Linkmeister

Heard on the radio

One of the local art house theaters is screening So Long at the Fair, probably because it stars Jean Simmons, who died recently.

I've never seen the film, but the title made me think of this Bonnie Raitt song from 1976:

Oh When the Saints

Saints 31 - Colts 17.

The crowd I was with decided that it wasn't a really exciting game until the interception in the 4th quarter. The word we kept using was workmanlike. No big plays, no big turnovers, just solid play from both teams. Then Tracy Porter picked off a perhaps-ill-advised throw from Manning, took it 74 yards, and the room exploded.

Congratulations to the Saints, their fans, and the city.

Super Bowl XLIV prediction

It will be a high-scoring affair.

Head says Colts, heart says Saints.

Mmm, the tried and true

I'm taking my usual Super Bowl Crab Dip to the game tomorrow, and I'm taking along Ritz crackers. It occurred to me that if I really wanted to impress, I'd find some upscale crackers instead, but I guess I don't care about impressions; I'm up for tasty. This may be why I occasionally like iceberg lettuce smothered in Thousand Island dressing, too.

I remember hating salads as a kid. Then, when I was 12, we left Los Angeles for Washington DC in a car (a 1962 Plymouth Valiant with push-button transmission on the dash, no less). On our first night out we stopped at a Howard Johnson's motel. I astonished my parents by eating every bite of the salad I was served with my burger. What sort of salad? Yup, iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island and a big tomato wedge.

Roads I'd like to travel

The Karakoram Highway between Pakistan and China. There's bus service!

Map.

Pictures taken by a Finnish tourist in 2005-2006.

Google Images.

Shelby's pork as payoff?

It sure looks that way.

The unusual “blanket hold” placed on Obama administration nominees by Senator Richard Shelby, represents an effort to support a firm that has contributed more than $100,000 to the Alabama Republican over the course of his long political career, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.

Shelby reportedly initiated the blanket hold in an attempt to back a $35 billion tanker contract for Northrop Grumman and EADS; the plane would be built in his state.

[snip]

The fourth-term Senator has received at least $108,233 in PAC contributions to his political campaigns and leadership PAC from Northrop Grumman’s corporate PACs. This includes contributions, dating back to his first Senate election in 1986, from the company’s political action committee and from the PACs of companies that are now part of Northrop Grumman.

Alabama Hold 'em

That oh-so-courtly Southern gentleman, Richard Shelby, has just put a blanket hold on all nominations to positions in the Executive Branch.

Why? He wants a couple of pet projects done in his state, and he thinks this is an ethical way to force that to happen.

Charming bastard, isn't he?

Frank Fasi, R.I.P.

Frank Fasi, ex-Marine and former Mayor of Honolulu for 22 years, died last night.

Love him or hate him, he never bored you. One of my favorite stories, which I'd forgotten till I read about it again:

When City Council members objected to the loss of their parking spaces behind City Hall fronting Hotel Street, Fasi struck early one morning with a bulldozer and pulled up the asphalt, creating the mall that's now called the Frank F. Fasi Civic Center.

Frank loved to fight. He fought with the City Council, he fought with governors, he fought within his administrations. He was never happier than when he could get in front of a microphone and rail at his enemies. Whether you agreed with him or not, he was always entertaining. Here he is driving the backhoe which tore up that parking lot. That's vintage Fasi.

He'll be missed.

Lost, Season 6, Episodes 1 & 2

Oh my goodness. More "what-if" games (amusingly, what the showrunners are calling "flash sideways); suppose the bomb explosion did do what Daniel's theory suggested it would, reversing everything and allowing Oceanic 815 to land undamaged in Los Angeles from the beginning.

A-n-d . . . Cuse and Lindelof explain their idea.

Alas, poor Juliet. As much as Sawyer misses her, I miss her nearly as much. And I thought for a few minutes that the writers were pulling a Hitchcock, killing off multiple main characters midway through the first reel (see Janet Leigh in Psycho), but then Sayid somehow, someway comes back to life (as Sayid? As a reincarnation of Jacob? As one of Jacob's disciples? Stay tuned, I guess).

Ryan's initial take here.

Alan Sepinwall's take here.

Entertainment Weekly's take here.

Lost, the beginning of the end

Here we go, locked into appointment TV again. I know we've been told that much will be cleared up this season, but I suspect there will be a lot we never learn, if only because there are so many outstanding unanswered questions.

Mixed feelings, that's what I have. I get antsy when I can't get up and leave the room once in a while, even in a movie theater, but with this show I can't do that. So I sit, mesmerized yet restless. Oy.

More on the Haiti adopters

In comments to the previous post, my friend Juli provides a link to a blog post by a guy named Mike Doughney, who says about his work:

developing some kind of framework in which to make sense of the Biblical American flood of “purposeful nonsense” is a valuable effort. I think that if you want to start to get a handle on what the future looks like, take a look at what Biblical America holds to be true. In particular, watch closely when people who some call leaders, people who I describe more accurately as the dominant personalities of Biblical America, are teaching things that they believe are important to their kids.

In his post he points out the following from the "adopters'" own website:

The Plan:

Rescue Orphans from Port au Prince, Haiti

• Friday/Saturday, Jan 22nd : NLCR team fly to the DR
  
• Sun Jan 23rd: Drive bus from Santo Domingo into Port au Prince, Haiti and gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages, then return to the DR
  
• Mon Jan 24th: Bus arrives in Cabarete, DR at New Life Children Refuge

The obvious problems with this "plan" are numerous, from even just these few lines. The trip from Santo Domingo to Port-au-Prince, as can be easily learned through a brief online search, is over six hours by scheduled bus under normal conditions. Were they serious about making a daytrip out of this run, it would have been little more than a snatch-and-grab of whatever kids they could have found on the streets over a few hours.

Read it. It's enlightening.