Whipped Cream Difficulties

First of all, a couple more obits: Lana Peters. You might know her better as “Svetlana Stalina”, Josef Stalin’s daughter.

I missed this over the weekend (I’ve been distracted, working on my final project for school) but Tom Wicker, noted NYT journalist, passed away on Friday.

…the sputtering economy and municipal budget cuts are presenting new problems for the Tournament of Roses.

Speaking of municipal budget cuts, Lourdes Garcia, one of Robert “Ratso” Rizzo’s employees, has lost her job with the city of Bell.

Garcia is now a witness for the prosecution in the government’s case against her former bosses. She has been granted immunity in exchange for her testimony.

She was making $422, 000 a year until last year, when her salary was cut to $165,000.

We haven’t had a “Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark” update recently. How are things going?

In an interview to mark the Monday anniversary of the production’s first, fumbling preview performance, the producers of “Spider-Man” said they were considering new plans for recouping the show’s record-setting $75 million capitalization. The most unusual idea: adding new scenes and perhaps a new musical number to the New York “Spider-Man” every year, making it akin to a new comic book edition, and then urging the show’s fans to buy tickets again.

The producers also say that they’re not planning on mounting touring companies, but instead want to concentrate on making the Broadway production successful. And this decision has nothing to do with Julie Taymor’s lawsuit. Nothing at all.

Weekly running costs alone for “Spider-Man” total $1 million or more, by far the highest amount on Broadway, while its net income has ranged recently from $100,000 to $300,000 a week. At that rate the show would need to play on Broadway at least five more years — and possibly quite a bit longer — to pay off debts, a run very few shows achieve. In other words, it would need to turn into a hit on par with “Wicked” or “The Lion King” (the latter directed by Ms. Taymor), which after lengthy runs still regularly sit atop the weekly Broadway box office charts.

Bruce Boudreau out as coach of the Washington Capitals.

Up until about five years ago, I drove Loop 360 every day. I still have to drive it from time to time, so I was quite interested in the Statesman‘s coverage of plans to improve traffic flow. The biggest change involves implementing “Michigan left turns”: instead of left turn arrows at the lights, drivers will have to turn right, go down to a median cut, and do a U-turn.

I had plans: if I was ever diagnosed with a terminal illness, I’d go out late one night and blow up all the pointless traffic lights on Loop 360. The “Michigan left” plan doesn’t go quite that far, but I think it is a good step, if properly implemented. However, the plan doesn’t address the other major problem I used to see: traffic backs up horribly at the Loop 360/Mopac (Loop 1) intersection. That area badly needs a massive intersection redesign.