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Movie Theater Stabbing: He’s Done!
by Jim Washburn 2010-03-10
A short article in today's LA Times that bears mention: At a packed showing of Shutter Island in a Lancaster movie theater two weeks ago, a moviegoer asked a woman using a cell phone to be quiet. She and her two male companions left the theater, but the two men returned shortly after and plunged a MEAT THERMOMETER into the neck of the complaining man, seriously injuring him.
Who the hell brings a meat thermometer to the movies? Maybe at a screening of Julie & Julia, but Shutter Island? Or did they leave the theater, go to the market, buy the thermometer, return to the theater and ask the ticket taker, "May we go back in? We forgot to stab someone."
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Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground, on Glenn Beck
by Jim Washburn 2010-03-10
Eric Massa, the freshly retired Democratic Representative from NY was Glenn Beck's guest for the whole hour on Fox yesterday, time aplenty, Beck likely figured, for Massa to flesh out his allegations that he'd been forced out of a corrupt Congress by a vengeful White House and House Democratic leadership, which had smeared him to quash his opposition to the health care reform bill.
That had been Massa's third explanation for his retirement, after first claiming it was for health reasons, then because he'd been accused of inappropriate speech to a staffer. After those two didn't fly so well, he only then claimed it was because Rahm Emanuel had it in for him.
Hours before he appeared on Beck's show, a fourth and firmer allegation came out, claiming that Massa had groped a staffer.
On Beck's show, Massa immediately commandeered the conversation to announce:
"Now, they're saying I groped a male staffer. Yes, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday. It was kill the old guy."
That opening threw things so far off track that Beck spent the rest of the show in the caboose, trying to get Massa to say any of the things he'd hoped he would, badgering Massa to name names, to cite particulars of corruption and union misdeeds, to accuse a naked Emanuel of towel-snapping in the locker room-anything.
When none of that happened--when Beck again failed in his God-anointed job of bringing down Barack Obama-he told the camera, "America, I've got to shoot straight with you: I think I've wasted your time. I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time. And I apologize for that." Now if he'll only admit to those thousands of other hours.
You can read the whole thing here, straight from the Fox's mouth.
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Hybrid Madness: The Blogging T-Shirt Merchant
by Nathan Walpow 2010-03-10
I’m not crazy about hybrid cars. I think they’re exploiting a stopgap technology and an excuse for people who should know better to feel they’re pretty groovy.
But there’s a new trend a-formin’, and I’m all for it. Hybrid websites. Take, for instance, Fuji Wok and Sushi, which is a combination Chinese/sushi place in that space at the Venice entrance to the 405 north, the one that’s housed countless Asian restaurants over the years. It’s run by a guy named Samson, and the food is great, and you can get a hernia lugging it home, the containers are so full. Anyway, look at the website. It’s a shopping basket. You check off what you want and pay for it and it’s magically ready when you arrive.
And then there’s cubicle405. Is it a blog? Is it a T-shirt store? Turns out it’s both. They’ve got Woody Guthrie and Barry Bonds with an asterisk and men riding dinosaurs and all sorts of other cool, understated stuff, with the undecorated shirts sourced from American Apparel and other good-guy manufacturers. You read a blog entry, and right there’s a PayPal link to buy the shirt. How’s that for instant gratification?
They’re entertaining and they’re clearly on the right side of things and the frikkin’ shirts are reasonable, which is something most t-shirts aren’t. Like $12 reasonable. So go buy a few.
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The Masochism Tango
by Jim Washburn 2010-03-08
You've probably heard by now that California State Senator Roy Ashburn, Republican, has bravely come forward to announce to the world that he is gay, gay he tells you, some hours after the world had sort of figured that out for itself. That was after news reports that Ashburn had been arrested driving from a Sacramento gay bar, reportedly sporting a .14 alcohol level when stopped by police.
You have to wonder if Ashburn didn't keep his testicles in a painful restraint harness all the times when he was voting against gay rights, just to enhance the self-degradation. I don't know if there's a greater percentage of masochism in the gay world than in the straight, just that they're better at it. In recent times the old roles have been evaporating in a spray of Captain Morgan, but there remains some vestigial trait in women to add a modicum of responsibility and consequence to the sexual equation, to be the one to say, "No, you are not putting that there!" whereas men would stick their dicks in a particle accelerator if they suspected some new sensation might be derived from it.
And what could be kinkier than to be in a position of power, and to use that power to keep the boot heel on the neck of people just like yourself? What if Ashburn (where's the W, loser?) and his ilk are doing their best to bring back the old filthy, Larry-Craig-in-a-farty-mens-room view of gay sex, so they can go on loathing themselves as much as they'd like.
Ashburn wasn't nearly so introspective in his statement to the press: "What can I say? I just love that cock." Sorry, he didn't really say that, but he should have.
So there he was at night, and many nights according to patrons, having a Gay Old Party at Faces nightspot with fellow gays, and then he'd go vote against gay-accepting measures, claiming he was representing the interests of his Bakersfield constituents, you know, the ones who probably would have been real interested to know if he was gay before they cast their votes for him. Privacy, even for politicians, should be valued, but when they're pushing agendas interfering with the private concerns of others, the hell with 'em.
Boy, do I wish I'd thought of this take on he story, which blogger Andy Borowitz did:
"GOP Lawmaker Demands Recall of Car That Drove Him to Gay Bar"
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The Statistic
by Tony Chavira 2010-03-08
It's really unfortunate that most people think of homeless people when they think of cities. The vast majority of homeless people live in rural areas and, these days, a rising number live in suburbia. In fact, the largest amount of growth in homelessness is occuring in the suburbs, which is not exactly what you would expect when you have a vision for a suburban lifestyle in mind. As much as I (and many others) want to focus on density and urbanism, we need to find a smart way to address suburban homelessness simply because the suburbs are still such a large and inescapble component of American planning history.
Though located in DuPage County, Colorado, Mister Jerry Moore has a great but intense post on the blog "MySuburbanLife" that really gives an ominous view on how much worse things are going in the sprawled suburban community. Here's a killer snippet:
Last year, 74 people in the western suburbs were listed as unsheltered homeless, compared with 52 in 2007. The number of chronically unsheltered people in the west region rose to 35 in 2009 from 13 in 2007.
Children younger than 18 made up 32 percent of the homeless sheltered and 6 percent of the unsheltered homeless, the report said.
These numbers paint a bleak picture and deserve serious consideration. A concerted effort must be made by entire communities to provide the resources necessary to keep families with children from having to live on the street.
You said it, Jerry.
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