It’s the birthday

… of Deborah Kerr. The six-time Oscar nominee for Best Actress is 83 today.

… of Angie Dickinson. “Pepper” is 73 today.

… of Johnny Mathis. Chances are the singer is 69 today.

… of Barry Williams. Greg Brady is 50 today.

James Dean was killed on this date in 1955.

[Dean] and his mechanic, Rolf Wuetherich, were traveling in Dean’s new Porsche Spyder 550, which he planned to race that afternoon in Salinas. Dean had traded in his Porsche Speedster just nine days earlier, purchasing the Spyder for $6,900 and naming it “Little Bastard.”

From JamesDean.com.

Truman Capote …

was born in New Orleans on this date in 1924. The Writer’s Almanac tells us:

Even as a child, Capote wanted to become famous. He moved with his mother to New York City and applied to the prestigious Trinity School. He was given an IQ test as an entrance exam, and he scored 215, the highest in the school’s history. Capote said, “I was having 50 perceptions a minute to everyone else’s five. I always felt nobody was going to understand me, going to understand what I felt about things. I guess that’s why I started writing.” One day he read a news release about the murder of a family in western Kansas, and he decided to write about it. He moved to Holcomb, Kansas with his friend Harper Lee, and became attached to the community as it recovered from the crime. Capote compiled over 6,000 pages of notes on the crime, 80% of which he threw away. Eventually, he wrote his most famous work, In Cold Blood (1966), about the murders. He got to know the two murderers well and worked for many years to have their death sentences reduced. When the two men were hanged, Capote became physically ill. In Cold Blood introduced a new genre, the “non-fiction novel.” Capote received nearly two million dollars for text and movie rights.

Capote craved fame and spent much of his life socializing. He was an unassuming figure—small and with a high lisping voice. But he was a lively storyteller, and an expert charmer. George Plimpton said, “He knew he had to sing for his supper but, my God, what a song it was!”

Law & Order

NewMexiKen is certain that Dennis Farina is a fine actor and all-around good fellow, and I really should give him a chance, but I miss Briscoe.

Besides, Law & Order missed a sure thing when they didn’t hire Kelsey Grammer to play Dr. Frasier Crane, the district attorney’s new house shrink.

Private Craft Rockets Past Edge of Space

A spacecraft that looks just like something out of Flash Gordon. Can Dale Arden and Emperor Ming be real?

RocketPlane.jpgCompleting the first leg of a quest for a $10 million prize, a test pilot took a privately financed plane past the cusp of space on Wednesday morning in a flight that had equal measures of white-knuckle moments and triumph.

The rocket ship left the ground at 7:10 a.m. and reached a height unofficially reported at 337,500 feet (63.9 miles), well above its 328,000-foot goal set by the X Prize. That goal altitude, 100 kilometers above the Earth, is an arbitrary but widely accepted definition for the border of space. By 8:34, the squid-shaped craft had glided safely back to the runway.

But the best news of all, the pilot, Michael W. Melvill, is 63-years-old.

A New-Style Indian Village Rises From the Dust

Informative and interesting article in The New York Times on housing development on Winnebago Indian Reservation (Nebraska).

In mid-September the National American Indian Housing Council released a report on the health risks that overcrowded housing on reservations poses to children, including infectious diseases and breathing problems from tobacco smoke. A report last year by the federal Commission on Civil Rights cited an immediate need for 200,000 housing units for Indian families.

In Winnebago about one-third of households are overcrowded, including the home of David and Robin Redhorn. They live in town with their three children in a house they share with Mrs. Redhorn’s sister, her husband and their child. “There’s about eight of us,” Mr. Redhorn said. “It’s kind of crowded, but we’re managing.”

In October the Redhorn family will become the second to move to Ho-Chunk Village. With guidance from a 40-hour home buyer course offered by the housing authority, Mr. Redhorn, who works at the Heritage Food Store in town, paid off overdue debts to improve his credit record, which qualified him for financial assistance.

All Winnebago families are eligible for $15,000 in down payment assistance from Ho-Chunk Inc.’s nonprofit arm for houses on the reservation if they complete the course. Families earning $45,200 or less may qualify for an additional $5,000 from the housing authority.

“We’ll have a three-bedroom house, a full basement with a two-car garage, central air and central heat,” Mr. Redhorn said. “And a fireplace so we can have a real Christmas. I’m kind of fired up about this.”

The Rolex of sports cars

Pulitzer winner Dan Neil writes this week about the Porsche 911. Go read it, after all how many auto columnists begin with a discussion of Ezra Pound.

It’s fair to say I hadn’t thought of Pound since the moment I put down my pencil in graduate school — until I climbed into the cockpit of the redesigned Porsche 911 Carrera S. There, atop the richly upholstered dash, was a handsome stopwatch-style chronometer. Want to test yourself on a favorite piece of road? Tap a wand on the steering column and the instrument’s sweep-second hand and digital readout begin to march forward with unappeasable accuracy. Now you can time exactly how long it takes to lose your license.

The chronometer is a little bit of genius, design as metaphor. If you had to choose an image to capture the soul of the Porsche 911 — a car with thousands of road-racing victories to its credit, a car that virtually owns the production-based classes at Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring — that image wouldn’t be a wheel, or an engine or even the raring black stallion on the Porsche escutcheon. It would be a stopwatch.

Oh, and if you have $92,355, it’s a helluva car.

Paper quips

From Sideline Chatter:

• Steve Schrader of the Detroit Free Press, after Tony Siragusa, Fox Sports’ corpulent sideline reporter, called Lions QB Joey Harrington a “champagne and caviar” kind of guy: “Not that we’ve ever met him, but Tony looks like he might be a beer and pretzels, meat and potatoes, biscuits and gravy, chicken and dumplings, turkey and dressing, surf and turf, pizza and pasta, nachos and wings, chips and dip, macaroni and cheese, cake and ice cream kind of guy.”

• CBS’s David Letterman, with a special announcement for Britney Spears fans: “There will be no wedding on Saturday. It’s a bye week.”

Questions for the debate

Altercation has a series of reader-suggested questions. NewMexiKen’s favorite:

Question: Mr. President, you have accused John Kerry of not supporting the troops because he did not vote in favor of the funding bill that contained funds for basic soldier gear such as body armor. My question is who sent them into battle without that equipment in the first place?

Tough love

Dear Abby,

I recently read your column advising grandparents on “tough love” for grandparents to give misbehaving grandchildren, whose own parents let them run wild. I have followed your advice, and enclosed a picture demonstrating my technique when my grandson just won’t behave while I’m babysitting for his parents. They have told me not to spank him, so I just take him for a ride, and he usually calms down afterward.

Sign me,

Tough Love Grandpa

Fair is as fair does

“John Kerry said that you can’t have fair and free elections in a place where there’s no rule of law. President Bush said, ‘Oh yeah, what if your brother’s governor of that state?'”

“Republicans are now saying that Dan Rather should lose his job because he misled the country with bogus information. Which is odd because the Democrats are saying the exact same thing about President Bush.”

— Jay Leno

Samuel Adams

The Writer’s Almanac has a nice piece on America’s premier patriot. (You can listen to Garrison Keillor here [RealAudio].)

It’s the birthday of statesman and patriot Samuel Adams, born in Boston, Massachusetts (1722). As a young man, he tried to go into business for himself with some money his father had given him, but the business failed and he lost everything. He got a job as a tax collector, but he failed to collect any taxes and his accounting books were a mess. It wasn’t until the British passed the Sugar Act of 1764 that he found his purpose in life. He was one of the first members of the colonies to speak out against taxation without representation and one of the first people to argue for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain. He was the leader of the American radicals, and he was almost maniacal in his pursuit of American independence. He organized riots and wrote propaganda, describing the British as murderers and slave drivers. Adams said, “Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason,” and he had a genius for stirring up feelings. In one speech he said, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace … Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” He was so influential in his opposition to the British that British soldiers tried to arrest him, but he and John Hancock hid in a farmhouse and weren’t found. He went on to become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and participated in the Continental Congress. He said, “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

And a damn fine beer.

Never bored

Ralph had this story he got from a friend:

Several of my former co-workers have asked what retired people, like me, do to make their days interesting.

I went to the store the other day. I was only in there for about 5 minutes. When I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.

I went up to him and said, “Come on, buddy, how about giving a senior a break?”

He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi.

He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires.

So I called him a piece of shit. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.

This went on for about 20 minutes.. the more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

I didn’t give a damn. My car was parked around the corner.

I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired. It’s important at my age.

Sounds like fun.