Dick Martin Laughed Out

This blogging falls into the category of time quickly passing and feeling old. This morning's surprise was to learn that Dick Martin was 86 when he died yesterday after a long bout of respiratory problems.

I was just a young whippersnapper when Dick Martin became known to pretty much everyone in America due to his super hit TV show known as Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. There had been nothing on TV like Laugh-In prior to its debut in 1968.

It was the 1960s, the Hippie era of Love-Ins and Be-Ins. Hence, Laugh-In. Laugh-In had a psychedelic look to it and seemed very fast paced compared to what we were used to seeing on TV. Dick Martin and Dan Rowan were sort of the hosts, sort of observing the nuttiness around them with Dan Rowan being the straight man to Dick Martin's not so straight man. Laugh-In is where America first met Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin. And Tiny Tim and his Tiptoe Through the Tulips song.

Laugh-In brought all sortsa things to American culture. Catch phrases like "Verrrry Interesting!" "I didn't know that." "Easy for you to say!" "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall!" "Go to your room!" "You bet your sweet bippy!" "Here comes de' Judge!" "Beautiful downtown Burbank!" "Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?" "I just wanna swing!" "Blow in my ear and I'll follow you anywhere!" "Now that's a no-no!" "The devil made me do it!"

And the most famous Laugh-In catch phrase of all obviously is "Sock it to me!" Hubert Humphrey believed he lost to Nixon because Hubert declined being on Laugh-In, while Nixon agreed and to the amusement of the nation we got to see and hear Nixon say "Sock it to me?", turning the phrase into a quizzical question.

Dick Martin's sidekick, Dan Rowan, died in 1987. Over 20 years ago. Time flies way too fast.

Heading to New York via Athens

It is Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend. I'm in Texas. I've not done anything new and different in way too long. Or gone somewhere I've not been.

So, I think I'll take off for Athens and then go on to New York. I've not been to Athens before. It's supposed to be scenic.

Athens is about 30 miles south of Canton. Canton is about 100 miles east of Fort Worth. New York is about 13 miles east of Athens, near Lake Palestine.

So, what's the attraction in going to the Texas version of New York City you ask? Well, there's this Guided Adventure Tour thing with 6 ziplines called NY TX Zip Line Adventures. "Sky-High Thrills---Texas Style." I've long thought ziplines look fun, ever since seeing them on The Amazing Race.

From the NY Tex Zip Line Adventures website----

"Leave your fears behind..............as you experience the thrill of a lifetime at New York, Texas ZipLine Adventures. You will be on a guided adventure tour with 6 ziplines topped off with some of the most breathtaking 30-plus mile views of the East Texas Countryside. Your zipline adventure will take you soaring through towering pines, hardwoods and high above the rocky hillside of one of the highest elevations in East Texas."

Doesn't that sound fun? The New York area of Texas is known as the Piney Woods Region. It's the part of Texas that to me looks the most like parts of Western Washington, hilly and green with trees.

Hillary & the RFK Assassination

A brouhaha erupted on Friday over some unfortunate Hillary words. Campaigning in South Dakota Hillary was meeting with the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader when she was questioned about why she was staying in the race.

Hillary: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just, I don't understand it," she said in regards to abandoning the race.

Well, I sort of understand the reason for the brouhaha, what with raising the spectre of Barack Obama possibly being assassinated and thus, with her still in the race, I guess that would mean she would get the nomination by default. Or so her thinking goes.

I'd figured that Hillary was gonna keep plugging away gambling on the hope that gaffe prone Obama would commit a Super Gaffe between now and August, something that the supportive media would not be able to ignore, unlike when Obama said multiple times, with no sense of the obvious wrongness, that over 10,000 people had died in a tornado that struck a small Kansas town. Or recently when Obama let it be known he did not know how many states were in America when he said he'd been to all 57 states during his campaign. Does he think some of the Canadian provinces are states? Has anyone asked him.

Now, with Hillary's, to me, minor gaffe, this was not the first time she said the RFK thing. Back in March, in an interview in TIME magazine, she said pretty much the exact same thing. No brouhaha erupted that time though. Why? I can't help but wonder.

Impeach Bush?

On Friday, in front of the White House, presidential wannabe, Ralph Nader, called for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Ralph said George has, "dishonored the White House and brought a pattern of waste."

A meager crowd of supporters held signs like "Resign Bush-Cheney, Like Nixon-Agnew" and "From Katrina to Iraq, Colossal Failure."

Nader claimed Bush and Cheney are currently committing 5 impeachable offenses on a daily basis.

1) Criminal use of offense against Iraq.
2) Condoned and approved systematic torture.
3) Arresting thousands of Americans, then denying them habeas corpus and violating attorney/client privilege.
4) Signing 800 signing statements, precluding the president from actually having to follow the laws he signs.
5) The systematic spying on Americans without judicial approval.

I don't quite get #3. Thousands of Americans have been arrested? Why was I not informed of this? Who are they? Why were they arrested?

During my time on the planet there have been 2 impeachment attempts. Richard Nixon got in trouble being involved in a break-in at the Watergate. And then plotting to cover up the crime. No one died due to Watergate as far as I know. There were some other impeachment issues with Nixon other than Watergate, but none of those would have brought on impeachment hearings on their own without the Watergate Scandal. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.

Bill Clinton was impeached over lying under oath regarding his nasty shenanigans with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. The Clinton impeachment, in hindsight, seems terribly stupid and wrong. Though it was sadly entertaining at the time. And, again, no one died due to Clinton's little fib while under oath.

And now you have our current president. Believed by the majority of Americans to be woefully incompetent. Incompetence is not an impeachable offense. Maybe it should be. Of Nader's 5 impeachable offenses the only one that seems impeachment worthy is the Iraq debacle. As in why has there been no investigation into all the misinformation that was spewed by the administration to justify our first war ever where we were not the victims of an aggression, but were instead the aggressor?

In the words of Gerald Ford, his first spoken after taking over for Nixon, come next January it will be a happy day for America when our long national nightmare is over. If impeachment could hasten that day, that would likely be a good thing.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Before yesterday I had not watched a movie in a theater this century. That would still be true had I not come into possession of a free movie pass that included a bucket of popcorn with a large Pepsi.

And so, in the same way I suffered Six Flags over Texas, twice, due to free passes, I suffered the new Indiana Jones movie.

Suffer, I say, because it was like being stuck on a multi-hour roller coaster ride. I gave up roller coasters for life back in 2000.

I enjoyed, for the most part, the previous Indiana Jones movies, particularly the first one, Raiders of the Lost Ark. I did not care for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom for much the same reason Indian Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wore out its welcome, that being both being way too frenetic. And ridiculous.

The new Indiana Jones movie is set in 1957, so for villains we get Soviet KGB baddies instead of evil Nazis, with the KGB baddies led by Irina Spalko, aka Cate Blanchett. The movie starts in Nevada where Mr. Jones miraculously survives a nuclear bomb blast. This after he'd discovered a crate holding the remains of an ET.

With the arrival of ET, early on in the movie, I had concerns with where the movie was heading. Where it was heading turned out to be Peru, after a guy named Mutt Williams, aka Shia LaBeouf, a shortie with a Brandoesque puffed up pompadour, tells Indy that an old colleague, Harold Oxley, aka John Hurt, has gone missing whilst looking for a crystal skull in Peru where he is not missing, but is locked up, nutsy kookoo, in a Peru insane asylum.

The powers of the skull were explained, but it was far too convoluted for me to remember. Suffice to say it had something to do with some long ago Conquistador and it has some supposed mystical powers that the Soviets want to acquire, much like the Nazis' desire for that Lost Ark.

Indy gets help from his girlfriend from the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Marion Ravenwood, aka Karen Allen. She's aged fairly well over the last 20 so years. During one of the many laborious, yet well done vehicle chases, Marion reveals to Indy that Mutt is his son. Didn't see that one coming.

Eventually Mr. Jones and his crew end up in a Mayan temple with 13 crystal skeletons. one missing its head. There's triple cross by a character I should have mentioned earlier, an old Indiana crony named Mac, who is a double agent pretending to work for the Soviets and then when they are in the Mayan temple Mac reveals he really is working for the Soviets, making him a triple agent.

Then the KGB baddie, Spalko, puts the crystal skull on the skeleton with the missing head. The skeleton then begins to talk. In an ancient Mayan dialect which Indy is able to translate. Something about a great gift. Spalko demands to know more, so the skeleton starts shooting info into her eyes. Which causes her to shake.

A portal to another dimension opens over the room. Oxley regains his sanity and matter of factly explains that the aliens travel between dimensions and taught the Mayans their advanced technology (the Mayans had advanced technology? What? TVs and airplanes?). Indy, Marion and their son, Mutt, narrowly escape the temple as the Soviet triple agent, Mac, gets sucked to another world.

The skeletons then morph into a single alien being that overflows the KGB baddie, Spalko, with too much knowledge, killing her. (I've always believed knowing too much was deadly)

And then as the temple falls apart, a flying saucer rises above the rubble and takes off into space. (I'm not making this up)

Indiana Jones is then made Associate Dean of the Archaeology Department. And marries Marion. ET did not attend the wedding.

Yet One More Fort Worth Star-Telegram Basher

Currently 65% of my thousands of readers want me to continue bashing the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Lord knows it deserves it. And Lord knows I love to be obliging. But sometimes I am just not able to muster a good healthy level of umbrage over things that are very umbrage-worthy.

So, today I will use a Guest Star-Telegram Basher. Before I get to that, I must tell you that awhile back the Startlegram (misspelling intended, that's what locals often call this paper) had a makeover to supposedly improve the paper's readability. This changed the look of the paper and made it more in line with its content. As in it now it both looks and reads like a very small town newspaper, not the newspaper of record of a city of almost 700,000 people.

And then a few months ago, as the Startlegram continued to bleed money, and lose subscribers, they did a cost cutting move. They cut back on features, axed columns and fired employees, including their liaison with their readers, David House. These moves made the paper even thinner and even faster to read. As in there is much less to read.

And so, in today's Startlegram, in a Letter to the Editor, a reader from Arlington voiced his disdain regarding the Startlegram's plummeting quality.

Here is that letter-----

Voice of Reason Lost

I think the Star-Telegram has a death wish.

First, the management dumbed down and tarted up the format so that it looks like the My Weekly Reader that I read in elementary school.

Then, in an apparent effort to attract young readers, it emasculated the opinions section and changed another section heading from “Business” to “Work and Money.” Why not change from “Sports” to “Fun and Games”?

I find myself more and more reading opinions on The New York Times’ Web site. I didn’t think of doing that before the “new and improved” Star-Telegram debuted.

You’ve offended serious readers and haven’t attracted new, young readers. So what do you do when circulation nose-dives? Cut payroll costs.

This resulted in the final blow to mature, serious readers: Management, in an effort to appease the bean-counters, terminated several senior staff members, notably ombudsman David House.

David was a loyal supporter of the Star-Telegram. I had many conversations with him about the direction that the paper was taking, and he always defended management’s decisions. Too bad the loyalty didn’t cut both ways.

His was a voice of reason and one to whom many readers expressed their concerns. He was a good reader advocate and will be sorely missed by readers who actually read the paper.

— Brian Fels, Arlington

David Cook Wins American Idol

It is late. I am seeing if I can semi-coherently do this blogging thing when it's bedtime. Likely not.

So, despite earlier saying I was not going to watch the finale of American Idol, I did catch the last 5 minutes.

One of the reasons I wasn't interested in watching was the so over the top pimping of the little high school David guy, last name Archeletta. On Tuesday the judges made it seem like the other David, Cook, was doggy doo-doo. And that Archeletta was a shoo-in. That seemed the consensus everywhere.

I remember thinking if there is any sense of good ol' American Justice in the viewing public this should piss them off and those fools who actually vote will vote for the Cook option. Cook is the one I earlier said, early on in the season, that he reminded me of one of my runty, ugly cousins.

And it's not just me who, early on, did not see anything positive about David Cook. That obnoxious, though amusing, Brit, Simon Cowell, early on told the one who used to look like my runty, ugly cousin, that he had no charisma.

Well, the one who used to look like my runty, ugly cousin is the winner, by millions of those pseudo votes which determine the winner, you know, votes where people can vote over and over again.

David Archelleta seemed to take the loss well. His dad, not so well.

Dallas Cowboy Scandal Feedback

A week or so I YouTubed a video of the current state of the Dallas Cowboy stadium construction, interspersed with photos of the rubble of all the homes, apartments and businesses destroyed by Jerry Jones and the City of Arlington's Bulldozer Blitzkrieg in the worst case of eminent domain abuse in American history.

YouTube lets viewers make comments about the videos. The Dallas Cowboy Stadium video has gotten several. I'll share a few and stick the video in question down below.

COMMENT #1
"Corporate greed eh? do you have any idea how much revinue is going to be brought in the entire region by that stadium? can you even comprehend the economic impact to the town? You are a propagnda extremist and not very well educated."

(Is this a Canadian I can't help but wonder? What with that "eh?" at the end of his first sentence. I've been bitch slapped by a Canadian? That hurts. The poor Cheesehead seems unaware that the existing Cowboy stadium, in Irving, has not brought any great impact to that town. The area around the current Cowboy stadium is pretty much devoid of development. This person is right about one thing though, as in it is pretty obvious I am not very well educated.)

COMMENT #2 (responding to the Canadian's comment)
"I'd guess this spelling/grammar challenged fool, with a simplistic concept of the economic impact of a football stadium, has been told many a time that he/she is not very well educated. Or just plain stupid."

COMMENT #3
"I'm as disgusted as you are about what was done in Arlington to get the Cowboys a new stadium. Don't these morons realize this isn't how this type thing is done in the rest of the country? Eminent domain exists so that the public can take private land for the public good. Like roads, hospitals and schools. Not for football stadiums. A person should be secure in their home and should be removed from their home for only the best of reasons."

COMMENT #4 (from one of Jerry Jones' victims)
"Thank you for this. My family were among the Dallas Cowboy's and Jerry Jones victims. We were forced out of our home of over 25 years. I will never forgive or forget this. A stadium could have been built without doing this to people. There is plenty of open land in Arlington. The shame of this will forever stain the town of Arlington and the Dallas Cowboys with Jerry Jones answering to God, in the unlikely chance that that it is to heaven he is going when he dies."

Hamilton Jordan, Ted Kennedy, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars & Hillary

Once again this morning I was freshly reminded that I am old. I was surprised to learn Jimmy Carter's chief of staff and long time aide, Hamilton Jordan, was dead after a long battle against lymphoma and prostate cancer. He was 63.

When Hamilton Jordan was in the national spotlight he was a young guy, in his early 30s, which is how I still remembered him. The Carter years don't seem all that long ago. But they were.

And then we have Ted Kennedy's Saturday's hospitalization for a suspected stroke turn into him having the worst type of brain cancer, that being malignant glioma, with a very bleak prognosis and limited treatment options. Some are lamenting this being the latest case of the Kennedy curse. I think not. Teddy Kennedy has lived a long life. It is a sad thing though. I hope he bucks the odds.

Moving to the frivolous. Last night I managed to watch pretty much the entire hour of the American Idol semi-finale. I don't care who wins, either David, Archeletta or Cook. I don't think I can make it through the 2 hour finale tonight. I don't think I could make it through it even if I cared who won. Or if I thought it mattered.

Kristi Yamaguchi won Dancing with the Stars last night. I did not watch it, though I sort of like that show. I like watching people do something that I'm pretty sure I could not do, no matter how much training or practice I put in. But there was no way I was going to watch that show's inflated 2 hour finale.

Moving from the ridiculous to the semi-sublime. Hillary beat Obama badly in Kentucky. While Obama beat Hillary not so badly in Oregon. Obama is very near having enough delegates to win the nomination, needing about 77 more. Hillary vowed last night to continue til every possible voter, of the remaining few, has the chance to vote for her.

I wish Hillary as good a luck as she deserves. Same to Ted Kennedy. Lesser so to the 2 finalists on American Idol, I just don't care this year. Did I care other years? I don't remember.

The Bachelorette 4: Ugh

No. That is not me surrounded by a bevy of beauties. It's someone named Brad Womack. I learned of Brad Womack last night when I lasted about 20 minutes into ABC's The Bachelorette 4.

Apparently Brad Womack is the only bachelor on one of the Bachelor shows to reject all the women. Of his rejectees, the last one rejected, was DeAnna Pappas. In 6 short weeks, with cameras running, and relatively little time together, she'd decided she was madly in love with this Womack guy. And ready to marry him.

Last night it seemed to me that Brad Womack was made out to be some sort of Bad Man who'd broken not only DeAnna's heart, but the hearts of her family and friends and also all of America. I mean those few in America who watched. Now, to me, this Womack guy is the most sane person to have been on one of these type shows. I mean, if after only 6 weeks I had some woman, I barely knew, professing her crazy love for me, and desire to marry me, I'd search for the nearest hill to run to.

Poor DeAnna is sure she is going to find true love. Again. In six weeks. Because this time she is in charge.

You may remember that yesterday we learned that this show is loaded with Texans. Thus giving us in Texas a reason to watch. Well, before I bailed, it appeared to me that the Texas connections were ringers for an early boot. As in they seemed to have some serious personality issues. The Texans were not alone in that regard.

I hope DeAnna does not get her heart broken again. Although, apparently that makes for good television. I won't be watching.