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April 30, 2009

The continuing adventures of Joe Biden

Ah, Joe Biden. You sure do have a way with words. In an interview on the Today Show this morning, Matt Lauer asked the VP what advice he would give to a family member who wanted to fly to Mexico. Joe thought for a moment, then unleashed this wisdom:

"I would tell members of my family — and I have — I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said. "It's not that it's going to Mexico. It's you're in a confined aircraft. When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft." Biden went on to say he wouldn't suggest that they ride the subway either.

I, who at the time was getting ready to leave, shook my head. Little did I know that Biden's office was busy "clarifying" the remarks:

"The advice he is giving family members is the same advice the administration is giving to all Americans: That they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico," said Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander. "If they are sick, they should avoid airplanes and other confined public spaces, such as subways."

Cue the sad trombone. Come on, Elizabeth Alexander! That's not what Joe said. He said, I'd tell my kids not to fly on an airplane, or a subway. 'Twas pretty obvious to me.

I have a word of advice to Biden's PR people: you have to do better than that. Joe Biden is a smart man, and a good sidekick to Barack Obama. But, everyone knew going in, that Biden will, on occasion, say something dumb. This was one of the those times.

It'd be much better, I think, that instead of trying to claim Biden said something he didn't, to just admit that Biden misspoke, and here's what he meant. There's a subtle difference.

I should point on, however, that no matter what you think of Biden, he never joked about bombing Iran!

Posted at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2009

What is it about vans?

Seriously... Why do guys who get busted for gross stuff always seem to be driving vans? It's a legitimate question. To wit:

A man wearing just a sock led police on a short chase through West Seneca early this morning, before police located his van … with pornographic photos inside … and found him hiding nearby.

The incident began at about 4:15 a.m., when Lt. Edward Baker checked on a suspicious van behind Wimbledon Plaza and found pornographic photos spread across the front seat and dashboard.

The lieutenant also found an occupant in the back seat, wearing only one sock. The man in the van wouldn't get out of the vehicle and instead fled from the scene in the van, almost getting into an accident on Center Road before the pursuing lieutenant lost sight of him on a side street.

The fleeing driver ditched the van at a Seneca Street collision shop, before Baker found him hiding on top of a nearby abandoned travel trailer.

Posted at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

A star in our mi(d)st

Did you feel that? That was the the gravitational shift, as the world suddenly became centered around Western New York for, oh, about five hours.

You see, none other than Brad Pitt, only like the biggest celebrity in the world, was in Niagara Falls!

Pitt managed to keep a low profile by sporting a look closer to that of the Unabomber than a movie star. He wore big, dark sunglasses and a paperboy-style cap with the hood of his oversized black sweat shirt pulled over his head.

The Pitt family was given the star treatment at the Maid of the Mist. When their black SUV with tinted windows was escorted down to the dock about 3 p.m., they were discreetly whisked to the front of the line. The family gathered on the upper deck as bodyguards kept careful watch.

During their ride, the Pitts took turns snapping photos of each other and the falls, and the little boys seemed to enjoy getting drenched.

Most of the tourists seemed oblivious to the famous family in their midst.

“Aaaahhhh!” screamed a distressed Raisa Monteiro, 18, a Brazilian exchange student, after learning that she had been on the same boat as Pitt, but hadn’t even caught a glimpse of him.

Wow. Brad Pitt on the Maid of the Mist. I was on the Maid of the Mist a few times... Does that make me like Brad Pitt?

Posted at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2009

Damn kids

Back in Lancaster, where I grew up, the main place to hang out was the shopping mall. I imagine it was like that in a lot of places. Predictably, the older folks in town decried the presence of the teenagers, especially on a Friday night. They look weird, they talk disrespectfully, they're not doing anything.

I never really thought much about it, until I stopped at a McDonald's on the way to work this morning. As I stood in line for my Southern Style Chicken Biscuit, I noticed an odd crowd of people in the room. Old people. Lots and lots of old people. Some of them were reading the newspaper. Some were drinking coffee. And some, by God, were just hanging out.

It was truthfully a little intimidating, being surrounded by men in khaki pants, white sneakers and "VETERAN" trucker hats. I didn't fear for my life or anything, but it did feel strange to be the one younger person in a sea of gray.

But, I thought, aren't they doing exactly what teenagers do? Going to a place where people like them gather, and wasting time? Most of them had merely spent 99 cents for a cup of coffee, yet there they were, walking around like they owned the place.

Sure, they read the newspaper instead of texting. They talked about politics instead of MTV. (Or whatever kids talk about nowadays.)

Maybe gathering is a human instinct. I don't want to be alone, I'm bored, there's nothing happening. I'm going to find some people like me!

Old people, I guess, aren't as threatening as teenagers. But now I know they have the same impulses.

Posted at 07:55 AM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2009

Watch your back

I couldn't find a picture of someone in the modern British army, so this Redcoat will have to do. Anyway, a British soldier is, ahem, pressing his luck after being billed "the luckiest soldier in the British Army." Admittedly, he was pretty lucky... A bullet passed through his helmet, but completely missed his head:

Private Leon "Willy" Wilson, 32, a Territorial Army soldier from Bolton, was knocked over by the impact of the shot in Afghanistan.

But he was left without a mark after the bullet ripped through his headgear.

"The medic was looking queasy - I don't think anyone wanted to take my helmet off," Pte Wilson said.

The father of three was back on duty within an hour of the near-miss.

Defence chiefs pronounced Pte Wilson, who is on attachment with 2nd Battalion of the Mercian Regiment (Worcesters and Foresters) "officially the luckiest man in the British Army".

Now, I've never been in the Army, but I've been around enough superstitious people (myself included) to never want to tempt fate. If there's one sure way to do that, it's to talk about how lucky you are. So, for Pte. Wilson's sake, shut the hell up, "Defence Ministry" people!

Posted at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2009

Wowzers

Before I went on my little weeklong hiatus, I wrote about how I like to say the word "egads". This is a story definitely worthy of an egads!

A giant set of golden arches outside a McDonald’s in eastern Arizona toppled in high winds Wednesday, crushing a Naperville couple’s Chevy Trailblazer as they sat inside the parked vehicle.

Retirees Russell and Carolyn Janke suffered multiple injuries. They had stopped at the McDonald’s on the Navajo Nation reservation in Window Rock as they were making their way back to suburban Chicago from their winter home near Tucson.

Navajo acting Police Chief Steven Nelson said winds hit 60 mph Wednesday, causing the sign to be blown down from atop a pole across the street from the restaurant.

Damn. This story tells me two things: McDonald's is definitely bad for you, and nothing good can happen when two people are sitting in a car.

Posted at 02:41 PM | Comments (0)

Portland

Switching it up a little bit, last week also took me to Portland, Maine. This was a neat town, except for the fact that it had horrible signage. I found my way from the airport, eventually - in my rented Prius.

Yep, they rented me a Toyota Prius, the granddaddy of hybrid cars. I read somewhere once that a person driving a Prius feels almost arrogant, because the car has a big display which displays your miles per gallon and how much energy (and not gas) your car is using. I did feel a bit smug driving my Prius.

The coolest thing I liked about the Prius was its on/off switch. Instead of an ignition, you pressed a button. I am not sure how this keeps people from stealing the car, but whatever.

Additionally, Portland fulfilled all my New England stereotypes. I bought some "chowdah," my client used "wicked" as a modifier excessively, and the downtown square in Portland has a statue of a lobsterman. Oh, and a group of kids cursed at me just like they were little Will Huntings. Don't know why.

Posted at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)

Nashville

Continuing with the Tennessee theme, I was also in Nashville. That was an interesting place. After my case, I had some free time so I went running through downtown Nashville. That's the state capitol in the distance, and it is a stately building. Tennessee was a crucial state in the Civil War, and there are lots of monuments to Confederate heroes. The Capitol grounds are littered with them, and it is very awe-inspiring.

Also, I found myself on Broadway, which is filled with hokey tourist attractions and buskers. It feels weird to me that an entire nationwide industry is headquartered in Nashville. (Country music, fools.) But it is, and Broadway was crawling with musicians hoping to make it big. If you can make it in Nashville, you can make it anywhere.

Posted at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)

Knoxville

A few weeks ago, I went to Knoxville. I think I wrote about it then, but I just wanted to mention that after I looked at my pictures, I had to watch the Simpsons episode where Bart takes a road trip to Knoxville with his fake ID. The real Knoxville is much nicer!

Posted at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

The beach

When I was down in Florida, I happened upon a great park, called Fort DeSoto Park. It's on an island that overlooks the entrance to Tampa Bay, hence a perfect location for a fort in olden days. (Admittedly, I went because I heard there was a fort there.)

The park now has lots of beautiful beaches, including the one pictured above. I saw actual dolphins. Dolphins! I thought it was interesting, anyway.

Posted at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

Florida

First, let's talk about my trip to Florida. It was great. I won both the cases I went there to do. I did a little sight-seeing afterward. My nemesis was a bridge by the airport, mostly because the airport was one of the last exits before going on this bridge. That wouldn't be a problem, if the bridge is a small bridge. But this bridge is ten miles long, and traffic-clogged. I accidentally went on the bridge twice, growing angrier as the minutes wore on.

The only thing that lightened my mood was when I saw that car with a wheelchair attached to it. In Chicago, it seems the only thing you see attached to the end of a car is a bike. Only in Florida.

Posted at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)

Aloha

Damn, I just realized I haven't updated this in about a week. I have all kinds of stuff to talk about, but just haven't gotten round to it.

Well folks, I have some free time, so I'll have some posts here in a second about my latest adventures.

Posted at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2009

Good for France

People love to rip on France, but occasionally they do something that even the biggest francophobe ought to like. So, hopefully they get some praise for their capture of a pirate "mother ship" off Somalia:

The French forces initially responded to a distress call from a Liberian-flagged container ship, the Safmarine Asia, which came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire from two small pirate skiffs Tuesday night. A helicopter from the Nivôse arrived on the scene and observed the skiffs retreating and returning to the “mother ship” — actually, a 30-foot boat — which was being used as a floating base about 460 miles off the Somali coast, according to a statement by the European Union’s Maritime Security Center.

The French forces then mounted their assault on the boat on Wednesday, and found a range of firearms and equipment on board as well as the suspected pirates. The Nivôse took the boat and the skiffs in tow and is now on its way to the port of Mombasa, Kenya, the Maritime Security Center said. The detainees are expected to be sent to France to be prosecuted.

Now look. Somebody's probably going to say, "those were just a bunch of knuckleheads in a boat. France ought to be defeating them." However, ask yourself what Italy thinks about how easy that is!

Posted at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2009

Fun with word origins

I just realized I enjoy using the phrase "gadzooks," as I did in yesterday's post... Then, after a bit of daydreaming, I began to wonder where our dear language picked up that word.

The internet, as usual, has the answer.

Posted at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2009

I demand satisfaction!

Two people were murdered in Indianapolis this past week, but it wasn't your typical gun-inflicted death. Nope, the victims here were killed with a sword:

Adolf Stegbauer, 69, died from complications of a stab wound. Charges pending against Chris Rondeau, 39, were expected to be upgraded. Police said he stabbed Stegbauer.

Franziska Stegbauer, 77, also died as a result of stab wounds after the fight early Thursday morning, but police were not initially sure which of the men had stabbed her.

Rondeau and Adolf Stegbauer got into an argument at a home in the 5200 block of Raceway Road that escalated when one of the men grabbed a sword, prompting the other man to also brandish a sword.

Gadzooks! Now, I hear occasionally about somebody showing up with a sword or other kind of knife. One of my clients recently showed up to court with a knife, even.

Here's where I get confused: how did there happen to be two swords laying around? And was this an actual swordfight, or was it more like two yahoos trying to stab each other? I'm very interested. I wish there was one of those "want to know more?" buttons like in Starship Troopers.

Posted at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2009

Why yes, I do care. Why no, I don't have $20.

I'm kind of a sucker sometimes. I once got roped into signing up for one of those save the children things, to the point where I got a picture of my kid in the mail and everything. Unfortunately for her, my credit card expired and that was the end of that.

Another time, I did the same thing for the ACLU. Now, I'm 100% behind the ACLU, but what I am not for is that they apparently sold my information to Planned Parenthood and other such organizations. So, again, my credit card expired, and that was the end of that.

Now that it's starting to get a little nicer out, the street solicitors are back out in force. I mean the people who stand at intersections and ask passersby if they have a minute for the environment/to help Barack Obama/to save the whales. Most of the time, they're in the Loop. My suburb-workin' self can avoid those people altogether, because I know if they get my attention, I might be walking away with a monthly obligation. Occasionally, they'll pop up near my el station. This time, however, they were in a most devious spot... Right on one of my typical running routes to the lake!

If there's a great way to avoid these guys, it's by having on an iPod and ignoring them as you run in place. On my way back, however, I knocked off early an was toting a Starbucks cup. I knew I could only avoid them by staying on the other side of the street. So, I very deliberately crossed the street and kept walking, although it meant I'd have to risk getting hit by a car to get back to my house.

I think like most people, I care about the environment and want to save the whales. But, like most people, I also don't want to be bothered on the street. It's never appropriate to be mean to these people - after all, it is their job - but I'm also not going to let them snare me, either.

What I'd really like to see is somebody who does that for something like Nazism. "Excuse me sir, do you have a minute for white supremacists? Could I interest you in donating some DNA to create the master race? We have these great totes."

Posted at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2009

Showered with praise

Those who know me, know I love taking showers. I could stand in there all day, and often do. But, today, I had to take a shower in a most atypical place: a truck stop off the Interstate in Tennessee.

If you've been following along, I went for a run in Knoxville, then had to eventually scoot back to Nashville for my flight home. I figured I'd do my fellow passengers a service, and freshen up - but where to do that?

Yes! The Pilot Station. Road warriors, such as truckers, know that the Pilot Station is a beacon for all your road-warrior needs. When I was younger, my older brother used to go to school in Columbus, and he would carpool to get there. The drop-off and pick-up point was a Pilot Station halfway between Lancaster and Columbus, so I became quite familiar with it.

They had everything a trucker, or wanna-be trucker like most 10 year old boys, could want. Atlases; CB radios; TV's for your car; George Strait CD's. Those mudflaps with the silhouette of the naked woman. I mean, it was a veritable paradise of possibilities.

But it also focused on the mundane - the restaurant at that Pilot was reputed to have some of the best steak in Central Ohio. All for $3.99 including a potato! The thing I remember the most about the restaurant - we didn't eat there much - was that every table had a payphone next to it.

Apparently it also had showers. Truckers are human, and like any human, we want to be clean. This isn't Bastogne. It's bad enough being trapped in a vehicle for thousands of miles, but you gotta reek, too? Nevertheless, the truck stop shower did not sound like the ideal place for me to hang out.

So, with trepidation, I went into the Pilot Station and told the cashier - who, by the way, was the first hot cashier I've ever seen in my decades of going to truck stops - "I'd like to use one of the showers, please."

She told me that the system was down, and nobody could use the showers, even the ones at the truck stop down the road. I asked her why this was, and she told me that the computer was down, that keeps track of frequent customer reward points. I told her that I wasn't a frequent customer, I just need to take a shower and I was going to pay cash.

I haven't decided yet if I should take it as an insult, or compliment, that I was mistaken for a truck driver. It is probably an insult.

The shower actually cost me $10 to use, so I was hoping for at least something nice. The verdict? A-okay by me. Granted, it's not the Four Seasons, but it's not an outhouse either. The room was clean, it smelled nice, I had a fresh towel, and pleasant muzak in the background. Now, here I am, at the Nashville airport, all spic and span.

Although I have no real plan to become a frequent user of truck stop showers, it is a good option in case you are ever on the road and need to get clean. Putting pornographic mudflaps on a truck can get messy.

Posted at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

Tennessee time

Today I'm in Knoxville... It had been an unpleasant trip for awhile, but then things brightened up quite a bit. Due to the whims of the airline industry ($1000 flights to Knoxville from Chicago), I had to catch a flight to Nashville last night. Nashville is 160 miles west of Knoxville, which doesn't sound too bad... Except my flight arrived at 11 pm, during a blizzard. A blizzard in Tennessee? Really?

No sweat, I thought. I'm from Chicago, I can handle a Tennessee blizzard. This was only partially true, because unlike Illinois, Tennessee is a state of hills and mountains. It was so mountainous they needed a freakin' gap to get through the place. Trucks complicated the mess, because their tires sprayed water and ice all over my car anytime I approached within 100 feet of one.

But I made it. I was happily surprised to learn Nashville had a Jack-In-The-Box. Fueled by the Clown and copious amounts of Red Bull, I made it to my hotel 10 minutes before my target time of 2 am. The Holiday Inn, however, wasn't going to make it easy... When I got there, the desk clerk had left for an "emergency," leaving my fate in the hands of a security guard. He called the desk clerk, who did not answer. His solution was to give me the room that was reserved for someone else, and I gladly accepted, although I was afraid that I was being set up for some kind of No Country For Old Men style ambush. My presence here says that did not occur.

So when I went to court in the morning, I spent a total of ten minutes there. That was aggravating.

Meanwhile, the weather forecasts said it was going to snow, rain, and sleet all day today. Only I could go to Tennessee and be followed there by bad weather. Luckily, the result was not as dire as the forecast, and I was able to squeeze in a lovely 5 mile run through downtown Knoxville and the University of Tennessee campus.

Two thoughts on that: Knoxville is hilly. Not San Francisco hilly, but enough to frustrate a guy who doesn't want to run up hills all day. Secondly, Knoxville is nice. I expected the worst coming here, because all I knew about Knoxville was that it was full of raging Vols football fans. But, it is a neatly-kept city, with lots of interesting people, and although there is lots of Volunteer orange about, I don't think it rises to the sheer idiocy of Ohio State scarlet and gray.

Kudos to you, Knoxville.

Posted at 01:41 PM | Comments (1)

April 03, 2009

I've been had

Remember I said I thought WGN was playing an April Fool's joke about somebody who wanted to make a law requiring kids to wash their hands? Joke's on me.

Posted at 06:48 PM | Comments (0)

I'm going to be lambasted for this...

...But nobody reads anyway!

I was riding the bus yesterday, when a man in a motorized wheelchair wished to board the bus. No problem there. It always takes a minute or so for a guy in a wheelchair to get on the bus, because the driver has to lower the ramp, the passenger has to wheel onto the ramp, the driver has to raise the ramp, then the passenger has to roll into the bus and set himself up in the handicapped space on the bus. When you're on the bus and in a hurry, that extra minute sure seems excruciating. But like I said, it's cool. People in wheelchairs have the same right as me to ride the bus.

So guess what this guy does? He rides the bus for two blocks, then gets off. Repeat that process, except backwards.

I stood there thinking, WTF? You're in a motorized wheelchair, it's a nice day out, and you're going two blocks. I know he's handicapped and all, but he's in a motorized chair! He doesn't even have to exert himself to go those two blocks, just push a button. It probably took longer for him to get on and off the buss than it would have to simply roll the distance.

I will admit that I've ridden the bus two blocks in a fit of laziness, but this seems exponentially more lazy to me. Not only does he have a machine to do moving about for him, he used another machine on top of that.

All complaints about this entry should be directed here.

Posted at 01:31 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2009

For shame

I read, with great interest, an article in the New York Times about the struggles that professional video game players face. Apparently a person could make a decent living playing video games, but the economy ix-nayed that line of work. It forced virtual legends into real-life schlubs:

Rodriguez, a brash 23-year-old whose nickname in the gaming community is Master, dominated an international field in July in Dead or Alive 4, a popular fighting game, on the Microsoft Xbox 360. He picked up $5,000 and a trophy for the victory.

The competition, held in Los Angeles, was part of the world individual finals of the Championship Gaming Series, a league started two years earlier by News Corporation and DirecTV. And Rodriguez, given his success and his swagger, was a star. As a designated franchise player, he received a base salary of $30,000. During the regular season, he lost only one match, good enough to be named North American most valuable player.

...

Rodriguez and more than 100 salaried players had their short-lived dreams dashed. He returned to the job he left in 2007, at Sam’s Club.

Oh what a world! If there is something that I am proud of, it's that I am a crappy video game player. When I was younger, I won't lie, I played a lot of games. However, I clearly did not play as much as some people.

So it was that when I was in college, some of my friends and I bought an old Nintendo (the original, not that N64 crap or whatever they have now) and brought our old games. We were soon playing Tecmo Bowl, and I was obviously the worst player. I couldn't do anything. My runs would be stuffed, my passes intercepted, and my defense shredded in humiliating fashion.

You'd think that my awfulness at video games would transfer to excellence in something else, like athletics, perhaps. Nope, not so much.

What, then, did I spend my formative video game years doing? Hell if I know!

Posted at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2009

More April fool's

There's a great article in the New York Times, about former Sabres PR guru Paul Wieland. He loved to play April Fool's pranks, apparently, and did it well. For example:

The best might have been the one he composed in the 1970s that was, as press releases were back in the olden days, mailed out in actual envelopes with stamps and delivered by the postal service. This one announced that the Sabres were exploring a new technology that would allow N.H.L. games to be played on plastic ice. This, Wieland wrote, was going to change the game. No more costly refrigeration operations, no more water usage, no more Zambonis. The release read that this was the work of the technological consulting firm of van Hellemond, Scapinello and Hodges, which should have tipped off the joke away right there to almost anyone in hockey-savvy Buffalo.

Bam! That's a great joke.

This got me thinking - could you imagine somebody in the NFL trying to play an April Fool's joke? The guy would get fired. I am not sure why I bother with the NFL most days. It is the most odious sports league on the planet, and almost any amount of levity is barred. Bizarre touchdown celebrations, carefree attitudes and other on-field antics will get an individual labeled as a troublemaker or bad influence. A poorly-planned Facebook status update can get employees canned. With the way some football executives act, you'd think they were planning the invasion of Normandy.

So, I challenge you, NFL people. Put down the gun, and cheer up. I want you to have some fun... And play an April Fool's joke next year. It'll make you live longer.

Posted at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)

April fool

I love a good April Fool's joke. I've tried to pull a few in my lifetime. Sometimes they work; sometimes they don't. I know this, though: in order for a prank to work, it has to be believable. So, one website sent out an April Fool's joke claiming that interested parties could now follow President Obama all day, every day, on a webcam. I didn't believe that one.

On the other hand, when I was driving to work this morning, I heard on the radio that the Chicago City Council was planning to require all students to wash their hands before coming to school. It didn't even register to me that this was an April Fool's prank, because it seemed so much like something that the City Council would do. Either that's a testament to how good this particular prank was, or it is a sad commentary on the Council. I report, you decide.

[Truthfully, I don't even know if this was actually a prank or not. But I'm operating on the assumption it was, because I've heard nothing about it since.]

Posted at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)