Category: What the…?

Me and Stan Ridgway at Mississippi Studios early this morning. My iPhone is just not cut out for low-light venues.

Get his new album, Neon Mirage. Become his friend.

You danced and partied at the Mardi Gras
Threw back all the beads at the parade
Fake worlds and logos in the shopping mall where you came from
Everything seemed the same the whole world now

So you headed down south
Left your old home town
Relocated so far away from the real world
But where is the real world?

Get out of the bar
And follow the stars
Now you’ve relocated so far away from the real world
But where is the real world?

Ambitious eyes set firmly on the future
So keen to leave your old home town
But you’re a lost soul looking for the great illusion in another state
You had to escape you know you just couldn’t
Wait you thought the real world let you down.

So you headed down south
Left another home town
Now you don’t have the time to think
Who’s left behind in the real world
Watching game shows all day was no kind of deal
It all seemed oh so surreal
Had to break from the real world
But where is the real world?
One day you’ll wake up and you will feel
“I am alive. This is real”

—Ray Davies, “The Real World”, Workingman’s Cafe

I suppose there’s a perfectly good reason for the difference in terminology:

From an operational standpoint, speed humps and bumps have critically different impacts on vehicles. Within typical residential operational speed ranges, vehicles slow to about 20 mph (32 km/h) on streets with properly spaced speed humps. A speed bump, on the other hand, causes significant driver discomfort at typical residential operational speed ranges and generally results in vehicles slowing to 5 mph or less at each bump.

But seriously, does this difference—unknown to the non-traffic-engineering layman—overcome the possibility of roadside carnage when said layman drives off of SW Cabot St. in Beaverton in a paroxysm of juvenile laughter? Or accidents caused when they go unnoticed because the signs have been kifed by guys unintentionally adding a little versimilitude to their bach pads?

Paul Boehlke said about two or three months ago, some of the speed hump signs started disappearing one by one.

And while he doesn’t exactly know what happened to them, he does have a theory.

“Kids, you know i guess if i were a teenager, a speed hump sign might look pretty good in my bedroom, I don’t know.” said Boehlke.

When Barbara and I were in Ireland we saw huge signs for “RAMPS” in places where we didn’t see any potential for boating. I suppose if you called something a “SPEED RAMP” here it would just be a challenge for some Evel Knievel-style daredevil.

Great. I’ve been reading the wrong horoscopes all these years, no wonder I’ve screwed things up so much. Next they’ll be telling us there was supposed to have been a 13th month all along.

I’ve told myself
So many times
Not to turn into the type
But I’ve found
Is it too late?
Has my time come?
Sometimes I think I’m losin’ it
Am I the only one?

Understanding, more like demanding
Where do the grey skies end?

So should I stay
Or fly away
The wings that I begin to grow
Will surely let me know
How far I have to go
And I’ll be there

Oh yet again
Thought I was right
But as usual
I end up
On the wrong side of the fence
Is it too late?
Has my time come?
Sometimes I think I’m losin’ it
Am I the only one?

Understanding, more like demanding
Where do the grey skies end?

So should I stay
Or fly away
The wings that I begin to grow
Will surely let me know
How far I have to go
And I’ll be there

—”Fly Away”, The Living End, The Living End

Peter says my 2011 face sans beard reminds him of Elvis. Me, I don’t really see it.

Just watched the end of the 2010 version of “The Crazies”—one of the latest entries in the “fast zombie”-style movies of recent years—and aside from the typical huge number of plot holes in any zombie movie it ends as many zombie movies do with a nuclear explosion to wipe out the infection. The two main characters are speeding away from the afflicted area in a big rig, listening to the last thirty seconds of a countdown (presumably they’ve seen zombie movies), asking each other repeatedly “Do you see anything?”

Now, apart from the fact that a truck speeding away from—well, anything—isn’t going to cover even a mile unless they’re going 120 miles an hour, so perhaps it might be a good idea to get the rig pulled over and hunker down rather than be hit by the shockwave while you’re moving at full speed, anyone should know that you don’t look at the nuclear explosion.

A couple of generations of children had that drummed into them. I took an afterschool class taught by the former head of local Civil Defense when I was in third grade. “Duck and cover” may be a joke but you don’t look at the sun unprotected and you don’t look at the nuclear explosion.

From the list of offerings at TicketMaster this month:

As a man of larger size myself, it doesn’t really seem like a fair match.

Bonehead play of the night. We were more than two hours into a tournament limited to eight players per table and full up at 1,000 players. I’ve been playing a fairly tight, aggressive style that’s got me in around 50th place among the 240 remaining players. 104 places get paid, $750 goes to the top spot, but you need to make at least sixth to break triple digits from your $4 buy-in.

I’m on the button with . We’re in Level XII, blinds are 150/300 with 40 ante. UTG+2 (with about 17K in his stack) raises to 600 and the cutoff position (the table leader with 27K) calls. I call when I should have re-raised. The big blind (with 22K) calls.

The flop drops a on the table. The big blind checks to UTG+2 who bets 600. The cutoff calls and this time I re-raise to 1,200. The big blind makes a pot-sized raise to 5,100, which is called by UTG+2 but drives out the big stack. I call, leaving me with over 12K behind. There’s almost 19K in the pot.

After a shows on the turn, the big blind tries to take the pot down with an all-in of almost 17K. That drives out UTG+2, leaving me heads-up wondering if I can snag a club on the river. I’m reasonably certain the big blind has a set of 8s which I can only beat If I call, I’m out if I don’t. I shove my last 12.3K in.

As it happens, the river gives me my club but it’s another 6, making a full house for the guy who was holding which I doubt he’d have kept if a substantial re-raise had been made by me in the pre-flop betting.

I thought that Harold White—the mayor of Aumsville, Oregon where a tornado hit yesterday—was remarkably collected during his press conference just a few hours after it ripped through the town of 3,500. For someone faced with something as rare as a tornado in Oregon, who presumably doesn’t have to run a lot of press conferences, he managed to get the right questions to the right agency chiefs with aplomb.

One of the KGW reporters on the scene? Their take was that White seemed “ho-hum” about the whole thing. Seriously, I know there are endless hours of newshole to fill with blather, but “ho-hum?”