A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Richard Pryor was one of the funniest performers ever to grace this world. He died today at 65. Condolences to his family.
When I was a kid, I used to laugh like a retard over this album’s cover. Amy & I will watch Live at the Sunset Strip tonight in commemoration.
Radley “The Agitator” Balko continues reporting on the Cory Maye case, with even more harrowing and messed-up details in the case of a man who’s on death row.
Here’s his initial post about the case.
Update: TalkLeft is proposing a legal fund to help get Cory Maye off death row. I’m all for that, and will post about it as soon as I get any news on the subject.
The House of Representatives passed a tax cut yesterday for the Gulf Coast, to help redevelopment after Hurricanes Katrina & Rita. The “Gulf Opportunity Zone” includes tax breaks to help rebuilding in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, including new bond authority and incentives to rebuild houses.
However, according to the Washington Post:
Bowing to pressure from Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and other social conservatives, GOP leaders exempted casinos, country clubs, hot tub facilities, liquor stores, massage parlors, golf courses, racetracks and tanning salons from the tax breaks, exemptions the administration initially opposed.
My first inclination, of course, is to goof on the concept that massage parlors and country clubs got tagged as immoral by a right-wing rep. Unfortunately, Wolf’s name stuck in my memory, so I had to look up where I’d heard of him before.
Turns out he was the rep who introduced the bill condemning the genocide in Sudan. I wrote about him briefly last year. He’s been insanely out in front on this issue for a while now.
So, while I’m fully prepared to goof on his idiot moralizing and his contemptible idea of who “deserves” tax breaks, I have to be fair and say that he’s also trying to save a ton of helpless people in Sudan.
But tanning salons?
I kept reciting variations on the subject line above while reading this article from Radley Balko’s blog.
Sure, the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2000, but at least they haven’t fallen apart like Manchester United.
Official VM buddy Tom S. got a jump on the holidays by sending me and Amy a passel of presents! We couldn’t resist, and opened ’em up last night! It’s great, having a good friend who lives far enough away that he can’t rely on the USPS for timely delivery!
But now I feel like a heel for getting him a half-assed gift this year. Sigh. At least I have time to come up with something else.
(Update: Sez the official VM fiancee, “You’re not going to post what he got us?”
“I thought it would be tacky,” sez I.
We concluded that I should never trust my judgement on tackiness.
So Tom got us a pair of DVDs (Local Hero and Mick Foley’s Greatest Hits and Misses), three Joss Whedon-inspired books (Seven Seasons of Buffy, Five Seasons of Angel, and Finding Serenity), a 1940s copy of Ring Lardner’s You Know Me Al, and a gift certificate at the website of Roger Langridge, one of my favorite cartoonists. I’ll probably use the latter to buy a page of Roger’s original art.
Tom sez, “Don’t thank me! As my younger brother pointed out during wrapping, ‘So you’re basically getting them books you can read on their john, DVDs you can watch on their TV, and a piece of art that will probably go in the guest room.’
“‘And your point is. . .?'”)
Amy: Have you given any thought to what sort of wedding ring you want?
Gil: . . .
or maybe . . .
I mean, I figure that Legion flight-ring’s going to be a tough find this season. . .
Ahoy, ahoy, dear reader! After nearly 3 years of the same design and platform for Virtual Memories, I’ve decided to move over to WordPress! I’m hoping this new model will allow me to post entries more smoothly, and give me more flexibility for adding functions to the blog (as is, you can now search through all the contents really easily).
In the next week or so, I’ll be done reformatting the 700-odd previous posts, cleaning up broken links, and putting in new features like e-mail notification, an Amazon database, flickr integration, and whatever other neat/useful stuff I can find. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to migrate over the comments from past posts, so I’ll need you guys to start commenting anew. I’ll try to keep up my end with some entertaining/infuriating posts.
I hope you like the new look.
This is not on my Amazon wishlist. Check out the “Number of discs” line and laugh over the idea that it’s TWO-HUNDRED AND TWELVE DISCS!
That said, I do know people who would likely fork over the dosh for it. All $2,800 or so.