Category: People & Human Interest

Functional Ambivalent with yet another in a long line of really good stuff he’s written.

Go read it.

Even Lassie wasn’t this good. Superpooch.

NewMexiKen went to the lab early this morning for routine blood work. I’m not crazy about needles and so never watch. As I’m sitting there, having felt nothing at all, I realize that the technician is already drawing blood. This is too good to believe — a part of me actually doesn’t believe it — and then she’s done. Wow, I think, that was easy.

“Oh,” she says, “I’m sorry. I’ve got another one [tube] to get. I’ll have to do it again. I’m so sorry.”

It goes without saying I suppose that the second poke was the one that hurt like hell.

Andrew Sullivan has this video of a horse performing. It is, as Sullivan says, an amazing horse.

NewMexiKen would be more impressed, however, if the horse were wearing ice skates.

Another very short story.

He’s got his priorities.

Good very short story.

POTATOES

AAA customer service rep on the phone yesterday: “Is there another city nearby? I can’t find Tucson.”

(That’s because it was listed as the West Tucson and East Tucson offices.)

Arizona MVD today: “We need to have his signature. Send him a form to sign and have notarized.”

(I signed an affidavit and the car title and both were notarized by MVD itself last month! I guess you needed to sign a statement saying that your signature on the affidavit that you signed in front of them was your signature.)

And don’t even get me started on Verizon.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal asserts that, while various life skills seem to deteriorate as people get older, our skill at making personal-finance decisions doesn’t peak until the ripe age of 53. “Baseball players are said to peak in their late 20’s,” writes David Wessel. “Chess players in their mid-30’s. Theoretical economists in their mid-40’s. But in ordinary life, there’s an obvious tension between sheer smarts, often seen in the supple minds of the young, and experience, which comes only with age.”

There’s more at Freakonomics Blog.

20-ish guy: Your glasses can’t be bad, you just got them!

20-ish girl: Yeah, but I cheated on the eye exam, so it’s really my own fault…

20-ish guy: … That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

20-ish girl: I can’t help it, I’m very competitive!

–Kim’s Video, St. Mark’s Pl

Overheard in New York

Hispanic teen chick: Anyone ever tell you you look like Kevin Bacon?

Ethan Hawke: Yeah… Haha… Uhhh…

–Diner, Abingdon Square

Overheard in New York.

Once again, the above as much for their headline as the item itself. I thought this one was cute:

Little boy #1: I wish dinosaurs lived in Central Park.
Little boy #2: Dinosaurs aren’t real — they’re from the TV.
Little boy #3: Dinosaurs are real, they just live on other planets.
Little boy #2: Like Pluto!
Little boy #1: Pluto isn’t a planet anymore. The scientists blowed it up.

–M86 bus

For about half a minute on Saturday, the State Capitol Grounds became the 10th largest population center in North Dakota.

Nearly 9,000 people showed up to flap their arms and legs in the snow, apparently shattering the world snow angel record.

The results will be unofficial until Tuesday, but event organizer Marilyn Snyder said 8,911 people made snow angels at the same time at the Capitol on Saturday afternoon. The previous record, set last year in Michigan, was 3,784.

“The people of North Dakota are fantastic. They stepped up to the plate and hit more than a homerun today,” Snyder said. “I asked the governor to ask the Legislature to proclaim us the Snow Capital of the World.”

Gov. John Hoeven and first lady Mikey did their part to break the record. He announced the start of the event, and the couple promptly plopped down in the snow to make their marks.

Also in the front row of angels on Saturday was Pauline Jaeger, who was celebrating her 99th birthday.

“It started out as kind of a joke, but when I found out it was really happening I got pretty excited,” Jaeger, the aunt of North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger, said. “This is going to be my first snow angel, and what a time for it. This is really a great birthday party.”

The Bismarck Tribune

NewMexiKen was a Michigander in those days, though young enough to still be just a Michigosling.

Children didn’t get driven to school then. They walked. Or they took a bus. Or they rode a bike. And my bike was gone. Fortunately it was Saturday.

Still, it was my 11th birthday and it was depressing to have my bike missing on my birthday. We looked everywhere.

Finally Mom called the police. She described the vanished bike to them. “There was? Where? Downtown. OK!”

Dad and I drove the mile or so downtown to the bike shop. The missing bike was reportedly there.

We went in and Dad asked about the bike in our name. Sure enough, there was one.

Trouble was it wasn’t my bike. It was a brand new three-speed English racer.

“That’s not my bike.” I protested to Dad.

“Yes it is,” he said. “Happy Birthday!”

Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen, has returned from Walt Disney World. I thought I should point out her contribution to our Star gazing reports.

NewMexiKen’s request to for you to write about seeing/meeting famous people outside their natural habitat, or better yet, actually talking to them, generated 43 comments. (Above link, and here.)

Now that Tom and SnoLepard are — you think? — finished, maybe there are still others among you who would like to mention an encounter or two with “greatness.”

NewMexiKen once was able to attend a small conference with many, many notables. As I remember three Rockefeller brothers were there (Nelson, David and Lawrence), Lady Bird Johnson, William Paley and Frank Stanton the founders of CBS, Pat Weaver the creator of “The Today Show” and “The Tonight Show” (and Sigourney’s dad), Herman Kahn the thermonuclear war theorist, and Edward Teller one of the physicists that made thermonuclear war possible. I saw Nelson Rockefeller stirring his coffee with his glasses end piece (the part that extends to the temple).

But my favorite those two days was Bess Myerson, Miss America 1945. She was extraordinarily lovely nearly 30 years after her reign.

In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him.

“How much is an ice cream sundae?” he asked.

“Fifty cents,” replied the waitress.

The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in it.

“Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?” he inquired.

By now more people were waiting for a table and the waitress was growing impatient.

“Thirty-five cents,” she brusquely replied.

The little boy again counted his coins.

“I’ll have the plain ice cream,” he said.

The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and left. When the waitress came back, she began to cry as she wiped down the table. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies.

You see, he couldn’t have the sundae, because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip.

One of 5 Life Lessons.

NewMexiKen’s readers, especially Tom and SnoLepard, have just about seen everybody famous ever. SnoLepard spotting Tonya Harding at K-Mart still takes the honors of what seeing celebrities outside their natural habitat is all about. (Tonya Harding’s natural habitat would, after all, be the skating rink, the court room or the boxing ring.)

32 comments and counting, a NewMexiKen record. And Jill and Emily, the originators of this idea, are traveling. We haven’t even heard from them yet.

How about you. What famous persons have you seen?

For NewMexiKen’s part, I’ve seen Santa Claus many, many times.

This from The Lede:

But it’s true that Ms. Capovilla lasted only a little over six months, and the quick succession of title-holders after her makes one wonder if it wouldn’t be worth keeping one’s longevity a secret.

Ms. Bolden took the crown again with Ms. Capovilla’s passing, but held on to it for just three months before surrendering to the fates. That elevated Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico — for about a month and a half. He died last Wednesday.

Emma Tillman of East Hartford, Connecticut, then took up the baton. And today’s news: Ms. Tillman died on Sunday, at 114, after just four days as the oldest.

According to Guinness, that leaves 114-year-old Yone Minagawa of Fukuoka, Japan, as the new longevity leader.

At Christmas NewMexiKen and his two official daughters, Jill and Emily, were discussing the most famous people we’d ever had a conversation with or seen. We thought it might be an interesting blog topic, but with all that’s happened I’d never gotten around to writing it up.

So, who is the most famous person you’ve spoken with? And who is the most famous person you’ve seen in person? And what is the most famous/notorious event/performance you have witnessed?

No rules. Whatever you’d like to brag (?) about.

For NewMexiKen’s part, I saw Donny and Marie Osmond and some more Osmonds at Disneyland. They were guests, walking around just like us.

Top that!

More from me later.

NewMexiKen first posted this two years ago.

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What You’ll Wish You’d Known, a possible talk for high schoolers by Paul Graham. Interesting reading.

I’ll start by telling you something you don’t have to know in high school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking you this, so you think you’re supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.

Like Paula Poundstone, I thought adults asked kids what they wanted to be because the adults were still searching for ideas.

… If you’d asked me in high school what the difference was between high school kids and adults, I’d have said it was that adults had to earn a living. Wrong. It’s that adults take responsibility for themselves. Making a living is only a small part of it.

… It’s dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the people you have to impress to get into college are not a very discerning audience. At most colleges, it’s not the professors who decide whether you get in, but admissions officers, and they are nowhere near as smart.

… If you think it’s restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids.

… What you learn in even the best high school is rounding error compared to what you learn in college.

For the last eight years Dad lived in a townhouse condominium complex of 40+ units in the Tucson foothills. I learned from neighbors he was considered the “sergeant” or “guardian angel” for the place, with his patrols and concerns. The property manager wrote me that she didn’t “think he knew how much of a presence he was in our community.”

Dad had all the Harry Potter books, had read them all, and critiqued the more recent ones. He had ordered one of the volumes from Amazon so that it arrived the day it was published.

Dad paid his bills electronically and kept in touch with us all via email. The house was filled with family photos he had taken, been sent or scanned, printed and framed. As he often reminded me, I had six Sweeties (grandchildren) but he had ten (great grandchildren).

Jill said that when we visited the World War II Memorial in Washington last summer she had thanked her grandpa for his service in helping make the world free for her and her children. He said it was the first time anyone had ever thanked him. (Dad served four years in the U.S. Navy. Thank a vet you know.)

A man of infinite interests, when we last spoke he told me he was searching the internet to learn more about dragons. There on his desk when I arrived was the stuff he’d printed out.

Woman to another: I admire her strength so much… I don’t know how she did it! She raised three kids all by herself! Of course, she had her husband, but he doesn’t count. She still managed to raise three kids without a nanny or housekeeper! Can you imagine?

–Lex, Upper East Side

Overheard in New York, which also has this:

JAP on cell: I don’t think you will like Daniel, but he is worth meeting because he is a billionaire.

–25th St & 6th Ave

Overheard by: I’d like Daniel