When ice picks are outlawed…

September 25th, 2014

Admittedly, this is kind of old, but I only ran across it today (while, oddly, looking up Trotsky for reasons I won’t go into):

“There is no prohibition right now against carrying an ice pick in New York City,” said City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the Public Safety Committee, “which is interesting because I don’t know of any legitimate use for an ice pick.”

…

At NHS Hardware on Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx, a worker, Jose Santana, strode toward the back of the store and grabbed a $3.89 model, whose wrapper said that it was of “professional quality” and “high carbon steel,” from a display of ice picks hanging from a peg.

…

The demand is greater than the store chooses to meet: because the store has a policy restricting the sale of ice picks to anyone under the age of 21, it has sold only two in the past six months or so.
“Some guy might buy this for torturing people,” another worker, Victor Reynoso said. “Sometimes they come to buy, but we don’t sell. If you are going to buy this, you have to show me ID.”

…

“I would entertain expanding it further, banning all public possession, once we learn, during the hearing process, whether there are any legitimate uses in this day and age for an ice pick,” [Councilman Vallone] said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

In other news, it appears that you can listen to Trotsky Icepick on Google Play or Spotify, or buy some of the albums from iTunes. The same cannot be said of Mussolini Headkick; only one of their songs is available on iTunes.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Music | Comments Closed

Well. Well well well. Well.

September 24th, 2014

ESPN analyst Bill Simmons has been suspended for three weeks after he made profane comments about NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell during a podcast.

Original hattip on this to Jason Snell at Six Colors.

This is getting a great deal of attention, but there’s one aspect I want to point out: the ESPN Ombudsman’s page has disappeared from the site. Attempts to access it, either from the “ESPN Ombudsman” link (under “ESPN Feedback”, bottom left corner of the ESPN homepage) or direct links to columns (such as the one linked by Romenesko today) redirect to a generic “ESPN Blogs” page.

I’m not sure if this should be ascribed to malice or stupidity, but it is an interesting coincidence.

Edited to add, 9/24/2014 9:17 PM: Probably stupidity, since the Ombudsman’s page is back now. In that vein, this makes for interesting reading.

Posted in Clippings, Media, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: September 23, 2014.

September 24th, 2014

What does this have to do with this week’s TMQ? After the jump…

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Banana republicans watch: September 23, 2014.

September 23rd, 2014

The six members of the LA County Sheriff’s Department who were convicted of obstructing a FBI investigation were sentenced today.

Former Lt. Gregory Thompson was sentenced to 37 months; Lt. Stephen Leavins to 41 months; Sgt. Scott Craig to 33 months; Sgt. Maricela Long to 24 months; Deputy Gerard Smith to 21 months; and Deputy Mickey Manzo to 24 months.

(Previously.)

And a seventh LACSO deputy was convicted last week.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 3, 2014.

September 22nd, 2014

Running just a little behind: spent pretty much the entire day yesterday having fun with friends. Which I needed, but which was also not conducive to blogging.

Anyway, NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Jacksonville
Oakland
Tampa Bay

So the two teams I picked are still in the 0-16 hunt. And I’m starting to think that this could be Tampa Bay’s year, again.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: September 16, 2014.

September 18th, 2014

This week’s TMQ, after the jump…

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Posted in Clippings, Mixology, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | 2 Comments »

Tim Dog update.

September 16th, 2014

He’s apparently really most sincerely dead.

(Previously.)

Posted in Clippings, Law, Music | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 2, 2014.

September 16th, 2014

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Oakland
Kansas City
New York Football Giants
New Orleans
Tampa Bay

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Instead of actual content…

September 12th, 2014

…I give you a very silly quiz from the WP:

Is this a line from ‘The Great Gatsby’ or a New York Times profile of Lena Dunham?

I have never seen an episode of “Girls” (since I refuse to have cable). However, I still got a perfect score on the quiz. Which says something: either about my knowledge of Gatsby or about how silly this quiz actually is, I do not know.

Oh, what the heck, I’ll throw this one in, too:

http://www.lingscars.com/

I sent this to Lawrence with the suggestion that it might be worse than Bello De Soto’s website: Lawrence doesn’t think so, and I’m still trying to make up my mind.

There are so many things that push it towards legendary badness for me: the chicken walking around on the live Twitter feed (why?), the auto-play Chinese karaoke (ditto?), the spinning chat avatars, gratuitous abuse of the blink tag…

On the other hand, it hasn’t actually crashed any browser I’ve tried it on so far. On the gripping hand, it is an actually up and (apparently) functional website, as opposed to an archive of one…

Posted in Books, Clippings, Gatsby, Geek, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 11, 2014.

September 11th, 2014

Colonel Bernard F. Fisher (USAF – ret) passed away on August 16th, though his death does not appear to have been widely reported until today.

Col. Fisher (he was a major at the time) received the Medal of Honor for pulling off one of the greatest rescue missions in the history of the Vietnam War.

(I swear that I read this story in Reader’s Digest when I was a child, maybe as a “Drama In Real Life”.)

The paper of record does not seem to have deigned to note the passing of Richard “Jaws” Kiel, but the LATimes and the A/V Club have.

Edited to add: now the NYT gets around to it.

Posted in Clippings, Heroism, History, Movies, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

You want sad? I’ll give you sad.

September 10th, 2014

Very often the president would stride briskly out of the White House, with Tad at his side trying to keep up, and march four blocks down to 1207 New York Avenue, to Stuntz’s Fancy Store, a magical little toy shop. The owner, Joseph Stuntz, was a retired French soldier who carved wooden toy soldiers in a tiny back room. Sometimes Lincoln showed up alone at Stuntz’s and bought toy soldiers for Tad for Christmas. “I want to give him all the toys I did not have and all the toys I would have given the boy who went away,” Lincoln told the master toy maker.

—The Last Lincolns, page 49 (paperback).

Inside the White House, workmen were making last minute repairs, preparing the executive mansion for the new president. In a second-floor bedroom they found something unexpected — the vast collection of Tad Lincoln’s toy soldiers. These were the beautiful, hand-carved figurines Abraham Lincoln had purchased for his son at Stuntz’s toy store. They were Tad’s favorite playthings, but he had left them behind, probably because he could not bear to see them again. He was no longer the president’s son. He was just Tad Lincoln.

–ibid., page 71

Posted in Books, History | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: September 9, 2014.

September 10th, 2014

Might as well jump right into the first TMQ of the regular season…

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Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Guns, Law, Leland "Uncle" Yee, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Quote of the day

September 9th, 2014

Lincoln, Robert Todd, xi, 3, 4, 22, 210.
See also Jinxy McDeath;
Presidential Angel of Death

—index entry in Charles Lachman’s The Last Lincolns: The Rise & Fall of a Great American Family.

(Explained.)

(I just started reading Lachman’s book yesterday. For some reason, I found Chapter 2, about Willie, Tad, and the president’s relationship with the boys, really hard to get through. You want sad? That’s a sad sundae with sad sauce and chopped sad sprinkled over it.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, History | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 1, 2014.

September 9th, 2014

Like Ebola or toenail fungus, we have returned for another year of the loser update.

Are there any teams that we think have a chance of going 0-16 this year? We haven’t given this a lot of thought, but off the top of our heads, maybe Oakland or Jacksonville?

In the meantime, NFL teams that actually still have a chance to go 0-16:

New England
Cleveland
Baltimore
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
San Diego
Oakland
Kansas City
New York Football Giants
Washington
Dallas
Chicago
Green Bay
New Orleans
Tampa Bay
St. Louis

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: September 2, 2014.

September 5th, 2014

Yes, we know. We’re still a little behind. Our schedule was thrown off yesterday because we actually went “golfing”. (Technically, we went to a driving range. Yes, we know that seems odd; it was a corporate outing, and we were in it more to be social than to hit balls.)

Anyway, haiku after the jump….

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