The always delightful…

Dooce pays a nice Father’s Day tribute to her husband.

Predictable

Angry Bear predicts the future:

Tuesday is the day for My Life, Bill Clinton’s book. Here I shall write for you, the reader, a list of what you will hear over the next few days, so that you can safely ignore the blathering pundits:

• Clinton is hurting Kerry by stealing the spotlight.
• Clinton is hurting Kerry by stealing the spotlight, so that Kerry will lose and Hillary can run in 2008.
• Clinton’s charisma and eloquence make Kerry look bad [but they will rarely if ever be contrasted to W. Bush's lack of skills in those areas.]
• Clinton got blowjobs. In the Oval Office.
• Bill Clinton’s book is outselling Hillary’s 7 to 1.
• Monica Lewinsky. Monica Lewinsky. Monica Lewinsky. Monica Lewinsky. And, did I mention, Monica Lewinsky?
• Whitewater. Travelgate. FBI files. Waco.
• And, maybe if you listen very closely, at just the right time: eight years of peace and prosperity. Budget surplus. Record job growth. Surging home ownership. Real income growth. Fiscal responsibility. Compassion. Good relations with allies around the world. More popular than Reagan, based on exit polls in 1989 and 2001.

Ray Charles

NPR has a Ray Charles page that includes a link to his 20 greatest hits (courtesy of Rhino Records). The page also has links to a recording of the Charles’ memorial service last Friday and a number of other NPR features about “The Genius.”

The name game

Attempting satire, Kimit Muston, writing in the L.A. Daily News, suggests it’s time for the City of Los Angeles to rid itself of its religious name.

Before the Spanish started putting up subdivisions, I believe the Yang-na tribe called this place, “Ours,” which is a great name, but I’m not sure their word “ours” means the same thing as our word “ours.” We might just call ourselves, “Here,” and then refer to everywhere else as “There,” but that could get confusing. And “Laker Town” seems to be out of the running for now.

We might rename our town “La Brea,” after the pits on Wilshire where creatures have the life sucked out of them by a black viscous fluid. Or not. I even considered changing our name to “Beverly Hills,” just to stick it to those snobs shopping on Rodeo Drive, but then, Tuesday afternoon it came to me in a flash, a new name that would fit our terrain, our vision, our history and our future.

So I humbly suggest as the new non-religious name for Los Angeles, California — Shaker Heights.

By the way, it’s worse than Muston realizes. The original full name of Los Angeles was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula, which means The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Little Portion (i.e., small parcel of land).

Better browser

Firefox 0.9 is available. NewMexiKen has been using Firefox as my primary browser since February. No pop-ups. Tabbed browsing. Fast.

Bad advice

NewMexiKen watched an interview early this evening with mystery writer Tony Hillerman. If he’s unfamiliar to you, I suggest you take remedial action. Suffice it to say that his main characters are Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, and his whole cachet is the Navajo culture where he sets his stories.

Anyway, Hillerman said he sent his first novel, The Blessing Way (1970), to his agent, who had trouble selling it. As Hillerman put it, the novel was caught between genres — not quite a mystery, not quite a literary novel. Hillerman asked the agent what he should do about rewriting the book. “Get rid of all that Indian stuff,” she replied.

A little historical perspective

NewMexiKen means no disrespect to the late Ronald Reagan by posting this item. I actually respect the office too much to “dis” any but an incumbent President I happen to disagree with. But I think it is interesting to put the recent national mourning into perspective. Frank Rich does it well.

A total of some 200,000 Americans passed by the [Reagan] coffin in California and Washington. The crowds watching the funeral procession in Washington numbered in the “tens of thousands,” reported The Washington Post. By comparison, three million Americans greeted the cross-country journey of Warren Harding’s funeral train from San Francisco to Washington when he died in office in the steamy August of 1923, according to Mark Sullivan’s history, “Our Times.” It took 3,500 soldiers to direct the crowd in his hometown of Marion, Ohio, alone. The grief for Harding was so pronounced in New York, a city that hardly knew him, that The Times reported how theaters canceled their shows to hold impromptu memorial gatherings for those citizens unable to jam into the packed services held in Trinity Church at Wall Street and Temple Emanu-El uptown and most houses of worship in between. Next to that, the Reagan outpouring, much of it carried out by bubbly TV-camera-seeking citizens in halter tops and shorts, was grief lite.

The entire Rich column is well-worth reading.

Tick Tock

He’s clearly skilled, and obviously quite popular with the gallery, but is there anyone who looks less like an athlete than Phil Mickelson? And what’s with the wristwatch? He have an appointment somewhere this afternoon?

Update: Maybe he wore the watch to remember his appointment with the throat specialist.

I wish

From Morning Edition in the Los Angeles Times:

Jack Nicklaus, commenting on his steadily declining golf game: “Everyone has always wanted to play like Nicklaus. Now they really can.”

West Virginia…

joined the Union as the 35th state on this date in 1863.

According to the Library of Congress:

The land which formed the new state originally constituted part of Virginia. Historically, the two areas differed culturally, as pioneering individuals traditionally settled the western portion, while a slave holding aristocratic society developed in the eastern portion. Westerners made an unsuccessful attempt to formally separate from Virginia in 1769. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the residents of the western counties, few of whom owned slaves, decided to stay with the Union. “Mountaineers always freemen” is the state’s motto.

View President Lincoln’s handwritten corrections to Secretary of State Seward’s opinion on the admission of West Virginia.

Not my kids

According to The Writer’s Almanac:

Mother’s Day is the busiest day of the year for florists, restaurants, and long distance phone companies. Father’s day is the day on which the most collect phone calls are made.