Carolina Blues...not the basketball kind
Just received an email from a friend up north. Wow, she said. North Carolina hasn't copped good headlines in the national news lately. First the unsolved disappearance of the pretty Fort Bragg soldier. Then the sordid John Edwards trial (although doesn't the courthouse grass look beautiful?) Then Amendent One results. ...
Let the Buyer Beware...and Aware
I just read about scanning errors resulting in overcharging at Dollar General stores. Oh my, if I had a dollar for every error I've found at supermarkets and general merchandise stores I'd be rich. Sometimes, computers are not programmed with advertised prices. Other times the bar code is at fault. ...
History's mysteries
I am drowning in Titanica. Anniversaries (like Kennedy assasination and 9-11) prompt conjecture costing millions. Insatiable fascination is fed by the likes of zillionaire James Cameron, whose "expertise" surely must be profit-motivated given the re-release of his film in 3-D. I mean, he had the audacity to host a show ...
Relevance, please?
Today the TV political pundits were discussing Mitt Romeny's difficulty in capturing the support of women voters. A GOPer offered this answer: Just look at Ann Romney. She's a strong woman, a cancer and MS "survivor," mother of five...and more. The suggestion was that her qualities and accomplishments should be ...
ACC: Rest In Pieces
For three years I've been writing edgy columns about Duke basketball -- and the people who hate it -- based on my experience as the last of the blue-hot mamas. From beyond the arc I score with satire, sarcasm and arrogance. After all, that's what's expected of Dookies. I wouldn't ...
Recommended Reading
Get with Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 17 ... and learn that Elvis was a post-mortem Mormon. (Anne Frank, too). You just never know. Can't get the link to work...Google: Maureen Dowd Elvis Mormon.
Starlight, Star bright
Look up. The objects in the clear evening sky appear so close and so bright I thought two aircraft were on a collison course. No...Venus and Jupiter are absolutely spectacular, almost too perfect, like a planetarium show. I'm an astronomy airhead. The solar system seems too overwhelming, frightening. Sure we ...
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you Carolina!!!
Thank you, Tyler Zeller. You are a truly amazing basketball player, especially when you score two crucial points for Duke! Salut, from the Crazies. If Franklin Street shuns you, come drink free at any bar in Durham. And thank you, thank you Coach K for not quickly shepherding your players ...
Daylight Savings Time Dilemma
I know how to reset my car clock, oven clock, watch and wall clock. The computer, TV and alarm clock (a miracle!) set themselves. Now, would somebody please tell me how to reset my black cat Lucky? I adopted Lucky in July; somebody in the apartment complex where I live ...
The Fashion Police Blotter
I went shopping yesterday for a few fall rags. My age hasn't prevented me from mild trendiness...at least not yet. So I reconnaissanced the one department and several off-price stores hoping, praying that the tucked-front blouses that made grannies (12-year-olds, too) look pregnant had run their course. I found a ...
Jimmo, we gotta do lunch
First, please read my colleague Jim Dodson's delicious essay on homecomings and good eating located on this website. He captures the experience perfectly. During his years in Maine (eating the world's sweetest lobster and other New England stuff) Jim hankered for regional dishes of the sort he grew up with ...
Yankee Doodle Dandy Andy Rooney
I was looking for a blog subject for one reason only: to push some of the embarrassingly old blogs off the cliff. Looks like blogging has gone the way of .... sliders, or Sarah Palin. Seemed like such a good idea at the outset. Then I read that 92-year-old Andy ...
Weather Porn to the Rescue
Catchy name, weather porn, for the media blitz preceding, during and after Hurricane Irene. The blitz is justified if it saves one life or one home. The curiousity is how people feed on it, mesmerized, watch the same windblown reporters shout the same dire predictions every 15 minutes, or until ...
Bachmann Photo-Op (Ed)
Barely did Newsweek hit the stands when the flap started about Michele Bachmann's cover photo. Conservatives are outraged, deeming it "unflattering." By her own party, she is accused of a "wild-eyed" look. Others called it "sexist," which I can't figure out since she's not showing cleavage. Was it the maturing ...
Never Again? Again...
Those pictures are on the news again: emaciated babies with bloated stomachs and lips drawn behind their gums, flies picking at their unblinking eyes. A drought- induced famine in Somalia and other African nations has reduced populations to the same horrible suffering as the bubonic plague, in the Middle Ages. ...
Gimme an S...gimme an A....
I am perplexed and a bit worried about comments tendered concerning an op-ed piece satirizing the first televised GOP presidential debate. I am and always have been a groveling, unworthy acolyte of political satirists/Pulitizer Prize laureates Maureen Dowd and the late Mike Royko. Key word here is SATIRE, defined as ...
End of the Weinie Roast
I'm a bit shocked that former Rep. Anthony Weiner is already yesterday's news. A few limp jokes remain about what he will do next -- and what we learned from the debacle. Rumors are that he refused to resign until promised a lucrative job a la Elliot Spitzer, the whoremonger/CNN ...
Men Behaving Badly (on Twitter)
Many years ago, when I lived in a charming New England city, a relief organization asked me to help acclimate a refugee family from Eastern Europe that they were sponsoring. This meant "showing them the ropes," from how to pay bills to what the kids wore to school. The greatest ...
Willie and the Wonker
I'm a media wonk. That means I absolutely knew that before the confetti had been swept off London streets royal wedding wrap-ups would include investigations into Kate's...er, Princess Katherine, Duchess of Cambridge's upbringing, with a sly slant. The slant materialized: Kate's then-middle-class parents sent her to a series of schools ...
TV Still Teaches...
In the vast wasteland that is television --whether you get 20 channels or 200 in high def or not -- a few jewels remain. My criteria is to learn something new, however inane or perverse, from each viewing. I learned something about vacuum cleaner technology from Orek and Dyson commercials, ...
