The answer on Final Jeopardy! tonight must have been “The first woman in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
A whole lot of people googled it at once and here’s where they ended up.
Print This Post
When Woods steps on to the first tee of the 135th British Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club on Thursday, he will stand next to Nick Faldo, who was among a chorus of golf commentators who criticized him as he adapted to a swing change last year. Once word got back to Woods, a distant relationship grew even less amicable.
Perhaps Faldo should shut up and work on his swing. Woods beat him by 10 strokes Thursday (5-under vs. 5-over).
[Woods shot 7-under Friday, to go 12-under for the first two rounds.]
“A lot of people were complaining today about how long it’s taking to evacuate Americans from Lebanon. Lebanon? Hey, we couldn’t even evacuate Americans from New Orleans.”
Jay Leno
NewMexiKen had to show ID last night at the Isotopes baseball game to purchase beer. Now I am 61 years old, have four children in their thirties and six granchildren. I was of legal age 40 f***ing years ago. There is no way, much as I might feel young on the inside, that I look like I could be under 21.
What kind of foolishness requires servers and vendors to check the age of every customer? Doesn’t that obvious overkill actually undermine the legitimacy of the liquor laws? (Sort of like “drug free zones” near schools — drugs are illegal but they’re really, really illegal around schools.)
When I was 17 or 19 I would have had no problem getting alcoholic beverages. I’m fairly certain today’s 17 or 19 year olds have little trouble if they really want it. What mis-guided moron thought up the policy of checking the IDs of grandparents?
And you thought the World Cup was it for high-level soccer. No, indeed not. The Albuquerque Asylum FC (I have no idea why they thought Asylum* was a good name) will play the Sacramento Knights this Saturday evening in Albuquerque for the Western Division championship of the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL). The winner advances to the national championship.
The NPSL is an 18 team league — eight franchises are in California (from Chico to San Diego), but other locations include Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Minneota, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Princeton and, obviously, Albuquerque. The rosters include current and former college players, some I’m told as old as, gasp, 30.
NewMexiKen knows a few of the players and has attended three or four matches including last Saturday’s semi-final 1-0 win over San Diego Fusion. It was a hard-played, aggressive, exciting contest before 4,000 equally aggressive fans.
This week’s championship took on a new cast during the week when the Sacramento team asked that the match be rescheduled to Sacramento, as they were, they said, the better team and they didn’t want to play at Albuquerque’s altitude. Fortunately, the league stood by its schedule. Come on up Sacramento. Bring oxygen.
Saturday, 7:30 at Menaul School, tickets $5. Come early, it was packed last week.
* Asylum = A place offering protection and safety; a shelter.
1 Comment | Show Comment | Print This Post
Important pointers on How to Win at Monopoly include these:
3. Remember that Illinois Avenue is the square most often landed on (not including Jail). The B&O Railroad also is among those most landed on; Go rounds out the top three.
7. If you’re stuck with low-income properties, build to four houses quickly to create a building shortage, hurting other players’ chances to build. 24 of 32 houses (or 6 of 12 hotels) could be tied up on just six properties.
10. The trio of orange properties is an excellent monopoly to own because of their relationship to Jail. A roll of 6 or 8 (two of the most common rolls) from Jail lands you on an orange.
NewMexiKen watched the Albuquerque Isotopes hold on to beat the New Orleans Zephyrs 3-2 last night in the second game of a doubleheader (New Orleans won the first game—a make-up of Tuesday’s rainout—7-6).
It was a beautiful evening at the ballpark, if a touch warm with the temperature in the high 80s and the humidity up. Other than a few stand out plays (the ‘Topes had two triples and an unassisted double play), the highlight for the crowd of 8,400 was singing “Y-M-C-A” after “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the fifth inning stretch (they play 7-inning games in the PCL when they play two). For the many, many little people, the highlight seemed to be singing the “Sponge Bob Square Pants” theme when, for some reason, it was played.
And, as the Isotopes were named by Homer Simpson, we also have: Da-da-ta-da, ta-da, Marge!
NewMexiKen has been to many major league games in 14 big league parks, and there is nothing quite like it. But for pure recreational value, I’ll take the ‘Topes. Parking was free, for $11 each at the ticket window we got seats in the tenth row behind the first base dugout, food and drinks were good if just a little pricey, and we got to see the taco beat the red chile and the green chile in the race around the infield.
Marriott International announced Wednesday that it will ban smoking at its 2,300 hotels in North America — from the economy Fairfield Inns to the upscale Ritz-Carltons — making it the first major hotel company to adopt a sweeping anti-smoking policy.
From an article in The New York Times highlighting the new personlization and entertainment trends in funerals:
Mr. Biggins said funeral homes can do anything that party planners can do. At his own funeral home in Rockland, Mass., Mr. Biggins arranged a service for Harry Ewell, a man who had been an ice cream vendor. Mr. Ewell’s old ice cream truck led the funeral procession and dispensed Popsicles at the end. “If you call that over the top, then I guess I’m guilty,” Mr. Biggins said. “But our business reflects society as a whole. Today’s consumer wants things personal, specific to their lifestyle, whether it’s highlighting a person’s passion for golf or celebrating someone’s deep devotion to knitting or needlepoint.”
For NewMexiKen’s part, just blog my funeral, comments required.
Congressman Jim Kolbe of Arizona (though a Republican, he voted to override the president’s stem cell veto yesterday) has introduced legislation to eliminate the penny. Yahoo! News, among others, has the story.
Two things. One, why not make it easier all around and just eliminate the decimal place? That is, why not round-off to the nearest dime?
Two, I am reassured that eliminating the penny is a good thing not just because it costs more to make a penny than they’re worth, but because Kevin Federline (and Richard Branson — hello is he even an American) “threw a “Save the Penny” show in Times Square … to publicize the penny’s plight.” Plight!? Kevin Federline is a plight.*
Kolbe, by the way, probably likes the nickel because there is more copper (Arizona copper) in the nickel-coated copper nickel than there is in the copper-coated zinc penny.
* Plight = a dangerous, difficult or otherwise unfortunate situation.
… was born in Autlan de Navarro, Mexico, 59 years ago today. His family migrated to the U.S. in the 1960s.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introduces inductee Santana this way —
Guitarist Carlos Santana is one of rock’s true virtuosos and guiding lights. Since 1966, he has led the group that bears his surname, selling over 30 million albums and performing before 13 million people. Though numerous musicians have passed through Santana’s ranks, the continuing presence of Carlos Santana at the helm has insured high standards. From the earliest days, when Santana first overlaid Afro-Latin rhythms upon a base of driving blues-rock, they have been musical sorcerers. The melodic fluency and kineticism of Santana’s guitar solos and the piercing, sustained tone that is his signature have made him one of rock’s standout instrumentalists. Coupled with the polyrhythmic fury of drums, congas and timbales, the sound of Santana in full flight is singularly exciting. Underlying it all is Santana’s belief that music should “create a bridge so people can have more trust and hope in humanity.”
Sixty-two years ago today, German military officers failed in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb in a briefcase. Four were killed but Hitler, though wounded, was saved by the heavy wooden table on which he was reviewing maps. This from the BBC —
Adolf Hitler has escaped death after a bomb exploded at 1242 local time at his headquarters in Rastenberg, East Prussia.
The German News Agency broke the news from Hitler’s headquarters, known as the “wolf’s lair”, his command post for the Eastern Front.
A senior officer, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, has been blamed for planting the bomb at a meeting at which Hitler and other senior members of the General Staff were present.
Hitler has sustained minor burns and concussion but, according to the news agency, managed to keep his appointment with Italian leader Benito Mussolini.
…Von Stauffenberg was arrested the same day and shot. The rest of the conspirators were tried and hanged or offered the chance to commit suicide.
Eight of those executed were hanged with piano wire from meat-hooks and their executions filmed and shown to senior members of the Nazi Party and the armed forces.
The Lakota Tatanka-Iyotanka (Sitting Bull) surrendered to the U.S. Army on this date 125 years ago.
This from a fine, brief biographical essay at AmericanHeritage.com:
On the morning of the July 20, in front of American and Canadian soldiers and a Minnesota newspaperman, Sitting Bull had his eight-year-old son, Crow Foot, hand Brotherton his Winchester rifle. “I surrender this rifle to you through my young son,” said the chief, “whom I [thereby] desire to teach . . . that he has become a friend of the Americans. . . . I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle. This boy has given it to you, and he now wants to know how he is going to make a living.”
David Pogue loves the new version of the speech-recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking. “Like Having a Secretary in Your PC,” the title claims. (Windows only.)
Meanwhile, Walt Mossberg warns against having more than one firewall and anti-virus checker. (Umm, that would be Windows only, too.)
At The Apple Blog they try and help choose from among the various browsers for OS X. (Mac only.)
From a column in today’s New York Times:
The second measures how squiggly the borders of a country are. Straight lines are usually the sign of an arbitrary colonial mapmaker. Natural barriers like rivers and mountains seldom look tidy. Taking the measures of partitioning and neat borders, their study compares the performance of countries with natural borders to those with artificial ones and finds, overwhelmingly, that artificial nations suffer terribly — lower income, horribly ineffective and corrupt governments, less respect for the law, low literacy, limited access to clean water, poor health care, you name it.
…Iraq, especially, is a straight-edged, ethnically partitioned nation wracked with internal strife. And having oil wealth is unlikely to save the day. Fragmented countries with natural resources often do worse because civil war rages over who gets to keep the money.
2 Comments | Show Comments | Print This Post
Two of New Mexico’s three congress persons voted to override the president’s veto of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act: Udall (D) and Wilson (R).
Pearce (R) voted with the president.
How did your representative vote?
Print This Post
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Powered by WordPress.
