Month: February 2006

It’s the birthday

… of actor-comedian Red Buttons. He’s 87.

… of priest-professor-author Andrew M. Greeley. He’s 78.

… of baseball hall-of-famer Hank Aaron. Henry is 72.

… of singer-songwriter Barrett Strong. He’s 65. “Money (That’s What I Want)” was Strong’s only hit as a singer. The record provided Berry Gordon the capital to expand into Motown. With Norman Whitfield, Strong authored “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby,” “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” “Ball of Confusion,” and “War.”

… of football hall-of-famer Roger Staubach. Jolly Roger is 64.

… of rock musician Al Kooper. If for nothing else, Kooper is known for playing the organ on Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” He’s 62.

… of actress Barbara Hershey. She’s 58.

… of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. She’s 44.

Build an ark (for real)

Debby, official youngest sister of NewMexiKen, writes to report that Astoria, Oregon, had a record 24.10 inches of rain in January and 58.88 inches since October 1.

Astoria had 2.91 inches of rain on January 5.

Albuquerque hasn’t had 2.91 inches cumulative rainfall in nearly five months (since September 9, 2005).

Yalta

Big Three

It was on this day in 1945 that the Yalta Conference began, during which President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union met to plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany. It took eight days and nights hashing out the future of the world. The meeting was totally secret with no news reporters allowed and there were no leaks to the press of anything that went on there.

At the time, Roosevelt and Churchill believed that they had to persuade Stalin to help fight against the Japanese and they also wanted him to help establish the United Nations. So they were willing to make the concession that he could continue to occupy Eastern Europe as long as he allowed free elections there.

Roosevelt’s health was failing at the time. He died of a stroke a little more than two months after the Yalta Conference. Some historians have suggested that Roosevelt’s health ruined his ability to negotiate effectively but others have argued that Stalin just had the better hand. He had effectively won the war on the Eastern Front with Germany and Roosevelt and Churchill desperately needed his help.

After the conference Stalin completely ignored his commitment to democracy and installed Communist Party dictatorships in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania, and the Cold War began.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

It’s the birthday

… of Byron Nelson. The hall-of-fame golfer is 94.

… of Betty Friedan. The feminist leader is 85. [Update: Friedan died Saturday, her birthday.]

… of Conrad Bain. The actor (Maude, Diff’rent Strokes) is 83.

… of John Steel. The Animals drummer (and therefore Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee) is 65.

… of David Brenner. The comedian is 61 today.

… of Dan Quayle. The former VP is 59.

… of Alice Cooper. The rocker is 58.

… of Lawrence Taylor. The NFL hall-of-famer is 47.

… of Clint Black. The country music star is 43.

Ain’t it funny how a melody can bring back a memory,
Take you to another place and time,
Completely change your state of mind.

It’s also the birthday of Rosa Parks. The soul of the civil rights movement was born on this date in 1913.

Charles Lindbergh was born on this date in 1902.

And George Washington was elected the first President of the United States on this date in 1789 when all 69 electors voting cast their ballot for him. John Adams was second with 34, becoming Vice President. (Each elector had two votes.)

Erin Brockovich

Pacific Gas and Electric on Friday agreed to pay $295 million to settle claims by more than 1,000 residents in several Mojave Desert towns who said they were harmed by groundwater contamination, a case made famous by the film “Erin Brockovich.”

As part of the settlement, the utility apologized to affected residents in the towns where leaks from gas compressor plants in the 1950s through the 1970s polluted the groundwater basin with chromium.

Los Angeles Times

An even better joke

This one posted by Eric Alterman:

President Bush was scheduled to worship at a small Methodist Church outside Washington, D.C. as part of Karl Rove’s campaign to reverse Bush’s rapidly deteriorating approval ratings. A week before the visit, Rove called on the Methodist Bishop who was scheduled to preach on the chosen Sunday. “As you know, Bishop,” began Rove, “we’ve been getting a lot of bad publicity among Methodists because of the president’s position on stem cell research and the like. We’d gladly arrange for Jack Abramoff’s friends to make a contribution of $100,000 to the church if during your sermon you would say that President Bush is a saint.”

The Bishop thought about it for a few minutes, and finally said, “This parish is in rather desperate need of funds … I’ll agree to do it.”

The following Sunday, Bush pompously showed up for the photo op, looking especially smug even while attempting to appear pious.

After making a few announcements, the Bishop began his homily: “George W. Bush is a petty, vindictive, sanctimonious hypocrite and a nitwit. He is a liar, a cheat, and a low-intelligence weasel with the world’s largest chip on his shoulder. He used every dirty election trick in the book and still lost, but his toadies in the Supreme Court appointed him. He lied about his military record in which he used special privilege to avoid combat, and then had the gall to dress up and pose on an aircraft carrier before a banner stating “Mission Accomplished.” He invaded a sovereign country for oil and war profiteering, turning Iraq into a training ground for terrorists who would destroy our country. He continues to confuse the American people by insisting on a nonexistent connection between the horrors of 9/11 and the reason he started his war in Iraq. He routinely appoints incompetent and unqualified cronies to high-level federal government positions and as a result, hundreds and hundreds of Americans died tragically in New Orleans. He lets corporate polluters despoil God’s creation and doom our planet. He uses fear-mongering to justify warrantless spying on American citizens, in clear violation of our Constitution. He is so psychotic and megalomaniacal that he believes that he was chosen by God. He is the worst example of a Methodist I have ever personally known. But compared to Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and the rest of the evil fascist bastards in this administration, George W. Bush is a saint.

Culture’s magnetic forces

From an article in the Christian Science Monitor:

Not so long ago it seemed as if we all spoke the same pop-culture language. But in an era of 500 TV channels, billions of Web pages, unlimited Netflix rentals, and iPods with music libraries of Smithsonian proportions, popular entertainment has suddenly become mind-bogglingly vast. As the overlap between what we all watch, read, and listen to steadily erodes, the water cooler has become a modern-day tower of Babel, where conversations sound like the jumbled voices emanating from the jungle in “Lost.” (If that reference is lost on you then, well, Q.E.D.)

In decades past, major pop-culture moments – the ones that everybody experienced at the same time – acted as an intangible glue that bound us together. “There’s a ‘we’ in all of those; the unum of the pluribus,” says Tim Burke, a cultural historian at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. “It’s harder to get those things as the media fragments.”

Which makes Sunday’s Super Bowl all the more remarkable.

“It’s the largest national event, at least in terms of people doing a common thing at one time in American culture,” says Mark Dyreson, a Pennsylvania State University professor who co-wrote the chapter “Super Bowl Sunday: A New American Holiday?” for the forthcoming Encyclopedia of American Holidays.

That got us thinking: Which other pop-culture phenomena still bind us together? After days of argument, research, fact-checking, and multiple rounds of voting – a process as rigorous as a “CSI” forensics test – the staff here at Weekend came up with a highly subjective, nonscientific list of 10 things that act as common denominators.

Go read about the 10.

Pretty good joke

An English major was being released from prison. The nice looking female clerk was about to give him the $100.00 they give to all released prisoners. Since the inmate had not had female attention for a long time, he suggested that she could keep the money if she would have sex with him. He was immediately rearrested and thrown back into jail. Everybody knows you should never end a sentence with a proposition.

A Prairie Home Companion: Pretty Good Jokes

Flags at half-staff

Flags are at half-staff in various states to honor Coretta Scott King.

NewMexiKen isn’t sure what law authorizes this, but it seems fitting.

Among the states (and cities) honoring Mrs. King in this way are New Mexico, Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Rochester (N.Y.).

N.M. Governor Richardson’s Executive Order mistakenly says Mrs. King died in Atlanta. She died at a clinic in Mexico.

Unique photo gift ideas

Lifehacker has a good list of things you can do with all those digital photos — refrigerator magnets, movie posters, trading cards, collage posters, etc.

NewMexiKen’s very own official oldest daughter has her own idea. For the past two years, Jill has photographed Mack with each of his birthday gifts, then uses the photo to decorate the thank you note for that gift.

That’s a long way from the first computer merge we ever did. “Dear [blank], Thank you for the [blank]. I will enjoy [blanking] with it.” Add a list of gifters, gifts, and actions and voila, thank you notes ready to print and mail.

Journalism caveat

First found at Campaign Desk (link no longer valid):

During the Civil War, some northern newspapers, uncertain as to the reliability of dated dispatches sent overland by part-time correspondents at the front, resorted to a standard headline that read:

“Important, If True”

The other Indian scandal

At Daily Kos, writer mbw tells one side of the Indian trust litigation story. This problem has been festering for 119 years, but somehow now it’s the fault of the current Administration. No issue is black and white — and issues in Indian country are particularly nuanced.

This incomplete and one-sided report seems to me to be a particularly good example of what passes for reporting in today’s media, mainstream or blog. But, as DailyKos is a big-time website, NewMexiKen thought mbw’s report should be noted.

Update: “mbw” is MB Williams at Wampum.

It’s the birthday

… of Tom Smothers. He’s 69.

… of Graham Nash. The Nash of Crosby, Stills & Nash (or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) is 64.

… of Farrah Fawcett. Charlie’s Angel is 59.

… of Christie Brinkley. She’s 52.

James Joyce was born in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin, on this date in 1882. Joyce only wrote four books of fiction in his life, but they’re all considered masterpieces — Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

But, of course, it is on June 16th that we should celebrate Joyce.

Best line of the day, so far

“As summed up by the distinguished social scientist who writes humor columns under the name of Dave Barry, residents of Red states are ‘ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying road-kill-eating tobacco-juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks,’ while Blue-state residents are ‘godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving leftwing Communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts.’

James Q. Wilson in an article entitled How Divided Are We?

‘Burque Men in Burkas Can’t Fill Their Shirts or The Pit

Jon at Albloggerque has a great take on the choreography of basketball and why today’s uniforms are harming the aesthetic of the game.

Read it all but here’s the jist:

But when it comes right down to it, there is more to sport than winning. It has to be enjoyable to watch. And basketball has a special place in sports. For one thing bball is the most like dance. The ball is the melody and the players, like dancers, leap and streak into a multitude of jazz variations of that one theme: the flight of the basketball. It flies from player to player, end to end, riff to rumble, and eventually we watch someone with artistry and deftness stick it just right.

Part of the beauty of it is watching the athletes themselves. Their physiques are totally awesome. At least we think they are…because we really can’t see them for all that loose and shapeless clothing.