Summer of Nance.

I was going to write something last night, but I had a date with three former colleagues at a steakhouse about an hour away, and I opted to do that instead. Never turn down a chance to have a two-hour meat house date with fun people. I listened to “Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus” on the way home, very loud, and decided I don’t care how many people OK-boomer me, that record is great and I will not apologize for loving it.

It’s the Summer of Nance, I’ve decided. All healthy eating, self-improvement, open windows, warm breezes, old music and weeknights out in Howell, Michigan.

First, a housekeeping note: I don’t know what was going on with the page not loading on your iPhones, etc. I try not to bother J.C. with every little thing, but the other day I noticed the spam filter on my NN.c email has seemingly dissolved. Every day I have to kill a couple dozen penis-enlargement emails, and no matter how many times I mark them as junk/spam, it doesn’t seem to learn. This, J.C. suggests, is a server problem, at least in part, so who knows, maybe they’re going through some things at Dreamhost.

Anyway, J.C. is going away on Sunday for two weeks in the Galapagos Islands, so we must all keep our fingers crossed that nothing goes awry in his absence.

Another housekeeping note, but really just self-promotion: I had a chance to write the “I Wish I’d Been There” column for Echoes magazine, published by the Ohio History connection, and it was published in recent days. The e-reader is a little awkward, but just drag the slider to page 46 and there it is: A moment of Ohio history I wish I’d have observed directly, when Elvis Costello and Bonnie Bramlett got into a fistfight at the Holiday Inn in downtown Columbus. To the credit of Bill Eichenberger, who asked me to do it, I must say that column has a nice, playful spirit. I read one about 10-cent beer night at Cleveland Stadium to get a feel for the voice, then noticed the byline: Erik Harden, son of my old Dispatch colleague Mike. Small world.

Note to Dorothy: When I went into the clips from the separate Costello and Stephen Stills shows from that night, the byline on the review of the Costello show? Mark Ellis. Jeff Borden wrote about Stills. I always thought concert reviews were a waste of time, unless it was for a show that was going multiple nights, but then, newspapers used to have space to burn. They needed to fill those pages somehow.

I had trouble falling asleep last night — too much food — and saw the news about Shinzo Abe’s assassination on Twitter. I will always remember him as the guy who rolled his eyes at Donald Trump’s asshole handshake move. Of course, Ivanka is all torn up:

She of course chose a photo that included Herself. “My government service,” lol.

And now I have to prep for the day, so adieu, which is also a good first word in Wordle. See you after the weekend.

Posted at 9:36 am in Current events, Housekeeping |
 

42 responses to “Summer of Nance.”

  1. jcburns said on July 8, 2022 at 10:32 am

    Nancy, I think the loading problem was not with the web server, but with the way Safari and Twitter interact. When you embed tweets (as you’ve done here) it puts a bunch of links in that somehow Twitter’s servers have to resolve, and Safari has fought with them. I fixed the last post by yanking out the Twitter-proprietary stuff and just leaving the words. Might have to do it again here, we’ll see.

    By the way, I may well be able to mess with server-oriented-things while I’m in Ecuador. Small planet!

    504 chars

  2. nancy said on July 8, 2022 at 10:37 am

    Ah, thanks. I’ll remember that for the future. Maybe just screenshots going forward.

    84 chars

  3. Dave said on July 8, 2022 at 10:46 am

    Ecuador! We went to Ecuador three years ago with our daughter-in-law’s family. Our DIL’s maternal grandmother was Ecuadorian. We were primarily in Quito, the capital city, where it’s 60°F and overcast most of the time. The Galapagos Islands sound much more exciting but our trip did give us the opportunity to cross the equator, something I never expected to do.

    367 chars

  4. Jason T. said on July 8, 2022 at 11:17 am

    Your Elvis Costello punch-up story was amazing and a very enjoyable read. I could have read several hundred more words of it.

    I did a quick search last night in Newspapers dot com and found almost no contemporary coverage of the entire affair in the mainstream press, except for a very short wire service report on Costello’s news conference that was picked up by the Akron Beacon-Journal and the Dayton Journal-Herald, among other papers. (The C’bus Dispatch is not part of Newspapers dot com.)

    498 chars

    • nancy said on July 8, 2022 at 11:31 am

      It wasn’t in the Dispatch because no police were called, so no report. And back then, they wouldn’t have seen a presser by a then-fringe musician in faraway NYC as newsworthy.

      175 chars

  5. Deborah said on July 8, 2022 at 11:20 am

    I always use adieu as my first word in Wordle, I used to use audio but adieu gives me an e which is the most common vowel.

    And of course I tested positive for Covid this morning. I was pretty sure I would today after feeling like I ran a marathon yesterday. My throat is pretty sore now and I’m having a telehealth conversation in a couple of hours with a Dr I don’t know since my Dr is on vacation this week. I’m hoping to get a prescription of Paxlovid.

    458 chars

  6. Icarus said on July 8, 2022 at 11:27 am

    For Wordle (and dordle, Quordle, and Octordle) my start guesses are:

    soare, clint, and pudgy. if necessary, I then use Thumb or Rhumb.

    For Nerdle I start with:

    42/7+0=6
    8*5-1=39

    188 chars

  7. Mark P said on July 8, 2022 at 11:38 am

    Of course Ivanka had government service. She spent the whole four years fucking the government.

    95 chars

  8. Jason T. said on July 8, 2022 at 12:10 pm

    Mark P.: I was going to say, it’s the same service a bull gives a cow.

    I often think of that when certain utility companies brag about their “public service.”

    161 chars

  9. Dave said on July 8, 2022 at 12:14 pm

    The only way to access the Columbus Dispatch archives is to go through the Columbus Public Library, which requires a card. I would love to go through those archives but I can’t, you have to be an Ohio resident. There are many things I would love to search out.

    262 chars

  10. Peter said on July 8, 2022 at 12:17 pm

    I’m obviously a child of the ’70’s – one year our college’s intramural football league had: Nature’s Way, Animal Zoo, Mr. Skin, Space Child, and Street Worm.

    Not to be outdone by obscure references, our team was Thunder Island.

    230 chars

  11. Heather said on July 8, 2022 at 12:30 pm

    Hope you feel better soon, Deborah. Sounds like you are on top of it. Not to scare you or anyone else, but I found out yesterday that my cousin is in the hospital with a COVID-related complication, so let’s be careful out there.

    For Wordle I also use audio or adieu, or sometimes miaou.

    289 chars

  12. Jeff Borden said on July 8, 2022 at 12:41 pm

    While listening to “The Stephanie Miller Show” this morning, attorney Glenn Kirschner was arguing it is likely that tRump will be facing charges at both the federal and state level based on the testimony to the Jan. 6 committee and the grand jury down in Georgia. He was fairly confident in his assessment the orange tumor will pay a price. The bastard has dodged so much for so long it almost seems like the law of averages should apply here.

    As lovely as it will (or may) be to see the oaf indicted, I really want to see his offspring pay a price, too. Donny Jr. is a pretty obvious target, but man, it would be great to see Princess Nepotism and that android she married go to trial. Her overinflated sense of self, the air of smug superiority she exudes, the feeling of entitlement. . . she’s quite a fine villainess.

    824 chars

  13. alex said on July 8, 2022 at 12:52 pm

    Foul language is full of fricatives and double consonants, so I haven’t figured out any advantageous words for starting LEWDLE. And the game usually uses 5-letter words, which makes it even more challenging.

    Think I’ll go play right now. I’ll try BONER.

    257 chars

  14. alex said on July 8, 2022 at 1:02 pm

    And the word of the day was CRANK so BONER wasn’t a bad starting point. Got it on the third try.

    96 chars

  15. LAMary said on July 8, 2022 at 1:11 pm

    The video of the stupid handshake/eye roll was good, as was the next video of awkward moments of trump. I agree it would be satisfying to watch the trump spawn hauled off to the slammer. Ivanka and Donny so deserve it. Eric is too stupid to know what he’s done wrong.

    267 chars

  16. David C said on July 8, 2022 at 2:12 pm

    Nice thing about the law is that even if you’re too stupid to know what you’ve done is against it, you can still be charged and convicted. So I say, let Eric enjoy time in stripe city too.

    188 chars

  17. Andrea said on July 8, 2022 at 3:18 pm

    @Deborah, I hope you are feeling better soon. A word about Paxlovid: my husband tested positive and was prescribed Paxlovid through a telehealth visit the same day. I was able to get him his 1st dose less than 24 hours after his symptoms started. The dr did warn him about the possibility of rebound COVID after taking Paxlovid, but we did not really understand or know much about that. While he was on Paxlovid he felt fine — hardly any symptoms, went running, gardening, and so forth. A few days after ending the medication, he started feeling bad again, with a fever, cough, and this time lost his sense of smell and taste, and ended up having to isolate for another 5 days. In all, it took him 20 days before he stopped testing positive on a rapid test.

    I did not qualify for Paxlovid and was laid out for about 4 days, but then was up and testing negative by day 11. YMMV of course.

    892 chars

  18. dull_old_man said on July 8, 2022 at 3:38 pm

    I agree about The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. ‘Nothing to Hide’ is the only pop song about heroin addiction I know of–We got nothing to hide/We’re married to the same bride/She eats away from inside. Howlin’ Wolf, Lou Reed–they did scary songs about heroin. Spirit did something catchy. By the way, I Got a Line on You is a perfect song.

    344 chars

  19. Julie Robinson said on July 8, 2022 at 3:39 pm

    Is anyone else feeling like throwing up their hands and groaning? This damn virus, and gun control measures aren’t even working in the strictest places? Gaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!

    176 chars

  20. ninja3000 said on July 8, 2022 at 4:44 pm

    Oh Nancy, yes Spirit surely did put out some great stuff, some of my all-time faves. And hey dull_old_man, “I Got a Line” was one of the first cover songs I ever played with a band, perfect groove rock tempo. A killer! Even now, they’re still underappreciated.

    260 chars

  21. LAMary said on July 8, 2022 at 4:56 pm

    A friend who grew up in the San Fernando Valley told me that when the 1971 earthquake hit he was listening to Nature’s Way on the radio.

    136 chars

  22. basset said on July 8, 2022 at 5:12 pm

    my IU work study job for several years was in the music school’s electronic shop… we had two LPs and only two for checking repairs, “Dr. Sardonicus” and the first Joan Baez album.

    “And in her right hand, a silver dagger,” indeed.

    236 chars

  23. Suzanne said on July 8, 2022 at 6:01 pm

    Thanks for the Wordle suggestions. I usually start with route or avoid but I get bored with those. Voice would be a good starting word, too. I failed to guess the word twice this week so not a good Wordle week for me.

    217 chars

  24. Deborah said on July 8, 2022 at 6:07 pm

    The Dr I spoke to during the telehealth call told me about the possibility of rebound with Paxlovid so I’ll watch for that. LB is feeling better, she got Paxlovid because of her medical condition, I got it because I’m old. My husband drove in from Abiquiu to pick up my prescription and some groceries for us in the sick house, then it was back to exile for him at the cabin. He has another zoom call in the morning tomorrow so he’s coming back to sit out on the patio with his laptop.

    I’m trying to rest because I’m very tired, the sore throat isn’t excruciating or anything it’s just there and my runny nose is the least of it.

    632 chars

  25. Jeff Gill said on July 8, 2022 at 7:19 pm

    Healing mercies to you, Deborah.

    Ohio is just plain getting weird. Roy already noted this succinctly.

    104 chars

  26. Deborah said on July 8, 2022 at 8:34 pm

    I got Wordle in 5 today, one of those aggravating words when you get the third and last letter right away but then you use up 4 tries with words that have those same letters in those positions. I manage to play about 3 or 4 times a week, I used to do it every single day.

    271 chars

  27. alex said on July 9, 2022 at 9:18 am

    Trump congratulating himself on his “strong hands, strong hands.”

    There were so many cringeworthy moments like this during his presidency, yet oddly I always found my cringe reflex, which is ordinarily triggered by empathy, completely overridden by schadenfreude, if not also a strange sort of abject terror. I couldn’t feel embarrassment for that fucking creep, nor pity nor any of the feelings that come naturally when I see people making fools of themselves.

    My takeaway from this is that he has, to some extent, dehumanized me. He has dehumanized all of us.

    569 chars

  28. Robert said on July 9, 2022 at 9:47 am

    Thanks for sharing your IWIBT piece.

    Kudos to Spirit, a key contributor to the Zeitgeist of the 70s.

    Wordle – a friend usually starts with r-o-y-a-l . A few months ago that allowed her to solve Wordle on her first attempt.

    Ivanka: my favorite picture is of her making goo-goo eyes at Justin Trudeau while Jared looks on in pain.

    Gun murders in 2021: Japan – 1; USA – more than 20,700.

    396 chars

  29. Deborah said on July 9, 2022 at 12:49 pm

    Here’s a symptom that I haven’t read about, LB said she had it too. My eyes hurt when I move them back and forth or up and down. When I take Advil, it helps but as I said I had not heard that one before. It started before I took my first dose of Paxlovid so it’s not from that. Also Paxlovid is now leaving a vile metallic taste in my mouth, which the info that comes with it warns you about. FYI.

    397 chars

  30. ROGirl said on July 9, 2022 at 1:11 pm

    Alex, the dehumanization seems to be the inevitable outcome when psychopathic fascist tyrants end up in power. The world exists in his version of reality now.

    158 chars

  31. BigHank53 said on July 9, 2022 at 2:58 pm

    Stare, store, and share aren’t that bad for starting Wordle with either. Just so you know, Wordle does not think “shart” is a word.

    I don’t think Trump has forced anyone into the habit of dehumanization. “Human” wasn’t ever a synonym for “good” anyway. The exceptional thing about Donald J. Trump is his utter lack of positive human traits—it’s all seven deadly sins all the time. He’d be nine thousand times more forgivable if there was a single thing he did for himself—play fetch with a dog, collect obscure comic books, listen to weird jazz—but every minute of every day is spent trying to show up other people. Cheating at golf, bigger desserts, fake People covers…it’s no wonder a normal person can’t find anything relatable in the man, because it isn’t there.

    826 chars

  32. Deborah said on July 9, 2022 at 3:30 pm

    OMG, for the first time ever, I got Wordle in 2 today. That is all.

    67 chars

  33. alex said on July 9, 2022 at 3:37 pm

    Shart’s a word in LEWDLE. I know because I got that one on a second try.

    I’ll grant you that Trump has no redeeming qualities as a human being, and that human isn’t a synonym for good, but humane is and humane he isn’t.

    221 chars

  34. David Edelstein said on July 9, 2022 at 4:36 pm

    Ah, your essay brings it all back. He loved being an obnoxious asshole in those Stiff Records days and it bit him on his own arse. Now, even after he has made a record with Allen Toussaint and The Roots, I still don’t know a single Black person who will admit to listening to him. When I saw him at Forest Hills Stadium in 2019 (Blondie opened) THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE PERSON OF COLOR IN THE ENTIRE STADIUM. NOT ONE. (I’ll take the caps lock off now but I’m NOT exaggerating.) Of course, I was probably the youngest person there. (I was nearing 60 at the time.) First rock concert I’ve been to where I sat behind someone with an oxygen tank.

    641 chars

  35. diane said on July 9, 2022 at 4:56 pm

    Just wanted to mention that the loading problem the other day wasn’t just with Safari. I was having the same problem using Chrome on a PC.

    139 chars

  36. jcburns said on July 9, 2022 at 5:04 pm

    Chrome and Safari share a lot of behind the scenes stuff, so that makes sense.

    78 chars

  37. Jeff Gill said on July 9, 2022 at 6:50 pm

    Speaking of the Ohio History Connection* I am happy to note a friend & colleague was just named the next executive director, and we look forward to continued great content under her tenure!

    https://twitter.com/OhioHistory/status/1544706502166036482

    *Infelicitously re-named as it is from just “Ohio History” briefly around the 2000s, from the Ohio Historical Society before that (and the Ohio Archaeological & Historical Society before that going back to 1885).

    475 chars

  38. Deborah said on July 9, 2022 at 8:32 pm

    Now LB has had an allergic reaction to the Paxlovid, a very, very itchy rash, she called her Dr office and they told her take 4 benadryl today and to take an oatmeal bath and to go to urgent care tomorrow. So it’s kind of serious, could be epi pen type stuff, but she feels better now. That kind of reaction was warned about in the info and they said to immediately stop taking it. She took 4 of the 5 days doses and they said that was probably enough to do what it needs to do. LB has had issues with meds before where she had to take Benadryl etc but it has been a long time ago.

    It never stops around here.

    612 chars

  39. Deborah said on July 9, 2022 at 10:38 pm

    Darkening lilac sky, gentle rain, gentle breeze, NM summer at its best.

    Our damp blooming lavender under the windows smells fantastic.

    137 chars

  40. FDChief said on July 9, 2022 at 11:16 pm

    The Abe assassination has a real strong Ninteen Thirties feel to it. Which is…interesting given that Abe as much or more than anyone helped re-center right wing nationalism in Japanese politics. It only needed a junior officer with a sword instead of (what appears to be) a random nutter with a zip gun.

    305 chars

  41. Dorothy said on July 10, 2022 at 8:02 pm

    Mark Ellis and I keep up with each other via Facebook now, reveling in pictures and stories about our grandkids! He’s retired from Kenyon now. He’s a really terrific guy.

    174 chars