Balloon Fiesta!

Tomorrow through October 10.

NewMexiKen

8,172 unique visitors (or at least unique IP addresses) from 63 different countries visited NewMexiKen 14,862 times in September, looking at 59,815 pages.

Which means that “largest college stadiums,” “Agador Spartacus” and “Ron Howard’s brother” are what this corner of the Internet is all about. They seem to be the big attractions.

Update: Some perspective — Kos is getting more than 32,000 hits an hour.

Amen!

Functional Ambivalent is appropriately worked up about the “news” coverage of the debate.

This is the biggest, best-financed, most professional journalism machine in the history of the world, at a critical moment in our history, on a night when public interest is high and audiences are large just before a Presidential election…and that journalism machine walks through the coverage using the same template it would use if it were covering a Congressman’s speech in front of the Rotary Club of Bettendorf, Iowa. Get a Republican reaction…get a Democrat reaction…get the story filed and head to the bar.

As he says, “a news-like substance.”

It’s the birthday

… of James Whitmore. The actor, twice nominated for an Oscar, is 83. He was the sole cast member of Give ‘em Hell, Harry!.

… of Jimmy Carter. The 39th President is 80 today.

… of William Rehnquist. The Chief Justice is also 80 today.

… of Tom Bosley. Richie Cunningham’s father is 77.

… of Julie Andrews. Mary Poppins is 69. Ms. Andrews won the Best Actress Oscar for Mary Poppins; she was nominated for The Sound of Music and Victor/Victoria. Of course, her claim to fame really was as Eliza Doolittle in the stage version of My Fair Lady.

… of Rod Carew. The baseball hall of fame player is 59.

… of Tim O’Brien. The novelist is 58. O’Brien is the author of Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1979 National Book Award in fiction, and The Things They Carried, which was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of 1990, received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction, and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In the Lake of the Woods was named by Time as the best novel of 1994. The book also received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times.

Trite, trite again

From Dwight Perry’s Sideline Chatter —

Psychologist Don Powell has written a book titled “Best Sports Clichés Ever!” — listing 1,771 of them in 87 categories — reports Brooks Melchior of sportsbybrooks.com.

As soon as our backs aren’t against the wall and there is a tomorrow, we plan to give this book the 110 percent it deserves — one cliché at a time.