I forgot to tell you about the Movement festival. Not that I went. It was hot as Vulcan’s dick (to steal a witticism from Titus Pullo in “Rome”) all three days, expensive as hell, and nooooo thanks. I like techno/house music OK, but not well enough to pay a fortune and stand on the hot concrete of Hart Plaza with a bunch of Ecstasy enthusiasts. But I’ll say this: Those folks can party.
Seriously. The after- and pre-parties went basically around the clock. Kraftwerk showed up at the contemporary art museum and played a set at 4 a.m. one night. A friend reported one of his posse stayed in one bar until 11:30 a.m. Almost noon the day after the party started.
I just can’t conceive of this. I’m suspecting? Maybe some drugs were involved.
But me, I went to one. I guess it was a pre-party, but it started at 6 a.m., and most people there were absolutely not fresh out of bed, but rather, zombie-white, inked with tattoos of Detroit’s longitude and latitude or its Latin motto, having cocktails at daybreak and listening to the persistent, monotonous bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa house beat.
It was held here:
If you’re thinking that looks like a run-down hotel, why you’re right. And I don’t think any of the residents — and I believe they were mostly all residents, long-term residents, not conventional hotel guests — had any idea this was coming until they were awakened by bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa-bum-thumpa, looked out the window and saw 30 or 40 zombies dancing in their motor court.
“Look at this place,” my friend said, delighted with the scene. “I bet there are as-yet-undiscovered species of bedbugs in there. It would be like going up the Amazon and finding a new bird.”
Meanwhile, just picked this up on one of the Deadly Vipers’ Facebook pages, taken in the West Hollywood Airbnb we sprang for, to get them off of a succession of floors:
Looks like the girlies are having fun. Just a few more days, and Kate flies home. Can’t wait to see her.
No links today — workin’ too hard! — but you guys always find the best ones, anyway. Dance the day away, then.
Dexter said on June 1, 2016 at 1:24 am
Titus Pullo…my fave Ray Stevenson role, one for the ages. http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y61/fathom216/ROMEC3.jpg
Finally the cops are wising up and considering a possible Zoo Mom intentional placing of the kid into the moat for either attention or law suit money or …life insurance payout. Good job, coppers, a tad slow on the uptake but investigate at will.
nance, (or beb, crazycatlady)…is that place you went for music that billed itself as a carpet house but is really just a lot still going strong? You biked there a couple years ago.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=641&q=john%27s+carpet+house+of+blues&oq=john%27s+carpet+house&gs_l=img.1.1.0i24l2.1811.11775.0.14739.25.13.3.9.12.0.407.2331.2j4j4j1j1.12.0….0…1ac.1.64.img..1.19.2365…0j0i30j0i8i30.0aTrVTm066k
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Sherri said on June 1, 2016 at 2:46 am
Even by the low standards of the for-profit educational industry, Trump U looks to be particularly fraudulent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/us/politics/donald-trump-university.html
Way to go, Republicans.
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adrianne said on June 1, 2016 at 6:30 am
The Vipers look like they’re enjoying the tour. I’m sure you’ll be glad to have the little bird back in the nest for a bit before Iceland, though.
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basset said on June 1, 2016 at 7:49 am
How are they traveling? The itinerary starts out looking drivable but some of the overnight jumps out west are pretty long. Then again, Bob Seger used to drive straight through from Detroit to Florida, play, turn around, and drive back. Used to be a website out there with some of his old routes on it… two I remember were play one night in Evansville, the next in Dallas, and New Orleans to Detroit, home one day for Christmas, then straight through back to Louisiana.
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Suzanne said on June 1, 2016 at 7:53 am
I doubt the Trump U problems will have much impact on Trump. His people don’t seem rational and that story is from the NY Times, the most egregious of the main stream media who have an agenda which is, of course, to get Hillary elected. Nothing to see here, move on. And even if it was a scam, buyer beware and all that. The losers that enrolled should have known better, so it isn’t Trump’s fault. He’s great! Gonna make America great again!
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nancy said on June 1, 2016 at 8:27 am
They went halvsies with another band on a big Econoline van, and so far, it’s doing OK. Fingers crossed for this final leg, up the coast.
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beb said on June 1, 2016 at 8:30 am
In defense of the Zoo Mom…. Our daughter has ADHD. As a four year old she could disappear the moment you turned your back. Not because she was willfully defiant but because she was in her own world. Four year old kids are all kind of like that. ADHD just makes it worse. So: for a four year old kid a rail fence and four foot of margin before a moat is not much of a deterrent at all.
On the other hand, according to a report I read this morning, the children declared he wanted to splash around in the moat. His mother said No!” then turned away. Seconds later he’s in the moat. After raising him for four years she ought to have known that he was willfully defiant and not turned away. It will be up to the police to determine if anything criminal was committed (probably not) but there’s little sympathy on my end.
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Dorothy said on June 1, 2016 at 8:49 am
beb I’m sorry but I think you’re off base saying “After raising him for four years she ought to have known that he was willfully defiant and not turned away.” How do you know if he’d ever been ‘willfully defiant’ before? Maybe he chose that moment to begin his career as a willfully defiant child. Maybe he’d been unpredictable and sometimes he obeyed, and sometimes he didn’t. You don’t know the mother, you don’t know the child, and NO ONE should be in the business of second guessing what is going on in someone else’s mind.
Nancy said we readers sometimes find the best links, so I’d like to share this from the paper where my daughter works. It so happens she edited this very long two-part story about CTE in the armed forces (you all might be familiar with the stories about football players being diagnosed with it after their deaths). She wrote all the headlines but she said they aren’t used in the online version. No matter. The paper was going to publish this in a week or two but they found out the NYTimes was working on a similar piece, so they decided to publish sooner. I haven’t finished reading it all but plan to do so today.
http://pilotonline.com/news/military/veterans/a-navy-seal-s-last-act-of-service-a-search/article_8ee3d886-638d-59b8-b7ff-e1e9956e79a5.html
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 1, 2016 at 9:07 am
Further, as we will see, the second Klan espoused all of the “mobilizing passions” Paxton identifies as characteristic of fascism:
Feelings propel fascism more than thought does. We might call them mobilizing passions, since they function in fascist movements to recruit followers and in fascist regimes to “weld” the fascist “tribe” to its leader. The following mobilizing passions are present in fascisms, though they may sometimes be articulated only implicitly.
1. The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual.
2. The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action against the group’s enemies, internal as well as external.
3. Dread of the group’s decadence under the corrosive effect of individualistic and cosmopolitan liberalism.
4. Closer integration of the community within a brotherhood (fascio) whose unity and purity are forged by common conviction, if possible, or by exclusionary violence, if necessary.
5. An enhanced sense of identity and belonging, in which the grandeur of the group reinforces individual self-esteem.
6. Authority of natural leaders (always male) throughout society, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny.
7. The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success in a Darwinian struggle.
From http://www1.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 1, 2016 at 9:10 am
Sorry, link should have gone on top. Online source for Paxton’s criteria, out of:
https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Fascism-Robert-Paxton/dp/1400033918
[link not Kickbackified…]
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brian stouder said on June 1, 2016 at 11:08 am
I’m with beb on zoo-mom, and I think the zoo has a faulty design.
That ‘barrier’ is the key. Not to sound like the Donald, but if there actually was a wall (made of plexiglass, or whatever) that’d be one thing…but there’s basically a speed-bump and then a drop (I believe they said 10′) and then the water.
The Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo, which I love, has a Capuchin monkey display with a 4′ high (give or take) wall, and a water-filled mote, and then an island where the monkeys are.
Kiddos could (and maybe have) go over the wall, and land in the water, and go for the monkeys…but these are not large animals – and the keepers could easily go right in and collect any such kiddo.
By way of saying, I’m a little leery of that display – and if a gorilla was similarly situated (Cincy only seems to have added a bit of height) I’d find it unacceptable
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MichaelG said on June 1, 2016 at 11:18 am
As Basset notes, that’s quite the itinerary. Looks like they’ll be passing right by here today on the way to Reno. I’ll wave. I’d imagine that starting 06-04 they’ll want to sleep for a week.
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alex said on June 1, 2016 at 11:55 am
Here’s a fun little read that I chanced upon today:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/06/zarif-khans-tamales-and-the-muslims-of-sheridan-wyoming
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Judybusy said on June 1, 2016 at 12:18 pm
Love the pic of the Vipers! Gotta run, busy, leaving for two weeks on Monday, so lots to do here.
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brian stouder said on June 1, 2016 at 12:30 pm
Alex for Thread Win! – I say
That’s a marvelous, marvelous article that he linked; evocative.
Of all the stuff my family binge-watches, if someone made that story into a mini-series, I’d tune in
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Jakash said on June 1, 2016 at 1:55 pm
My wife and I attended a play at the acclaimed Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago last night. Coincidentally, the theater opened a new cafe/bar next to the theater yesterday. Having not had dinner, we visited it after the play for a sandwich and a beer. Which were fine, as was the place (as was the play!) The reason I bring it up is that, when I went to hit the men’s room, I was presented with a choice of two bathrooms and a sign pleasantly explaining the difference. I wish I’d taken a picture of the sign, as I don’t remember exactly what it said, but something to the effect of to accommodate everybody fairly, they were going with unisex bathrooms. One had four stalls and four sinks, I think, and the other had 2 urinals, two stalls and 4 sinks. You were encouraged to use whichever you were comfortable with. (I, uh, went with the urinals…) It also said that if you weren’t comfortable with this idea, the staff would let you into the theater lobby next door, which was closed by this point, to use the regular restrooms. I suppose, in a sense, it was no different than a men’s room and women’s room, just that you’re to figure it out for yourself. But it seemed like an interesting introduction to the brave new world. (For the record, nobody was in the one that I used.)
This all occurred *after* I had read this column in the Tribune yesterday, which might bear posting here:
Money quote: (Obama) “took a torturous route to embracing the cause of gay marriage in 2012. He said it was an issue he ‘struggled with.’ In 2004, he told a WBBM-AM interviewer: ‘My religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.’
If Americans gave him space to re-evaluate his position on gay marriage, doesn’t he owe other Americans a little breathing room on the issue of who gets to go into which bathroom?”
Just to be clear, this was not written by some right-wing fire-breather, and he actually deals as much with the question of locker rooms, which seems more significant to me, as bathrooms…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-transgender-washroom-wars-grossman-20160530-story.html
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Jakash said on June 1, 2016 at 2:02 pm
As for Zoo Mom, count me on the side of those giving her a bit of slack. I marvel at folks wrangling multiple willful children on various public outings, and am not inclined to judge this one too harshly, myself.
Kinda related — has this Pulitzer Prize-winning Gene Weingarten piece ever made the rounds here?
“It was an inexplicable, inexcusable mistake, but was it a crime? That was the question for a judge to decide.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
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Sherri said on June 1, 2016 at 2:24 pm
There was a boy in my daughter’s kindergarten class who was a handful. I think there may have been some learning issues going on that were making life difficult for him, plus a recent divorce at home (though both parents seemed to be working to make the best of it for him.) But he was a difficult kid, who could be whiny, uncooperative, and willful. Needless to say, field trips were challenging if you had him in your group. Imagine being in charge of wrangltheing a bunch of 5 and 6 year old kids in your typical children’s museum, all with different interests and attention spans, all wanting to go in a different direction, and now make one of them especially difficult. That explains how we lost Bradley in the San Jose Children’s Museum. We got outside to the bus, counted, and came up one short. We did find him, but the teachers and chaperones were all a bit panicked for a bit.
Dexter, I don’t know why you’re so harsh on the zoo mom, but you have a lot more faith in the foster system than I do if you’re so quick to want to put the kid in foster care. There are good foster families out there, I know. I have two friends who fostered and eventually adopted a couple of kids each, another friend who temporarily fosters infants, and another friend who went through the process of becoming a foster family only to eventually decide it wasn’t going to work for them. The stories they tell of the foster families in it for the money were disheartening.
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Sherri said on June 1, 2016 at 2:34 pm
You know when it’s considered usually a tragic mistake but not a crime? When the small child finds and plays with the parent’s loaded gun. Well, usually if you’re white, and especially if you’re a LEO.
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MichaelG said on June 1, 2016 at 2:49 pm
Years ago, when daughter was about 10 we lived in San Francisco. During the summer she went to a YWCA for child care. This was quite convenient since the Y was across the street and up a little way, but still in the same block.
One day they went on a field trip and during the return trip Steph fell asleep on the bus, as she is wont to do when riding in a motor vehicle. This was a regular Muni bus, not a charter, and when the bus arrived at their stop, all the Y people got off forgetting and abandoning the blissfully sleeping Steph.
The driver found her and woke her when he reached the end of the line. No big deal. He just carried her back on his return trip and let her off at her stop. The Y people were crapping their pants and running in circles about the missing child when Steph wandered in after having been missing for 45 minutes or an hour.
I have no idea what happened at that zoo in Cincinnati , but I must agree that it’s easy to misplace a kid and that it can happen in the blink of an eye.
Brian looks to be correct in that that barrier seems to be very insufficient. I can’t see how it would deter an enterprising kid for more than a couple of seconds.
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nancy said on June 1, 2016 at 3:08 pm
Sherri,
Our county prosecutors does not play when it comes to kids shooting themselves. She just charged a pair of 80-year-olds who left a loaded gun under their pillow that was found by their granddaughter.
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Deborah said on June 1, 2016 at 3:09 pm
Alex, I agree with Brian, that was an excellent link.
I don’t know what to think about the gorilla fiasco. I was a pretty strict mom, I didn’t let Little Bird run wild, mainly I was cognizant at all times how she might be effecting other people. I never let her get up from the table and wander around which people let their kids do all the time at restaurants, which drives me absolutely crazy. I don’t blame the kids, I blame the parents, but I’ve never confronted a parent about it and never will, ever. But I certainly silently judge them. I mean, parents keep track of your damn kids, do not let them be in the middle of a public spectacle. Do I think the parent in this gorilla case should be charged with anything, probably not. But let this be a lesson to the rest of the parents out there who have rambunctious kids: keep them in check and don’t let them spoil it for the rest of us.
Today is my husband’s 69th birthday. We’re baking him a birthday pie instead of a cake, because he’s a big pie fan. This one will be cherry with vanilla ice cream on top.
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brian stouder said on June 1, 2016 at 3:23 pm
Deborah – absolutely AGREED on kids running hither & yon’ in restaurants!!
And – birthday pie sounds awfully good…and 69 sounds younger all the time!
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alex said on June 1, 2016 at 3:25 pm
The deference people have to pay to the gun lobby is just sick. I read recently that Katie Couric had to apologize for a “misleading” report she did on guns. It was “misleading” because the editors inserted a pause between a question and the interviewee’s answer in order to give viewers the opportunity to absorb the complexity of the question.
Kid disappears from mother’s sight for two seconds at the zoo and they want to crucify her, but if the same mother left her Glock on the kitchen table and the kid killed himself with it we’d never hear about it.
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Sherri said on June 1, 2016 at 3:27 pm
I’m glad to hear it Nancy. It’s a mixed bag out there: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/us/guns-children-deaths.html
Even when charges are brought, juries may be reluctant to convict. An off duty police officer left a loaded gun in a cup holder in his mini van with his kids while he inside a store to run a quick errand. His three year old son picked up the gun and shot and killed his 7 year old daughter. He was charged with manslaughter, but the trial ended in a mistrial when the jury couldn’t reach a verdict. He was fired from the police force, but was reinstated through arbitration.
It sometimes feels like that if he had let a dog die in a hot car there would have been more outrage.
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alex said on June 1, 2016 at 3:27 pm
And happy 69th to Deborah’s husband!
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Sherri said on June 1, 2016 at 3:35 pm
Ken Starr, already stripped of the presidency of Baylor, has resigned as chancellor now “as a matter of conscience.” The chancellor’s duties included representing Baylor externally for fundraising and promoting religious liberty. Starr’s conscience does not extend as far as resigning from his position as the Louse L Morrison Chair of Constitutional Law.
I haven’t checked the law school syllabus to see if they offer classes in “How to Get Away With Murder” and “How to See No Rapes When Your Football Team Is Intended For The Glory of God”.
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Deborah said on June 1, 2016 at 3:57 pm
Nancy has an interesting dialogue going on Facebook about a kid she tutored who realized in an aha moment that the meaning of “prejudice” is connected to Trump. The kid is of Mexican heritage and easily made the connection when Nancy explained the definition of the word without her prompting. Some of the commenting is negative which is surprising to me but in today’s political climate I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. One of the things that stood out in the exchange I read is that one of the commenters on FB on her thread is also someone I went to college with many years ago. He was a year ahead of me and I always admired him. He replied positively to her FB post, so it was encouraging to me that some of the people I went to school with at the LCMS college were open minded after all of these years. I have no idea how Nancy is connected with this guy, but if he’s a reader here, Hi, Steve.
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adrianne said on June 1, 2016 at 4:00 pm
Ha! What Sherri said on Kenneth Starr, that loathsome creature.
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Kirk said on June 1, 2016 at 4:22 pm
I looked at the clip that Couric apologized for, and she should have apologized. It’s bogus and deceptive. A pause inserted to give viewers time to understand the question, my ass. If it’s a documentary, don’t phony it up with misleading editing. Most of us can agree that it shouldn’t be hard to produce a documentary that indicts the country’s obsession with guns without resorting to tricks.
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BethB from Indiana said on June 1, 2016 at 4:27 pm
The key to a good cherry pie, IMHO, is the addition of 1/4 tsp of almond extract (the real stuff) into the filling mixture. This is for a nine inch pie. It gives a tiny bit of “wham” to the taste. I make mine with a lattice crust on top that I sugar before baking.
It’s the recipe I got from my ancient Betty Crocker cookbook, a gift from my family when I moved 300 miles away from home in 1972 for my first teaching job at the age of 22. I still use the cookbook which is now falling apart. I noticed that a newer version of the same cookbook leaves the almond extract out of the cherry pie recipe–probably not an error, but a big mistake!
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Jakash said on June 1, 2016 at 4:29 pm
Agreed, Kirk. Sadly, on rare occasion even the minions of the Right Wing Whackosphere have a point…
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Deborah said on June 1, 2016 at 4:35 pm
BethB, the recipe we have also calls for almond extract, so hopefully it will have the “wham” you described.
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Connie said on June 1, 2016 at 4:49 pm
My birthday cake is almost always a peach pie. Because it is in season. Best fruit of all, a Michigan peach.
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brian stouder said on June 1, 2016 at 5:05 pm
Connie – Michigan peach is very, very hard to beat! (plus, vanilla ice cream along with it)
So today I gave Uncle Rush 5 minutes, as he pilloried the press for the way they treat the Donald, and how the Donald was right to attack them, blah blah blah.
My question for him would have been – what would you have said about Senator Obama, if he lashed out like that, in 2008?
If he made false statements and scrambled at the last moment to make them true (literally saying ‘the check is in the mail’!), and called particular reporters names and cast aspersions……
but of course that’s a stupid question on my part, because rule #1 for the cry-baby rightwing media is that ‘their guys’ don’t have to live up to the impossible standards they set for anyone else.
It’s almost pure id
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David C. said on June 1, 2016 at 6:23 pm
Our county prosecutors does not play when it comes to kids shooting themselves. She just charged a pair of 80-year-olds who left a loaded gun under their pillow that was found by their granddaughter.
Good for them. “They’ve suffered enough” doesn’t cut it. A couple of years in stripe city may be enough to focus their minds on something other than their paranoia.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 1, 2016 at 6:34 pm
Somehow, in a couple of weeks, I will be in Michigan somewhere near fresh peaches, and my phone will be off. Mmmm.
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nancy said on June 1, 2016 at 7:36 pm
There won’t be any fresh peaches in Michigan until July or August. Sorry to burst your bubble.
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Brandon said on June 1, 2016 at 7:56 pm
@Jeff: If you were in Hawaii now, you’d be enjoying lichee and mangoes.
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MichaelG said on June 1, 2016 at 8:49 pm
Double header in the area this evening. Trump speaks at the airport at 7:00PM (scheduled) and Bernie Nader is scheduled to speak at UC Davis at 8:00 PM. The airport is completely, solidly blocked and I-80 is backed up forever in both directions. Sure glad I’m not traveling today. Wonder how old Bern plans to get to Davis with the airport so fucked up by Trump. He’ll have to charter a chopper.
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basset said on June 1, 2016 at 9:26 pm
Been getting fresh Georgia peaches for the past couple of weeks here in Tennessee – just clings so far, but the freestones are on the way.
My dad learned to drive on a Model A Ford pickup in the late 30s so he could haul South Carolina peaches for his uncles – actually the real business was in quart jars under the fruit boxes, but you gotta keep up appearances, right?
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 1, 2016 at 10:26 pm
Curses.
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Deborah said on June 1, 2016 at 10:37 pm
Well, the birthday celebration was fine except the pie looked like hell. It tasted great but Little Bird and I need to up our crust making skills.
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Sherri said on June 1, 2016 at 11:06 pm
No matter how loathesome you thought Ken Starr was, he’s worse.
http://deadspin.com/baylors-ken-starr-is-full-of-shit-1779911194
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