Web Log

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Baldemar Huerta died in 2006 at the age of sixty-nine after a five year battle with metastatic kidney cancer. He grew up poor, the child of travelling-circus parents, showing prodigious musical talent by the time he attended kindergarten in the Rio Grande Valley town of San Benito, Texas. Wanting to 'make it' with the Gringos, he changed his name, in the late 1950's, to Freddy Fender. Under this moniker he began to have some success in the Spanish-speaking record market when things went horribly wrong. He and a buddy were arrested in 1960 for marijuana possession in Louisiana. He did nearly three years in Angola State Prison. Having learned auto mechanics behind those bars...that's how he earned a living upon his release. Barred, under his parole conditions, from frequenting places that served alcohol, Freddy's musical fortunes didn't rebound until the early 1970's when his recording of Before the Next Teardrop Falls became a 'crossover' hit: #1 on both the country and pop music Billboard charts.

For a time during my misspent beer-soaked youth (in pizza parlors and steak & lobster bars), I sang a few of Freddy's songs. My favorite was Living It Down.

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 Happy Birthday, Ruth!

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Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

But...I thought Karl Malden died years ago!

And...get this: for years it's been known that smoking can kill you, but did you know that now there's evidence that stopping smoking 'the wrong way' can also kill you? Makes sense when you think about it!

“He removed his clothing during the flight [from Charlotte to Los Angeles] and refused to put them [sic] back on. There are no further details [regarding] why he may have done what he did, but the court may order a medical or psychological exam during his court appearance.”
FBI spokesman Darrin Jones of Albuquerque, to which the plane was diverted in order to forcibly remove the man in his birthday suit. He was arrested and charged with interfering with a flight crew.

Cell phone photo courtesy of fellow passenger Marius Langlete.

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

The Hare and Many Friends, by John Gay (born this very day in 1685)

Friendship, like love, is but a name,
Unless to one you stint the flame.
The child, whom many fathers share,
Hath seldom known a father's care;
'Tis thus in friendships; who depend
On many, rarely find a friend.

A hare, who, in a civil way,
Complied with ev'ry thing, like Gay,
Was known by all the bestial train,
Who haunt the wood, or graze the plain:
Her care was, never to offend,
And ev'ry creature was her friend.

As forth she went at early dawn
To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn,
Behind she hears the hunter's cries,
And from the deep-mouth'd thunder flies;
She starts, she stops, she pants for breath,
She hears the near advance of death,
She doubles, to mis-lead the hound,
And measures back her mazy round;
'Till, fainting in the public way,
Half dead with fear she gasping lay.

What transport in her bosom grew,
When first the horse appear'd in view!

'Let me,' says she, 'your back ascend,
And owe my safety to a friend,
You know my feet betray my flight,
To friendship ev'ry burthen's light.'

The horse replied, 'Poor honest puss,
It grieves my heart to see thee thus;
Be comforted, relief is near;
For all your friends are in the rear.'

She next the stately bull implor'd;
And thus reply'd the mighty lord.
'Since ev'ry beast alive can tell
That I sincerely wish you well,
I may, without offence, pretend
To take the freedom of a friend;
Love calls me hence; a fav'rite cow
Expects me near yon barley mow:
And when a lady's in the case,
You know, all other things give place.
To leave you thus might seem unkind;
But see, the goat is just behind.'

The goat remark'd her pulse was high,
Her languid head, her heavy eye;
'My back,' says he, 'may do you harm;
The sheep's at hand, and wool is warm.'

The sheep was feeble, and complain'd,
His sides a load of wool sustain'd,
Said he was slow, confess'd his fears;
For hounds eat sheep as well as hares.

She now the trotting calf addrest,
To save from death a friend distrest.

'Shall I, says he, of tender age,
In this important care engage?
Older and abler pass'd you by;
How strong are those! how weak am I!
Should I presume to bear you hence,
Those friends of mine may take offence.
Excuse me then. You know my heart,
But dearest friends, alas, must part!
How shall we all lament! Adieu.
For see the hounds are just in view.'

Monday, June 29th, 2009 Carol is sixty-two

Eight parakeets in a cage.

Each with a name:

Lavender Louie
Martha May I
Rowdy Boy
Just Olive
Slim Dusty
Mattie McScrewLoose
Doo-We Don't We
Governor Huey P. Long

Courtesy of RJ.

Sunday, June 28th, 2009 The 40th Anniversary of the police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village

"At the end of the 1960s homosexual sex was still illegal in every state but Illinois. It was a crime punishable by castration in seven states. No laws — federal, state or local — protected gay people from being denied jobs or housing. If a homosexual character appeared in a movie, his life ended with either murder or suicide."
David Carter

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

"As in all great affairs, Mark Sanford fell in love simultaneously with a woman and himself — with the dashing new version of himself he saw in her molten eyes.
In a weepy, gothic unraveling, the South Carolina governor gave a press conference illustrating how smitten he was with his own tenderness, his own pathos and his own feminine side.
With Maria, Mark was no longer the penny-pinching millionaire who used to sleep on a futon in his Congressional office and once treated two congressmen to movie refreshments by bringing back a Coke and three straws
...no longer so frugal as when he made his staffers use both sides of Post-it notes and index cards...and no longer so selfish as when he tried to enhance his presidential chances by resisting South Carolina’s share of Obama’s stimulus package, thereby giving the back of his hand to his suffering state’s most vulnerable: the jobless, the poor and black students."
From 'Genius In A Bottle', by Maureen Dowd. Her best column in months!

Friday, June 26th, 2009

"It's hard to find out your husband is not who you thought he was. Parenting is the most important job there is and what Mark has done has added a serious weight to that job. I was hoping he was on the Appalachian Trail. But I was not worried about his safety. I was hoping he was doing some real soul searching somewhere...and devastated to find out he was in Argentina. It's tragic."

From an Associated Press interview this morning with Jenny Sanford, a Georgetown-educated, former Wall Street vice-president and heir to the Skilsaw fortune. Mrs. Sanford's handling of this sordid business has met with near-unanimous encomium. She is (publically, at least) unbowed by what, for most mortals, would be a long-term ego-buster. On the day of her husband's hastily-called (and ill-considered) press conference, rather than appear meekly by his side, she said, "I feel it is more important to look my sons in the eyes and maintain my dignity and self-respect."
She has done that.

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

What a day! Did you happen to catch the interview that PBS News Hour host Jim Lehrer did with USA Today Music Critic Steve Jones within an hour of the announcement of the death of Michael Jackson? The tone of Lehrer's questions revealed that he was never among Mr. Jackson's fans. This is not surprising (Jim is a former Marine from Kansas who just turned seventy-five) but he went beyond that...seeming to ridicule Mr. Jones's fawning assertions regarding the significance/importance of Michael's contributions to pop culture. For example, he asked Jones: 'What was the key to Michael's success?' and then, when Jones offered a pretty lame answer to what was, frankly, a pretty lame question, Lehrer pressed him until Jones stumbled to respond at all! Moving on, Jim (while conceding that millions of people did seem to get off on this freshly-deceased star) leaned on Jones to explain Michael Jackson's appeal to the (many) people who just 'didn't get it'! Another lame (though novel) answer ensued, one which attempted to position Michael's work within an aura of intellectuality (averring that Jackson had 'studied' Jackie Wilson and James Brown...huh?). Finally, within this tone of 'really?', Lehrer delivered a knockout with 'Did Michael Jackson deserve to be called the 'King of Pop?' The condescension was palpable. It was as if Mr. Lehrer was humoring someone who claimed to have been recently dragged aboard a flying saucer!

Michael Jackson lived 18,563 days. Farrah Fawcett lived 22,789 days. Ed McMahon lived 31,529 days. So far, Walter Cronkite has lived 33,836 days.

This just in: Jaclyn Smith told Barbara Walters (tonight) that Farrah Fawcett 'had an unrelentless capacity to fight this disease'! OK.

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

There is no question but that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford hit it out of the park this afternoon during his news conference. For the first eight (or so) minutes he rambled like a drunk at his own retirement party (which this well might yet become)...reminiscing about his youth as an enterprising trail guide.
Then he segued into a series of apologies (including one to his 'parents in-laws' [sic] as well as 'to anybody who lives in South Carolina')...before he had even said what he was apologizing for! Here was a man with a freshly-mangled sense of his role in life. And here was a story that was so 'delicious' that it knocked Iran, North Korea and health care reform from the nation's headlines.
There is some question as to how prepared he was for this news conference, which he himself characterized as a 'consequence' for breaking 'God's Laws'. There is even some question as to whether he would have held the news conference at all had he not, only hours earlier, been busted by a reporter as he furtively got off a plane from the Southern Hemisphere. He certainly had some 'splaining to do. No one could remember when the chief executive of a State...or even of a large corporation...had flat-out gone missing! Now there is, of course, the eighty-three year-old tale of Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Foursquare Gospel Church, whose disappearance (well before the days of 24-hour news...or even of commercial radio) ultimately revealed that even the Godliest among us may succumb to temptations of the flesh.
Governor Sanford had been AWOL for at least five days...leaving not his wife nor even his own Lieutenant Governor with a plausible explanation (make that 'alibi') for his absence. And it turns out that one of his own State's best-read newspapers had been on to him for nearly a year having, in some manner still unclear, come into possession of some rather embarrassing electronic correspondence between the Governor and a woman not his wife. So the jig was up and the man who was the Chairman of the Republican Governor's Association (a post from which he resigned today) and who only last September was on John McCain's short list of possible running mates will soon likely have to resign from his elected office. In some ways, his indiscretions are worse than those of once fellow-Governor Eliot Spitzer and fellow-Republican Senator John Ensign. Mark Sanford actually left his elected post to pursue his clandestine pleasures...and possibly even did so on the taxpayers' dime! Evidently, he was unable to help himself.

In 1998, citing the need for "moral legitimacy", then-Congressman Mark Sanford voted in favor of three articles of impeachment against then-President Clinton.

Revenge is a dish best-served cold.

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979) is a name not familiar to most folks today. But he was a celebrity...an idol, really, to millions of Irish Catholics living in the New York City area during the middle years of the last century. Throughout the early years of radio (from 1930 through 1950) and of television (1951 through 1968) Archbishop Sheen was a staple among Irish Catholic immigrants and their first-generation descendants. He was the world's first televangelist.
Though there was nothing randy about him, Father Sheen was the closest thing to a sex-symbol that my immigrant grandmother ever embraced. She came through Ellis Island in 1914, at the age of forty-four...sporting a rich brogue. I marvel at what personal courage she possessed to have made that decision to leave her native Ireland (for good) at such a late stage of life. Now...it's fair to say that my grandmother did not harbor 'progressive' views...and neither did the handsome, charismatic priest who regularly broadcast faith-reinforcing homilies during The Catholic Hour (on radio) and Life Is Worth Living (on television). My grandmother was likely troubled only by the fact that there had never been a 'Saint Fulton' and, so, why would any Catholic parent 'burden' an offspring with a name for which there was no Saint? Such was her Old World mindset. In fact, Father Sheen's birth name was 'Peter'. 'Fulton' was his mother's maiden surname.
Bishop Sheen was no Jim Bakker. He did not live in material comfort. His was 'a name that a shame never had been connected with'. At his ordination at age 24, he took the vows of 'poverty, chastity and obedience' and, as far as anyone knows, kept them throughout the sixty years of his priesthood.

Now, a half-century past the height of his popularity, his visage seems vampiric and his views trouble the cosmopolitan mind. He was an 'absolutist': disdainful both of democracy and of the then-emerging 'science' of psychoanalysis. [Sigmund Freud only died, after all, in 1939.]

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded. Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil ... a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons ... never to truth.

Right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong. The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.

Anyone who goes to a psychoanalyst ought to have his head examined.

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

"Just when you thought the G.O.P. could never match the high bar set by Larry Craig’s men’s room toe-tapping, along came Senator John Ensign of Nevada, an ostentatiously pious born-again Christian whose ecumenical outreach drove him to engineer political jobs for his mistress, her cuckolded husband and the couple’s son."
Frank Rich

When the husband of John's paramour gave the Senator a choice between public exposure and monetary compensation (read: 'blackmail'), the man of God (and rising GOP star) issued the following statement which reads, in part:

“I violated the vows of my marriage. It is the worst thing I have ever done in my life. I take full responsibility for my actions."

Mr. Ensign is the only Pentecostal in the Senate. and is also a member of Promise Keepers.

The Senator voted to impeach then President Bill Clinton in 1998 over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In 2004 he said, "Marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation."

"Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue."
Francois de La Rochefoucauld, (1613-1680)

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

Friday, June 19th, 2009

God in His wisdom made the fly...and then forgot to tell us why! Ogden Nash

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals. We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals. Swatting a fly on TV indicates he (Obama) is not perfect. We wish he had not."
PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich

Rather than swat (and kill) a fly who has found his way indoors, PETA recommends (and sells from its catalog...for only $8) a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher. "Simply place Katcha Bug over the bug and slowly slide its plastic trapdoor shut. The bug will step onto the trapdoor as it closes, and you can carry Katcha Bug outside, where all you need to do is slide the trap door open, allowing the bug to walk (or fly) away."

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Feel bad that you're a lowly renter and not a proud homeowner? Then take heart!

This just in: Canadian Researchers have discovered that female homeowners, on average, outweigh female renters by 12 pounds.

"I don't see any strong evidence that homeowners are any happier than renters. On the other hand, they consistently report a higher level of pain — or what you might call negative feelings — connected to their home, and that's after controlling for all kinds of demographic characteristics, their financial situation, how many children they have and so on. Homeowners as a group are simply not the kind of active and engaged people we see them as."
Grace Bucchianeri, Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, whose 600-woman study is under review for publication in the Journal of Urban Economics.

"There's a whole bunch more work to be done when you own a home, whereas when you rent, you just phone someone and say: 'I have no hot water; do something about it.' "
Renter Arlene Barr

Professor Bucchianeri speculates that renters, as a group, may have more time (than owners) to spend on leisure activities...including walking and jogging, and that this could explain the difference in average weight. Grace does seem to assume that women would rather weigh less than more.

One more thing: this study was completed before the housing crash, after which many people discovered that being a renter was not without its joys.

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.
It has been my experience that the company of a 'mere child' is preferable to that of a 'mere adult'.
Humility is no substitute for personality.
As a teenager you are in the last stage of life in which you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
Life is what happens when you can't sleep.

Fran Lebowitz

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

"Can someone explain why the expression "I couldn't care less" somehow became perverted to "I could care less"? It's bad enough in speech, but when you see it in black-and-white, and in the auspicious [sic] pages of The Chronicle to boot, I wonder what other linguistic reversals we'll have in store anytime soon."
Keith Howell, in today's San Francisco Chronicle

Yeah. Keith, but...how 'bout when someone sez, like, 'if I never go there again, it won't be too soon'?

Or...like: 'it's impossible to underestimate his importance to the team'?

Or...like: 'during our Spring sale, you'll save up to 50% and more'!

My observation is that most people don't pay a whole lot of attention to what comes out of their mouths...or their keyboards! When's the last time you met someone who doesn't constantly say 'ya know' and/or 'like'!?!

Monday, June 15th, 2009 Happy Birthday to Jay, Alice and Doug!

As for useful things, they have all been discovered; and to those which are agreeable, I hope that good taste will not admit algebra among them.

It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war. If my soldiers began to think, not one would
remain in the ranks.

That the arrested man has committed blasphemy is a proof that he does not know God. That he has slandered me, I pardon him. But for his insulting of an honorable member of the Council, he shall be punished as an example and be sent to Spandau Prison for half an hour.

I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people. Neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God.

Frederick The Great, (1712-1786), King of Prussia

Sunday, June 14th, 2009 Flag Day

" 'To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen' wrote the English biologist T.H. Huxley. But Huxley never met Keith Olbermann or Glenn Beck. A fact, today, is a smudged windshield through which we peer at the confusion of what might or might not be in front of us."

Kyle Smith

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

I'm unaccustomed to seeing or even hearing about (let alone meeting) anyone who is smarter than I am. Yes...there are a few. Jon Stewart and Barack Obama leap to mind. But for almost every hour of almost every day I am consigned to rub elbows with lesser lights. Now...if I were not also generously endowed with forbearance and personal humility, this predicament would make my life even lonelier than it already is.

But today was a good day; one brightened by my discovery of yet a third person who is definitely smarter than I am! His name is Patrick Killelea. I believe he was briefly brought to my attention some years ago by my baby sister in reference to a newspaper article. My dear sibling spoke of him in not-altogether-flattering terms. I think she took umbrage at his derisive reference to new home owners as 'loan owners'. She might have even called him an 'asshole'.
I suspect that Patrick, as is the case with many geniuses, often meets with opprobrium because, to paraphrase a haberdasher from Independence Missouri, he doesn't 'give 'em hell'. He merely 'tells the truth and they think it's hell'!
Back in 2005, at the height of our national housing hysteria...at a time when well-engaged, hard-working people were stepping on each others' throats in pursuit of the 'American Dream of Home Ownership', Patrick launched a Web site in which he first-off confessed to having 'no background in real estate'. Yet he lined himself up for a head-on collision with what was then the 'popular wisdom' that renters were 'throwing their money away' ! He explained that it made no financial sense to borrow the money to buy a house if you could borrow the house (i.e., rent it) for a lot less.
His math is best illustrated by an example: suppose you have a choice between renting a house for $1500 a month...or buying that same house for $500,000 (by putting $100,000 (20%) down and financing the remaining $400,000 at a 6% Annual Percentage Rate). Now...by the simplest calculation available on any Web Mortgage Calculator: your monthly payments would be about $2400. This, of course, does not include the other expenses associated with owning that house...like property taxes, insurance, maintenance...and the fact that you've already parted with $100,000. Patrick says that until and unless you can buy that house for about the same (monthly payment) that you could rent it...you are better off renting. In the frenzied California real estate market of the early oughties, the yearly cost of renting typically represented about 3% of a home's market value whereas the yearly cost of owning worked out to about 9%. He pointed out, with eerie prescience, that such a situation is not sustainable and could only end in a 'crash'.

Among Patrick's pithy (and often counterintuitive) observations are these:

It's a terrible time to buy when interest rates are low, like now. Realtors lie without shame about this fundamental fact. Real estate businesses have a large financial interest in misleading the public about the foolishness of buying a house now.

The primary evil in the economy is housing "affordability" programs which encourage debt, making prices higher, not lower. True affordability is not more debt -- true affordability is lower prices.

Now there are mass foreclosures, and Congress is taking a trillion dollars of your money to pay the mortgage investment losses for banks. The plan is to overpay the banks for bad mortgages, claiming that this will support the housing market. It will not work, since bank profits have nothing to do with housing prices.

Government leaders never talk about how lower house prices are good for pretty much everyone except bankers, instead preferring to sacrifice American families to make sure bankers have plenty of debt to earn interest on. Every "affordability" program drives prices higher by pushing buyers deeper into debt.

The people dictating the conservative agenda manipulate your feelings about patriotism and religion to get you to help the very rich evade taxes. While you’re distracted pledging allegiance to God and country with your hand over your heart, their hand is picking your pocket!

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

"Cars and houses led the decline, demand having been sated by the huge purchases of 1923-29, which buyers managed by taking on record levels of debt. Consumers began shutting their wallets in reaction to the layoffs and the stock market panic. Wholesale and retail prices joined the retreat, and by late 1930 unemployment was rising sharply. Corporate profits were beginning to implode. Such was consumer debt hangover after the boom's spending binge that in 1932, interest payments consumed 20 percent of national income. Many people simply walked away from their cars, houses, or debts between 1930 and 1932, handing the keys to already wobbly banks."
From Wealth and Democracy, by Kevin Phillips, 2002

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

"The fish toss celebrates cruelty to marine animals. Surely the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) would not describe an event as 'fun, educational and inspiring' if the animals being tossed around were lambs, hamsters, or cats."
From a letter to the AVMA by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), asking that representatives from Seattle's Pike's Place Fish Market (purveyors of the moronic (yet seemingly popular in Corporate circles) 'Fish Philosophy') not demonstrate their nonsense using real (dead) fish at the AVMA's upcoming national convention.

Of the several 'quality/morale-building/productivity-enhancing' programs I had seen during my decades as an employee of a BHC , there is little doubt but that the 'Fish Philosophy' is the lamest. It paragon-izes a bunch of undereducated druggies working in a stinky Seattle fish market (in the same shopping center that is home to the original Starbuck's). What's especially insulting about the Fish Philosophy is its claim that you can always 'choose your attitude'. IOW, no one has any real problems. It's all in your head! Everything's just about how you look at it. One egregious example in the video (mandatory viewing for some captive employees), features a frayed monger explaining that he only got a couple of hours sleep the night before (gee...I wonder why) but...so what! He could 'choose his attitude'! Nobody really needs to sleep.

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

FYI: The name of the Director of the Central Institute of Forensic Science in Bangkok, Thailand, is Dr. Porntip Rojanasunan (photo at right). The 53 year-old pathologist is Thailand's best-known author (and authority) on the subject of violent death. She, it is said, 'speaks for the dead '.

On Friday, citing unnamed 'Sex Experts', the Bangkok Post reported that David "Carradine's advanced age (he was 72) suggests that he may have been a lifelong practitioner of the secretive and dangerous practice known as auto-erotic asphyxia...one that can go fatally awry."
Gosh! I've known guys who are even older than that and, truthfully, it had never crossed my dirty mind that even one of them might be into hanging himself (alone in a closet) to get off! Maybe I just need to get out more!

Saturday, June 6th, 2009 The 41st Anniversary of the Death of Robert Kennedy

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Don't try this at home!

"I can confirm that we found his body, naked, hanging in the closet. There is no trace of fighting in the hotel room and the room was locked from inside. There is no sign of bruising on his body."
Bangkok Police Lt. Teerapop Luanseng

"All we can say is, we know David would never have committed suicide."
Tiffany Smith, spokesperson for Binder & Associates

"It was the continuation of abhorant [sic] and deviant sexual behavior which was potentially deadly [that] also added to the complications of the relationship."
From the 2001 divorce petition of Marina Carradine.

Illustration by Martin Van Mael, ca. 1905

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

According to the Social Security Administration's birth records (which reference about 20 million babies of each gender), the five most popular boys' names from January of 2000 through February of 2009 are:

Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew and Christopher.

The five most popular girls' names are: Emily, Madison, Emma, Hannah and Olivia.

The five least popular boys' names are: Jax, Heriberto, Stephon, Daryl and Krish. [About a thousand boys got each of these names...but it makes you wonder if the parents just aren't very good spellers, eh?]

The five least popular girls' names are: Finley, Beatrice, Dasia, Zara and Jaslene. [About 1300 girls got each of these names.]

John came in at #18 and Mary was #61.

Incidentally, there are, of course, names less popular than the ones listed in the bottom five. They just didn't make the SSA's list of 1000 names per gender. For example, Adolph and Jezebel were not listed but that doesn't mean that there were no newborns assigned either of those names during the survey period.

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

What I`d really like to say about stardom is that it gave me everything I never wanted.

I want to live to be 150, but the day I die, I want to have a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.

When I lose my temper, honey, you can`t find it any place.

What`s the point? My face, shall we say, looks lived in.

Deep down, I`m pretty superficial.

In later years, upon learning that her first husband, Mickey Rooney, had taken to telling people how great she was in bed, she blurted, "Well, honey, he may have enjoyed the sex but, goodness knows, I didn't!"
Ava Gardner, 1922-1990

Monday, June 1st, 2009

Sunday, May 31st, 2009