I guess it’s a measure of how brutal the winter was that the arrival of spring yesterday passed unnoticed by me. Current temperature: 37 degrees. Signs of spring so far: Pretty much zero, unless you count potholes, which are epic this year. I heard the beeping of the cold-patch truck coming down my street today, which will have to do in place of birdsong.
But I know it’s only a matter of time, and before winter slips entirely away, I’d like to give a shout-out to a few of the items that made it bearable this year. Cue the montage!
These shoes:
In a cold, wet climate, it’s more important to keep your feet warm than your head. These were my birthday present last fall. If I’d been buying them for myself, I’d have skipped on the shearling lining and gone for Thinsulate, but Alan is a sweetheart and splurged. L.L. Bean. I stepped into a few drifts that came over the top, but the shearling never really allowed the loose snow to penetrate to my feet. So kudos to these workhorses. A key supporting role was played by…
These cleats:
These seemed a little bit of overkill when I got them. They were another present from Alan. I’d asked for Yaktrax, but Alan decided these were sturdier. They are, and though they hurt my knees when I wore them on dry pavement, they were essential on snow and ice. We had LOTS of ice this year, at least three storms that started as rain and turned to snow, followed by a deep cold snap. All that slush froze solid into icy lumpy fuck, and walking was absolutely treacherous. But not with these cleats! Of course no footwear ensemble is complete without…
These socks:
Rag wool for the Bean boots, which run a little large, and merino for when you don’t want to feel like you’re wearing carpet on your feet. These are Smartwool knockoffs from Costco, but I have lots of the original. I’m wearing a pair right now, in fact. Moving up from the feet, we have…
These longjanes:
Capilene from Patagonia, and I also had some silky polyester ones from Land’s End. I went days without taking them off for anything other than a shower. When I had to go outside, I threw on…
These pants:
More L.L. Bean classics. They are frumpy as hell, adding 10 pounds at least. The rise is so high, and the zipper is so long, that I felt like someone’s grandpa every time I put them on. But low-rise jeans that hug your butt don’t come with fleece lining. I may have looked unfashionable, but goddamn I was warm. Which brings us to the star of the show…
Ladies and gentlemen, the parka of tribulation:
Sturdy enough to stand up on its own, surprisingly heavy, the North Face McMurdo parka came to me a decade ago, via eBay. That was the year I was in Ann Arbor, and I was seeking to duplicate my college experience, when my very first down parka protected me through the fearsome back-to-back winters of the late ’70s. I think I paid about $100 for it new with tags, two-thirds below its retail price, probably because it didn’t include the fetching coyote ruff for the hood. It’s so warm it becomes uncomfortable when the temperature is much above 20, but as I’ve been whining for months, we didn’t have too many of those days. In most winters, this is a specialty item worn for only a few days. This year, it was my main coat. I just put it back in the front-hall closet, where it lives in the off-season. I think of it as you might a spouse you’re divorcing, but don’t actually despise. You respect and admire the work it does, but if it’s all the same, you’d rather not see it for a while. A long while.
Supporting roles were played by hats, several pairs of gloves, scarves and sweaters, but you don’t have to see everything in the closet today. Yesterday I wore a lightweight trench and was perfectly comfortable. Of course it rained.
Bloggage for today:
I had fun reporting this graffiti story for Bridge.
I’m only about halfway through this Grantland story on the world’s greatest juggler, but I’m enjoying it very much. No transsexuals in this one (so far), but a great lead:
I feel like I should let you know what you’re in for. This is a long story about a juggler. It gets into some areas that matter in all sports, such as performance and audience and ambition, but there’s absolutely a lot of juggling in the next 6,700 words. I assume you may bail at this point, which is fine; I almost bailed a few times in the writing. The usual strategies of sportswriting depend on the writer and reader sharing a set of passions and references that make it easy to speed along on rivers of stats and myth, but you almost certainly don’t know as much about juggling as you do about football or baseball. We’re probably staring at a frozen lake here.
A few juggling videos are embedded below. I hope they help. We may fall through the ice anyway.
And finally, one for March Madness: What white people don’t see, watching basketball.
A great weekend to all. It’s supposed to be sunny and over 40. Spring!
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 21, 2014 at 12:32 am
Bean, and Capilene. The ticket to happiness in a Great Lakes winter.
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Dexter said on March 21, 2014 at 1:13 am
I am surprised Chait didn’t rip Spike Albrecht , Michigan bench guard who comes into games sporadically to ignite a flame under some Blue asses, for not playing every night like he did a year ago in the NCAA tourney championship game when he scored 17 first half points, or compare Spike to Trey Burke, who simply was the national player of the year last year and jumped to the NBA. Spike has grit, is an over-achiever even more that Jordan Morgan is , but Trey Burke is Black and, well, what is Chait trying to say here? All the players hit the weights, not all develop muscles at the same rate. Stauskas didn’t really bulk up much, probably because he spends almost all his time shooting long jumpers on his driveway basketball court. Enter Nik Stauskas on your YouTube page and watch him shoot those long three pointers…nobody has been able to do stuff like that except Larry Bird, Steve Nash, and Rick Mount (Mount was a Purdue superstar 48 years ago.) I was really on a roll today, picking all the winners…then tonight North Dakota State U beat Oklahoma, and my Quixotic quest for Warren Buffet’s billion $$ prize went up in smoke. A team called “The Bison” ended my dream.
Very sensible on your part for the lined shoes and jeans, the parka, all the rest of the quality winter wear. My winter parka was a gift from our middle daughter, it’s a “Free Country” brand parka, featuring “Dobby Texturing” ? 100% polyester, and it is the warmest coat I have ever had…dual zippers, one for the lining, one for the shell. It’s Chinese made.
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Sherri said on March 21, 2014 at 2:38 am
Smartwool socks are marvelous, even if you don’t have to survive a Great Lakes winter. I wear them all the time during our 40 degree and raining winters. REI is the go to rather than LL Bean, but the North Face seems to be the official jacket of the PNW. Everybody here seems to wear North Face; this is mine: http://www.rei.com/product/865135/the-north-face-nimble-hoodie-jacket-womens.
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Sherri said on March 21, 2014 at 2:47 am
I like the graffiti story.
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Linda said on March 21, 2014 at 7:26 am
What are the brand name of those things on your feet? I like my yaktrax well enough, but sometimes the arthritis in my hands makes them hard to put on.
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mark said on March 21, 2014 at 7:32 am
Chait’s piece might be more compelling if he explained how all of the black announcers and analysts at the Big Ten Network ended up with white people preconceptions. Jimmy Jackson, Kendall Gill, Jimmy King, Sam Vincent and the rest cover Michigan b-ball a lot.
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brian stouder said on March 21, 2014 at 8:29 am
And then – no sooner than we think of Al Maloley and the old days in Fort Wayne, and muse about it in these spaces at good ol’ nn.c, then we trip across this, this morning:
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20140321/LOCAL/303219973
Aside from that, I think Nancy’s clothing awards show is an eloquent counter-point to the T-Lo world of frippery and mirage
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beb said on March 21, 2014 at 8:33 am
I don’t watch basketball so my first response was ‘there’s white guys playing basketball’? Followed by amazement that someone 6′ 6″ tall could be described as short. I suppose this is all part of the preconceived idea that blacks are ‘natural athletes’ while white guys have to work for it, thus the achievements of black athletes can be disregarded, or something.
I kept waiting for you to mention some of the spectacles graffiti works around Eastern Market. Some of those are every bit as amazing as that two-story Madonna (Not that Madonna, the other one). My brother-in-law is a produce merchant with a warehouse in Eastern market. he hired a nephew (a busy tagger) to paint his warehouse on the grounds that most taggers will respect the work of another tagger and not continue to mark up his building. I was amazed when I first saw the overhead freeway signs in our area being tagged. How could they even get there? Then I noticed that the supports are more or less a giant jungle gym structure – open truss construction. In Ohio they’ve dealt with this problem by replacing the supports with large tubes so there’s no where to climb.
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basset said on March 21, 2014 at 8:38 am
what, no Carhartt?
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Alan Stamm said on March 21, 2014 at 8:44 am
So I assume that’s not the first in an occasional series of undergarment photos, right? (Yes, the sensitivity training sessions I endured at The News have been forgotten.)
On a more serious note, the graffiti piece is fabulous. It’s clear you enjoyed reporting it even more than usual.
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Jolene said on March 21, 2014 at 8:53 am
Mark, psychologists have shown that, subconsciously, blacks share the same low opinions of the capabilities of black people that many white people have. Way back when, psychological research showing that black children preferred black dolls to white dolls played a role in the Brown v. Board of Education case. More recently, psychologists have measured racial attitudes using an instrument called the implicit association test. The results indicate that a much larger proportion of whites harbor negative attitudes toward blacks (about 70%) than are willing to report such views (about 20%), which is, perhaps, not surprising. Results for blacks are more varied. Many show no preference, but among those who do, about as many prefer whites over blacks as prefer blacks over whites. That is, a substantial number of blacks have pro-white prejudices.
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Julie Robinson said on March 21, 2014 at 8:57 am
beb, your brother-in-law is a wise man. I dunno, the older I get, the less graffiti bothers me. I’m seeing it more as a creative outlet and place to vent.
Alfred Maloley’s life is a case study of how life and commerce have changed, and how fast. He was a pioneer of modern supermarkets, but his stores were bought out by a company that was in turn bought out (Rogers), rinse & repeat (Scotts), and again (Kroger). Very sad.
Those Costco socks have been my favorite this winter, since they aren’t as thick as the ones from Bean & Lands End. My office is shared with someone who is always cold, so I’m always hot. The thinner socks made that tolerable, without having to change when I left to run errands on my way home. And here on the north side of town, we’ve a new inch of snow on the ground, so I can’t put them away just yet.
Sherri, I wish we had an REI. We always went there when we visited our daughter north of Seattle. I’m not sure there are any in her new location of Orlando!
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alex said on March 21, 2014 at 8:59 am
One thing I learned from this book:
The Maloley name is Lebanese and was handed down by way of a nineteenth-century matriarch, the madam of a Fort Wayne brothel. The name wasn’t associated with the grocery business until the twentieth century.
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coozledad said on March 21, 2014 at 9:32 am
The authoritarian the Republicans like to talk about now is a kid named Vlad Putin. He’s also white. He looks like a dinner theater Yul Brynner after a three day bender. His wife ditched him after he was photographed sucking on a boy’s belly. Average height, old KGB cutthroat, and an ability to unleash waves of poverty stricken serfs with the mere mention of an extra ration of vodka. The thing the Republicans mention every game — the fact that is incorporated into the shorthand notes they use to define their hot new autocrats story line — is that Putin worked hard in the off-season to persecute gays.
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Suzanne said on March 21, 2014 at 9:33 am
As I read Al Maloley’s obit, all I could think was that he really WAS George Bailey! Went off to college, dad died unexpectedly, and he took over the family business.
Wonder if a Clarence ever stepped in to save him?
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brian stouder said on March 21, 2014 at 9:44 am
The Maloley name is Lebanese and was handed down by way of a nineteenth-century matriarch, the madam of a Fort Wayne brothel.
I associate the Maloley name with pretty cashiers (I think they used to wear orange uniform one-piece dresses, but don’t quote me on that), having a job where I had to wear a necktie (and to this day, that’s the only job I ever had where that was the rule), and more than a few interesting lady customers.
Back in those days, I had hair on my head and a mustache on my face (Maloley’s didn’t allow beards) – and in the 9 years I worked there, I was well supplied with young ladies to go to the movies with, plus one wife – although no brothels….but we digress!
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brian stouder said on March 21, 2014 at 10:01 am
Suzanne – an excellent point!
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Judybusy said on March 21, 2014 at 10:07 am
We like to stay in neighborhood called Santurce when we go to San Juan. A couple years ago, they did this amazing project. It’s murals, not graffiti, but still amazing.https://www.google.com/search?q=murals+in+santurce+san+juan&espv=210&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=u0YsU5uAIuSNygGZ-IDYBw&ved=0CCkQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=961
I am trying Darn Tough Socks from a Maine company. They should be arriving in the mail any day now. Aside from ten days in Puerto Rico, since early December, I have worn Smartwool on my feet for 16 hours a day. The other eight hours, it’s dress socks at work. Low of 8 Saturday night, so the days of ever-besocked continue…..
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Bruce Fields said on March 21, 2014 at 10:09 am
I sat in an admiring circle around an Anthony Gatto practice session at a juggling convention in Baltimore in 1989. He ended with a long run of 7 clubs. At the top of the pattern there are two spots where clubs alternately peak and float for a moment in mid-flip. It’s like a water fountain, mesmerizing.
I can manage 7 balls for maybe 20 catches if I’m lucky. You get a couple seconds where it feels easy and perfect, then it crashes, then you pick everything up and try again. It’s addictive.
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Bitter Scribe said on March 21, 2014 at 10:11 am
When I was in kindergarten, the teacher told us that the next day would be the first day of spring. I was so excited. I thought I’d wake up to sunshine and birds and fully bloomed trees. The next day I ran to the window and was greeted with three inches of fresh snow. I wailed, “That teacher lied to me!”
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brian stouder said on March 21, 2014 at 10:15 am
Cooz – a week or two ago, I noticed the unapologetic fawning that the Obamaphobic Fox-den was engaged in, with regard to Putin.
As I changed the channel, the thought occurred that this must have been how Joseph Kennedy sounded to folks, in the 1930’s
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Jeff Borden said on March 21, 2014 at 10:26 am
Thanks to a Facebook posting by my old buddy Page Lewis, I learned today that former Columbus Dispatch reporter/columnist Jack Willey died recently. While he became a cartoon figure of himself over time and his prodigious drinking did him no favors, I knew him when he was a damned good reporter who would go to Hildy Johnson lengths to get a story. I hope his passing brings him peace.
Meanwhile, on the spring front, it is supposed to hit 60 degrees in Chicago today, but fear not, as temps will fall again soon and we have more snow predicted for Monday and Tuesday. My big winter wear breakthrough were snow pants, which I wore over my flannel-lined blue jeans. I thought it was interesting that my snow pants were manufactured in Bangladesh and my fleece-lined Sorel boots were made in Indonesia. . .countries where they would never be needed.
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Heather said on March 21, 2014 at 10:54 am
Wow, cleats! Now that is serious. I don’t know if I need those, but I am definitely buying a parka with a hood for next winter. Going to keep an eye out for sales. I have a puffy down coat but it only goes to my hips–not nearly long enough.
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Dorothy said on March 21, 2014 at 11:03 am
May I give a shout-out to my daughter’s Copy Desk team? They won first prize in their category at the ACES Headline contest yesterday. And several former members of that team now work at the 3rd place winner. Take a gander:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13177105/100-200.STAFF.pdf
Here’s the complete list in case anyone wants to read the others:
http://www.copydesk.org/blog/2014/03/20/aces-announces-winners-of-2013-headline-contest/
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Joe Kobiela said on March 21, 2014 at 11:05 am
Ok, go to the story on the juggler and watch the last video, it’s 11 minutes of amazing showmanship, the concentration and practice, must be unbelievable.
Do yourself a favor watch it.
Pilot Joe
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coozledad said on March 21, 2014 at 11:28 am
Brian: Idle speculation here, but I’m willing to bet targeted sanctions against the Russian oligarchs are hurting the Koch Brothers and Harold Hamm as much as Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezofsky. Once you’re in that club you inevitably start swapping fluids, if only to share the taste of that mutant evil bastard gene. Oil is a family.
That’s why the Republicans’ messaging is so conflicted. Once again, they don’t know which pecker to suck.
But their propaganda organs will always push for a military response, to distract from the problem of a few greasy apes controlling the world’s wealth.
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Charlotte said on March 21, 2014 at 11:38 am
Nancy — you should check out Ibex.com — they’re making most of the Patagonia stuff but from lovely, soft, not-itchy wool. Their wool longies/tights are really really wonderful, and they have many nice wool skirts etc. Apparently, the military is somewhat responsible for reviving the wool market — unlike polypro, wool doesn’t melt when there are explosives going off. Hence, the smartwool (or Costco knockoffs, which I wear continually) sock and tights and longies etc. I bought Himself a wool hoodie that he’s been thoroughly happy with as horn hunting season begins.
My go-to overcoat for really cold days is my late brother’s old North Face shell over a down jacket (and a sweater, and all the rest). It’s so big it comes down to my knees and functions like one of those Antarctica coats. Miss him tons, but gee that jacket is nice.
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nancy said on March 21, 2014 at 11:50 am
Linda, I’d have to check the brand on the cleats, but I can tell you now they aren’t easy to put on, at least not in the size configuration I have. In fact, they were enough of a pain that for a while I just left them on the Bean boots all the time, and went to my other snow boots for when I needed to walk on a wood floor or go to the grocery or whatever. The upside is, once they’re on they stayed on.
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brian stouder said on March 21, 2014 at 11:58 am
All this looking at the Proprietress’s shoes and socks and so on makes the following North Carolina story a little more than a – what do you journalist-types call it? – ‘thumb-sucker’?
http://wane.com/news/crime/nc-police-seek-man-who-sucked-toes-at-wal-mart/
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beb said on March 21, 2014 at 12:52 pm
Cooz and B Stouder: it is creepily reminiscent of the 30s love for Hitler by conservatives in the US.
Interesting point about the Crimea. Ukraine was split about 50-50 Ukanie and Russian. Crimea was about 4% of the Ukraine population and it was mostly Russian. Annexing Crimea makes the rest of the country now slightly more Ukraine than Russian, accelerating the drift away from Russian to Europe.
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Julie Robinson said on March 21, 2014 at 1:14 pm
Dorothy, please tell your daughter congratulations–you must be beaming right now! The dropbox link didn’t open for me, I wonder if it has to have a public setting?
Non-itchy wool has been a welcome revelation to me. I stayed away for years because I didn’t think it was real.
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Jolene said on March 21, 2014 at 1:44 pm
Pretty cool, Dorothy. I had no idea that there were awards for headline-writing, but these are definitely worthy. (The Dropbox link worked for me, by the way.)
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coozledad said on March 21, 2014 at 3:39 pm
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2014/03/obamacare-are-you-nuts.html
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brian stouder said on March 21, 2014 at 4:23 pm
Cooz – that thing was, indeed, nuts!
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brian stouder said on March 21, 2014 at 4:32 pm
…and btw – it has been refreshing to see Ms Maddow go after the NC/Duke Energy deal pretty heavily, in recent days.
Afterall, the Chris Christy belly-flop is fast becoming water-under-the-bridge, whereas the Duke/NC scandal continues to foul the water – even despite local sheriffs’ efforts to shoo away concerned citizens with video cameras.
And the missing jetliner is (at least for now) still the dog that isn’t barking
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LAMary said on March 21, 2014 at 4:39 pm
I keep thinking of Chris Christie as Lou Christie. I don’t know what Lou Christie looked like so I just visualize Chris Christie singing “Lightning Striking Again.” It’s not a good image.
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coozledad said on March 21, 2014 at 4:47 pm
LAMary: Lou looked like Chuck Norris without the ravages of heavy drinking and having Bruce Lee mop the floor up with his dumb ass.
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LAMary said on March 21, 2014 at 4:51 pm
Ah, ok. I actually did see Lou on some show, maybe American Bandstand, but he had just been in “an accident” and had a smashed up nose and black eye, so I didn’t really know what he looked like. Didn’t stop him from doing a bang up job lip synching though.
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coozledad said on March 21, 2014 at 5:05 pm
One thing you might not want to think about is Chris Christie dressed up like Klaus Nomi.
It would be like an oily Teletubby.
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LAMary said on March 21, 2014 at 5:08 pm
I know I’ve mentioned before that I have a sister in law who looks like Chris Christie in drag. I still do.
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brian stouder said on March 21, 2014 at 5:15 pm
LA Mary for the win!! I could just see the sister-in-law!
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Connie said on March 21, 2014 at 5:20 pm
Judge Rules Michigan’s Ban on Gay Marriage Unconstitutional
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/judge-rules-michigans-ban-gay-marriage-unconstitutional-n59116
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alex said on March 21, 2014 at 7:02 pm
A friend who’s an audiophile turned me on to Lou Christie in the ’90s, believe it or not. He had a collection of obscure stuff that never got major airplay back in the late ’60s or early ’70s but was interesting in that it reveals Christie’s label couldn’t figure out what to do with him when he aged out of the bubble-gum teen idol genre, so they tried recasting him in all sorts of styles that just didn’t wear well. Some of it was quite interesting and some of it even good, but a grown man whose falsetto was his strong suit was hard to package and market in those days.
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Deborah said on March 21, 2014 at 8:25 pm
I didn’t remember the name Lou Christie at all, but then I googled him and listened to some of his hits on You Tube and it all came back to me. I wouldn’t consider his voice a falsetto, I think of Aaron Neville (etc) for that kind of thing.
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Deborah said on March 21, 2014 at 8:35 pm
OK, I went to Google and looked up Aaron Neville to make sure I remembered his voice and I found this lovely rendition he did with Linda Ronstadt. Then when I was listening to it my daughter asked me why I was listening to really bad music. Am I right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNX1JLRSiyg
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Jolene said on March 21, 2014 at 10:16 pm
Tell Little Bird she is wrong, Deborah. Aaron Neville is terrific.
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basset said on March 21, 2014 at 10:27 pm
Watching a 1977 Renaissance concert on YouTube right now, for the benefit of Mrs. B. and Jr.
I think they are catching on.
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linda said on March 22, 2014 at 7:34 am
No, Deborah, your daughter is wrong.
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linda said on March 22, 2014 at 7:41 am
Let me amplify. The voices are great, but the duet Close Your Eyes was much better. However, due to copyright restrictions you can’t get it online.
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brian stouder said on March 22, 2014 at 11:01 am
Y’know how Cooz is always goin’ on about those elected Republican ‘grifters’ and con-men and so on?
Look at the attached photo, and see if this guy doesn’t look exactly like one of the wait-staff at a Koch-sucker fundraising party
http://wane.com/news/indiana/rep-stutzman-tax-warrant-was-a-mistake/
Rule #1 for the advocates of the incoherent “Makers versus Takers” meme (and especially for those who, like darlin’ Marlin, literally receive cash subsidy checks in the mail from ‘Uncle Sugar’): pay your taxes!
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MarkH said on March 22, 2014 at 1:57 pm
KQV Radio Shower of Stars Pittsburgh, PA (remember those, Dorothy?), December, 1965. In order of appearance: Simon and Garfunkle, Chuck Berry, Lou Christie, Four Seasons. Christie did some faux stripper act throwing his coat around, but he seemed to be just past his peak popularity.
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Sherri said on March 22, 2014 at 2:53 pm
Police will always claim that some power or exemption they have is absolutely essential to their job, even if they can’t or won’t tell you how they use it. Prostitute or terrorist, the story is the same.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2023189286_apxhawaiiprostitutionpolicesex.html
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brian stouder said on March 22, 2014 at 3:12 pm
Sherri – that is flat-out the craziest damned “real thing” I’ve read in awhile. It reads like a semi-flat joke.
I would bet that most prostitutes would demand payment before rendering the service, yes? And this is when the arrest would occur, right?
Or, looked at another way, if I am engaged in a plot to commit a crime – moving lots of ill-gotten cash from the drug trade, say – the undercover police who pretend to be my partners don’t get to keep the cash, right?
Well, except in New Jersey
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Julie Robinson said on March 22, 2014 at 3:20 pm
And speaking of the Kochs, this cartoon from Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee, which was in our morning paper: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/03/21/6255129/koch-industries.html
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brian stouder said on March 22, 2014 at 3:44 pm
Julie – I had a funny little experience the other day at Wayne High School. I buzzed across town at 5, for a 5:15 “Generally Speaking” meeting (wherein the principal of the school invites any and all parents to come in and find out updates on how the school is doing, and what is going on, and to answer any questions), to be followed at 6 pm by a presentation by our esteemed superintendent, Dr Wendy Robinson, about challenges facing the district.
She has conducted this presentation at each high school, open to all citizens, with a view to an informed discussion including everyone. I was gabbing with Dr Robinson before her presentation, and asked her about a rumor I’d heard that Senator Cruz had attended one of these, earlier in the week…! and she confirmed that he did indeed….and then it hit me that it was State Senator Kruse, of the crooked auctioneer family, and NOT Senator Raphael Cruz, of the green-eggs-and-ham tea party.
Happily, this came to me before I said anything really really stupid!
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Kirk said on March 22, 2014 at 4:54 pm
Julie, Ohman worked with us here in Columbus before he was old enough to buy a beer. Though he was only 20, he already was syndicated in a bunch of newspapers and, as such, made plenty more than any of us. But he was notorious for bumming 50 cents or a dollar off people and not paying them back without coaxing. He’s a smart guy who has had a fine career.
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Julie Robinson said on March 22, 2014 at 6:04 pm
Eh–Kruse, Cruz; not sure there’s much difference.
Kirk, that one had more bite than we normally get, and it made me applaud.
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brian stouder said on March 22, 2014 at 10:50 pm
Another shadow of President Lincoln, possibly
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-man-may-have-found-two-forgotten-photos-of-lincolns-funeral-procession/2014/03/19/8f5f5fa6-ade6-11e3-96dc-d6ea14c099f9_story.html
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alex said on March 23, 2014 at 10:48 am
Kruse represents my district and he’s a perennial crusader for the cause of creationism in the classroom. In a nearby district is Bob Morris (who’s going to have his ass handed to him this year by attorney Michael Baranda, everyone hopes) who thinks the Girl Scouts are a lesbian indoctrination camp and a front group for the abortion rights movement. As imbecilic politicians go, Indiana can hold its own against any southern state. It’s an even bigger badge of pride than our rankings for obesity and illiteracy.
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LAMary said on March 23, 2014 at 1:47 pm
Shearling lined duck shoes and capilene undies…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWG2dsXV5HI
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Deborah said on March 23, 2014 at 10:43 pm
Have you seen this flash mob video from the Ukraine? Ode to Joy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2R1X28sJaE&feature=youtu.be
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Sherri said on March 23, 2014 at 11:31 pm
Interesting article about the byzantine water rights in California: http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-delta-flows-20140323,0,5660274,full.story
I couldn’t believe it when I moved to California back in 1990 (in the middle of a drought) and I found out that people actually grew rice and alfalfa in California, a desert. And that there weren’t any water meters in many locations in the Central Valley (though that’s slowly changing.)
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