Sorry, Ma, I Remembered to Rummage through the Trash

The IMDB reports:

Desperate Housewives actress Marcia Cross is battling to keep naked pictures of her from being published. Two hundred sexy snaps were reportedly discovered by a catering company hired to removed rubbish from redhead Cross' home in Los Angeles.

200? Wouldn't it just be easier for her to take off her clothes and parade around the house rather than take all those pictures? I'm also a bit confused why someone employs a catering company to take out the trash, but if it's an example of hiring dyselxia it does explain why so many people got sick from the canapes at the last bash at the Cross estate.

The firm's owner is being represented by agent David Hans Schmidt, who plans to sell the pictures. Schmidt tells the New York Daily News, "There are some pictures of her showering outside. She looks absolutely gorgeous. And yes, the carpet does match the curtains."

I guess that means in addition to being an agent, Schmidt is an interior designer.

But 44-year-old Cross' legal team claims the photos were thrown away by mistake and insist they still belong to her and husband Tom Mahoney. She is demanding their return. But Schmidt is confident he has the law behind him and hints he plans to sell them abroad: "The pictures were not stolen. When you throw something away, you forfeit that property. We recognize the copyright issue, but US copyright law stops at the border." But he has given Cross the opportunity to buy the photos back, claiming he knows how wealthy she is after discovering her tax return in the trash as well.

Two syllables, Marcia: Shred-der.

Schmidt adds, "I'm not looking to mortify Ms. Cross. I just want the most money for my client. I know how much she made, but out of respect for Ms. Cross, I won't discuss it."

Yeah, what a gentleman. Her income is off limits but the blush of her bush, that's a different kettle of fish.

Dog-Gone Halloween Dilemma

Please help Mookie decide: should he go as a clown looking for his John 3:16 sign (turns out that's a very scary story!) or as a delightful if insouciant devilish redhead?

Happy pagan candy eating ritual day, everyone!

P.S. If you're wondering where you know who is, you try to get a costume on Nigel for more than 3 seconds....

A Simple Plan

According to the AFP President Bush today asserted:

"If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don't have one. Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, yet they don't have a plan for victory," he told cheering Republican faithful at a rally here.

He went on to say, "I do have a plan, and that plan is to say I have a plan and then to do nothing. This will confuse people in Iraq, expecting something better from the U.S., which just goes to show they're too busy being blown-up to notice how well our other plans in places like New Orleans have gone so far.

"Plus the Democrats don't give me enough credit for making Iraq the central front on terror. Terror used to happen anywhere, but now we know where most of it is getting created. Just as we know that Afghanistan is the central front for growing opium. That's all thanks to our plan."

Turn Your Head and Coiff

Originally uploaded by internatsleben.at.tf.

Aspiring actor Chip was quite depressed to learn that when he at last grew his hair just so, they went and cancelled That 70s Show.

Monday Random Flickr Blogging explained.

There Is a Light that Never Goes In

Uploaded by Ethans mom on 29 Oct '06, 4.59pm PST.

We knew at an early age that Timmy would be a colonoscope operator.

It's My Fantasy, and I'm Not Afraid of the Other 11 Owners, and I Did Beat Their Asses

May I introduce to you the 2006 Bill James Memorial Baseball League World Series Champions, your Oberkfellows! There will be a ticker-tape parade through our house, featuring a relatively normal-legged Nigel (so much joy in our little Mudville today!), at noon. You're all invited.

From Suit to Nuts

As you might know, Madwoman McCaw is suing the Independent. Here's Nick Welsh's take on it:

I was busy doing nothing when I was interrupted Thursday evening by a reporter from UCSB’s Daily Nexus, informing me that The Independent had just been sued in federal court by News-Press owner Wendy P. McCaw.

In her lawsuit, McCaw alleges that The Independent had infringed upon her copyright, ripped off her trade secrets, engaged in “intentional and negligent interference with her prospective economic advantage and contract.” Translated into the English language, McCaw claims that two news articles written by News-Press reporters had somehow been leaked to me and that I was in their possession illegally. Secondly, she was upset that I had posted one of the articles on the Independent’s website in its entirety without the News-Press’ consent. And somehow because of this, her lawsuit charged, McCaw and her newspaper have suffered economic damages.

I shouldn't wade into these waters, knowing only enough about the law to change my mind about being pre-law when I was merely a freshman in college. Plus we have Craig Smith to set us legally straight. But part of me thinks that I want to be in the courtroom for this trial, assuming the case doesn't get a sane judge who will laugh his robes off and toss it out. I mean, McCaw is on such a losing streak she can't get the NLRB to give her a hearing, let alone side with her on anything.

Because if the News-Press is going to prove it has suffered economic damages, first it's going to have to admit it's lost advertising revenue and/or lost circulation. And so far it refuses to admit either, or else folks aren't passing around those Dr. (of Philosophy) Agnes Huff press releases about how poorly the paper is doing.

But what might be even more delicious is that in a courtroom people are sworn to tell the truth and the whole truth. What's Travis Armstrong going to say on the stand? Scott Steepleton? And that's about all the witnesses for the News-Press's case--I doubt Wendy will get to say what she thought was going on at her paper in July as she was on a yacht in Europe. Unless anyone wants to know what suntan lotion Catherine Zeta-Jones wears.

The Independent, on the other hand, will have 26 former N-P staffers who might actually all say the same thing. Sure, Wendy will rant that they are part of the conspiracy that at this point probably includes random people on a grassy knoll in Dallas, but it seems impossible that she can have a trial about how Ampersand's trade secrets got out without saying what those trade secrets actually are. So this very lawsuit guarantees some transparency.

I'll bet anyone dollars to donuts that the story about the suit won't be reported on in the News-Press.

The Bigger the Foot, the Bigger the Rimadil

For Dog Bigfoot Blog Friday: Nigel's poor leg, still swollen from last week's hematoma.

Excuses...

For Dog Blog Friday...

I had photos up, I thought, but they only appeared on Firefox and not on IE. So I took them down and now Blogger won't post any photos for any browser. It sure showed me.

I'll try later. I actually work, you know.

Friday Random Ten

Just loaded Mission of Burma last night--after trying to rip all the artists we thought we needed for the party last week, we are now plugging through the alphabet; we're at 29.4 GB, 8757 songs that would play for 22 1/2 days.

Yo La Tengo "Georgia Vs. Yo La Tengo"
Billy Bragg " The World Turned Upside Down"
The Klezmatics "Shnaps-Nign"
Laurie Anderson "In Our Sleep"
Mahlatini and the Mahotella Queens "Kazet"
The Blind Boys of Alabama "Good Religion"
Fred Astaire "They All Laughed"
Built to Spill "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss"
Brian Eno "Saint Tom"
Boomtown Rats "Like Clockwork"

bonus
Steve Earle "Until the Day I Die"

How nice--2 artists we've just seen live, a cut featuring one we will see next week (Lou Reed is on "In Our Sleep"), and a true worldly mix that is as random as my tastes are.

A Whole Lot of Water-Boarding Going On

So it goes like this--of course BushCo is all for torture, since that's what they've done to Iraq, to the U.S. Constitution, to reality itself. What a surprise that it's Dick Cheney who finally admits that there's water-boarding going on; after all he has no problem spraying a friend's face with birdshot, so what's a little H20 on someone darker and foreign. Cheney and Bush won't even listen to the first two subjects in the next sentence, as they are noted commie-pinko-liberals:

The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many experts on the laws of war, however, consider water-boarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture. Some intelligence professionals argue that it often provides false or misleading information because many subjects will tell their interrogators what they think they want to hear to make the water-boarding stop.

That's so like everything they've done. Methods don't matter. Results don't really matter either--just ask those watching the Taliban sweep back into power in Afghanistan or those still waiting for recovery in New Orleans--but the impression of results do. Just say what we want to hear.

Those of us still living in reality have to make sure we say something very different November 7.

Don't Like What He's Pitching

OK, I'm rooting for the Tigers tonight both because I have the Tigers starter Jeremy Bonderman on my WS fantasy squad and I want to see Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan lose after he shut down the Mets twice in the League Championship Series despite being truly mediocre throughout his career otherwise. I don't mind losing to good athletes, but getting beat by Jeff Suppan and Yadier Molina is like watching W. keep winning elections.

I chose that comparison advisedly as it turns out that rooting for Suppan is very much like voting Republican. For we learn from the New York Times:

Jeff Suppan is scheduled to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 4 of the World Series at Busch Stadium, but his time on the mound will not be his only appearance on the baseball telecast.

Suppan is one of several athletes in a political campaign commercial to be broadcast regionally during the Fox network’s telecast of the game. The ad urges Missouri voters to oppose stem-cell research and vote against Amendment 2 to the state constitution, on the ballot in the Nov. 7 election.

In a video copy of the ad, produced and distributed by an anti-amendment group called Missourians Against Human Cloning and posted on the Internet, Mr. Suppan’s face appears in the first 10 seconds. He is not wearing a baseball cap in the ad.

"Amendment 2 claims it bans human cloning, but in the 2,000 words you don’t read, it makes cloning a constitutional right," Mr. Suppan says in the ad. "Don’t be deceived."

Clone this, Jeff. When you get your medical degree come back and we can talk.

Your Name's Too Long to Vote with God

So yesterday's Washington Post reports:

U.S. Senate candidate James Webb's last name has been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville because of a computer glitch that also affects other candidates with long names, city officials said yesterday.

Although the problem creates some voter confusion, it will not cause votes to be cast incorrectly, election officials emphasized. The error shows up only on the summary page, where voters are asked to review their selections before hitting the button to cast their votes. Webb's full name appears on the page where voters choose for whom to vote.

[...]

Thus, Democratic candidate Webb will appear with his first name and nickname only -- or "James H. 'Jim' " -- on summary pages in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, the only jurisdictions in Virginia that use balloting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic of Austin.

[...]

Every candidate on Alexandria's summary page has been affected in some way by the glitch. Even if candidates' full names appear, as is the case with Webb's Republican opponent, incumbent Sen. George F. Allen, their party affiliations have been cut off.

Now, I'm not the kind of person who spends time pondering how Building 7 came down, but here I begin to smell the scent of conspiracy. The Democrat? His name gets zipped. The Republican? He loses his party affiliation right when it's not necessarily the best time to stand proud and tall with that R after your name.

It doesn't help when you do a quick search into Hart InterCivic and discover Black Box Voting says:

From Chapter 8, Black Box Voting book - "What you won't find on company Web sites" (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf):

For initial funding, Hart went to Triton Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Triton Energy, a firm that primarily exploits oil fields in Colombia. Triton, in turn, is a subsidiary of Amerada Hess.(1)

The $3.5 million awarded by Triton in 1999 didn’t last long, but the Help America Vote Act, with its massive allocation of federal money, hovered just over the horizon. In October 2000, Hart picked up $32.5 million more from five sources. 45 In 2002, it raised another $7.5 million. (2)

RES Partners, which invested in Hart’s second and third rounds, is an entity that represents Richard Salwen, retired Dell Computer Corporation vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary, who had also worked with Perot Systems and EDS. Salwen is a heavy contributor to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. (3)

Hart’s most politically charged investor is an arm of Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, which was founded and is chaired by Tom Hicks. Hicks bought the Texas Rangers in 1999, making George W. Bush a millionaire 15 times over. Tom Hicks and his investment company are invested in Hart Intercivic through Stratford Capital. They are also heavily invested in Clear Channel Communications, the controversial radio-raider that muscled a thousand U.S. radio outlets into a
more conservative message. (4)

(1) – Hoover’s Company Profiles, 11 March 2002; Triton Energy Limited.
(2) – InformationWeek, 2 October 2000; “Cost Of Compliance”
(3) – Austin Business Journal, 8 November 2001; “Investors cast $7.5M vote for Hart InterCivic.”
(4) – CN group web site http://www.thecapitalnetwork.com/advisory.php# and http://www.OpenSecrets.org

So, we've got oil fields in Colombia, George W. Bush, and Tom Hicks, the man who made Alex Rodriguez the most hated man in New York City.

I keep having this feeling that all the pre-election day polling and all the exit polling is going to be wrong November 7. And I keep inching closer into looking into real estate prices in France.

Me Llamo Jorge Is Blogging the Classics

In an endless effort to diversify my portfolio and take over the internets, I have a review of the the Yo La Tengo show up at the Santa Barbara Independent website. I promise it's not a case of nothing blogging itself inside out.

Blogophone Colossus at a Loss-es

As you must know, it's never been a stay the course strategy at INOTBB. The enemy we're fighting is a very determined one. They're very lethal.... But we are going to prevail and it's going to require that readers themselves step up and take more responsibility, and that's something we'll be impressing on you in the weeks and months ahead.

We're not talking about cutting and running from blogging, just a re-adjustment of priorities. We are reacting to the news on the ground, which of late includes a kegger with Stone IPA and 30 guests and badly underestimated food purchasing (or maybe we just didn't realize how hungry our guests would be, although we were shocked to see some purging prior to the party in order to eat more), and seeing Sonny Rollins--who still plays like a genius and isn't just the shell of one--on Sunday night and Yo La Tengo on Monday night, although YLT wasn't kind enough to play in Santa Barbara, so there was this ride to LA and back, and let me tell you, INOTBB is more of an late-summer chicken (not a spring chicken or a hot chicken #1 or a summer sun) these days, no matter how much guitar feedback can sustain a soul.

Plus there's the general sapping of the life force at chez INOTBB, as Nigel has been on the DL. He managed to hog-tie himself Friday while playing at the off-leash park and fell on his side in a cloud of dust. He seemed OK, but when we got home his hip swelled up, and it was time to take him and our checkbook to the vet. They say it was just a hematoma, but they left out the "one heck of a" beforehand that we would like to add in our non-medical way. Since Friday the fluids up there drained down his leg, so his new nickname is Bigfoot. But he's not his usual chipper self, and therefore our whole household seems to be running on a lower wattage battery, barely enough to spark up this dim bulb.

300 Million Minus 1

IMG_3355
Having finished his reuben and still feeling a bit peckish, Wolfgang opts to suck out the brain of poor little Sweetpea.

Monday Random Flickr blogging explained.

Noggin Nummy!

IMG_3355
And soon the Brain Cafe was the culinary rage.

Mr. Stewart Comes to Santa Barbara

Big scoop, my loyal reader(s)--members of the Arts & Lectures big donor Producers Circle learned this weekend what the rest of us poorer folks will want to know, too. Jon Stewart is coming to Santa Barbara. He will do some sort of Evening with... at UC Santa Barbara's Events center on Saturday, November 18. Tickets go on sale to the general public starting next Sunday through Ticketmaster and be sure to sit down when you think about buying your seats, as the rumor has it the cheapest non-student ticket will be $70.

Still, Stewart doesn't like to fly, and is only out here because he has a big LA appearance the night before with Antonio Villaraigosa for the Geffen Playhouse.

Taking the World Serious

If you want to root for my fantasy baseball team, and I know you do, since they are in the World Series and the Mets aren't (goddam):

Oberkfellows

Pujols
Guillen
Ordonez
Rolen
Thames
Belliard
Bonderman
Verlander
Wainwright
Carpenter

That's the squad. Nice job tonight, Justin. If we didn't just have a kegger at our house with Stone IPA you'd be in so much trouble. (But thank you Albert and Scott.)

Friday Random Ten

Amy's super nice husband got her an iPod for her birthday, so we've been downloading the CD collection around the clock and are up to 2600 songs and 6.5 day of music (and on the seventh day God played John Cage's "4:33"). That means I get to do my first Random Ten, just in time for everyone to wonder why they're doing them. Here I am, in time to kill off the meme. It doesn't help that the darn machine got repeat artist happy, but I guess that is an essential feature of randomness--sometimes the same thing happens (like the Mets lose).

Gang of Four "I Love a Man in Uniform"
Wilco "Monday"
Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve "My Dark Life" (live)
Magnetic Fields "Grand Canyon"
Perez Prado Orchestra "Mambo No. 5"
Magnetic Fields "I Was Born"
Wilco "Summer Teeth"
The Jackson 5 "Forever Came Today"
Elvis Costello and the Attractions "Shabby Doll"
Talking Heads "Sax and Violins"

bonus: Talking Heads "Air"

If Wishes and Butts

For Dog Blog Friday: The end of the dog, the end of the Met season. And we all hide our heads in a Yadier Molina-induced shame.

The Tragic Met-suary

As the Gothic Archies sing:

It gets dark around here early
Because of all the crows
What they want and where they came from
No one really knows
Crows are sour and surly
With reason, I suppose

There are crows, crows, crows in the trees
Saying crows things, doing as they please
There are crows, crows, crows everywhere
But when I think of you, dear, I don't care
There are crows, crows, crows in the trees
Saying crows things, doing as they please
There are crows, crows, crows everywhere
But when I think of you, dear, I don't care

It gets light around slowly
Because of how it goes
Every day we hear the same dumb list of those crows' woes
Thinking they're so holy while leaving mementos

There are crows, crows, crows in the trees
Saying crow things, doing as they please
There are crows, crows, crows everywhere
But when I think of you, dear, I don't care

I don't care because I know you love me
Unlike all crows lurking above me...

Now just replace crows with cardinals and you're all set for a Metsian Series of Unfortunate Events (AKA, Not the World Series). C'mon, I mean Yadier Molina?

Warning--Scary Image Below!

You have to check out the columnist archive page at the News-Press. Either evil Teamster hackers got in, temporarily distracted from their international plot to sap our precious bodily fluids and end slow-growth on the South Coast and make life miserable for millionaire newspaper owners, or someone at the paper has a good sense of humor (which, I hope, makes up for not having a job soon):

"Dr" Laura

(BTW, doesn't the headshot make her look like a character from Sim Family?)

No Fidelity

This is so so wrong (from Newsweek):

But the challenge facing the new musical “High Fidelity,” now in previews in Boston and scheduled to open on Broadway Nov. 20, is quite the opposite, though perhaps equally daunting: how to follow a book and a movie that were both awash in charm, and, if not megahits, at the very least cult classics.

[...]

“I loved the book so I admit that my first thought when I heard the idea [of a play] was ‘Oh no, really',” said David Lindsay-Abaire, the Tony-nominated author of last season’s hit “Rabbit Hole” who adapted “High Fidelity” for the stage. He changed his mind though, swayed, he says, by the songs from the composing team of Tom Kitt (music) and Amanda Green (lyrics). “It’s real music, songs you would hear on the radio,” says Lindsay-Abaire.

How badly don't they get it? First, the book is about songs you don't hear on the radio. The guys at the record store would be aghast if the songs they liked got played on the radio. Second, you simply can't write a new score for it--if you want to do it as a musical, you have to go the Pennies from Heaven route and have the cast sing existing indie songs. Now that could be interesting. It wouldn't be...

The major change is that the back story—Rob tracking down his past relationships in a desperate attempt to understand his life of romantic failures—is reduced pretty much to a single song. The play is the love story, focusing almost entirely on Rob and Laura’s relationship.

So it just becomes another love story, like Romeo and Juliet or King Kong. The idea of Rob trying to make himself whole by going through the other relationships--which he can only think about as lists, as that's how his whole life is formed--eh, who needs it? I put this idea on my top ten list of Brodway musical mistakes.

Shea It Isn't So

I'm sure at least one of you (and I know who you are, too) has been wondering when I would write about the Mets. There's no better time than prior to a Game 6, as Game 6 means much to Mets fans, especially those who name their dog after Mookie Wilson. The point is, there's always hope, and the Mets seems to like to give their fans memorable moments to cling to--there's no just out-and-out winning for the Mets. There's Ron Swoboda and Tommie Agee sprawling their way to great catches, there's Buddy Harrelson in a fight with Pete Rose, there's all the hope you can run through the space between Bill Buckner's legs. All of that gets balanced by pretty much 35+ years of futility, anguish, Steve Chilcott and not Reggie Jackson, the remains of Jim Fregosi for Nolan Ryan, Dallas Green mowing down the young arms that might have meant a turn in fortune. I mean, as a child I had to root for George "Stork" Theodore.

Let's just say being cheery and being a Mets fan isn't really possible. You just assume the worst will happen as it mostly has. Even this season, when they tied with the Yanks for the best record in baseball (and who's still playing now?), they could often look so lifeless they seemed to be auditioning for a George Romero movie. Even in the same game--this summer they trailed the Cubs, the worst team in the NL this year, doing nothing in a nationally televised game, only to club two grand slams in one inning later that afternoon. I almost turned it off before that point, I was so digusted.

So anything can happen, even with John Maine versus Chris Carpenter this evening. You know who started the infamous Game 6 for the Red Sox? Roger Clemens. Who got a blister and left the game, and the rest is Calvin Schiraldian history. If the Mets mystique surfaces, Chris Carpenter has an appointment with unexplained boils tonight, or at least some tasty not quite outside enough pitches to Carlos Delgado. If just the Mets show up, I'm picking the Tigers over the Cards in 5.

The Bigger the Tool, the Bigger the Fool

Turns out the President really isn't any different from a dung beetle. The New Scientist reports:

Dung beetle research may be about to boost the cliché about men with flashy sports cars. According to new study, male beetles with the most dramatic and ostentatious sets of horns apparently pay for that with smaller testicles.

So today Bush got to sign the urgently needed, but he'll take 19 days to sign it (closer to the election that way) pro-torture/anti-habeas corpus bill, and be proud that the CIA has the big tool they need.

And the Prez has his "I got my way" smirk on. But now science confirms exactly what he's packing.

It's Not Whether You Win or Lose, It's How You Can Strip the Bill of Rights

From yesterday's White House press gaggle with the head gaggler, Tony Snow:

Q One on Iraq again. Sorry. Just the simple question: Are we winning?

MR. SNOW: We're making progress. I don't know. How do you define "winning"?

Follow-up question: So, Tony, if you don't know what winning is, is there someone in the White House who does?

(crickets)

That's a Stretch, Armstrong

We might as well start calling him Travis "Stretch" Armstrong, because that's just what the News-Press' editorial page editor does with the truth. At least you can't say he stretches common sense, for to do that he'd have to have some in the first place. Seems that on Sunday part of his column included the following attacks on other papers, bringing to mind the old Biblical adage, "How can you take out the speck in your neighbor's eye when there's a plank in your own?":

(No link, because the News-Press threatens to sue you if you link to them.)

THE WALL?: Where's the dividing line between news and opinion at the Santa Maria Times? There might not be one. Just look at its editorial board. You'll see the group that comes up with the newspaper's editorials includes the executive editor and managing editor. (I'm not sure how in touch the paper can be with the community when the page's contributing editor, John Lankford, apparently lives in Florida.)

The Santa Maria paper's ethically challenged situation echoes that of the Ventura County Star's. At the Star, Editor Joe Howry and Managing Editor John Moore also sit on the newspaper's editorial board. Mr. Howry has the final say over the newspaper's editorials.

On the South Coast, one of the weekly freebie papers takes up its whole cover to promote its political endorsements of candidates.

Why aren't there uproars about these ethical problems?

Because there's a conpsiracy to get you, Wendy, and the Nipper, Travis--you know that. Every other newspaper in the world is in on it. That's how important you are.

OK, let's pretend the shuttle has landed and examine the problem as it exists in the real world. First, this is a complete misreading of "the wall." It's not that news and opinion can't have the slightest thing to do with each other (unless, of course, we're talking about the Wall Street Journal, were the news reporters do fine jobs and the editorial penners are right wing wackos). It's that the opinion side of the paper can't drive the news content, reporting, etc. Like, say, someone in opinion thinking a story should say nasty things about a politician because the person in opinion also lobs nasty opinion about that politician, for instance.

Second, it also assumes that if one person wears two hats, he or she can't be an objective reporter wearing one chapeau while having opinions as an essayist. The News-Press's very own Starshine Roshell did this for years, till the paper told her she couldn't (gee, wonder why she left), and the N-P readers knew that if a story had Roshell's headshot next to it, it was a column, if it just had her byline, it was a news story. Believe it or not, but readers can actually be all sophisticated like that.

Third, it might not be wise to belittle the Ventura County Star's editorial board. Turns out it features 11 community members. When was the last time that Travis, Wendy, and Arthur met with community members, let alone pretended they cared what they had to say?

Fourth, of course Travis takes a shot at John Lankford, as he's a former News-Press-man. True enough, at this point in the dreadful McCaw regime you pretty much can't throw a rock on the Central Coast without hitting a former News-Press staffer, but still it's telling Travis calls him out by name when....

Fifth, he can't name the Independent, like it's beneath him or something, and instead pretends that it's worth nothing because it's free. I guess that just means Money Bags Wendy is teaching him access for everyone is not such a good thing. So big deal, they tout their endorsements--that means they're being open about it. So much so that on the Indy's blog there's a debate about what they've done and how they did it, a kind of transparency that the News-Press has sorely lacked all through its, what do you call it, period of adjustment?

Sixth, there are uproars about some endorsement choices, and even how those choices came to be, but because the Indy lets people hash it out on its very website, people don't show up in DLG Plaza to have rallies.

Putting on the Leyritz

Sure it's hard to take seriously any article that claims Danys Baez "was an effective closer for Cleveland and Tampa Bay" and that putting in Mark DeRosa of the .947 lifetime fielding percentage at third in the A-Rod slot would solve the Yanks's problems. But the true whopper has to be this passage from the New York Daily News:

When Torre's Yankees were great, the two men next to him on the dugout bench were vital components. Bench coach Don Zimmer was the unquestioned master of strategy, while pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre had the complete confidence of his staff.

"Zim was the strategic genius, and Joe was perfect at managing people. It was a great combination," [Jim] Leyritz says.

The Gerbil was the strategic genius? The guy who called out Pedro Martinez for a fight? The guy with a single first place finish in all his own years of managing as he led 14 teams to a stunning .508 winning percentage?

Does Leyritz have a metal plate in his head, too, and he's standing up for a union of the ore-brained?

Here's my theory about the Yanks demise, if only getting to the playoffs is a demise--after the 2003 season David Wells, Andy Pettitte, and Roger Clemens left (rumor has it with the remaining youth of Bernie Williams). Oddly enough, an Astros club with Clemens and Pettitte went to the 2005 World Series. Somehow Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, Shwan Chacon, and Aaron Small didn't make up the pitching difference. Who would have guessed?

I Think My Weiner Dog Fell Asleep

Next time I have to remember not to pass out before she tells me if she wants to meet my three-feet of little friend.

Bronzed before Stonewall

Two of our founding fathers plan a little late night continental congress.

Amy's Awesome Ides of October

Yesterday was Amy's birthday, so now she's x+1 day. And doesn't even look 22 minutes older, if you ask me. Thanks for getting old with me, if not as old as me.

The Sign Said Point Dume

Without a life guard on duty, Tom and Tina decide to jump into the deep end.

Blog Flog Friday

Basically brilliant Bérubé:

The attack on American universities is part and parcel of that ascendant wing’s larger program for American society. They now control all three branches of government, they’ve got their own Philip K. Dick-like alternative-universe media in Fox News and the vast right-wing noise machine, and they’re striking out at the few areas of American life they don’t dominate—Hollywood, unions, college campuses. (You know, the real centers of power.) It’s a little hard to believe, at first; if I were a conservative, I’d be quite happy with an arrangement under which my allies control the country and my opponents control the survey courses in American fiction.

Go read the whole interview, or better yet, buy his book What's Liberal about the Liberal Arts?

The Dog-fault Jungle

For Dog Blog Friday (a bit early--it's one crazy day tomorrow for non-dog George): Nigel is stylin in his skate punk collar. Just don't let him bum any smokes.

Hip, Hip, Brahe!

This Friday is the 405 anniversary of the death of the man who invented the San Diego Freeway, but his hearse is still stuck in traffic near LAX. Only kidding, it's actual the deathiversary of Tycho Brahe, who has to be written about simply because his name is cool. Brahe was a famous astronomer whose observations set up lots of the things we know about the heavens, not including how Bush won't get in. According to Wikipedia "No one before Tycho had attempted to make so many redundant observations, and the mathematical tools to take advantage of them had not yet been developed." So you have to hand it to Brahe--he did the same thing over and over, and didn't know why. Today we'd just give him a pill for being OCD. But that would be just the beginning of our medication of this positively strange man who lost part of his nose in a duel and then wore different prosthetic schnozzes depending on the occasion (take that, you piercing people, you). Evidently he could also tell you the story of a dwarf named Jepp, his court jester, who would sit under the dinner table. (I wish I was making this up.) He also owned a tame elk that he'd loan out to friends, but, alas, during one dinner the elk had drunk a lot of beer and fell down some stairs, and died. He should have just stayed under the table with Jepp. As for Brahe's own demise, he suffered from something any frat boy would be proud of--a bladder burst. Seems it was rude to get up from a fine dinner mid-meal, even if nature called. Instead the mortician called, given it's generally a bad idea to have urine flowing in your body. I'd say more about his importance to science, but he's dead and it's pretty boring.

My Name Is Potty Mouth

Line of the evening by Steve Earle, during a fine solo show that proves he's a better lyricist than songwriter--he has about 5 tunes ("Christmas in Washington" is "Ellis Unit One," for instance), although they're awfully good tunes. He's finishing up his catchy sing-along "Fuck the FCC" and says:

Sorry for any of you who brought the kids tonight, but would you rather they learn to curse from me or Dick Cheney?

The President Cometh? No, He's Just Breathing Heavy

Another Bush press conference. I sort of liked it better when he didn't talk to the press. And the silly, psuedo-chummy joking about people's clothing--you'd think Bush wants to take over for Steve Carrell on The Office. But let's visit a moment or two. First, I love this one:

I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me and it grieves me.

As for those non-innocent people, death is too good for them. I wish we could have the "CIA program" go forward with those non-innocent people.

Then there's this passage, which is pretty much Bush in a nutshell (not to mix anatomy):

Q But they [the Democrats] don't say cut and run.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, they may not use cut and run, but they say date certain is when to get out, before the job is done. That is cut and run. Nobody has accused me of having a real sophisticated vocabulary, I understand that. And maybe their -- their words are more sophisticated than mine. But when you pull out before the job is done, that's cut and run as far as I'm concerned. And that's cut and run as far as most Americans are concerned. And so, yes, I'm going to continue reminding them of their words and their votes.

OK, no one's going to accuse him of using adverbs properly, either, but it's not the Dems' words that are more sophisticated, it's their thinking. For Bush there's only in Iraq or out, and there's no way in-between that actually might be responsive and responsible. Plus, you can't say you're reminding people of their words when you change their words into your words and then use those.

Short of all that, there's the easy Freudian take on this, especially with 41 looming over W.'s shoulder--you can't pull out before the job is done. Iraq, get ready for your money shot.

Nun of the Above

In the program to Doubt playwright John Patrick Shanley writes:

There’s a symptom apparent in America right now. It’s evident in political talk shows, in entertainment coverage, in artistic criticism of every kind, in religious discussion. We are living in a courtroom culture. We were living in a celebrity culture, but that’s dead. Now we’re only interested in celebrities if they’re in court. We are living in a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment, and of verdict. Discussion has given way to debate. Communication has become a contest of wills. Public talking has become obnoxious and insincere. Why? Maybe it’s because deep down under the chatter we have come to a place where we know that we don’t know…anything. But nobody’s willing to say that.

Let me ask you. Have you ever held a position in an argument past the point of comfort? Have you ever defended a way of life you were on the verge of exhausting? Have you ever given service to a creed you no longer utterly believed? Have you ever told a girl you loved her and felt the faint nausea of eroding conviction? I have. That’s an interesting moment. For a playwright, it’s the beginning of an idea. I saw a piece of real estate on which I might build a play, a play that sat on something silent in my life and in my time. I started with a title: Doubt.

Shanley ends with a play set in 1964 that's pretty brilliant if you can admire the sheen of ambivalence. Did the priest molest the young boy? Is the nun's conviction of the priest's guilt merely her way to keep order against the encroaching secularization of the holy orders? Why does she want to sustain a system that makes her mightily powerful over children but relatively powerless otherwise?

The play is yet more wonderful because Cherry Jones enhabits (pun intended) the role of Sister Aloysius so fully. She's so formidable she's practically S.S. Nun, so any crack in her armor is even more devastating, more a chance for all of us to wonder what it means to know, to doubt. How much of faith is the desire for faith? And what does it mean if we've wandered into desire as our verb of choice, as we stare into the religious?

Perhaps one of Shanley's best touches is we never see a single child at the St Nicholas Church School in the Bronx. Sure, that just make the play easier to stage, but I sort of mean that in more than one way. If we saw the child who was supposed to be molested, even if we have doubt about Father Flynn's guilt, it would be tougher to sustain, if doubt is sustained (is doubt a wallow? a fog? a grace we want no part of, just as we don't want part of the cross--and I don't even mean that religiously). It's a play about protecting the children yet we never see them. They are part of faith, then, too, prayers we offer, hopes we hold to our hearts and assume there's a bigger picture who cares for their innocence. Of course, it's Sister Aloysius who says, "Innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil." When the nuns--even the most ramrod straight of them--call experience wisdom, you know the fall is just around the corner. Nuns fall, you know.

All the Facts that Are Fit to Stack

Why is journalism a mess, you might ask (and I'm not even taking about the News-Press this time)? It's easy to see Bob Woodward as the dean of American journalists, at least the most known name and face. Sure you or I might pick Seymour Hersh, but Hersh never had Will Ferrell, let alone Robert Redford, play him in a movie (btw, if you've never seen Dick, get your hands on it and stick it in your DVD player at once). Woodward is everywhere, and one of his books tops the bestseller list with almost too-automatic regularity, as if booksales were tabulated by Diebold, especially given how those same Woodward hardcovers end up remaindered and clogging the sale aisles post-haste.

Still, when people think journalism, they think Woodward. But when Woodward thinks journalism, he thinks, according to Alicia C. Shepard in the Chicago Tribune and soon a bio of "Woodstein":

Say what you will, but he just wants to get the facts.

"He really believes it is his job to bring to light secrets that would otherwise not be told, not give his opinion," said David Greenberg, a former Woodward assistant.

Woodward takes advantage of the access he has built up in 30 years of reporting. And he lets the reader decide what it all adds up to. He doesn't attempt to make sense of the story, to put it in context or even be analytical. It's just not who he is.

Now, even Ronald Reagan knew that facts are stupid things. Does Woodward really think ignoring context works? Is that how Bush can be the decider in one book and decidedly deluded in the next?

It strikes me as truly odd that it's the political right that accuses the left of being wishy-washy, too willing to see all sides and not believe in absolutes. Yet when it comes to the media, if they actually tell the truth and not truthiness, they are flat-out wrong. The media have to present "both" sides of every story. But true objectivity would admit there is truth--that Iraq is a mess, that people lied to get us there, that BushCo. wants more power than any White House has ever even asked for, let alone received.

In the meantime our most famous journalist stacks up facts but refuses to see what the piles mean, leaving us standing about in too many steaming piles.

Science Poops On Bush's Power Party

North Korea has a nuke! North Korea has a nuke! Run about with your arms flailing! Give all your (remaining) rights to President Bush!

Or, maybe, consider what the New Scientist says:

Scientists around the world are taking a cautious wait-and-see attitude after North Korea claimed to have successfully conducted an underground nuclear test on Monday.

Only careful analysis of data returned by seismic or atmospheric sensors will determine whether the blast was a success or a damp squib, they say. Nor could they rule out the possibility of a scam, in which North Korea blew up a huge stock of conventional explosives to bolster its claim to have joined the nuclear club.

Damn those scientists, calling us descendants from monkeys, claiming humans have something to do with global warming, wanting to play with stem cells and stop the joy of snowflake babies. And now this. How are we supposed to scare people back into the Republican flock?

(Hat-tip to Amy Gahran at PoynterOnline.)

Hey Baby, Hey Baby, Hey Baby...Swing

The AP reports:

A woman used her 4-week-old baby as a weapon in a domestic dispute, swinging the infant through the air and striking her boyfriend with the child, authorities said.

The boy was in serious but stable condition Monday at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh, police said.

Remember, as the NRA says, Babies Don't Kill People, Mothers Do.

The Mile Die Club

IMG_7382
Originally uploaded by alisammk. Look, I remembered the condom, you didn't tell me I was supposed to remember the parachute, too.

Chiny-Chin-Chin

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Originally uploaded by viewpoint heuristics. If only I could find a soup-thrower I'd be in business.

Monday Random Flickr-Blogging explained.

Mets (afteranightofathousandcuts) Win

So much to report after two straight days driving down to Los Angeles, Saturday for doubt and Sunday for Doubt (will report on the magic of Cherry Jones tomorrow). Both were great, but one was a lot more agonizing. As you may have heard, the Mets swept the Dodgers. And we were there in Loge 144 down the first base line and I do love E-Bay, yes. We got there early because every sporting event known to man happened in LA yesterday--2 college football games (supposedly people here care about this USC and UCLA, but I don't get it as UCSB doesn't even have a football team) and there might have even been a cricket match somewhere. So we sat around and watched the Mets take batting practice and the Yanks lose (such a pity) on the big screen, which seems surreal, like we went to one ball park to watch a game on TV in another.

This photo looks better big (click on it) as you can see Wright and Delgado and LoDuca and Reyes, and Green on the far left in his natty white gloves (I assume he just came from tea). And in the bottom right corner 2 Dodgers fans belittle the Mets in their Gagne souvenir jerseys, pretending it's still 2003.

I won't go into point for point detail on this game as it lasted about as long as the Seven Years War (Steve Trachsel started for the Mets, after all). The worst part was there was never an inning the Dodgers didn't have a baserunner (in the second they only sent 3 men to the plate, but that's thanks to a double play). Given the Dodgers were a great comeback team all year, who would, in fact, comeback to take a 5-4 lead after being down 4 zip in this very game, any time they got runners on base (i.e., every innning) it seemed like the beginning of the end. Especially when I called the start of their scoring, and thought to myself if Marlon Anderson gets on, Jeff Kent will hit a homer off Darren Oliver. Bingo. (P.S., Marlon, Mr. Scratch wants that soul now, hope your out-