As long as we’re thinking about astronauts today, Wired.com reminds us that the first extra-terrestrial round of golf was played on this date back in 1971 by Alan Shepard of Apollo 14. So-so quality YouTube video of the event below the fold:
When you live in Utah, you get used to hearing weird news stories that have some kind of local connection. From Howard Hughes’ “Mormon Mafia” and the tale of Melvin Dummar in the ’70s to the White Salamander bombings and cold fusion kerfuffle in the ’80s to anything related to the polygamist colonies of the Four Corners area in the last ten years, the more bizarre the story, the more likely it either happened here or has some kind of link to my home state.
Today’s weirdest news story is no exception to the rule, but it is really a wild tale: astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is being charged with attempted murder after she drove 900 miles from Houston to Orlando while wearing a diaper (so she wouldn’t have to stop for potty breaks), intending to kidnap or otherwise harm a rival for a fellow astronaut’s affections. Nowak, who is a married mother of three and who flew on shuttle Discovery last summer, accosted Colleen Shipman in an airport parking lot while disguised in a wig and trench coat and carrying pepper spray, a mallet, a BB gun, gloves, a folding knife, rubber tubing, and trash bags. She later told police she only wanted to “scare Ms. Shipman into talking with her.” Um, yeah… you always go loaded for bear when you just want to talk.
According to the Orlando Sentinal, these are likely “the first-ever felony charges filed on an active-duty astronaut.”
Weird indeed. But what’s the Utah connection, you’re wondering? Well, as it happens, Nowak is a cousin of Tony Caputo, the owner of one of Salt Lake’s most popular eateries and a bit of a local celebrity in his own right. I imagine he’s screening his phone calls today…
You know, this whole blogging thing really amazes me sometimes. I’ve got no illusions about the size of my audience here; I’m an absolute small-timer writing only for friends and family, and I’m not entirely kidding when I talk about having only three Loyal Readers. Still, I’ve got a presence out there in the world because of this silly blog, and connections are being made because of it, tiny audience or no.
For example, a few weeks ago I was contacted by a total stranger named Anna Biller . She’s an LA filmmaker who had a movie that was going to be running here in The SLC as part of TromaDance, one of several renegade film festivals that run concurrently with Robert Redford’s big Sundance event. Anna was looking for information about Brewvies, the venue where her film would be playing, and Simple Tricks popped up in her googling because I’ve mentioned the place in a couple of entries. We ended up having quite a nice conversation via e-mail; regretfully, I wasn’t able to take her up on her invitation to meet her in person. But still, a connection was made that never would’ve happened only a few years ago, before this technology and this blogging phenemenon came along.
And then there’s the strange story of Chenopup and Brian Greenberg. You may recall that these two guys, regular commenters here on Simple Tricks, got into a debate over whether a local Salt Lake pizzeria could produce a pie that would be equal to what you find in New York. The Great Simple Tricks Pizza Challenge never did materialize, but Cheno was in New York on business recently, and, well… I’ll let Brian tell tell the rest.
Simple Tricks and Nonsense… it’s both a blog, and a social networking tool! Next up, I’ll be introducing floor-wax functionality, too…
I’ve just been reading about a massive new development project that’s planned for Lehi, Utah, a town just south of where I grew up, in the next valley over. Up until a few years ago, Lehi was a bucolic farming community where the largest structure of any kind was the old roller mill where Kevin Bacon and his friends staged their high-school dance in the movie Footloose. I used to love driving down that way in my big Ford Galaxie, past the sweet-smelling fields along narrow two-lane (and in some cases, one-lane) roads that were so infrequently travelled that no one had bothered to maintain the lane stripes.
As with so many of the places I knew as a teenager and young adult, however, that Lehi is gone forever. Nowadays Lehi is another anonymous suburban wasteland with some of the most congested traffic conditions along the Wasatch Front (the result of a whole bunch of new residents trying to get to work along those narrow old roads), and it’s about to get worse. The planned development is described as an “85-acre ‘high-adventure’ residential and retail development” that will include the tallest building in Utah, a 450-foot, five-star hotel and convention center. I have no idea what a “high-adventure” residential and retail development is supposed to be, and I can’t imagine a less likely place to plant a skyscraper than the wind-swept bluff that divides the Salt Lake Valley from Utah Valley, but here’s the really agonizing part: this entire project is being designed by none other than Frank Gehry.
If you’ve been hanging around this place for any length of time, you’ve probably got a pretty good handle on my tastes in entertainment. I like pulp adventures, science fiction movies, superhero comics, horror novels, and British comedy. In the simplest possible terms, I’m a geek. But aside from the social stigma of daring to like such things, what is the connection between them? Why is the core appeal of all these various genres?
A blogger named John Seavey has a pretty good idea:
Ah, man, here’s another one: the writer Sidney Sheldon died Tuesday, aged 89. I’ve never read any of his novels, but I Dream of Jeannie, the ridiculous sitcom he created back in the 1965, has always been a favorite of mine. Growing up, it was part of my afternoon block of “must-see” syndicated re-runs, which also included (on a rotating basis over the years) Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, Hogan’s Heroes, Bewitched (that other sitcom about a hot blonde with magical powers), Get Smart, Laugh In, and, of course, Star Trek. As a little kid, I grooved on the slapstick of whatever trouble Majors Nelson and Healey got themselves into. When I got a little older, my interest in Jeannie became a little more, ahem, adult in nature. Let’s just say that, If nothing else, Sheldon deserves our respect for bringing us the sight of Barbara Eden in diaphanous pants.
Ah, the glories of a misspent youth…
Here’s a joke I just received from The Girlfriend’s dad that I thought was pretty funnny:
A C-130 was flying on a mission when a cocky F-16 pilot flew up next to him.
The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, “Watch this!” and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb! He finished up with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier.
The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that.
The C-130 pilot said, “That was impressive, but watch this!”
The C-130 droned along for about five minutes, and then the C-130 pilot came back on and asked, “What did you think of that?”
Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, “What the hell did you do?”
The C-130 pilot chuckled. “I stood up, stretched my legs, went to the back, took a leak, then got a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.”
Ah, military pilot humor…
I just learned from Scalzi that the columnist Molly Ivins has died. According to her obit, it was breast cancer and she was 62, about the same age as my mom.
This is really shaping up to be a crappy day.
In an occupation filled with self-important, mean-spirited blowhards who aren’t nearly as funny or smart as they think they are, Molly Ivins was a class act. Yes, she was unabashedly liberal, and yes, she was unsparing in her criticism of those politicians she thought were in the wrong, but she was also a sharp thinker who was motivated more by common sense and heartfelt populism than cynical partisanship. She took plenty of shots at Bill Clinton during his time in office, too. And she was damn funny when she did it. I’m going to miss her columns, which so often seemed to say (in folksier language, of course) exactly what I was thinking and feeling but couldn’t quite articulate.
I’m sure everyone who writes about Molly today will link to these items as well, but here is a tribute to her by her editor at Creator’s Syndicate, from which you can navigate to all her 2006 columns, and here is her final column, a protest against the president’s “surge” plan. Personally, however, I much preferred an earlier one that included this cri de couer:
What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn’t supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?
It’s a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there. Since 1215, civil authorities have been obligated to tell people with what they are charged if they’re arrested. This administration has done away with rights first enshrined in the Magna Carta nearly 800 years ago, and we’ve let them do it. [Emphasis hers.]
Yep, there she goes again, saying what I’ve been thinking in better language than I’ve managed to summon on my own.
I’ve just been reading about the guerilla marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force that went horribly wrong yesterday, and I honestly can’t decide who is more foolish: the marketers who didn’t stop to consider the ultra-paranoid times in which we live before they started planting mysterious devices all over urban settings, or the ultra-paranoid public who apparently believe that al-Qaeda has started decorating its bombs with blinking LED cartoon characters.
I really hate the 21st Century sometimes…
Sean Means over at the Trib reports that the American Film Institute is sending out ballots to various film-industry and scholar types so it can update its list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. Hard to believe it’s already been ten years since the first list came out… refer to yesterday’s post about the future being right around the corner and how did it get here so quickly?
In any event, this repolling is intended to take into consideration the movies made in the ten years since the original AFI list came out. Means included the nominees in his post, which I’ll now reprint here, along with this question for the reader: [Do these] movie[s] belong with the classics?