Sunday evening driving back from Mass to Long Island, my friend and I had to stop to eat dinner and take a pee break. We drove through Stratford which was pretty dead, nothing much going on, no restaurant in sight, until I saw Main street with a small strip of stores/restaurants. It did seem like a ghost town but the potty was calling. We decided to go for Mexican.
I love my hometown, but this is SO Stratford.
Now the presence of the drum major instinct is why so many people are “joiners.” You know, there are some people who just join everything. And it’s really a quest for attention and recognition and importance. And they get names that give them that impression. So you get your groups, and they become the “Grand Patron,” and the little fellow who is henpecked at home needs a chance to be the “Most Worthy of the Most Worthy” of something. It is the drum major impulse and longing that runs the gamut of human life. And so we see it everywhere, this quest for recognition. And we join things, overjoin really, that we think that we will find that recognition in. Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. (Make it plain) In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff. (Yes) That’s the way the advertisers do it.
(via tardisontheisland)
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
President Dwight Eisenhower, in 1953
![newsweek:
“You don’t [get back to normal] very quickly. You kind of hang your head. You feel like you let down the party, you let down the people in all 50 states, your supporters. You start dissecting the campaign, what did we do wrong, was there ever a chance to win against Clinton. You sort of go over that a million times. Sometimes it keeps you awake at night.” - Bob Dole on losing a presidential election.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md1r64VqkX1qzs5cqo1_500.jpg)
“You don’t [get back to normal] very quickly. You kind of hang your head. You feel like you let down the party, you let down the people in all 50 states, your supporters. You start dissecting the campaign, what did we do wrong, was there ever a chance to win against Clinton. You sort of go over that a million times. Sometimes it keeps you awake at night.” - Bob Dole on losing a presidential election.
Subways can’t be restarted until power is restored, and power can’t be restored until all underground tunnels are dry and it appears we’re still a long way from that.
SOME IMPORTANT NOTES… 1. IF YOU ARE BEING ASKED TO EVACUATE A COASTAL LOCATION BY STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS, PLEASE DO SO. 2. IF YOU ARE RELUCTANT TO EVACUATE, AND YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO RODE OUT THE `62 STORM ON THE BARRIER ISLANDS, ASK THEM IF THEY COULD DO IT AGAIN. 3. IF YOU ARE RELUCTANT, THINK ABOUT YOUR LOVED ONES, THINK ABOUT THE EMERGENCY RESPONDERS WHO WILL BE UNABLE TO REACH YOU WHEN YOU MAKE THE PANICKED PHONE CALL TO BE RESCUED, THINK ABOUT THE RESCUE/RECOVERY TEAMS WHO WILL RESCUE YOU IF YOU ARE INJURED OR RECOVER YOUR REMAINS IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE. 4. SANDY IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS STORM. THERE WILL BE MAJOR PROPERTY DAMAGE, INJURIES ARE PROBABLY UNAVOIDABLE, BUT THE GOAL IS ZERO FATALITIES. 5. IF YOU THINK THE STORM IS OVER-HYPED AND EXAGGERATED, PLEASE ERR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION.
Hurricanes are the latest discovery of radio stations and they are being taken up in a big way. To me, Nature is continuously absorbing— that is, she is a twenty-four-hour proposition, fifty-two weeks of the year— but to radio people, Nature is an oddity tinged with malevolence and worthy of note only in her more violent moments. The radio either lets Nature alone or gives her the full treatment, as it did at the approach of the hurricane called Edna. The idea, of course, is that the radio shall perform a public service by warning people of a storm that might prove fatal; and this the radio certainly does. But another effect of the radio is to work people up to an incredible state of alarm many hours in advance of the blow, while they are still fanned by the mildest zephyrs. One of the victims of Hurricane Edna was a civil-defense worker whose heart failed him long before the wind threatened him in the least.
E.B. White, “The Eye of Edna,” which first ran in the New Yorker in September 1954 (via yayitsrob)
(via theatlantic)
Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Matt Cain. Matt Cain said to his brother, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Matt Cain attacked his brother and killed him. Then the Lord said to Matt Cain, “Where is your brother?” “I don’t know,” Matt Cain replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Matt Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Adam made love to his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, “God has granted me another child in place of Matt Cain‘s brother, since Matt Cain killed him.
Shouts of “If you’re looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills” during Taken 2 showings: 322
Moments in Taken 2 in which Liam Neeson’s makes use of said “particular set of skills”: 87
Times Liam Neeson instructs his onscreen daughter to “get out a map and a grenade” in Taken 2: 1
Your Weekend Box-Office Numbers*
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/box-office-taken-2-13506914?click=news
Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what it most truly is, is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.
Willie Mays (via firstbasefoundation)
(via mightyflynn)
We don’t want to stop people engaging in this by social media and sending updates,” he said, “But perhaps they might consider only sending urgent updates.
Ah, yes, it’s Twitter people who are the problem. Not the people who couldn’t plan television coverage when they had 6 years to do so.
I think it’s fascinating that I receive attention for what people perceive to be a level of manliness or machismo, when amongst my family of farmers and paramedics and regular Americans, I’m kind of the sissy in my family. But when I arrive in Los Angeles in the entertainment community, and I use implements like a shovel and a hammer, our society has distanced itself so far from working with its hands that those incredibly pedestrian skills are perceived as somehow being extraordinary. I think the whole thing is kind of sad, honestly, in the same way that our civilization—particularly the consumers of pop culture—has grown so used to an emasculated, bare-chested leading man that something like simply growing a mustache can impress people.
Over the years, it’s been tempting to look at Griffith’s body of work as purely sentimental or even sappy—and certainly his many albums of gospel and Christian hymns, along with his work on the Andy Griffith Show, have made him a model of a certain old-fashioned, moral majority sensibility. But as evidenced in his many movie roles, Griffith was a surprisingly layered actor, willing time and again to chuck the goodwill he’d accrued from playing the good ol’ boy and try going crazy for a while, even if audiences just wanted him to remain their bastion of small-town common sense. He was definitely that too—and he did it better than almost anyone else—but like his many characters, we’d be wise to remember today while honoring him that Andy Griffith was much smarter and capable of surprise than a lot of people ever gave him credit. Then again, that’s exactly how he snuck up on ‘em.
His love of creating, the joy he took in it whether it was drama or comedy or his music, was inspiring to grow up around. The spirit he created on the set of The Andy Griffith Show was joyful and professional all at once. It was an amazing environment. And I think it was a reflection of the way he felt about having the opportunity to create something that people could enjoy. It was always with respect and passion for the opportunity and really what it could offer people in a very unpretentious and earthy way. He felt he was always working in service of an audience he really respected and cared about. He was a great influence on me. His passing is sad. But he lived a great rich life.
Page 1 of 6
My name is 
