State Fair '07

I've gotten my fill of the Fair for another year. I went last Sunday Java and Carl for about 5 hours or so, and then yesterday with family for somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 hours. I consumed enough calories to feed a small African nation for a day and a half, most of those coming from cheese curds, mini doughnuts and fresh chocolate chip cookies.

I don't know how he hears about these things, but Java's mission on Sunday was to find the booth that sold Viper Jerky, which he had heard billed as the hottest jerky ever. After looking for most of the day, he ended up asking another jerky stand where it could be found, which was fortunately close to the All-You-Can-Drink Milk Booth. As Carl and I watched with curiosity and barely concealed hilarity, Java ate one of the two small pieces he had bought, tearing up after the first bite. It made me curious enough to try some, so I had a bite of the second piece. It was about as hot as eating a whole plate of fairly spicy thai food very quickly. Impressive, but only for the heat-it didn't have any other taste. I was fine, Java not so much.

Most of the time Sunday was just spend in a delicious wander from food to food, looking at various exhibits and what not. I did get to see Etta James, Al Green and B.B. King perform last night, which was cool. Although I would have liked to see more of B.B., as he only played a 50 minute set and talked for a good portion of that. Not that I didn't enjoy hearing him talk; he told several good stories, the best of which was about him slipping over to the "good" (read: white) side of the tracks as a young man in Mississippi under cover of darkness and taking a long drink from a segregated water fountain (after the concert I started working it out-B.B. was over 40 by the time the civil rights movement gained momentum in the 60s. Wow.). It's amazing that he's still touring at age 81 (82 in September), especially with the health problems he has (diabetes, bad joints, etc). The biggest cheer of the night was when he repeated a line he had just sung, saying "I'm going to play until I die, folks." It occurred to me that when he finally does go we're going to miss his voice almost as much as his guitar. It's still as powerful and vibrant as ever, and I'm glad I got the chance to hear it in person at least once. That's history right there.

Invincible

"This is Wolf Blitzer, and you're watching CNN. And now, for the latest insight into the nascent Presidental race, we go to our newest political correspondent, Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro. Nice to have you here, Mr. Castro."

"Nice to be here, Wolf. And please, it's Fidel."

"So Fidel, we're still several months before the Iowa caucus, and no one's dropping out of the race yet, but political pundits have been speculating that a Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama ticket would give the Democrats the best chance to win the general election. Your thoughts?"

"Well Wolf, I'd first like to say that I'm disappointed because both of them feel the sacred duty of demanding 'a democratic government in Cuba.' They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a Sunday afternoon. That being said however, I do think that the two of them on one ticket would be invincible. The Republicans would have a very hard time matching that sort of star power."

"Interesting. Now, Al Gore hasn't yet entered the race, but several observers think he might declare late in the game. Do you think he will?"

"I don't think he will do so, although I must say that Gore, better than anyone, knows about the kind of catastrophe that awaits humanity if it continues along its current course. Of course, when he was a candidate, he committed the error of yearning for 'a democratic Cuba,' which is just one more example of how the US is hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma that perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society."

"Thanks for your insight, Fidel. We'll talk to you again as the primaries get closer."

"Thanks for having me, Wolf. Have a good night."

Why Sterotypes Exist

I've only seen Zoolander once, but I seem to remember some advice being given to models about answering any question with the response "world peace." This would have been good advice for Miss Teen South Carolina, whose response to a question about US education was all over the map on which 1/5 of Americans can't find America (supposedly).


I'm sure the poor girl simply got very flustered and started babbling, since she only had a limited amount of time in which to respond. But I'm afraid that she's set the cause of getting ridiculously beautiful blondes recognized for their brains back a few years.

This version of the video has subtitles, which makes it even better. Also, if you look closely at the guy holding the microphone at the end, it's clearly all he can do to keep from busting a gut laughing.

ConVick

I was watching CNN this morning, which was covering two stories: the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Vick formally entering a guilty plea as part of his plea bargain in court. Two thing struck me about the coverage.

The first was that the Gonzales resignation was taking a back seat to the Vick coverage. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about this, as it's just another indication of the power of the cult of celebrity and the pull it exerts over our news programs. But somehow I thought that the resignation of an Attorney General who somehow managed to pull off the once-thought-impossible feat of making was forget just how bad John Ashcroft was would get top billing, at least on a station like CNN. A little later I was on JibJab.com and found this video, which struck me as being appropriate.

The second thing I noticed was from Vick's statement to the press after he entered the plea. He said that this situation had called him to "find Jesus." Now, I watched the statement and I don't doubt the man regrets his actions (facing at least a year in prison will do that), but the finding Jesus bit and "turning my life over to god" statements are starting to really be the go-to line for anyone who gets in trouble and has to account for their actions to the public. Not that it's not a good strategy, since sometimes it seems this country has been getting so rabidly religious that I'm surprised Bush hasn't slipped and called the war on terror a crusade. The "I did something bad, but now I've found Jesus" excuse has been used so much that it really strikes me as inauthentic. Whatever cultural or intrisic personality defects that caused Vick to be able to treat dogs in the manner reported weren't a result of not having an active religious life. Actions like that indicate the need for some serious help.

30-3

Yesterday the Texas Rangers were down 0-3 to the Baltimore Orioles in the fourth inning of the first game of a double header. By the end of the game they had rattled off 30 unanswered runs, the first team in over a century to do so (in 1897 the Chicago Colts beat Louisville 36-7). Sure, that's impressive, but if you look at the stats it gets even better.

-The Rangers scored 30 runs, but they only had 29 hits. There was one error committed by the Orioles and 8 walks given up by the four Oriole pitchers. So the Rangers left only 8 men on base in a game in which they had 38 baserunners. To put it another way, a Rangers baserunner had a 79% chance of scoring during yesterday's game.

-All the 30 runs were earned, so the one baserunner that reached because of error didn't score.

-The four Oriole pitchers combined to strike out 11 Rangers.

-Of the 29 hits for Texas, 21 were singles. 21! 2 were doubles and 6 were home runs. I only find this impressive because I'm fairly certain the Twins could find a way to hit 21 singles over the course of a game and not score any runs.

All in all, a massively impressive show of offense.

We've run out of things to study

A British study was recently undertaken to find out if carnivorous dinosaurs were faster than David Beckham. The results found that a T-Rex would have little trouble running down the famous midfielder. Reports that the English are still a little pissed that Beckham left for Real Madrid (and then for the LA Galaxy) are, as of press time, unconfirmed.

Best Lawsuit Ever

We live in an overly litigious society, in which idiotic lawsuits cause dire warnings to be placed on the simplest objects and nobody thinks anything that goes wrong could possibly be their fault. But it does have some benefits, as well. Like this lawsuit, filed by Jonathan Lee Riches against embattled Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. Vick, in case you've been living on Mars with your head under a rock, is being indicted for his part in a massive and brutal dogfighting ring.

Riches is suing Vick for $63 quintillion (or 63 followed by 18 zeros), claiming that Vick stole his pit bulls, sold them on ebay and used the profits to buy missiles from the Iranian government.

Wow.

Vick is only the latest target of Riches, who is incarcerated in South Carolina for committing wire fraud and apparently needs a hobby. The week before he sued Vick he named the Mossad, the CIA and Larry King Live in a suit. But here's the best one:

"In his most noteworthy suit, Riches submitted a 57-page list of defendants that included President Bush, Pope Benedict, actor Tony Danza, Fruit of the Loom, NASCAR, the Ming Dynasty, Skittles candy, the Philadelphia Eagles (2005 roster), the Doobie Brothers, the Congolese Army, the Magna Carta, "WKRP in Cincinnati," the King's Dominion amusement park in Virginia, the philosopher Plato, and the Liberty Bell.

He claimed they collectively owed him money."

It doesn't get better than that.

King on Rowling

I admit to not having read much Stephen King. In fact, until Mr. Hanberg gave me a book of his short stories a couple of years ago I hadn't read any of his writing at all. But since then I've read a little, enough anyway to disabuse me of the totally uninformed notion that he is a horror writer. Instead, I would say that Mr. King (much like Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors whose work I'm much more familiar with) is a writer: someone who loves to write and will do so at almost every opportunity, no matter what the topic.

All this is by way of introducing an excellent article that King wrote for Entertainment Weekly on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. He talks about the last book, but much more about Rowling, the series as a whole and what it's done for books in the 21st century. It's thoughtful and insightful, but beware of major spoilers, since King assumes that pretty much everyone who cares has finished the book by this point.

Ahh, Sequels

So what's more improbable than two people being able to steal the Declaration of Independence? Why, two people kidnapping the President and breaking into the Oval Office, of course. In the grand tradition of Hollywood striving to outdo itself in sequel form, the trailer for National Treasure: Book of Secrets is now on apple.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the first movie a fair bit, and I'm sure I'll see this one and probably enjoy it as well. But in a post 9/11 security conscious world these movies require a major suspension of disbelief. Luckily, that's what Americans are good at, so I'm sure the movie will do fine.

Bridge Photos

I went downtown to take a look at the collapsed bridge today-spent about an hour and a half walking around the south side of the river. I couldn't get closer than 300 yards at best. Everything was roped off, and not without reason, as there were a lot of people doing exactly what I was doing. Still, it would have been nice to have gotten a view from one of the surrounding bridges. Oh well.

This is the best of my shots, taken with my new digital camera. Unfortunately it's just a little sucker, and doesn't have much of a zoom. Check out these shots, taken last night by a guy I know who has professional-level camera equipment (and clearly got to the scene before they started roping everything off).

Video of the Collapse

CNN managed to get some security camera footage of the 35W bridge collapsing. It's pretty amazing-you can find it here.

Bridge Addendum

So it turns out that my friend's wife was in one of the cars in the middle section of the bridge that fell 64 feet down into the river. If you follow this to CNN.com (picture #1), you can see a picture of her car (the silver saturn in bottom center of the photo that's pointing toward the sky), as well as her (lower right in a white shirt, next to a girl in a green shirt). Pretty damn crazy. She's fine, which is excellent.

Bridge Collapse

If you haven't heard, the I35W bridge that spans the Mississippi River just north of downtown Minneapolis collapsed just after 6pm (CDT). Current reports have the death toll at 7 and the injured somewhere in the 50-60 range. My family and I are all present and accounted for.

I actually turned on the local news at about 6:10, just before heading out to frisbee practice. As I was leaving the house 20 minutes later the first video images were just starting to come in. When I got to the practice fields, the 6 guys who were there hadn't yet heard about the bridge. They checked their cell phones, and it turned out that the wife of one of my teammates was on some part of the bridge (I'm not sure which part) when it collapsed. He had three voicemails waiting for him, basically saying that she had been on the bridge but was now safe.

If you haven't seen the images yet, go to any news site (the Star Trib will have local coverage). It looks like a major earthquake hit the bridge. This is one of the most heavily trafficed bridges in the metro, carrying over 140,000 cars a day. Beyond the infinitely more important loss of life, this is going to affect traffic in the cities for years.

At this point I've watched somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours of coverage on this today. What a crazy night. If I get the chance to go downtown tomorrow I'll try and post my own pictures.