Author: NewMexiKen

It’s the birthday

… of Barbara Eden. “Jeannie” is 70. We can stop dreaming about her now.

… of Linda Thompson. The folk/rock musician, who with then husband Richard made one of the great rock albums — Shoot Out the Lights, is 57 today.

… of Shelley Long. The star of Cheers and numerous films is 55.

… of Kobe Bryant. He’s 26.

… and of Gene Kelly. The wonderful singer/dancer/actor was born on this date in 1912. He died in 1996.

The perfect golf gift (for the hacker)

From Morning Briefing by Larry Stewart in the Los Angeles Times —

Dodger center fielder Steve Finley gave two cases of golf balls, each containing 144 balls, to Manager Jim Tracy, who is not exactly a scratch golfer.

Bench coach Jim Riggleman, noticing the two cases in Tracy’s office, put notes on both. The note on one box read, “Front nine.” The note on the other read, “Back nine.”

Basketball’s all-time scorer

Wilt Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1936.

Usually called “The Stilt” because it rhymed with Wilt, Chamberlain actually preferred the nickname “The Big Dipper.”

NewMexiKen had the pleasure of seeing Chamberlain play in person during the great Philadelphia 76ers 1966-1967 championship season. Wilt averaged 24.2 rebounds and 24.1 points per game that year.

Judging quality in a restaurant

NewMexiKen’s list of the top ten reasons to chose another restaurant if you want to impress your date or customer:

10. You pay before you eat

9. You pay after you eat, but you stand in line and pay a cashier

8. More men eating with caps/hats on than those without caps/hats

7. The piped-in-music is louder than the TVs

6. Soup served with soup spoon already in soup

5. They fill the condiments while you’re at the table

4. Menu includes photos of the food

3. Menu includes samples of the food stuck to pages

2. They wipe your table with a wet rag

And the number one reason to chose another restaurant if you want to impress your date or customer

They wipe the seats of the chairs with the same rag

It’s the birthday

… of Issac Hayes. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is 62.

Isaac Hayes is a multi-faceted talent: songwriter, producer, sideman, solo artist, film scorer, actor, rapper and deejay. He has been hugely influential on the rap movement as both a spoken-word pioneer and larger-than-life persona who’s influenced everyone from Barry White to Puff Daddy. Hayes is best known for his soundtrack to Shaft, one of the first and best “blaxploitation” films, and for the song “Theme from ‘Shaft,’” a Top Ten hit. But his varied resume boasts everything from backing up Otis Redding and writing for Sam and Dave and others at Stax Records in the Sixties to serving as the voice of Chef on South Park in the Nineties.

… of Connie Chung. The newscaster is 58.

… of Robert Plant. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee (as part of Led Zeppelin) is 56.

… of Al Roker. The weatherman who’s not half of what he used to be is 50.

… of Joan Allen. The three-time Oscar nominee is 48.

Ouch!

From Morning Briefing:

From Seth Soffian of the Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press: “Did you hear the one about Tiger Woods? During [last week’s] PGA tournament, Amy Mickelson handed one of her children to him before she realized it wasn’t her husband, Phil.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m still used to guys who can’t win majors.”

Just like ringing a bell

Voyager 2, the first of two Voyager spacecraft (Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1 — go figure), was sent to explore the planets of our solar system on this date in 1977.

NewMexiKen wrote about The Golden Record on board each spacecraft some months ago. The record is “a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth” so that extra-terrestials might learn about life on our planet. Among the music is Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, various native music and Chuck Berry performing “Johnny B. Goode.”

If we ever hear from extra-terrestials, I imagine their message to us will be, “Send more Chuck Berry.”

Bear down

From Reuters via CNN.com —

A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.

“We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around,” said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.

The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers’ coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds.

It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge.

Wildlife agents chased the bear away, but it returned the next day, said Broxson.

They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation.

For that matter, they could have captured NewMexiKen with doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer.

Growing up

Update from Jill on Mack, now that he’s tall enough for every ride at the Magic Kingdom —

I tell my three-year-old son about our sudden plans for a trip to Disney World next month. I elaborate on the rides we’ll visit. I tell him that we’ll be able to watch giraffes graze from our hotel room. I also mention that our hotel has a huge pool with a big water slide.

I pause for his response.

“Is there a hot tub?”

Two-timing dentist

Regular readers of NewMexiKen may remember me mentioning a few weeks ago that the dentist had said I was a “good patient.”

Today I’m waiting in the dental chair, feeling confident because of my “good patient” reputation, and I hear the dentist in the adjoining room telling someone they are a “great patient.”

My ego tumbled.

And then — and then — with industrial-strength dental tools and several fingers in my mouth to decide where he can best torture me this time — he tells me (in a conversation we had been having about sports) that he couldn’t do that particular sport because he’s too accident prone.

An accident-prone dentist and a good— but not great — patient. A recipe for disaster.

The Ugly Duckling

Pika at Quirky Burque sums up the relationship between Albuquerque and Santa Fe in a few words —

JUST 60 MILES TO THE NORTHEAST, as we all know, the situation is quite different. Our fair sister-city, Santa Fe, prances around LIKE A BLEACH-BLONDE TROPHY WIFE whom writers can’t stop telling us is oh-so-pretty, so popular, and did we mention she married a Texas billionaire? All while poor dusty Albuquerque worries whether she’ll ever get a date to the Prom.

NewMexiKen likes them both, but Albuquerque is definitely the better prom date. For one, we’ve got Pika Brittlebush.

SP2

Walt Mossberg takes a look at SP2, the Windows free upgrade —

I’ve been testing SP2 on two Windows computers, and it seems to work fine. I recommend installing it, if only because of the under-the-hood security improvements Microsoft claims it contains.

But SP2 falls way short of what Microsoft could have done to fix the miserable state of security in Windows. While the update will make it harder for malicious software to enter your PC, SP2 doesn’t detect or remove viruses or spyware or spam.

What’s more, some of the key features of SP2 are inferior to those in third-party security software. In fact, even after you install SP2, you will still have to use add-on security programs, if you want to be reasonably safe.

He concludes: “Overall, SP2 is worth installing and will definitely improve Windows security. But it’s limited. You’ll still need to look beyond Microsoft to really secure your Windows PC.”

Antonio Salieri …

was born on this date in 1750. After his characterization as a villain in Peter Shaffer’s play and film Amadeus, it seems Salieri is making a bit of a comeback. According to a December article at Guardian Unlimited, “Next year the renovated La Scala in Milan is to reopen its doors with the work Salieri wrote for its very first performance back in 1778. And now Cecilia Bartoli has recorded an album devoted to his music.”

This article and other sources seem persuasive in saying that while there was competition between the upstart Mozart and the established artist Salieri in Vienna, there was cooperation, too; that is, what transpired between them was typical office politics.

As the Guardian Unlimited article notes:

…Mozart’s death, as one respected musical journal wrote, was almost certainly caused not by poison but by “arduous work and fast living among ill-chosen company”.

It was only after Mozart’s demise that Salieri began to have any real reason to hate him. Unlike that of any before him, Mozart’s music kept on being performed. Cut down at the peak of his powers – and with the added frisson of whispered rumours that he might have been murdered – he became the first composer whose cult of celebrity actually flourished after his death.

Salieri, however, had outlived his talent. He wrote almost no music for the last two decades of his life. Instead he spent time revising his previous works. He did have an impressive roster of pupils: Beethoven, Schubert, Meyerbeer and Liszt – not to mention Franz Xaver Mozart, his supposed adversary’s young son. But the composer who had once been at the vanguard of new operatic ideas was not necessarily teaching his students to be similarly innovative…

Of Mozart’s death, the story is more complicated:

So how did this respected musician become the rumoured murderer of the great Mozart? Nobody knows for certain. But in his final weeks Mozart is reported to have believed he had been poisoned, and had gone so far as to blame hostile Italian factions at the Viennese court. People put two and two together and pointed the finger at Salieri. And who could resist a story this good? Certainly not his fellow composers. There are mentions of it in Beethoven’s Conversation Books. Weber, Mozart’s father-in-law, had heard it by 1803, and cold-shouldered Salieri ever after. And 20 years later it was still doing the rounds; Rossini joked about it when he met Salieri in 1822.

As the rumour gathered strength, all denials only served to reinforce it. Then, in 1823, Salieri – hospitalised, terminally ill and deranged – is said to have accused himself of poisoning Mozart. In more lucid moments he took it back. But the damage was done. Even if few believed the ramblings of a confused old man, the fact that Salieri had “confessed” to Mozart’s murder gave the rumour some semblance of validity.