Author: NewMexiKen

That’s why they call it a “dash”

From Dwight Perry’s Sideline Chatter —

Philip Rabinowitz of South Africa shattered the record for the fastest 100-meter run by a 100-year-old by more than 7 seconds, Reuters reported, but his 28.7-second time has been disallowed because a power outage at the stadium in Khayelitsha stopped the official electronic clock.

Complicating matters further, we hear, jealous competitors are spreading rumors that Rabinowitz tested positive for prunes.

Airport blogging

As advertised, the Albuquerque Sunport (our lovely little airport) has wireless service (as do an increasing number of our public libraries). NewMexiKen is sitting at Gate B10 before departing to visit three of The Sweeties.

Amen!

T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times, after watching ESPN’s coverage of the All-Star Home Run Derby on Monday: “Whoever came up with the idea of the mute button had to be listening to Chris Berman at the time.”

Via Dwight Perry’s Sideline Chatter

Chick car

Dan Neil knows how to write about cars. The lede to today’s column —

When I drive the Lexus SC430, I feel pretty. Oh so pretty. I feel pretty and witty and let’s just leave it at that, hmmm?

The SC430 — as polished as a manor house banister, as smooth as Napoleon brandy strained through Naomi Wolf’s silk stocking — is that mightily maligned thing: a chick car.

Read more.

Grow your own

Quirky Burque knows how to do Bastille Day.

Join me, epicureans, on a dangerous backyard adventure! Right here, right now in the Duke City, tantalizing bits of Atkins-certified protein are swarming your backyard. Yep, you got it, SNAILS! Don’t twist up your nose at me, you Franco-phobe, this is high-couture culinary hunting! I’ve been trapping and “purging” snails ALL WEEK LONG in honor of Bastille Day today.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie…

was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on this date in 1912. We, of course, know him as Woody Guthrie.

This from David Hajdu in a review in The New Yorker earlier this year of a new biography of Guthrie:

…”This Land Is Your Land,” a song that most people likely think they know in full. The lyrics had been written in anger, as a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which Woody Guthrie deplored as treacle. In addition to the familiar stanzas (“As I went walking that ribbon of highway,” and so on), Guthrie had composed a couple of others, including this:

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people—
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God Blessed America for me.

Woody Guthrie died in 1967.

Gerald R. Ford …

is 91 today. He was born as Leslie L. King, Jr., on this date in 1913. He took the name Gerald Rudolf Ford, Jr., when adopted by his stepfather.

Ford is the second oldest former president ever, after Ronald Reagan. John Adams and Herbert Hoover both lived to be 90.

NewMexiKen had several meetings with President Ford in the years after he left office (1977). In fact it can be said that on one two-day occasion I helped him clean his garage. The most astonishing incident however, was in 1981.

The Gerald R. Ford Museum was about to be dedicated in Grand Rapids. As the representative of the National Archives nearest Ford’s retirement office in Rancho Mirage, California, I was called with an urgent request. It seemed flags had not been ordered for the replica Oval Office in the Museum. President Ford would lend them his. I was asked to go to his office, pick them up and ship them to Michigan.

The next morning I was ushered into the former President’s office. He was standing at his desk browsing through some papers. After the routine “Hello, Ken” and “Hello, Mr. President” exchange, I went about my business with the flags. He continued his business with the papers.

The U.S. flag was on a brass stand with two wooden staff pieces screwed together at the middle and a brass eagle, wings outstretched, at the top, about seven feet from the floor. I unscrewed the two pieces of the staff, a task made difficult by the weight of the flag and the eagle above.

As I began to lower the top half at an angle, the eagle took flight. It was just set on the top of the staff, not screwed on as it should have been.

Stop and picture this. The former President of the United States is a few feet away. His gorgeous White House presidential desk is even closer. And we have a brass eagle weighing several pounds in free fall. I’m holding the flag and can’t do anything but watch.

Poor President Ford I thought, he is about to be in the news for being clunked (or worse!) by a flagpole eagle in his own office — and this after years of being portrayed by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live as a clumsy, stumble-prone klutz. (In reality Gerald Ford was an All-American football player at Michigan in the thirties and still looked exceptionally fit in his sixties.)

It wasn’t my fault the eagle hadn’t been attached but I was about to be a footnote to history.

Amazingly, the eagle missed Mr. Ford. Even more miraculously, it missed the historic desk and fell harmlessly to the carpet with a thud.

The former President had to have noticed. He never said a word. For that alone he has my enduring admiration.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

The discrimination amendment vote

Republicans who voted to block the amendment were Susan M. Collins (Maine), Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), John E. Sununu (N.H.), Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Colo.) and John McCain (Ariz.). Democrats who voted to bring up the amendment were Zell Miller (Ga.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.).

Words of wisdom

“We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.”

Abraham Lincoln, November 10, 1864

Well put

“I love that the Department of Homeland Security always tells Americans if you don’t fly commercial airlines, ‘the terrorists have won.’ If you don’t hold the Super Bowl or the World Series, ‘the terrorists have won.’ If you don’t get out to the mall and do your Christmas shopping, ‘the terrorists have won.’ Comes time for the election, ‘Oh, let the terrorists have that one.’ ”

Jay Leno

Sweet

Last night’s All-star Home Run Derby was won by the smallest man competing, 5-9 Miguel Tejada with a record 27 dingers including 15 in the second round (also a record) and one that measured 497 feet. Fourteen 500+ home run hitters present (out of 20 all-time), three of them competing in the Derby, and the little guy out slugs them all.