For his cold open on Monday Craig Ferguson showed how to yodel:
And the following night, he had his monkey do it:
January 2009 Archives
I received the following email from Pat, a former co-worker. She and her husband took their grandson Tyler to see the inauguration day parade. Tyler snapped this photo; click on it to enlarge the image.
I got up at 1:30 am and we were on the road by 2:15 am. We drove to New Carollton MD METRO station. I'm guessing we got there about 4:30-5 am. We were in DC around 6:30ish.
To sum it all up, it was so exciting. Imagine 2M people and no arrests. The people were all in good spirits, the police, military, security, etc all in good moods. We were on the mall prior to the inauguaration. No pushing, shoving - people weren't even stepping on each others toes.
Sadly we weren't on the mall with all the flag waivers during the oath. We had tickets for the parade and had to make a choice between the Mall and the parade because they were closing Constitution Ave which was between the Mall and the parade route. We left the Mall area before 11 to make sure we could get to the parade area. We waited more than 4 hours in the cold for the parade. For most of those hours we were the only people on our set of bleachers. I suspect others who purchased tickets went to the Mall but couldn't get to the parade route due to the road closure. The best part of the whole day was when the President and his wife wallked the two blocks - they walked right in front of us. I can't believe how exciting that was. Michelle Obama looked right at me on the bleacher and waived. Also saw Joe Biden and his wife. After they walked by about 90% of the people left - too cold!
We left around 6 pm and were home by 10:30.
There are a lot of reasons to be hopeful for the new administration, but given my values, the emphasis on science is one of the most important.
Yes, we can!
Brad Delong offers a good take on where Obama stands with respect to recent history:
The Possibility of the First Normal Policy-Making and Politics since...
Well, from 2001-2008 we have been ruled by cruel and incompetent wingnuts. From 1995-2001 the congress was dominated by cruel and maladjusted wingnuts. From 1993-1995 the congress was dominated by old dinosaurs who wanted to teach the hick from Arkansas a lesson. From 1989-1993 we were ruled by reasonable people who thought they had to pretend to be cruel and maladjusted wingnuts. 1981-1989 was the Age of Reagan--when we had to pray for George Shultz and Nancy Reagan's astrologer to outmaneuver the wingnuts in the White House and make good policy. Before then was another four years 1977-1981 when the barons of congress's highest priority was to teach the hick from Georgia a lesson. Before then we lived in Nixonland--in which the twin centers of American politics were the successful attempt to tell all Americans who did not like Black people that they had a home in the Republican Party, and "anticommunism"--in the form of denunciations of Helen Gahagan Douglas was a spy for Stalin (besides being married to a Jew) and denunciations of Harry S Truman for being soft in communism in settling for "containment" rather than "rollback" (and, of course, when the Hungarians in 1956 dared take the rhetoric of John Foster Dulles, Richard Nixon, and Dwight Eisenhower seriously...). Before then were the denunciations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt ("the communist in the White House..." "that cripple in the White House...").
One of my all-time favorite sf series is Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.
So I'm looking forward with trepidation to the promised movie based on the Foundation stories.
Hollywood has not been kind to many of the classic sf writers, and in particular the I, Robot movie based upon Asimov's robot stories was a big disappointment.
Well, it seems we now live in a time of hope. So here's hoping!
I'm not much interested in today's modern music makers, so I passed on the concert on the mall. But I like this bit with Pete Seegar, including the lines:
"As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!
In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me."
Update: Alas, the curmudgeons at HBO are claiming copyright on a free concert performed at the Lincoln Memorial. Shame on them. But I've replaced the clip with one from German television which is outside of HBO's creepy mitts. h/t Mark Evanier
Chloe's back!
Chloe rules!
Go, Chloe, go!
I just wish that 24 would have a more realistic view on torture, given that they are now debating the issue...
Oprah Winfrey is an extremely stupid person.
My attitude towards thrillers and suspense shows is that I don't mind implausible plot developments as long as the absurdities don't jump in my face.
Alas, last night's season opener of 24 opened with an in-your-face stupidity: the bad guys kidnap a scientist by broad-siding his car. Since they need the scientist's expertise, how can they possibly know that he'll survive?
The rest of the show was OK, but I just couldn't get past the lunacy of the opening sequence.
I just enabled Facebook Connect in the comments, so folks can leave a comment using their Facebook account.
I've recently begun the immensely pleasurable pastime of reading and re-reading the books of John Dickson Carr. I own copies of about half of his works and am trying to acquire the remainder. Sadly and inexcusably, his books are largely out of print these days, so that means I must check the second-hand market.
It's hard for me to believe, but I haven't been to the Book Trader in years--so many years that it has long since moved from its cramped South Street location to an even more cramped spot on Second near Market, just down the street from the Arden Theatre. Its shelves are overflowing with thousands of books and its aisles ought to be declared a disaster area.
Still, with all those books, it only had two Carrs; happily I owned neither of them, so my Carr collection grew to 36 volumes.
Carr was the master of the impossible crime, usually but not always some variation of the locked room puzzle.
In the best of the Gideon Fell series, The Three Coffins, Dr. Fell famously gives a lecture for an entire chapter on the various ways that locked room puzzles can be constructed. I've read The Three Coffins at least three times (and will probably keep re-reading it as long as my eyesight lasts). In it Carr describes two seemingly impossible crimes: a murder by gunshot committed in a room whose only exit is under observation by two witnesses, yet when the door is opened only the victim is found to be inside and there is no gun in evidence; another murder committed at point blank range in front of witnesses, but the evidence shows only the footprints of the victim in the snow.
But Carr's masterpiece has to be The Burning Court, a wonderful blend of witchcraft and crime detection.
It opens with a man riding home on a train and finding a photograph in a book that looks exactly like his wife, but the photo is labelled as that of a woman who was executed for murder 70 years earlier.
Soon a murder is discovered that has several impossible aspects and the evidence begins to pile up that his wife is indeed a witch. Is there a rational explanation for the deeds?
Carr keeps the reader guessing until practically the very last page.
Overall The Burning Court is one of the most satisfying and surprising detective stories that I have ever read.
