148 posts tagged “qotd”

Which 5 words would your best friend use to describe you?
Submitted by Ross.

As if I would ask.

The paparazzi in Hollywood are becoming more and more aggressive, often stalking famous celebrities 24-7. Do you think there should be laws preventing this behavior, or does it come with the territory?

I don't believe that paparrazzi should be allowed to stake out a celebrity's home, or to invade their privacy by shooting onto their property without their permission.  The current law says that a paparrazzi can stay outside a house two days, but not three days.  So teams will switch off after two days to get around the law.  I think the law should not allow that loophole.  Furthermore, if a paparrazzo wishes to claim status as a member of the media, that person should have accreditted media ID, and should be able to produce them on demand.  Unless such ID are produced, the person should be forced to be treated just as any stalker would be; harshly.

I would also put in place a prohibition on any paparrazzi being permitted to follow an automobile driven by or for celebrities.  It creates an inherent hazard to all parties, including innocent bystanders.

So, this is the deal.  You want to park outside a celebrity's house.  You have to prove you are a member of the media.  You want to see where the celebrity is going?  Either take an educated guess, or set up teams.  And if you cross the line?  You should be subject to punitive civil penalties.

Are you voting for the party that you're registered for?

Yes.  I had to check the State Rep race to be certain.  The incumbent is running unopposed.  I did actually consider contributing to the Speaker of the state House, who is of the other party, since I'm not in his district.  But, in one of those local quirks, he ran for both party's slot in the primary, and won.  So I would have been adding to a treasure trove, rather than funding the campaign of a tireless champion for special needs kids.  (Unlike that fraud whose initials are SP.)  My son is autistic, and this man was ready to personally go to the mat to get my kid into the right school.  And fought his own party to get autism covered by private insurance in this state.

What's your favorite scent?

Street tar.  It's the smell of early childhood for me.  The street which went past my house was full of cracks.  Every few months, the town street crew would show up, and retar those cracks which needed it.  I used to love the smell of tar as they melted it in those big ugly machines.  Even now, whenever I smell it, I am instantly transported back to Sausalito in the early '60s,  I can almost feel the cold clammy air on my arms, and see the waves of fog rolling over the hills above the highway.

What word or phrase drives you absolutely nuts?
submitted by, revolt

Likeyouknow, youknow?

Who would you hope to never face in a political debate?

In his prime, William F. Buckley.  His show Firing Line was one of the great intellectual triumphs for conservative advocacy in the last century.  Unlike, what passes for commentary today, Buckley was not afraid to bring onto his show the giants of liberalism to debate.  And, more often than not, his intellingence, biting wit and timing carried the day.  (I write that as someone who disagreed with a great many of his beliefs). A couple of the great lines he pulled off:

I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.

or the variation:

I would like to take you seriously. but to do so would affront your intelligence.

Now, we're reduced to John McCain, acting like a giggling schoolboy saying No you are, what am I?

And Rush Limbaugh would not have lasted five minutes with Buckley, who suffered no fools gladly, even those whose views were close to his own.

What is your all time favorite board game?

  I was the youngest and smallest child in my family.  But, every once in a while, I could kick my siblings' ass playing Risk.  That was a rush, I must tell you.

Show us your favorite person in uniform.

Ryan Howard.  2005 NL Rookie of the year.  2006 MVP.  Quickest Ever to 100 home runs (60 games faster than the anyone in history).  Quickest Ever to 150 home runs (74 games faster than anyone in history).  9th highest slugging percentage in history. 

Not to mention that he reminds me of my childhood hero: 

Willie "Stretch" McCovey. 

Both left-handed hitters, both with majestic power, and graceful demeanors.

New Yorkers are sad to say goodbye to their much-loved Yankee Stadium. What would you miss most from your home town if it were torn down?

 

P1000105

This is 5 Josephine Street, in the town of Sausalito, California.  I lived here for the first eight years of my life.  My parents bought this place in the late '50s, shortly before I was born.  We lived on the main floor, the picture window of which you see just above the tree in the photograph.  The window looked down over a small inlet beside the road down from the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito proper.

This is a screen still from the 1948 film noir thriller The Lady from Shanghai, directed by and starring Orson Welles, along with his then-wife Rita Hayworth:

Shanghai05

If you look to the left upper portion of the shot, you can see the peak of the roof of the house.  There were public stairs leading down from Josephine to the small beach you see in the center-right.  We used to go down the steps to the beach to skip stones.  Sometimes, our neighbor across the street, Ben Chamberlain, would let us take his dog Sigmund Freud, a beautiful lab, down with us to throw sticks or balls into the water for him to fetch and retrieve.  When Ben died, my family adopted Sigmund.  The beach no longer exists.  The widow Mrs. B lived in a house along the stairway.  I used to visit her all the time, even though she disliked children.  For some reason, she made an exception for me.

If you went up the stairs of you see in the first photograph, the first landing had a lawn with a hedge on the right, where my mother planted roses.  She was so upset when we pulled all the petals off of the roses, in order to boil them to make perfume.  To the left, the grass and hedge continued, and there was a prickly pear bush, which did pretty well, considering how cold and clammy it could be there. 

My oldest friend, Jimmy Purcell, initially lived in the first apartment, just past the first landing.  Later, he moved to one of the apartments above our flat.  I was probably three when we met, and Jimmy was just out of grad school for psychology.  Every Sunday, after Jimmy moved upstairs, I would go up, and he would make me silver dollar pancakes.  Afterwards, his friends would show up, and they would play jazz together, while I sat and watched.  Jimmy delights in telling the story of the one morning I came into his apartment without knocking, as was my wont, and found him in bed with his girlfriend of the evening.  He relates that I looked at them, and asked him "Jimmy, is that your mother?"

Up the driveway on the right side of the photo, there is a garage with a dirt basement behind.  I found a cache of French francs in there.  Perhaps the previous owner was a soldier in the War.

This is what we saw coming down the hills to us most mornings and evenings:

Fog_Sausalito

   As the fog covered the town, the foghorn on Alcatraz would begin to blow.  It was still a prison when I was a very small child.  I often wonder how it is that all of the inmates did not go mad, rather than just many.

Were you to pass along the right side of the photo, and up the street parallelling the house, you would see a large ivy patch, which, aside from stairs winding up to the slat covered porchlike landing and entrance to our flat, covered the whole side of the hill beneath the house.  In a certain season, monarch butterflies on migration would rest on the ivy, thousands of brilliant orange and black bodies carpeting the hillside.  I thought for a while that this memory was a fanciful construct of my imagination, as neither my parents nor my brother remembered it.  But my sister, in recent conversation, also recalled the wonderful event.

I have so many snippets of memory floating around from those very early days.  The time I saw two guys sitting in the playground, talking about what one of them who had just been drafted should do.  Walking down to Ole's Bakery, long gone, to buy fresh bread in the morning.  Ben's daughter, a flower child who made beaded jewelry, ironing her very lenghty blond hair.  Greasing the circular metal slide up with Crisco, to make the transit down quicker.  Burying my brother's chameleon beneath the wooden car-deck above the house.  Our oldest cat, Miss Blue, baiting dogs with her friend, a huge tabby.  The smell of the tar used by the street crews to cover cracks in the road.

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I would miss the house, were it to be torn down.  After all, its very being is now a part of me.  All that is important remains as whispers in my soul,

How do you know when a relationship has run its course and it's time to call it quits?

When she wants to borrow the car to go out on a date with another guy.  Seriously.