
Whoo boy, so much to say about so many subjects:
Sherri at 37: I loved that Oreos ad – even more now, after people criticized the ad because the whispering didn’t male sense – dudes, they’re in a LIBRARY. I thought the second Go Daddy ad was pretty funny. Was it sexist? Compared to anything but a typical Go Daddy ad, sure was.
Farmers: I admit that I’m out of touch with your typical farmer, but I’ve done trading rooms for a few ag firms and investment firms that cater to farmers and what I’ve learned is:
1. Boy, those ag firms treat farmers with contempt, which I think is pretty sad, if for no other reason than they are your customers, and:
2. I found out that dairy farmers really have a rough time, but back in the day they made a TON of money compared to other farmers.
Paul Harvey: My mom worked for Bankers Life, and they encouraged employees to find stories for Paul to read. When Paul would read a story that was submitted by Bankers, they would get $10.00, and they split the proceeds with the employee. Hooo weeee!!!
Talk about winning the lotto!
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paddyo' said on February 5, 2013 at 1:57 pm
Pardon, ” . . . made glorious SUMMER by this noble DNA”
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Prospero said on February 5, 2013 at 2:01 pm
New REd Bull F1 car. Video.
I wondered whether the people that made that Godaddy ad tried to talk Danica Patrick into the kissing part. That was seriously revolting. Anheuser Busch could show the Clydesdales wallking highwires, I wouldn’t buy the pissoir beer. I have neither purchased no used a BIC product since the Flic my Biic stewardess ads in the 60s. And always rooted against the Baron’s yachts in America’s Cup.
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Hattie said on February 5, 2013 at 2:49 pm
I thought the whole superbowl thing was awful. We have sunk to new depths of crudeness and awful in this country.
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MarkH said on February 5, 2013 at 3:03 pm
Picking up where jc left off on audio/video embelishment during the Super Bowl:
Beyonce was great, BUT, did anyone else get the impression that there was some pre-taped staged video of her routine injected just for the home viewers? I’m talking mostly about Beyonce’s close-ups, when she was suspiciously able to hold still looking in the camera as it was able to stay on just her. And the background was different, and the lighting of these suspicious scenes was perfect, not consistent with the general stage lighting, ie, rapid fire flashes, strobes, etc.
Paul Harvey: I am probably the only one here who has ever had his name spoken over the air by Mr. Harvey. It was over ten years ago and he asked for listeners’ answers to a trivia question (what’s the year and make of car on the back of the $20 bill?). He read one or two suggested answers, with names, a day for a week. I’m still convinced I’m correct with a 1927 Hupmobile, but he claimed it was an artist’s combination of several cars of the day, not one in particular.
I do remember when I shut down Paul Harvey as a legitimate news source, but like Dexter, continued to enjoy his broadcast for what it was. It was 1975, when the chloroflorocarbon issue (spray-can propellants depleting the ozone) became known. Scientists were greatly alarmed at the threat, but, of course, Corporate Paul poo-pooed the notion. “Mankind is a wonderfully adaptive creature”, he intoned. “Who’s to say that in a hundred years or so, we can’t evolve and adapt just fine to the effects of this depletion?” Just what Dow and 3M wanted to hear, no doubt.
But I liked the Ram commercial just fine.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5, 2013 at 3:06 pm
Susan, what Charlotte DOESN’T say: the car park turns out to be the confirmed location of Greyfriars Church — a point proven two years ago in early stages of the excavation. Adding in the location in the church subsurface remains, you have the something-less-than circumstantial evidence of a body buried with honors, in the church known to be his last resting place, which happens to have both scoliosis and battle injuries. Somehow that doesn’t seem too circumstantial!
I think calling a project with lots of public interest and excitement “not history at all” as she does is really just sour grapes. Yes, budgets are tight, and no, not every worthy project gets funded, but having a media circus is not, in itself, cause to doubt the professionalism or quality of the scholars at work in Leicester. They began doing relatively garden-variety salvage archaeology, and it turned into something well worth capitalizing upon.
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Prospero said on February 5, 2013 at 3:07 pm
I’d be willing to bet a bundle no professional athlete will manage to make more of an embarrassing spectacle of himself than injured Pat TE Rob Gronkowski does in these video. Maybe he’s trying to get invited to live in the new Free Republic of Belle Isle. Good Lord, what a low rent dumbass.
I’d find it pretty difficult to swallow that the Richard Plantagenet facial reconstruction owes nothing to this famous image.
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alex said on February 5, 2013 at 3:36 pm
My shit’s been read on the air by Paul Harvey. I used to write Paul Harvey copy — that is to say, the paid plug for one of his advertisers. His old fart schtick was really just a bunch of folksy sales pitches strung together to resemble something of a narrative and it was a perfect vehicle for my client, True Value Hardware, to reach angry old men listening to AM radio.
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brian stouder said on February 5, 2013 at 3:59 pm
total non-sequitur, but now we know that Fort Wayne really isn’t that far from Sandusky:
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20130205/LOCAL03/302059981
The videos and images were found on the ex-coach’s work computer nearly five months ago, and what they exactly contain has never been made public. But their discovery led to his termination, opened the door for police detectives to search his home and belongings and allowed rumors and speculation to run rampant.
Monday, the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office announced that investigators found nothing illegal on computers and other devices controlled by former Bishop Luers football coach Matt Lindsay. Therefore, the prepared statement said, no criminal charges will be filed against him.
The statement also noted, though, that Lindsay’s personal computer “could not be located,” meaning it was not subject to a forensic investigation by detectives.
How big will the lawsuit be, 5 or 6 years from now, whenever some new prosecutor takes this guy down?
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5, 2013 at 4:08 pm
Friends, you may think the government is dumber than a bag of hammers, but have you ever given any thought to where you might BUY a bag full of hammers? After due consideration, we can all agree that the smart handyman would go to True Value Hardware for all their leaden metaphor needs page two . . .
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JWfromNJ said on February 5, 2013 at 4:16 pm
Brian @47
Lindsay’s computer is at the bottom of the Maumee River. That sentence jumped off the page at me also, Fort Wayne with Keystone Cops FTW.
I’m still waiting to hear what happened with Emily Housholder, a white well-off mom found dead of a gunshot wound in her running $60,000 Hyundai Eqquos. And yes, typing Hyundai and $60,000 in the same sentence feels odd to this once-upon-a-time Hyundai salesman.
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120530/LOCAL07/120539961
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brian stouder said on February 5, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Well, and another bit of enterprise journalism that a Fort Wayne reporter might pursue is – what the hell is going on with the Fabinis?
The NFL one still had his radio gig on Rock-104 (for example)….
even Uncle Google has nothing to offer newer than last December, when Uncle Sam swooped in
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Suzanne said on February 5, 2013 at 4:28 pm
I was not surprised that the coach from Luers was not prosecuted. Sadly, not surprised. I’m enjoying seeing Indiana win basketball games this year, but I’m uneasy wondering what’s happening in the shadows that none of us knows about. Yet.
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brian stouder said on February 5, 2013 at 4:45 pm
and tonight, after the fine young son and I get back from the very fine lecture that his US history teacher has insisted upon (5 Tuesday evenings, 2 hours each, devoted to the Holocaust), I’ll expound on how Abraham Lincoln really did have a hand in slaying Richard Mourdock’s chances for the US Senate
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Tom M said on February 5, 2013 at 6:45 pm
The recent disclosures about the LA archbishop just further confirm that the Roman Catholic Church is a corrupt organization. Not just the paedophilia but the complicity of the Argentine church in the disappearances of left-wing rebels. The stories go on and on.
Prospero(?) Saturday jug……spent a fair number of early mornings there but after a while I tried (wasn’t hard) to get sentenced every week since it was on the way to work.
Poor Richard, slung over a horse, naked, and stabbed in the buttocks. Are they sure the Greyfriars didn’t do that?
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Brandon said on February 5, 2013 at 7:25 pm
23.nancy said on February 5, 2013 at 10:52 am
I think there’s a pop-cult master’s thesis in stadium halftime shows, and if I were writing it, I’d credit the Chinese. In Beijing in 2004…
Nancy, the Olympics were held in Athens in 2004, and in Beijing in 2008.
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nancy said on February 5, 2013 at 7:51 pm
You are correct, sir! Thanks for the fix.
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David C. said on February 5, 2013 at 7:28 pm
Oh good lord.
http://www.glamguns.com/hk47.html
The Glambo Signature Series “Hello Kitty” HK-AK-47
The world should note the hand-crocheted shoulder-stock muffler and the anodized titanium plating. This fully functional firearm fires standard 7.62mm 125 or 150 grain ammunition with a muzzle velocity of approximately 710 meters per second and a maximum effective range of approximately 300 meters. Several choices in stock wood are available. With a limited run of only 500, buy now before they’re gone! A mere $100 extra includes Glambo’s signature wood-burnt into the opposite side of the handguard. A perfect gift for the young lady of the house.
A bargain at only $1072.95!
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Deborah said on February 5, 2013 at 8:22 pm
Glamguns? What is this world coming to?
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Sherri said on February 5, 2013 at 8:35 pm
Any pop culture master’s thesis on stadium halftime shows should cover the Orange Bowl halftime shows, which used to be big spectaculars back before anybody paid attention to anything happening at halftime of the Super Bowl. Here’s the 1978 Orange Bowl halftime show, where Disney brought their new Electrical Parade down the state: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq7qto0VoJg
Super Bowl halftime shows were boring Up With People kind of nonsense until TV counterprogramming forced the NFL to up their game. It’s about keeping TV viewers from changing the channel; after all, you’d rather the people in the stadium were off buying concessions, anyway.
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Deborah said on February 5, 2013 at 8:39 pm
I know I complained about this yesterday and then dull_old_man countered that Chicago was actually a positive experience in February. But again the only term that works for me to describe today in Chicago is “slophole”. Not pretty.
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susan said on February 5, 2013 at 8:43 pm
J,tmmo @44-
There was no peer review. Lots of media review, though, which makes the whole thing like a circus. That bothers me. Also, from what I read, DNA is easily contaminated, and maybe not that infallible.
I suppose, this far removed, any determination will be based on circumstantial evidence anyway, but it sure couldn’t be 100% positive, which is what the enthusiasts are aiming for. Oh, well, it’s a “fun story.” Yes.
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Prospero said on February 5, 2013 at 9:18 pm
I don’t know anything about the story but what’s at Brian’s link, but is there any evidence of actual criminal behavior bythat coach, other than some person that seems to have more than a couple of screws loose that snooped on his work computer? Have the cops been carrying on for 6 months without finding anything while letting the guy dangle under suspicion. From just that one news story, it sounds like this guy is getting the full boat Richard Jewell. Sure, the failure of the guy’s pc to show up is suspicious, but that ain’t evidence, and I get no clearer picture from that Fort Wayne story.
DavidC@55: I bought my daughter a Hello Kitty 3/4 electric guitar when she was little. I don’t think she would have enjoyed an AK nearly as much. Who was the female Congress critter that waved her pink Sig-Sauer around and ended up pointing it at a reporter? I think it was a gift from a lobbyist. And why are the gun nut NRA types so careless with guns so frequently in entirely inappropriate places? Every pol with a gun accidentally forgotten in carry-on luggage is always somebody with a straight A NRA report card.I’m thinking of painting the little HK tele clone with a Spiderman or Red Sox motif for my grandson.
Susan@59: I think something that separates scientists form Fundaglicalictment science deniers lik Inhofe and the aholes that think Jesus rode T Rexes with western saddles is that scientists always admit to the possibility that reality may intrude on a theory. Gravity is only 100% in the observable universe, but scientists can countermand it within earth’s atmosphere. Scientists don’t really claim 100% surety about anything. But, with DNA it’s generally at least 99 and 44 one hundredths sure. There has been “peer review” about climate change and global warming, and it represents the most incompetent, venal, dishonest “science”, ever bought by corporatist behemoths. Bjorn Lomborg, ya know. Objections to the Richard Skellington findings may well have to do with the iron Roman arrow that dates BC. The whole shebang isn’t even 6000 years old.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 5, 2013 at 9:20 pm
Okay, but I didn’t mention the DNA, because I agree, it doesn’t look really probative. I still think it was a case of some low-level, low-expectations archaeologists getting a chance in the middle of a salvage dig to make a major splash, and I’m happy for them. Richard III is worth a mass of media.
Oh, and I can’t recall now if I said this here already or not: if all this does is get people to re-read “The Daughter of Time” by Josephine Tey, it will all be worthwhile!
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alex said on February 5, 2013 at 9:33 pm
The daughter of Time? Claire Booth Luce?
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brian stouder said on February 5, 2013 at 10:48 pm
OK – so Exhibit A was this story last summer, which you may recall, and which caused much lively conversation amongst my lunch companions and I, back at the time. It was like – what the hell?
(It was also the first time I tripped across the “47%” meme, which would – later in the summer – prove so decisively destructive to Mitt Romney’s already slim chance at the presidency)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/richard-mourdock-tax-debates-abraham-lincoln-slavery_n_1503308.html
Mourdock, a geologist by trade, often invokes Abraham Lincoln in his stump speeches, seeing an analogy in the troubled years before the Civil War to the splits in modern America. In a video recording of a speech last June that was provided to The Huffington Post by a Democratic source, Mourdock cited Lincoln’s famous pre-Civil War “House Divided” speech, suggesting that the half of Americans who pay no federal income taxes are the potential enslavers.
“He made this speech and what the media interpreted it to mean was that he was going to predict that there was some terrible Civil War coming and that wasn’t what he meant at all. What he did say was that a house divided against itself cannot stand, I do not expect the house to fall, however I do believe that it will cease in being divided, it will become either all of one thing or all of the other,” Mourdock said at a meeting of the Whitley County Patriots in Columbia City, Ind.
and
“In fact, half of that 47 percent almost, actually got tax money back from the government that they never paid -– because a few years ago we revised the welfare program to make it part of the tax code,” Mourdock said. “When 47 percent are paying no income taxes — they do pay Social Security — but they are not paying income taxes, and 53 percent are carrying the load, we are a house divided.” And what Mourdock foresees is some sort of class warfare after which the working poor will either emerge paying more tax, or the forces of Socialism will prevail, crushing liberty.
“We are coming to some point in the future — whether it’s going to be in the next two years or the next 20, I don’t know — but I think we’re going to cease to be divided. We’re no longer going to be that country that all of us grew up in that understands that sense of individual responsibility and, yes, freedom, or we’re going to move into a country that is more like those Eastern, or, I’m sorry, the countries of Europe that are Socialist.”
So we learned that Mourdock liked to quote Lincoln – which is, in and of itself, quite understandable enough! – and also that he also had approximately ZERO understanding of what the hell Lincoln was talking about!!
Fair enough, I suppose.
And then, this past weekend on one of the Sunday yapper shows that ol’ Mourdock’s infamous sound byte about rape came up again (in connection with new Republican efforts to weed guys like him out ahead of time)..and then, when I was taking a shower(!), it suddenly hit me that that idiot was aping an allusion to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural!!
Uncle Google informed me that Mourdock is a history buff (of sorts), and loves to allude to Lincoln; and in fact, he lives near Evansville – which is Lincoln boyhood home ground….and, from that standpoint, when you revisit his clunky, wrong-headed rhetorical grope from that ground – you can see the fun-house Lincoln that Mourdock thinks he knows.
In discussing the mighty scourge of the American Civil War – a war that was finally heading for an end – the president said (in part):
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
And Richard Mourdock’s crabbed vision of the 16th president manifests itself thus:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/indiana-senate-candidate-richard-mourdock-pregnancy-from-rape-something-god-intended/
“I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen,” Mourdock said during Tuesday’s Senate debate
Showing once again (and for all time) that Mourdock not only doesn’t understand America’s greatest president, he also doesn’t understand violence against women, nor any God that I could possibly recognize, let alone worship.
Anyway – that’s my garbled story, and I’m stickin’ to it!
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Dave said on February 5, 2013 at 10:52 pm
Pros, the story that got things started on the FW Luers coach is when a father confronted him outside a local swimming pool, accusing him of taking pictures of his daughter. Allegedly, he was deleting pictures off his cellphone (smartphone, I don’t know) when the father confronted him. Then stories surfaced of similar behavior by him over the past years but they were covered up or who knows. It’s interesting that his computer was nowhere to be found but who among us would want anyone going through their computer. Honestly. I imagine it was destroyed and quickly.
Emily Householder’s husband was and maybe still is the sales manager at the local Hyundai dealer, I believe. Although I don’t know them, they lived in the same subdivision as my daughter and her family, a fair distance from where she was found. And no, there’s been nothing in the news about it since it happened.
I was wondering about the Fabini brothers just the other day. Another Fort Wayne story that comes to mind was the recent sentencing of a hit-and-run driver, who struck and killed an IPFW student: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20130202/LOCAL03/302029981
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 6, 2013 at 12:13 am
On the book by Tey: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900271.txt
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Dexter said on February 6, 2013 at 12:41 am
From the beautiful Crisler Center in Ann Arbor, the Wolverines beat Ohio State in overtime…sweet! This was men’s basketball.
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Brandon said on February 6, 2013 at 1:35 am
@Nancy. You’re welcome.
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