Could you put a portmanteau on your deck?
I'm sad that heebie passed up the chance to write "portmanteaux".
ceci n'est pas les portmantosies.
The most popular debate among liberal commenters is whether it's appropriate to make fat jokes in conjunction with his scandal. And to get more meta opinion seems to be a gendered divide as to the appropriateness.
I wasn't previously aware that this sort of thing was considered a scandal in NJ. I was under the understanding that street closings to affect voting was de rigueur in NJ.
12: That's as may be, but getting caught is a horrible breach of protocol.
You say port-man-to, I say port-mon-to.
Is causing a traffic jam an effective form of political payback? Was there an actual election being held that day and this was part of a voter suppression plan, or was the hope simply that people would blame the mayor for lanes being closed on the bridge?
For payback to work, doesn't the victim have to know that the harm was intentional? How do you communicate that? How do you communicate it to the mayor without the press finding out?
I've heard that in Chicago Mayor Richard the First used garbage collection to reward and punish neighborhoods. But he had a lot more control over the city than a Republican Governor of a blue state could ever have.
The whole plan seems really screwy to me.
There was no plan. He really is just a bully who posts bully videos to Facebook (not gonna link.) I doubt he will be caught out himself since it likely a who will rid me of this turbulent priest moment. Still, thankfully, I suspect. It ends the 2016 I am a reasonable Rethuglican nonsense.
15 --- am pretty sure the mayor knew what was going on. Which is, of course, why it blew up in Christie's face.
His real work of screwing over NJ <-->NYC transportation happened several years earlier.
11: If making fun of Chris Christie's avoirdupois is wrong, then I don't wish to reside in, or adjacent to, any area zoned for rightness.
Making fun of his weight is not punching up. It's a second cousin to creating a hostile environment. You're reinforcing a social norm that making fun of fat people is A-OK.
He's done plenty of disturbing, bullying things. You can condemn him just fine on the basis of his behavior without sniping about his appearance.
Some decent questions here.
19: That was so astonishingly evil.
I don't think people should make fun of his weight. I also think that, if Christie wasn't fat himself, he's the kind of guy who would make fun of fat people.
So would it be reasonable to say (as I saw on Twitter) that all NJ politics is about cars? "Auto insurance, tolls, Turnpike racial profiling, tunnel, gas tax", and now this.
Born to Run, Racing in the Street, Pink Cadillac...
the highway was jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive.
Are you quoting the given examples or getting pwned?
the highway was jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive trying to get the fuck home from work no thanks to Chris Christie.
I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396
Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor
She's waiting tonight down in the parking lot
Outside the Seven-Eleven store trying to get on to that goddamn bridge.
Get outta my dreams, get into my car.
11: The most popular debate among liberal commenters is whether it's appropriate to make fat jokes in conjunction with his scandal.
Apparently Glenn Beck made a remark about "Fat and Furious."
Of course it's not okay. Who are these liberal commentators debating this question? Way to give us a bad name.
He's my little juice toot.
You don't know what I got.
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I always forget just how Tommy Makem is, until I listen to him again (though I think that's the first time I've listened to him separate from the Clancy Brothers). I knew the Pete Seeger version of that song and he's better.
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Let me hear that beep beep.
And let me hear that toot toot!
This is the remix to ignition, hot and fresh from the kitchen.
"My Fellow Americans, Look At Me: Do I Look Like A Corrupt, Vengeful Bully?
(This is the definitive response to 21, btw)
Here's video of today's Rachel Maddow segment. Typically vehement, but a pretty stark and well-laid-out review of the chain of events and the paper trail.
19, 22: Glad to see people bringing that up. This current scandal is fun, what with all the Schadenfreude, but killing the ARC Tunnel was a much bigger deal. To me it demonstrated conclusively that he's actually a terrible governor concerned only about his own political prospects and willing to massively screw over his constituents to further them.
39: I'm surprised the regular media didn't publish that for real.
Am I the only one who is not caring very much about the Christie fuck-up? From what I can tell, people are blowing a gasket (and live-blogging his press conference, for god's sake, as though this is Watergate or something) because he was or is allegedly a 2016 contender, but I hadn't taken him very seriously on that front in the first place.
More interesting piece on the price new Republican state Governors are paying for their dark money antics in running their state governments. Lots of details; it looks pretty grim for them, and if corruption is to be gawked at, there it is.
Well, he was (maybe still is?) what passed for the frontrunner in a wide-open GOP field. And given that it's very likely going to be relatively favorable ground for the Republicans in 2016, it seems to make sense that political journalists and bloggers would pay close attention.
From what I can tell, people are blowing a gasket (and live-blogging his press conference, for god's sake, as though this is Watergate or something) because he was or is allegedly a 2016 contender, but I hadn't taken him very seriously on that front in the first place.
Yeah, me neither. I'm still enjoying all the attention this story is getting, though, because I hate him so much. (As I said in the thread in 43, actually.)
Plus, he'd be the fattest president since Taft. This is important stuff!
46 is me, by the way. I can't stand the man and would like to see his career sink beneath the weight of this scandal. But I can't be bothered to pay very much attention.
It's certainly something to chew on.
I don't know, there are frontrunners and there are frontrunners. Hilary Clinton, okay. Chris Christie? Way too RINO seeming to be the favored nominee, and it's way too early, and even before this scandal I didn't think New Jersey played well in Peoria. I'm slightly annoyed that such a hullabaloo is being made. There is probably some other news worth spending time on, media folks.
I hate corruption. I hate how many corrupt stories that I know of go unreported. When one finally does break open, I feel a sense of relief and glee that the bad guys don't ALWAYS get away with it. And it's nice to see a family-owned local newspaper (Bergan Record) getting some credit for helping to move the story.
I think Christie is a bully and I don't like the number of left-leaning men I know who think he's a "straight talker" and don't see his downsides. But I wouldn't care much if he just had some garden variety sex scandal. It's the corruption and the contempt for other people that make this compelling to me.
He certainly looked too much like a RINO.
Making fun of his weight is not punching up. It's a second cousin to creating a hostile environment. You're reinforcing a social norm that making fun of fat people is A-OK.
Chris Christie is the two-term governor of a corrupt and blasted wasteland where hideous mutants run wild and the living envy the dead rich Northeastern state, not a teenaged girl with self-esteem issues or some dipshit Millenial who follows Lena Dunham on Twitter.
Chris Christie is fat? Huh, I just don't see weight.
I think the best strategy is to seek out novel ad hominem attacks that don't have built in problematization.
That alliterative asshole sucks shit!
To 15 and others, this Maddow segment points out (at some length) that whereas both Christie and Mayor Sokolich say they don't recall any particular push to get Sokolich's endorsement, the "time for some traffic problems" email was sent right when Christie was even angrier than usual at the state Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, and the majority leader's district includes Fort Lee. (And from the maps it seems likely that the Fort Lee lanes would have been fed by traffic in much of the rest of the district.)
And from the maps it seems likely that the Fort Lee lanes would have been fed by traffic in much of the rest of the district.
Yeah, this is the real importance of Fort Lee: since that's where the bridge is, it's a major choke point for access to NYC for a big part of North Jersey, for which access to NYC is a really big deal.
So you're saying Chris Christie may have clogged a major artery? Dude, no fat jokes.
On the other hand, it could be that any random day you picked in 2012 you'd have a two-in-three chance of finding a press conference with Christie describing his opponents as "animals".
His real work of screwing over NJ NYC transportation happened several years earlier.
This.
So maddening, so stupid. It's been about 64 years since a bridge or tunnel was built between NYC and NJ, and obviously the traffic has increased enormously since 1950. A new tunnel is desperately needed to relieve congestion, and the construction would supply much-needed employment to how many hundreds of people?
And Christie cancelled the project because of his presidential ambitions (so ridiculous: I'm going to run on the Herbert Hoover platform...), which ambitions are, imho, hopeless to begin with. He is not a viable candidate for 2016. For all his bullying, he's just not enough of a hard-core wingnut to satisfy the base, and he's probably too "ethnic" too (of a certain sort of "white ethnicity," I mean).
61 gets it exactly right. It may be hard for people who weren't following it at the time to understand just how insane that decision was. They had already started building the damn thing, and NJ's share of the costs was pretty small, especially given how much it stood to benefit when it was complete.
I don't know if Christie is a viable candidate or not, JPJ, but as I've said before, Mitt Romney was a Mormon fatcat most famous as a legislator for bringing socialized medicine to Massachusetts. Which is to say, political parties nominate people for all kinds of different reasons, not least because they want to win. That Christie is a RINO (he's not), then, and seems a little too close to Tony Soprano for some people's comfort doesn't make him any less likely to be the GOP standard bearer in '16 than Romney was in '12.
Meanwhile, New Jersey's economy has been curiously weaker than its neighbors' during the Christie years. Imagine that.
What Wafer said. Christie not being white enough is crazy talk and the last couple Repub nominees have made no sense. McCain was obviously too godamn old and Romney's previous run had made it abundantly clear that the guy was out of touch and unlikeable as hell.
It's been about 64 years since a bridge or tunnel was built between NYC and NJ, and obviously the traffic has increased enormously since 1950. A new tunnel is desperately needed to relieve congestion, and the construction would supply much-needed employment to how many hundreds of people?
I have a long tendentious speech about this utter resignation and collapse of legislative and executive responsibility in the region. TWYRCL can lip-synch it (and has done) when we're out with unsuspecting innocents who probably don't deserve to be subjected to twenty minutes on tri-state infrastructure development shortfalls.
I always forget just how [good] Tommy Makem is, until I listen to him again (though I think that's the first time I've listened to him separate from the Clancy Brothers).
Eh, I guess I think of Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers as the standard-bearers for "trad." Irish schlock (those identical, Aran-knit jumpers/sweaters and caps, dear God). But Makem and the Clancys were very talented, no doubt. In the late 1950s, they were actually part of an alternative/folkie scene, playing in clubs in the Village and such.
This version of Reilly's Daughter is pretty good. Makem steals the show, of course.
Our gov tweeted today: "Governors causing traffic jams ensnaring thousands of drivers? We'd need a whole lot of cows to do that in Montana. http://bit.ly/1d3nHyt"
(That video was shot by one of the state's leading human rights activists. Glad to know the Gov is paying attention.)
68: The song playing in the background of that clip is a good one.
According to the runner-up rule, the 2016 GOP candidate will be Rick Santorum. Christie will be runner-up to him, then either run as his vice president in 2024 or as the runner-up candidate in 2020.
This feels unlikely, but it is defensible prognostications-and-patterns-wise.
Pointed out elsewhere that restricting traffic over a vital bridge in order to crowbar some sort of political concession is something that Christie has in common with America's favourite cuddly grandpa, Walder Frey.
This feels unlikely, but it is defensible prognostications-and-patterns-wise.
Seems reasonable to me. Candidates have to spend one election cycle building up their infrastructure and recognition, so that they can make use of it in the next election cycle.
That's why I was surprised Huckabee didn't run in 2012... he was kind of a co-runner-up with Romney in 2008. I'm wondering who will win the Huckabee-Santorum cage match. Probably Huckabee.
The interesting aspects of this particular scandal will happen out of sight (at least for a while, maybe). The press conference represented one of the most utter viscerations of formerly-trusted aides I have ever seen. He went very big with the big lie. Of course, all political operatives working for ambitious politicians understand the rules and their ultimate role as bus fodder, but I suspect this was a little much. For instance, see this Bergen Record column on now-notorious deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly--"Kelly: Image of former Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly doesn't fit resume".
For now, however, Governor Christie seems sure of his anger, equally sure of his target. "I was heartbroken," he said of Kelly. "I trusted that I was being told the truth, and I wasn't." But the governor who talked for almost two hours on Thursday said he never spoke to Bridget Anne Kelly before he had her fired. "I'm, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation at the moment," Christie said. Those may be words that Christie will come to regret.Not too mention the crony pleading the 5th at the hearing that the press conference overshadowed (plus the other guy who resigned from the Port Authority--combined salaries of $400k, zero transit experience between them, but of course, that's just how it works).
Anyway, interesting how even his remaining loyal staff and associates view this--how many still think they can ride with him to the top?
We haven't had a president from the Northeast (not counting GHWB) in 50 years. We've had few candidates: Kerry, Romney (although Romney had some Western cred), and Dukakis, and all of those are Massachusetts men. We've had someone from the mid-Atlantic states in practically never, excluding that Ike and Nixon technically had New York addresses. Then again, the leading Democrat is a New Yorker.
Please, don't make me have to vote for him.
So Anthony Weiner is the frontrunner?
Making fun of his weight is not punching up
Somebody doesn't understand how weight classes work.
We haven't had a president from the Northeast (not counting GHWB) in 50 years
And we've never had a black president (not counting Obama).
If Cruz runs, we could have our first Canadian president.
You've only had nine presidents in the last 50 years (LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama) and one of them was from the north-east. Sample size is too small to make reliable conclusions. Since 1776, no Democratic incumbent had ever managed to defeat a challenger who was taller than him: until Obama beat Romney in 2012.
http://xkcd.com/1122/
Obama didn't try to pass as a Texan. Not to say it'll never happen, but I think it's an interesting trend that I haven't seen mentioned many places. Thinking about it some more, two of the Massachusetts candidates were against incumbents (and thus to a degree sacrificial) and the third was running against the Reagan legacy.
There's no excuse for making fun of someone for being fat.
Sorry, I meant to follow 85 up by saying that it's just another way of making fun of someone for being ugly.
Assume a trolley heading down s track occupied by X number of babies and you are standing next to a person who is fat on a bridge overlooking these tracks. If the fat person is big enough to stop the trolley by blocking the tracks but you are not, then there is a value of X high enough where you'd be justified in ridiculing the fat person until he despaired of living and jumped down, blocking the trolley from the babies.
The northeast has 1/6 the population but a disproportionate number of politicians (Senators, at least). How many presidents would we need to have to have a meaningful same size? For that matter, how many male presidents would we need (since universal suffrage, say) to reliably conclude the electorate/parties are sexist? My stats skills are weak.
The northeast is overrerpesented in the senate? Compared to Alaska and Wyoming and the Dakotas?
87. Doesn't matter. The fat person has shut down the traffic to the bridge so you can't get close enough to him for him to hear your ridicule anyway.
88: The sexist thing is easily significant is you are assuming that without sexism, 50% of the presidents since 1920 would have been women.
The sexist thing is easily significant is you are assuming that without sexism, 50% of the presidents since 1920 would have been women.
It seems like the null hypothesis should be that, without sexism, 50% of the presidents since 1789 would have been women.
If you define it as Maryland, Delaware, and points northeast, it had something like 60 million people and 22% of the senators. US population is 317 mil so would expect 70 million to be fairly represented.
88, 89: Yeah, I think you might have the math wrong. overall the standard definition of the northeast is 9 states (so 18%) of senators, and about that percentage of the population. The big states are offset by the adorable "littles."
Calling anything south of the Mason-Dixon line the Northeast is deprecated with extreme prejudice.
The south has lots of extreme prejudice.
95/97: Agreed, math was probably off; was doing it on public transportation. I'm actually at at keyboard now. If we use your 9-state definition, the Northeast has 56.7 million people (17.8% of population, 18 senators). If we include Delaware (which is east of the Mason-Dixon line) we get 57.6 million (18.2%, 20 senators). With Maryland, it's 63.5 million (20.0%, 22 senators). Regardless, it's very slightly disproportion in the northeast's favor, but admittedly not enough to mention.
This seems to be the first news story in the Record from the time of the backup. Nothiung much in it, but an intersting little read for the overly involved politics/news junkie in light of ensuing developments.
My wife is from the same town as one of the folks quoted and her folks still lived there, so quite familiar with the layout. One of the "non-scandalous but fuck you anyways Chris Christie" moments was when earlier in this saga he was pretending to complain why "one town got 3 lanes". As if it was only used by the residents of that freaking town.
It's interesting to think of the Senate in this regional way. So New York shouldn't complain because it is also represented by Connecticut. Massachusetts gets at least eight senators. PA, NJ and MD share Delaware.
The senators from Oklahoma and Kansas might as well be from Texas.
Then the only real disproportion is away from California and towards the Great Plains.
Mason and Dixon surveyed the arc that is the border between DE and PA.
The Northeast ought to have more states -- 3 or 4 at least. No, 6 more (splitting PA into 3, NY into 4, MA in two). But no, you people are all hung up on your overstuffed polities . . .
NJ was two colonies for a while -- they should revert to two states.
They could be called Suburban Philly and Suburban New York.
96: I just parsed this; despite the name, I'm not a she. I post infrequently, but the male privilege probably shows.
101: Yeah, California gets screwed as usual. Why haven't they split up at San Luis Obispo yet? Control of textbook standards?
102: True, they did survey the Circle, but they also surveyed the north/south DE/MD border. And Wikipedia highlights it like the rest of the line, so dammit, I'm going to call it the Mason-Dixon line. If we're going to pull in such an archaic measure of regional boundaries, we might as well acknowledge that Delaware had significant cultural ties to Pennsylvania at the time.
I would approve of that except that then the PA Turnpike would be even worse. The border would probably be drawn along one of the ridgelines that is tunneled under. What if the Republican governor of Mittelpennsylvania decides to vengefully shut down a tunnel lane?
105.1: Sorry. Either way, you're not a "The".
No need for apology. I assume I'll gain the The when I'm ennobled.
107: why is it dalriata and not Dalriada, btw?
Wait, they're variant spellings. Ignore 108.
Yeah--just that I like the modern Irish Gaelic spelling more than the Scottish Gaelic or Old Irish variants. Purely aesthetic, even thought it's probably the least historically relevant form.
105.last: Original tunnels were only two lanes. Huge backups (became 4 lanes in the '60s). The Laurel Hill one was bypassed inbstead; I always wanted to drive through it, know a few people who have been able to since.
Hard as it is for me to admit, the PA Turnpike is getting better. Other than the exorbitant tools, the continuing crimes of Breezewwod and Carlisle non-limited-acccess interchanges, building mostly useless mini-turnpikes all over the place, and the vague remnants of when they Agent Oranged the trees along the right-of-way in the late '70s.
Yes. I drove clear to Philadelphia and back last year. The road was good for nearly the whole way.
The Great Plains and mountain states (defined as OK, KS, NE, SD, ND, MT, WY, CO, NM, AZ, UT, ID, NV) have 10.5% of the population and 26% of the Senate seats.
The PA Turnpike used to be known as a slow road?!?!?
I agree that it is getting better, even if it's still a patronage machine. The extra lanes west of the Allegheny Tunnel and east of the Blue Mountain Tunnel are appreciated and I look forward to greater expansion (with the understanding that due to some of the bridges some areas are going to be two lane for a long while). The Northeast Extension around Scranton/Wilkes-Barre is one of my favorite highways to drive on.
Breezewood is horrible in every way and I'm surprised doesn't lead to more fatalities; the Carlisle transfer to 81 is annoying but I'll put up with it; the 99 exit is a huge safety risk every holiday weekend and should be enlarged somehow to accommodate the student traffic. But, yeah, otherwise, mostly better.
I'd love to go through the abandoned tunnels, but have never found the time to. Is the Laurel Hill one actually still accessible without off-roading?
When it opened there was a brief period of time with no speed limits. The 70. Then 35 (for the war).
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Take note of Update 2. We must not allow a mineshaft gap, comrades.
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Yes. I drove clear to Philadelphia and back last year. The road was good for nearly the whole way.
If I read my turnpike toll ticket correctly on our recent Cle/Pgh trip, it costs a rather shocking amount in tolls to make the drive to Philly and back these days.
114: JP's right about the tunnels. The seven(!) tunnels through the mountains were originally one lane each way; they were appropriated abandoned railroad tunnels. By the sixties, twenty years after it opened, this was hugely insufficient for traffic load so they paired four of the tunnels and routed around the other three.
It was still probably much faster than taking 22 across the state.
117: Is that really referring to us? I'm gullible and couldn't actually find the comment.
Also, is a mineshaft gap like a thigh gap? Are we getting fitter?
115.last: I think there is a "bad" road that goees there. The one person I know who did it recently was doing the Christmas Bird Count in that area, and got stuck at the bottom of a snowy backroad north of Rt. 31, so they followed the backroad to its end and came the tunnel. Somehow they ended up going through it, but not sure if they were able to just do that, or somehow got hold of turnpike folks. Wikipedia says: The tunnel is currently used by Chip Ganassi Racing for high-speed race car aerodynamic testing. The tunnel has been repaved, equipped with climate control, safety equipment, and data collection systems. The tunnel was first used for testing in 2004 to develop the G-Force Indycar
Is that really referring to us?
No.
122: This video from 2006 looks like it was open at at least one end then (although there may have been gates before that).
Apparently the state police enforce the no-trespassing signs there. Guess I'll have to check out the further away abandoned tunnels. Maybe sometime over the summer.
In this day and age the "Northeast" clearly includes Maryland and Delaware and any argument to the contrary is ridiculous. It also clearly extends into Northern VA but there's still enough of the rest of VA to exclude the state as a whole.
From my very brief time knowing something about PA politics more than 15 years ago, the road work stuff was amazing -- the head of the State Senate Transportation committee was a drunk buffoon whose brother just happened to be a major road contractor in Western PA, and guess what everything was under construction all the time. In this and other areas California still has its progressive-era legacy; CalTrans is huge and sometimes insane, but not old timey corrupt in that good ole East Coast way.
Eh, I guess I think of Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers as the standard-bearers for "trad." Irish schlock (those identical, Aran-knit jumpers/sweaters and caps, dear God).
That's exactly why I forget how good they are.
In the late 1950s, they were actually part of an alternative/folkie scene, playing in clubs in the Village and such.
I have the impression that in later life, after their fame had started to recede, that the Clancy Brothers went back to being more traditional. I'd need to check that.
Makem steals the show, of course.
He does "charming rogue" well.
I swear I have never heard all these bad things about the PA Turnpike before. Since 1990 its image has been "An expressway, but expensive and with less exits".
It's now $1.60 for Pittsburgh to Irwin, which is about ten miles. I think most of this is because they are using the turnpike revenue to fund other infrastructure without increasing taxes.
...without increasing taxes as much, anyway. The gasoline tax increase is much appreciated.
126: Recently, we had a Turnpike Commission director who lived in Florida and came in-state perhaps perhaps twice over his year-ish tenure. If I recall correctly, he was somebody in the state government's father-in-law.
Here we are. We also had another Commission member resign recently due to his proximity to a bid-rigging scandal.
One of the Turnpike Comission's little political plays back in the day was to KO the originally planned extension of Route 28 as a freeway all the way up to I-80. You know, because other than the economic benefit for Pittsburgh in general and the economically-depressed communities of the Allegheny Valley in particular, it might siphon some traffic away from the turnpike.
I think most of this is because they are using the turnpike revenue to fund other infrastructure without increasing taxes.
Wasn't selling the PA Turnpike to Quatar on the table at one point? I guess that didn't happen?
133: Seriously? I have them to blame for the insanity (fun, but still insane) that is trans-Kittanning Route 28? Argh.
It's now $1.60 for Pittsburgh to Irwin, which is about ten miles. I think most of this is because they are using the turnpike revenue to fund other infrastructure without increasing taxes.
I remember there was a plan a few years ago to turn another highway into a toll road (81?) which was rejected in what seemed like an insane outburst of sentiment. "Another turnpike? No! Anything but that!" So instead they doubled the tolls on the real turnpike.
They wanted to do it to 80. The feds didn't like the idea.
They wanted to make I-80 a toll road, but the feds said go fuck yourself.
Pwned, but I added useless profanity.
136: Presumably you are thinking of I-80. PA Turnpike folks explain it here.
As long as I'm not the most pwned of all.
Being pwned is a state of mind up with which I will not put.
Regarding old abandoned stuff, locally we've got the Blue Ridge Tunnel, currently being converted into a rail trail. That's definitely good, because people have been accessing it for years, and sometimes it's full of water, which is probably dangerous.
Still no word on what they're going to do with the old abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium.
The feds position on I-80 was actually pretty justified. I don't understand why (or if) the the state thought it would work.
Not a tunnel, but the Bergen Arches in Jersey City is nice little bit of abandoned turf. Bill Benzon takes a lot of photos there.
Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers as the standard-bearers for "trad." Irish schlock
Gosh. Trad, yes. A little much with the costuming (though a sweater is pretty mild compared to the costumes for other groups of that time). But no Danny Boy schlock. They came in with the folkie wave and were seen as a breath of fresh air. (Early on, my mother saw them in venues where the audience barely outnumbered the Clancys.) Funny, the Pogues and such were seen the same way in their era.
I laughed at this at first, but now it actually scares me. It should be disqualifying for the presidency. If this guy will shut down the world's busiest bridge for days just because some nobody mayor didn't endorse him in an election he was going to win anyway, what will he do when he has control of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and IRS?
The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Maken @ Carnegie Hall album makes excellent road trip with small children listening fare, very rowdy and super fun to sing along to. Also the Harry Belafonte CH recording and there is some bonus naughty language thrilling to 8 year old boys.
The knitwear was ridiculous if for no other than thermal reasons, cables and stage lights are a horrifying mix. Amazing they all didn't collapse if heat stroke, and the stench must have been epic.
Was once arm twisted into knitting a sample hat for a ballet performance despite protesting it would be far too hot, but the costume cabal insisted and as I can't sew worth a damn and therefore depend on them for child's costume I knit it up. Was intensely relieved when ballet master rejected it at rehearsal: "ees eemoossible! No, ees not possible! Zey vill boil!"
the stench must have been epic.
Bet the cigarette smoke helped there.
Relevant. Possibly it doesn't say much good about my priorities that I remember this.
I was really terrified and fascinated by this Clancy Brothers album cover when I was a child. Theirs may have been the first concert I ever attended, but I don't really remember and apparently slept through most of it.
149.1: I've been looking for some fun sing-a-long albums, so I will have to check those two out.
149.2: The knit hat/warmth thing is actually one of the biggest reasons (besides sheer laziness) that I've been putting off crocheting my Super Grover helmet. I will be seriously annoyed if I put all that effort into making the damn thing only to find its too hot to wear at any comic-cons.
I wouldn't worry too much J, Robot - ballet is pretty far out there on the physics exertion scale and a cotton crochet cap should be fine in even a crowded convention center so long as you don't start trying to leap about in fantastical ways.
On the other hand,what am I thinking undermining someone's procrastination justification! How rude and unfeeling of me.
re: CH recordings from back in the day, the sound is typically is quite good. Worth a listen if you run across them
Thorn that is quite the album cover! Yikes.
J, Robot, ditto on crochet being less warm than knitting on the whole. Also, you're using acrylic or an acrylic blend, right? I wouldn't think that would be outrageously hot, but I've also never made a Super Grover helmet.
That super Grover hat is seriously bad-ass.
(Though this is perhaps colored by the fact that Grover was always my favorite, besides Mr. Snuffleupagus.)
I am using an acrylic yarn, so maybe it won't be too bad. The first time I attempted Super Grover cosplay--NYCC--I had a light plastic helmet that kept falling off (probably because it was kid-sized, and I bought it at the dollar store). Will put pics in the flickr pool.
Wasn't Grover's helmet always falling off? So, you'd be more authentic, but then again, I guess a total pain to have to keep picking it up.
I was really terrified and fascinated by this Clancy Brothers album cover when I was a child.
Hey, me too! (Probably about 20 years before you did.)
Album covers blighting my youth typically featured scitmar-esque false eyelashes of highly improbable length on Yugoslavian sopranos in tight closeups with stupendous bosoms barely contained by chartreuse satin. Suspect there was a 5 year plan for their production.
I am very happy that people are interested in talking about the Clancy brothers.
The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Maken @ Carnegie Hall album makes excellent road trip with small children listening fare
The 1962 Carnegie Hall album or the 1963 Carnegie Hall album?
I will check once home, but both are from the era of surprisingly good audio! Its got Johnson's Motor Car on it.
Its got Johnson's Motor Car on it.
That's both of them.
Now I have "Fare thee well, Enniskillin," stuck in my head.
Sadly continuing to edit this answer that needs to be filed Monday should take care of it. Eventually.
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I can't post this on fb because two of my friends posted the link there, but this kind of yuppie collect-'em-all "discover unspoiled Namibia/Albania/INDIANAPOLIS???" shit is why I have a complex about travel.
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172. Keir is going to just love that.
I was wondering if that came off as obnoxious or as helpful, given that the Christchurch local economy could probably use the tourism income.
Nice to see we didn't make the list at all.
Heh. I can spare you a trip. Tahoe doesn't look like that this year.
174 oh yeah we could use the money. But also yeah it is a bit I dunno disaster tourism-y.
Everyone I know on facebook is all "yay we're in the NYT" which, like, colonial cringe much, and also, ugh, yeah.
Also I kinda hate the whole "transitional city" "post-disaster aesthetics" "Gap FIller" thing.
PS: don't go to Revival bar. It is a dive. Go to the Darkroom, or Smash Palace. They are much better transitional city drinking times.
The water turn green or something?
47. Siem Reap, Cambodia
Telling New York Times readers to take a holiday in Cambodia isn't as much fun as it was in 1980.
I'd like to go to ChCh someday. I just need someone to hire me for a case where we have to take a deposition or look at some documents there or something. Anybody want to sue somebody?
There's not been much snow is what I think she means. Rather dry out here. Have recently been in Napa and Redding, both were bone dry.
Holy shit, even by the unbelievably abysmal standards of NYT reporting on Los Angeles (especially inexcusable since a huge number of contributors live here) this is bad:
Gone is the musty, lifeless, only-open-for-Kings-hockey-games reputation of downtown Los Angeles. While the museums in this corner of the city are thriving (the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art is nearby), the growing dynamism of downtown is the food scene. Most notable is the Grand Central Market, an arcade of over 30 of the best food vendors in the city.
I count at least two things wrong with each of those sentences, but "only open for Kings hockey games" is the most stunning.
Have to say whenever I work out of the firm's LA office downtown seems comically dullsville compared to SF. That's probably mostly due to lack of foot traffic and that I have zero clue as to LA's happening spots.
And LA taxi drivers are near universally lame. That one I'm confident of.
Office downtown LA is very lame (and distinct from the new cooler downtown). What's so stunningly weird about the sentence is that the Kings play at the same place as a little team no one has heard of called the fucking LAKERS and that both teams only moved downtown in about 2000 when DTLA was already starting to liven up.
I'd like to go to ChCh someday.
I hope real estate people will start calling it ChaCha.
102: The Northeast ought to have more states -- 3 or 4 at least. No, 6 more (splitting PA into 3, NY into 4, MA in two). But no, you people are all hung up on your overstuffed polities . . .
This thread is too long for me to check whether this has been mentioned, but someone put together a map of the U.S. with states redrawn by population not long ago. Pretty fascinating.
Can we get a campaign going to call the scandal "Standstill Bridgegate"?
That would certainly be better than "Bridgeghazi."
Okay, urple, I checked. So, an LP was released that was mostly tracks from the '63 concert (with a few from the '62 concert mixed in, maybe? not sure). Then later a CD was issued with the complete '62 and '63 concerts. As is really often the case (see reissue CD of Dr. John LP), the editing on the LP was pretty fine, so that the LP track list is wonderful whilst the whole thing starts to pale a bit. Well, Dr. John never really pales, but still the general principle holds.
Also excellent live at CH recordings:
- Monk & Coltrane, '57
- Harry Belafonte, '59/'60
- Wavers, '55
And of course a ton of classical stuff. Great audio on all of them (using a very small number of mikes, mixing basically provided by the musicians moving around in relationship to the mikes, lovely yummy sound). But the ones listed above are all excellent for road trips with the younger set! Well, maybe not the Monk & Coltrane ... on the other hand, gotta start 'em off on the right path young.
- Wavers, '55
I hear that as some British Islands version of the group.
(It is a great album.)
192 had me looking for the "Like" button.
You'd think my typing would improve when not using a phone mais non!
Chris Christie's Control Room.
(Click that! It's a comic/gif by the delightful Christoph Niemann.)
I clicked. It's fantastic. Or it was, until it got to the one of the person leaning his seat back into the knees of the gentleman traveling behind him. Too soon! Hurtful! Triggering! Racist!
Also, Ariel Sharon is dead. You must all stop masturbating at once.
Bill Kristol knows who the true anti-semite is (not linking):
Ariel Sharon--a man whose deeds as soldier, general, cabinet minister, and prime minister were decisive in the history of modern Israel, a soldier-statesman of true historical significance, a larger-than-life figure whose like we're unlikely to see again--dies, and Barack Obama issues a statement that would be appropriate if one were recognizing the death of a pedestrian functionary who had routinely served as the insignificant leader of a random country.
of true historical significance, a larger-than-life figure whose like we're unlikely to see again
Such criteria. Stalin.
I don't get the last one in the gif with the subway.
I am sure you will enjoy reading the arcana available in the Wikipedia entry for the G train!
But the idea is that the G train clusterfuck is the one calamity that cannot be laid at his feet.
