He swiped a Camry or Sentry each day, just to drive to his bay-bay:
Whenever Antonio Moreno wanted to see his girlfriend, police say, he'd jump in a car and drive right over.But there was a problem. The 26 cars Moreno jumped into all belonged to someone else, according to authorities who arrested the 31-year-old near his Inglewood home on Wednesday. They said he was behind the wheel of a 1987 Toyota Camry when they found him.
Since January, police said, Moreno had been stealing Toyota Camrys and Nissan Sentras by using a simple device that starts Japanese cars of a certain age. Acting on a tip, members of a regional auto-theft task force took him into custody.
So clever, so full of beautiful acts of service, and now so cruelly cut down by both the law and love:
His girlfriend, who was not arrested, told authorities she had been trying to dump him.
How sad.
While I can't stand the song "Magic Bus," here's the excellent "Pictures of Lily":
There's also a sweet video taken during the original recording of the song if you'd like to have a look.
At last, the cowardly month is over. John-Mark Derbysteyn-like Six Million Dollar Man reflexes for everybody until 11 months hence!
I'm just supposed to take the word of some officials that 8,600 gallons of fiery fuel is enough to collapse a freeway? Please:
A stretch of highway near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed Sunday after a gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames, a loss that officials said could leave freeways leading to one of the nation's busiest spans in near paralysis at rush hour. Officials said traffic will be disrupted for weeks, if not months.Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported in the 3:45 a.m. crash, which officials said could have been deadly had it occurred at a busier time.
Sounds like BS to me. I wonder what really happened?
Time to rethink this:
A two-year campaign to raise $30 million for a permanent memorial for the victims of Flight 93 has fallen far short of its goal, and organizers say they are shifting their strategy to close the gap.Only $11 million has been collected in the capital campaign for the $58 million memorial, a drive started by groups including relatives of the 40 passengers and crew members killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
What's not mentioned in the article is the design (and redesign) was controversial, alienating many who would have normally subscribed to the fund. I don't find groves of trees and wind chimes particularly evocative in any case -- it's weak tea, with emotions being diffused and diluted among acres. Perhaps our next memorial will be an installation that wafts a series of scents meant to lead us through a progression of moods as we ride along on a moving sidewalk laid out in figure eights (chosen by the designer to symbolize eternity, of course).
I really miss the permanence, power, and beauty of a single sculpture that draws the eye and focuses the emotions.
My former brother-in-law had gone missing. After many days searching, he was found dead yesterday at the age of 54. Born of a good family and blessed with loving parents, drugs and alcohol ate up his life like locusts going through a field:
Efforts continue in the search for a North Fort Myers man missing since last weekend. Marlin James Clapham, 54, of Bartholomew Drive in Suncoast Estates, was last seen by a neighbor walking barefoot north away from his home last Sunday.Clapham, who goes by the nickname "Mick", is an outpatient of Hope Hospice and is without medication critical to his well-being.
He is described as 6-feet 4-inches, 170 pounds, with shoulder length gray hair and brown eyes. Clapham has numerous tattoos on his arms.
So far, ground and air searches including use of the sheriff's office K-9’s have not been successful.
Condolences to those left behind.
Does first base ever foil a batter? Some reporters might think so:
Disabled man foils robberA homeless man attempted to rob a wheelchair-bound man in front of the Collier County Courthouse Thursday, sheriff officials said.
The suspect, Juan Guerrerra Gonzalez, 34, allegedly approached the disabled man at around noon and asked for money. The victim, Moises Ramos, 38, of Naples and his caregiver Corley Browning told Gonzalez they didn’t have any money.
According to the Collier County Sheriff’s Office Gonzalez allegedly grabbed Ramos’ backpack and began pulling on it. Browning said he had to pull the backpack, strapped around Ramos’ neck, away from the suspect to prevent Ramos from choking.
The suspect let go of the backpack and tried to get away on his bicycle but fell off several times.
Witnesses flagged down a deputy patrolling the government center, at 3301 Tamiami Trail East.
I guess you can say in a way this disabled gentleman did foil the robbery: he used his head. If he'd been headless the backpack would have slipped off his neck at the first tug.
Good job to the writer for keeping things positive to the point of silliness.
Three state senators, including a felon, this week voted against a measure that would make a lawmaker's lying to the Legislature punishable by law:
First, it was no gifts. Now comes no lying.Is it going to be any fun to be a state lawmaker any more?
Lying to the Legislature would be a felony, thanks to a proposal approved Thursday by the state Senate that would require lobbyists, legislative staff members and lawmakers themselves to speak under oath.
''We're not above the law,'' said Alex Villalobos, a Miami Republican and the bill's sponsor.
Only members of the public would be exempt.
A similar bill by Miami Republican Rep. Marcelo Llorente also is moving through the House.
But plans to apply the bill to lawmakers didn't go over well with some senators, who spent more than a half hour debating the need for the so-called ''Truth in Government Act.'' Three Democrats, Mandy Dawson of Fort Lauderdale, Al Lawson of Tallahassee and Gary Siplin of Orlando, voted against the bill, which passed 36-3.
Mandy and Gary have been in legal hot water so often they have permanent prune fingers. Senator Lawson should now bear scrutiny not only for his vote but also for his decision to lie down in between the two most flea-ridden mutts in Tallahassee.
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice.)
Did I really wear out my copy of T. Rex's The Slider as a youth? Oh dear; yes, I guess I did. When advertisers mining the past for nuggets of pop culture to attach to a product get to Glam, we'll be hearing this one in a car commercial. Marc Bolan's shiny blue plastic overalls probably won't be making a comeback though:
She counted the apples:
In an e-mail titled "Fecal Matter on Fort Lauderdale Beach,'' a Fort Lauderdale woman wrote to a Broward County Commissioner that on April 4 at 4:30 p.m. she had just finished a 45-minute ocean swim.The e-mail went on to say: "Two Fort Lauderdale Police Officers on Horseback rode from A1A and Sebastian (Street) to the shoreline where they allowed their horses to defecate about 2 dozen balls of fecal matter, then turned and rode back to the street. No attempt was made to clean said fecal matter. I was appalled, disgusted, and fear for my and the health of all who enjoy our beautiful beach of Fort Lauderdale.''
If she thought about what she absorbed during her 45-minute swim, she'd lose her mind. Those gentle behemoths she probably saw on the horizon as they floated along in their territorial waters make enormous contributions to the briny waves slapping the shores of Ft. Lauderdale. Whales do too, but their bowels aren't so fecund as those of cruise ships.
If grand juries are famous for their willingness to indict a perfectly nice ham sandwich, it must have been quick work for them to strike this rancid item from the menu:
A grand jury indicted three current and former Atlanta police officers in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a drug raid, according to documents unsealed today.At least one of the men, retired officer Gregg Junnier, planned to plead guilty later today to reduced state charges and also admit to a single federal charge, his attorney told The Associated Press.
Plainclothes police officers with a no-knock warrant raided Kathryn Johnston's home on Nov. 21 after an informant said he had bought drugs there, according to police. When the men burst in without warning, Johnston fired at them, wounding three, and they fired back, killing her.
Junnier, 40, and Officer J.R. Smith, 35, were charged in the indictment with felony murder, violation of oath by a public officer, criminal solicitation, burglary, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and making false statements.
Officer Arthur Tesler, 40, was charged with violation of oath by a public officer, making false statements and false imprisonment under color of legal process.
Fulton County district attorney's spokeswoman Lyn Vaughn said a 1 p.m. plea hearing was scheduled for Junnier and Smith.
Junnier's attorney, Rand Csehy, said Junnier agreed to a deal in which he would plead guilty to manslaughter, violation of oath, criminal solicitation and making false statements. In federal court, he will plead to conspiracy to violate a person's civil rights resulting in death, though federal charges have not been filed, Csehy said.
Smith's attorney, John Garland, declined to discuss his client's intended plea.
Junnier retired from the police department in January; Tesler and Smith are on administrative leave. All three are expected to face federal charges.
Tesler's attorney, William McKenney, said his client testified before the grand jury and expects to go to trial.
He is "very relieved" not to face murder charges, McKenney said, "but we're concerned about the three charges."
The raid was set up after narcotics officers said an informant had claimed there was cocaine in the home.When the officers burst in without announcing their presence, police say Johnston fired a handgun and officers returned fire. An autopsy report revealed Johnston was shot five or six times in the chest, arms, legs and feet. Initially, the medical examiner's office said Johnston was 88, while her relatives insisted she was 92. Public officials now agree she was 92.
The case raised serious questions about no-knock warrants and whether the officers followed proper procedures.
Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington asked the FBI to lead a multi-agency probe into the shootout. He also announced policy changes to require the department to drug-test its nearly 1,800 officers and mandate that top supervisors sign off on narcotics operations and no-knock warrants.
To get the warrant, officers told a magistrate judge that an undercover informant had told them Johnston's home had surveillance cameras monitored carefully by a drug dealer named "Sam."
After the shooting, a man claiming to be the informant told a television station that he never purchased drugs there, prompting Pennington to admit he was uncertain whether the suspected drug dealer actually existed.
This is the best news I've heard in a while. Clean that department out; get justice for that Kathryn Johnston; and establish policies that make it unlikely that something like this will happen in the future.
***
Previous postings:
Murder Charges On The Way For Atlanta No-Knock Officers
Playing Dirty
Atlanta No-Knock Death
Deadly Warrant II
The Kathryn Johnston Thanksgiving Open-House Thread
Death Warrant
It seems like Shaolin monks are always killing someone then fleeing. It's a bad habit:
Charlotte County deputies are searching for a Shaolin monk who is a suspect in a Port Charlotte suspicious death.Deputies responded Wednesday around 3:15 p.m. to a call at 2080 Rickover St. in Port Charlotte, and ended up finding one person dead.
Now deputies are seacrhing for Scott Huss, who is listed in religious directors as a Shaolin monk. He was last seen in a 2006 PT Cruiser and is considered dangerous.
The property belongs to the Temple of the Tao, according to property records.
He was driving west; count on it. And he'll be bringing justice with him.
This party looks like so much fun. Do y'all think Travis and Jonathan are making fun of us, their very own people? If they are, I'm laughing too hard to be mad.
Mountain Zone has a fascinating interview with my favorite guy who's ever been in touch with his lizard brain, Everest expedition multiple left-for-deader Beck Weathers. The interview is a few years old, but as it is with people who've been distilled down to essence, his observations are timeless. He's on my short list of people I would love to hear speak.
Duane's guitars had some bad habits: seems they were often seen with a cig and a bottle.
Wail, on, Skydog!
Some nice person's been working on the Love Valley footage of "Whipping Post." Could those fellows have beat feet off the stage any quicker than they did here?
*Dymphna at Gates of Vienna has a great article (with pics) on the latest clothing crackdown in Iran. Madonna imagines she's daring; these gals are the real deal.
*In a great video shot by embedded journalist and general man-about-town INDC Bill, a Marine is shown using the word "synergy." He also says interesting things about Iraq.
*Chotoshops from Ace. The best thing to do with any of these self-centered murderous creeps is to mock them. It's beneficial that anybody thinking of being the next big Mr. Massacre Guy know he's going to be photoshopped wearing a strap-on.
*Jim Treacher gives a timeline of the VT murders and a much-needed sense of perspective. It goes like this: a) quit blaming those students for not bringing guns to class and b) quit talking out of your ass about how you'd have handled things differently were you face to face with a murderer. I swear, this must be the same batch of people who were bagging on Shawn Hornbeck. Some people were in the shit, others just talk it. And these typing tough guys wouldn't be so tough if they were looking into the eyes of a monster instead of at their computer monitor.
And
*Displaying how she's evolved environmentally, Sheryl Crow debuts a remake of one of her old hits over at Six Meat Buffet.
And if Keebler baked mayhem instead of cookies, they'd put their factory right here. Full article after the jump; it's got to be read to be believed:
A former convict wanted in his wife’s shooting death has evaded authorities in south-central Missouri for more than a month, at one time possibly hiding in a hollowed-out tree trunk.About 100 officers have been searching for Neldon Neal since his wife was shot March 13.
Officers believe he has stayed within miles of his home, and they think he hid for days inside a hollow tree trunk in Mark Twain National Forest.
But authorities also said Neal had help, and have charged four women with allegedly providing him with food, beer, soap and an occasional shower.
“It’s a big game to a lot of them,” Texas County Sheriff Carl Watson said.
Neal, 60, has strong ties to the rural Ozark county, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Sunday. And he has had several run-ins with the law on charges including kidnapping, burglary and robbery.
He’s also known for receiving a court judgment that could have made him a millionaire, though some of his family spent much of it before he got out of prison, said his former lawyer.
Recently, Neal had lived with his wife, Judy Lewis, in a dilapidated trailer.
Authorities say on March 13, the unemployed Neal and a drinking buddy returned to the trailer. His wife, Lewis’ former daughter-in-law and her 2-year-old daughter were there.
The sheriff said a fight broke out and Lewis, 51, was shot. Neal fled.
The former daughter-in-law and the drinking buddy drove Lewis to a gas station. The station’s owner, Linda Openshaw, said she dialed 911 but she said it was clear Lewis was already dead.
The Neal family, which includes 10 children, is well-known in Texas County, home to 23,000 people and Missouri’s largest county at more than 1,100 square miles.
Neldon Neal’s criminal record stretches back to 1965, the sheriff said. His most recent prison term came in 1998 with a 15-year term for stealing beer. While jailed in Miller County, Neal was beaten by deputies, said Kansas City attorney Don Roberson, who was hired by Neal to sue for damages.
His $1 million award was settled for $500,000. After expenses, Neal received a check for about $275,000. His family handled the proceeds, and the money was mostly gone by the time Neal was released from prison early for good behavior in October 2005, Roberson said.
Neal returned to Roby and married Lewis. But their relationship was marred by violence. Late last year, an argument resulted in Neal being shot in the shoulder by his wife’s grown son. Neal was stitched up by a friend, the sheriff said. Lewis’ son was fatally shot by police in Richardson, Texas, in early March.
Since Lewis’ shooting, authorities have scoured the area for Neal. Some in the county are locking their doors for the first time. Others keep their guns close at hand. The profusion of ready weapons led to the accidental fatal shooting of a 9-year-old boy by his brother, authorities say.
Authorities say they got one clue in the search for Neal after the fire department reported three young boys had burned down a shed to stay warm. The heat inside their trailer was broken, and their mother was not at home.
The boys told deputies their mother and another woman had visited Neal in the forest, Watson said. Two of the boys were Neal’s grandchildren.
Four women, all of whom knew each other, were charged with hindering prosecution. They told authorities they bought Neal food and beer and gave him a tent and sleeping bag, according to court documents.
They also revealed that Neal was holed up inside a hollow tree. In the national forest, the log is about 30 feet long and appears to have toppled years ago. Neal told the women he was hiding inside the log as a team of searchers rode by him on four-wheelers.
The sheriff said while extra patrols are gone, he and his deputies continue to look for Neal. They’ll find him, he said, but he doesn’t know when.
I'm happy to see that Sheriff Gary Toelke of Franklin County, Missouri is one of the eight finalists for the yearly All Star award from "America's Most Wanted." His amazing 3 for 2 success record in retrieving abducted children rates whatever rewards are out there.
Voting is open and can be done once a day. I'm sure the families of Abby Woods, Ben Ownby, and Shawn Hornbeck have been adding to his tally. The on-the-ball Toelke has replaced the bumbling, incompetent Chief Moose as what springs to mind when I think of a local lawman in the national spotlight.
Also, check out the new look for Shawn's parents in this interview. It's amazing how nice you can look once you don't have to spend all your time and money searching for your missing kid anymore. That, and worry no longer gnawing on your guts like a weasel makes for a refreshed look.
Updates on the Ownby/Hornbeck case include a grand jury in Shawn's home county of Washington indicting his kidnapper Michael Devlin for charges in addition to previously-filed charges of kidnapping with a weapon. The additional crimes they found evidence for were sex crimes and attempted murder by suffocation. This means that after taking the boy to St. Louis after the kidnapping, he brought him back to the boy's home county, probably to the wooded property Devlin owns there. It's at that time that the attempted murder took place. By an account by a family friend on Facebook, the incident followed an escape attempt that concluded with Devlin suffocating the then 11-year-old boy into unconsciousness. The new indictments, combined with the indictments from Franklin and St. Louis Counties, and the Federal indictments, put Devlin's potential jail time now hovering somewhere around 2,000 years; to be followed-up, of course, by all eternity in Hell.
***
Never Assume Anything
New House For Shawn
More Fun Times With The Pizzaman
Fun Times With The Pizzaman
Shades Of Tania
Exclusive! On Your Next Oprah
Everyone's On The 'Net
Missing No Longer
Let's shake on it:
I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming. Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating. One of my favorites is in the area of forest conservation which we heavily rely on for oxygen. I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.
She's right you know and I'll lay odds that woman will leave her mark on the way Americans go to the toilet. But why is she being so generous to woman about urination when we could easily go squareless? I hope for the sake of our planet's future Sheryl has reduced the toll she exacts on this big blue marble by switching to patting dry with her underwear. If she's wasting our valuable natural resources on her crotch, I'm going to be pissed. As for defecation, her three squares and one skidmark is spot on. Or in Michael Moore's case, three squares and one 18-wheeler laying rubber. As long as the print's not made of carbon, it's all good.
She's blogging while on tour in the South, so look for her next post to be from the University of Alabama. It'll be all about the scads of TP wasted on menstruation.
It's nice to see common sense has prevailed at the Minneapolis airport:
Taxi drivers who refuse service to travelers carrying alcohol at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport face tougher penalties despite protests from Muslim cabbies who sought a compromise for religious reasons, officials said Monday.The Metropolitan Airports Commission said new penalties were needed to ensure customers get safe and reliable taxi service, and voted to suspend a driver's airport taxi license for 30 days for the first offense and revoke it for two years for a second offense. The new penalties take effect May 11.
Airport officials say more than 70 percent of the cabbies at the airport are Muslim, and many of them say Islamic law forbids them from giving rides to people carrying alcohol.
Under the old rules, a driver who refused to transport someone carrying alcohol would be told to go to the back of the taxicab line. Airport officials said that since January 2002, there have been more than 4,800 instances of drivers' refusing to take alcohol-carrying travelers.
Commissioners said the old rules didn't prevent customers from being stranded at the curb or -- as reported in a few cases -- dropped off before their destination after drivers learned of their alcohol on board.
The next good idea: suspend the licenses of cretinous cabdriving imports who refuse to transport citizens reliant on seeing-eye dogs.
***
Previous postings:
Backlash
Blind Justice
Taxi!
Once the camera moves off the young chickie bluegrass groupie dancing for the fellows on stage, this video has a nice intro to a very good boy mando player (Florida state champion, in fact) named Josh Pinkham. And while we're looking at young mandoliners, this seven-year old went on to make a fine career for himself, though I'm not really sure that his voice ever deepened.
Last week, the only Amish man ever convicted of murder had a tearful reunion with family. Unfortunately the tears were all on one side:
An Amish man convicted in the grisly 1993 disembowelment murder of his wife returned to Crawford County last week and seized his 17-year-old daughter, Mary, after his son hijacked the horse-drawn buggy in which she was riding, family members said.Edward Gingerich spent five years in prison after he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter but mentally ill for stomping his wife, Katie, to death in the family home and then cutting out her organs. He is being sought in the seizure, which took place along a rural road Wednesday night.
State police are attempting to locate the girl.
Friends of the Gingerich family said Mary was traveling with an aunt near the family's home in the Amish settlement of Brownhill, Crawford County, when an older brother leapt into the buggy and took the reins. According to a court document filed seeking the return of the girl, the brother then drove the buggy to a barn owned by Mr. Gingerich's brother, Atlee.
The door to the barn was locked, trapping the aunt inside and Mary Gingerich was forced to leave in a waiting car with her father.
I hope the girl makes it out of this alive. It's a mystery why anyone would have assisted a man with his background in a kidnapping.
Still filled with sorrow over her memories of church burnings in Arkansas, a young politician discovers that she must steel her tender soul if she wants to pander like the big boys:
A candidate for Southern Oregon University student body president has admitted she was lying when she claimed she had a cousin who was killed in the Virginia Tech shootings.Brandi Freeman spoke at a candlelight vigil held by students at the university campus in Ashland Thursday night.
With tears streaming down her face, she had claimed she had lost her cousin in the shootings that left 33 dead at Virginia Tech.
By Friday, Freeman admitted to making up the story to appeal to voters for the student body election next week.
Her excuse for the performance? Bipolar disorder. In first grade I once went to school with my uninjured arm in a sling. My excuse? Attention-seeking disorder. Unable to maintain my nerve however, I wimped out after only a few minutes - thus ending my political career before it even began. Later on as I watched a neck-brace-clad Ted Kennedy make his first public appearance post-Chappaquiddick, I lifted my milk glass in salute to his masterful demonstration of the high-stakes employment of an unnecessary orthopedic device.
His village besieged by a bloodthirsty and merciless horde armed with catapults, one brave saurian led a counter-attack that routed the enemy:
A crocodile shot to death in south China during a search for a missing 9-year-old student was found to contain the child's remains, the official Xinhua News Agency said.The crocodile was shot Saturday in a park in Beihai, a city in the Guangxi region, by investigators looking for the missing child. Investigators confirmed that human remains found in the reptile were that of the student, the report said.
The child, surnamed Liu, disappeared Friday after Liu and three other children climbed over the fence around a pool in the park that had been used to stage crocodile shows, Xinhua said.
"The children shot the animals with catapults and beat them with wooden sticks," the agency said. "One of the irritated crocodiles bit Liu's clothes and dragged him into water, where he was eaten by a swarm of crocodiles."
In the end, his courage cost him his life as a reorganized and reinforced foe arrived to exact a terrible revenge. But even as the executioners approached, their feet shuffling like muffled dinner bells, he went forth to meet them.
It's disappointing to see Matt Apuzzo's AP article making the rounds today that has the narrative of the Virginia Tech mass murderer as victim. He wasn't -- at least no more than any other person who ever existed has been. He'd been writing the script of his life for a long time and input from any characters other than himself wasn't necessary. As Gavin De Becker noted in his book "The Gift of Fear", a scriptwriter asks the questions, answers them for you, then gets mad when he doesn't like what he hears. His "manifesto" is no different from any of the dozens of others we've seen in the aftermath of workplace violence: it offers a justification for the unjustifiable and presents as unpreventable something that was entirely within his control. A violent psychopath doesn't need you to do anything to him before he hates you, and wouldn't appreciate a kindness from you if one were offered. Whatever you do is suspect because it's being filtered through a twisted mind.
Don't waste any more sympathy on this creep than you would for a workplace murderer. There's nothing magical that this happened on a school campus. Cho was a grown man who went postal.
A different and more accurate narrative has been put forth by Cho's grandfather:
US university campus killer Cho Seung-hui "deserved to die", his grandfather was reported to have said in UK papers today.Kim Hyang-Sik, 82, told the Mirror Cho was a "trouble-causer who has destroyed his mother's life".
Speaking from his South Korean home, Kim said: "Son of a bitch. It serves him right he died with his victims".
A son of a bitch who destroyed a lot of people's lives.
Due to all the coverage, particularly the airing of Cho's videos, and the new narrative of Cho as a po'baby, expect in the next few weeks more attacks. These incidents come in clusters and feed off each other. Cho referenced the Columbine killers; the next killer will reference Cho.
And as more interviews are done with his family, expect a picture to emerge of a spooky man who'd been a spooky little kid.
Evidently Beetlejuice lives in N. Dakota and drives a truck:
A semi driver whose truck rolled on its side, dumping a load of specialty sunflower seeds, says it happened when he tried to check on a couple of doughnuts.Merv Bontrager of Milo said he looked away briefly from an off-ramp on which he was driving Tuesday morning and ended up rolling his rig on the southeast edge of Minot.
It seemed to happen in slow motion, he said.
"I just looked down briefly on the floor where I had thrown a couple of doughnuts I was going to eat later, to see where they had landed," Bontrager said.
"It was too late. I couldn't bring it (the truck) back, and started going over. That's all it took," he said.
Try not to eat unclean food if you can help it. I think the worst I've encountered was during a second scoop into a box of Ritz Bits. I came up with part of what looked to be the head from my elementary school janitor's string mop. My curiosity piqued, I checked inside the box for an elderly black man carrying a bag of Vomsorb, but found only more mop head and about a half a box-worth of dirty Ritz Bits, only a few of which were salvageable.
I saw a go-kart and a bald headed person leaning over, and it was my wife.
Timeless words from a timeless story:
It appeared to be simply a freak accident.A family's night out at a go-kart raceway in Pierce County turned tragic after a woman was scalped by the go-kart she was driving.
But now, Faye Brown's family is learning what happened to her isn't so rare, and they're trying to prevent it from happening again.
...
Faye's ponytail had gotten caught in the spinning rear axle of the go-kart – her scalp ripped from her head.What was left is gruesome to describe.
"Her bare bone skull was exposed," says Greg. "It was gone, all the way down to the skull."
Faye, whose long black mane was her pride and joy, has spent the last four months going through skin grafts and physical therapy for whiplash.
"Her long hair was her crowning glory," says Greg. "It was her identity and to have so violently ripped off her head, she could have been killed in this thing."
I hope when he gets on the witness stand he continues stressing his wife's deep affinity with her hair and its place at the core of her being. Juries award big damages for issues like that. He might even want to add a pendent claim for loss of consortium with his wife's hair while they're at it. I'd continue to downplay the loss of the living skin and flesh under the hair and the painful and expensive grafting, because frankly, the dry medical stuff just puts people to sleep.
I guess some people just shouldn't be in charge of selecting the joke for the weekly display:
Some Ocala residents are angered by a joke posted on the sign of a local fencing business.The sign in front of Hercules Fence Company reads "What has four wheels and flies? A dead cripple in a wheelchair."
Carol Terrillion had polio as a child and uses a motorized wheelchair. She is also the project coordinator at Ocala's Center for Independent Living.
Terrillion and others protested in front of the business Tuesday and demanded the sign be taken down.
The store's commercial manager told protesters the message would come down Friday.
The manager said the store's owner -- Paul Buchkovich -- decided which weekly jokes to post.
The company also drew criticism in 2005 with another joke posted on its sign.
During Violence Awareness Week, its sign said "Take your ex-wife out. One bullet oughtta do it."
They're not even particularly amusing jokes. I prefer the punchlines "A crippled airplane that's going to crash on landing" and "Baste."
On a $5 bet that he couldn't climb an enormously huge jungle gym that was by the side of the road, a 13-year-old Missouri boy received a shock that sent him tumbling 35 feet. Two years later, his mother is now suing the electric company for placing the enormously huge jungle gym in the path of her teenager without a sign warning that if he climbed high enough in the enormously huge jungle gym, way high near where it's festooned with silver streamers, it would first give him an owie then make him go boom.
Man o' the people:
Looking pretty is costing John Edwards' presidential campaign a lot of pennies.The Democrat's campaign committee picked up the tab for two haircuts at $400 each by celebrity stylist Joseph Torrenueva of Beverly Hills, California, according to a financial report filed with the Federal Election Commission.
FEC records show Edwards also availed himself of $250 in services from a trendy salon and spa in Dubuque, Iowa, and $225 in services from the Pink Sapphire in Manchester, New Hampshire, which is described on its Web site as "a unique boutique for the mind, body and face" that caters mostly to women.
Well, a nice coiffe is not cheap, and the price of Caribbean therapy body wraps has just skyrocketed.
I do kind of feel sorry for that little 10-year-old coatless girl he talked so much about during his last presidential bid. The cold makes her skin dry and she could probably use a good exfoliant.
The many moods of Duane seem to all have been pretty good ones.
I wish I had all the pics that went into this collage, but I don't.
Wail on, Skydog!
Via Owen, here's a pretty good reason to have kids, though I'll readily admit to having a soft spot for cute little girls singing Skynyrd:
We're getting pretty good at this:
Avon Park, Fla., is a zero-tolerance kind of place.On March 28, Desre'e Watson, a 6-year-old kindergarten student at Avon Elementary School, had a bad morning. She cried. She wailed. She kicked. She scratched. She hit a teacher. That's what the police say, anyway.
The police? That's right. To subdue the unruly kindergartner, school officials phoned Avon Park's police department ("committed to enhancing the 'Quality of Life' of the community"). When the cops arrived, young Desre'e attempted to resist arrest by crawling under a table. But Avon Park's finest pulled her out, cuffed her, put her in a police cruiser, drove her to the county jail, and charged this 50-pound menace with a felony and two misdemeanors.
It sounds as if Slate disapproves. They've included a photo of the arrest record for those who are presumably too shocked and incredulous to believe mere words. Yes, in schools here they do arrest kids that young -- as a last resort. They should watch the video of the 2005 tantrum bust in Tampa and describe how they'd be able to handle it better than the clearly calm and professional educators who were on the scene.
Whether the people at Desre'e's school are as skilled at de-escalation as those in the Tampa incident, I don't know. But I do know all they have to work with is words.
If God protects fools, drunks, and children, this fellow was close to being three for three:
A drunken man who fell under a train after being jolted out of a nap at a railway station emerged unscathed from beneath the locomotive.The 19-year-old had fallen asleep on the station platform in Cologne but was startled by the incoming train. Losing his balance, he fell in front of the locomotive, police said.
"According to the man he fell exactly between the two tracks and just felt a light knock on the head," Cologne police said in a statement.
The shocked train driver pulled the emergency brakes only to see the man emerge unaided from under the engine. He was taken to hospital for observation.
The drunk was taken to the hospital too.
I had a cousin who lost a leg getting run over by a train. Those kinds of accidents just don't seem to happen much anymore. It's like we lost a little bit of classic Americana. I blame Eisenhower and his highway system.
Did the Southern Motor Company's new truck not strike your fancy? Gmac sends photos of N2A (No Two Alike) Motors' new car. Sitting on a Corvette C6 chassis, it has a front styled like a '57 Chevy, the sides like a '58, and a rear like a '59. Its designation: the "789". They're planning a production run of about 100 of them:
There's much cuteness there, but to me in the end it's a fiberglass mash-up, while the SMC's truck is stainless steel.
An authentic, restored '57 Chevy will run you about $100,000 - the same as the 789. If fiberglass is not an issue for you, why not look into a kit? Not all of them look like hell.
(Via Gmac in e-mail.)
An Asian student with a bad grade? This is our worst school rampage ever. It took forty years, but someone's finally broken Charles Whitman's record:
At least 32 people are confirmed dead and at least another 21 are wounded after a shooting at Virginia Tech University Monday morning, federal law enforcement officials told FOX News.Campus police said there was only one shooter and he is now dead. They are unsure if the shooter was a student and it was unclear if he was shot by police or took his own life.
I hope all the wounded ones pull through.
This guy fell to pieces over the setback on the 30th floor:
A man jumped to his death Friday out the window of a 69th-floor law office in the Empire State Building.Police responded to the New York City landmark shortly before 3 p.m. after a 911 caller reported seeing a severed leg — covered in a gray sock — on the street below. The rest of the body was recovered from a setback on the 30th floor.
Though that law firm does have strange ideas about high-low arbitration, I understand that the decision was final and binding.
It's been disturbing to note this season the co-opting by the Establishment of Peep art. What had once been an edgy underground art movement is now being flogged in every paper from the big important ones right down to the weekly shopper and the Miami Herald. Artists are selling their souls (and selling out their brothers and sisters) for a bit of fame, while the newspaper suits sit back and collect the advertising revenue. What a world of injustice we live in. Flipping through this diorama contest in the Washington Post, I at first thought that the paper that brought down Nixon was going to once again show that it's not too scared to stand close to the flames. However, what had initially by its promising title "No More Wire Hangers!" appeared to me a tableau on the danger of our losing a woman's right to choose turned out instead to be a scene from Mommie Dearest. An opportunity to render in the medium of marshmallows a rallying cry born of blood, pain, and death had been lost forever. At least the reactionary media is still too timid to tamper with our tampon art.
They say this isn't a Disneyfication, yet don't offer a way for adult visitors to have their children pay off the price of the family's admission:
LITERARY purists may quake at the prospect of a Charles Dickens theme park complete with a Great Expectations boat ride and Ye Olde Curiosity Gift Shoppe. But Dickens World, a £62 million ($A148 million) complex built in the naval dockyard where his father once worked as a clerk, is confidently predicting 300,000 visitors a year to this new attraction dedicated to the Victorian author."We are not Disneyfying Dickens," insists manager Ross Hutchins, touring the site, where finishing touches are being made to the Fagin's den playground and Newgate Prison.
Despite its deficiencies it does sound fun, and I suppose those wanting an "authentic" Dickensian experience could book a flight to Calcutta instead.
How interesting that the rule that all exotic meat must taste like chicken applied even during the Cretaceous:
Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken."It's the first molecular evidence of this link between birds and dinosaurs," said John Asara, a Harvard Medical School researcher, whose results were published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Scientists have long suspected that birds evolved from dinosaurs based on a study of dinosaur bones, but until recently, no soft tissue had survived to confirm the link.
So its new name will be Tyrannogallus rex. The Terrible Chicken.
The oddest (and worst) flesh I've ever tried is pig brains. I didn't try it with the foreknowledge of what it was, and since it came from a plain ordinary pig, it wasn't required to taste like chicken. It had shells like popcorn, a meaty popcorn, and as I picked the brain-shells from my teeth and flicked them away, it was like I was flicking away a young pig's memories.
A little something for all the Dog Whisperer fans:
Imus really is a dolt:
MSNBC's decision to stop airing Don Imus's CBS Radio program increases pressure on CBS Corp. to fire the talk-show host over his racially charged remarks.MSNBC, the cable-television network owned by General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, said yesterday it will drop ``Imus in the Morning'' immediately, reversing a decision made a day earlier to suspend Imus for two weeks starting April 16.
``The National Broadcasting Co. has finally done the right thing,'' David Brock, president of the media watchdog group Media Matters, said yesterday in a statement. ``We hope CBS Radio will again follow NBC's lead.''
NBC acted after the show's largest advertisers, including General Motors Corp. and Sprint Nextel Corp., yanked support. MSNBC and CBS initially suspended Imus for two weeks after the radio host called the Rutgers University women's basketball team ``nappy-headed hos'' on April 4. Civil-rights leader Al Sharpton pressed his call for CBS to fire Imus.
But aren't you thankful the guy calling for his head doesn't have a radio show?:
1987: Sharpton spreads the incendiary Tawana Brawley hoax, insisting heatedly that a 15-year-old black girl was abducted, raped, and smeared with feces by a group of white men. He singles out Steve Pagones, a young prosecutor. Pagones is wholly innocent -- the crime never occurred -- but Sharpton taunts him: "If we're lying, sue us, so we can . . . prove you did it." Pagones does sue, and eventually wins a $345,000 verdict for defamation. To this day, Sharpton refuses to recant his unspeakable slander or to apologize for his role in the odious affair.
1991: A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and antisemitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the "diamond merchants" -- code for Jews -- with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and stabbed to death.
1995: When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. "We will not stand by," he warns malignantly, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed as "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters shout, "Burn down the Jew store!" and simulate striking a match. "We're going to see that this cracker suffers," says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno.
Why either of these guys are given a public platform is beyond me.
The North Carolina Attorney General will be holding a press conference this afternoon on the Duke lacrosse case, where he is expected to announce the dropping of the remaining charges against the players. Afterwards the defense will also hold a press conference, which I hope is to announce the bringing of a bagful of lawsuits against the turkeys who tried to railroad them.
UPDATE:
From the Attorney General:
"A tragic rush to accuse and failure to verify serious allegations"; defendants "innocent"; Nifong "rogue prosecutor." All charges dismissed. The whole thing is a quote-fest and I'll update as transcripts come out.
***
Previous postings:
Much Ado About Duke
Rush To Judgment Officially Over
Nifong To Go Before The Bar
Flipping Out
Rape Charges Dropped In Duke Lacrosse Case
Phony Rape Victims Need Our Support Too
Prosecutorial Misconduct In Duke Lacrosse Case
Duke Case
Accused Duke Lacrosse Player Guilty
The Duke Case
What's On The Menu
Twists And Turns
Duane, from a famously photographed concert.
Looks like they've got a little bit of a light show going.
Wail on, Skydog!
This is exciting news. There's been so much squabbling over water rights lately, it's a relief to know there's an unguarded watery planet just floating out there like a giant derelict bottle of Aqua Fina waiting for our arrival:
Evidence of water has been detected for the first time in a planet outside our solar system, an astronomer said on Tuesday, a tantalizing find for scientists eager to know whether life exists beyond Earth.Travis Barman, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, said water vapor has been found in the atmosphere of a large, Jupiter-like gaseous planet located 150 light years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. The planet is known as HD 209458b.
Sure, it'll take some doing to get there and collect it, but we're up to the job, and like the Little Red Hen we're only going to share it with our chicks. But are all the states really deserving? What about the states of the Colorado Basin? They suck so much water out of the Colorado River as it goes by that it's like an old man with a bad prostate by the time it gets to Mexico. I say they've had enough. It'll be tough love time once we get that space pipeline going. Another completely undeserving state is Georgia. While it's nowhere near the Colorado River, it will always be the state that in my eyes should forever be made to drink from a jelly jar. Only now it'll be an empty, dusty jelly jar held by husk-like hands.
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice.)
Though Jim Morrison has been tried and convicted of the greater crime of Criminal Pretentiousness, one fan is still focused on having a lesser one expunged:
Jim Morrison, native Floridian, one-time Florida State University student and charismatic rock star, could get a new label if fans have their way: pardoned criminal.Convicted of exposing himself during a notorious Miami concert in 1969, the lead singer for The Doors was sentenced to six months in jail. But he died in a Paris bathtub of heart failure in 1971, before his appeal was heard.
Nearly 36 years later, some of his fans want his record cleared. And they have asked Gov. Charlie Crist, himself an FSU alum, to consider a posthumous pardon.
Florida gets more than her fair share of the drunken and pantless, but usually the Kennedies keep it inside their compound.
(Herald login/pswd=crockett@tubbs.com/miamivice.)
All right, I know we're talking about Okies here, but why do you think they did this? :
It's a ruff life for one of man's best friends in Oklahoma.'Baby' is behind bars, and we're not talking about the pound.
The Jack Russell terrier is charged as an accessory in crimes her owner committed.
Baby is more than a best friend to owner Robert Day. She's a medical service dog trained to detect epileptic seizures.
Day was arrested this week on felony warrants issued by the state of Missouri.
Until they're picked up, jailers have to offer exercise and food to 'Baby' just like any other inmate! Officials say the dog and her owner will be transported together during a six hour ride back to Missouri sometime in the next day or two.
Yet they let Yorkies get away with murder.
Be sure to check out the video at the link.
It tough finding a new way to package Barbie, but it appears Mattel's got a winner in "Barbie and Tanner the Dog," or as it's more commonly known to kids, "Pooping Barbie":
The Barbie folks recently put out a new doll called, descriptively enough, Barbie With Tanner The Dog. The actual Barbie portion of Barbie With Tanner The Dog is not all that noteworthy. (In other words, she doesn’t poop.)But Tanner, well, Tanner’s a different story. Tanner The Dog, you see, comes with these little magnetic brown pellets. They’re about the size of an average Tic Tac. Except they’re not Tic Tacs. Not at all.
If your daughter pushes down on Tanner’s tail, his doggy mouth opens, and she can insert one of these “biscuits” (Barbie’s words, not mine) into it. Then all she has to do is shake ol’ Tanner a little bit, lift his tail, and voila, what moments ago was a doggie biscuit is now a completely different kind of doggie biscuit.
Better yet, Barbie can use her magnetic pooper-scooper stick to pick up Tanner’s little intestinal disaster. Ta daaaa, great fun is had by all.
I think they’re running out of ideas for new Barbies
The biscuits don't actually transmogrify inside the dog. They come out of the dog's behind looking undigested, and then the child re-feeds them to him. So if you want to teach your daughters an interesting lesson or two about extreme recycling and Tanner's shit-eating grin, this would be a great learning tool.
I hope everybody's having a great break. I took mine a little early and can sit here smug in the knowledge that I am even more rested and refreshed than any one of you.
What do you do when you've spent four years of your life looking for a body only to have the assumed victim turn up alive?
Early in his law career, John D. Rupp Jr. received a job offer he couldn’t turn down: Washington County [Missouri] needed an assistant prosecutor. “This countryside is gorgeous, with hills and pine trees, much of it in the Mark Twain National Forest,” he says. Small and rural, it reminded him of Pueblo, Colo., where he grew up. “What an easy job,” he thought. “What could happen in a place like this?”
Working for years to find the missing body of a murder victim and an elusive killer, at the beginning of May he'll be in court presenting the evidence in a preliminary trial against a kidnapper instead.
This is a fascinating backstory to the recent Missouri kidnappings. John Rupp is the only member of law enforcement to have worked the Shawn Hornbeck case from its start to its not-as-yet finish.
***
New House For Shawn
More Fun Times With The Pizzaman
Fun Times With The Pizzaman
Shades Of Tania
Exclusive! On Your Next Oprah
Everyone's On The 'Net
Missing No Longer
What's wrong Yossi? Pachers lose the big game?:
A seven-ton bull elephant charged and killed a female elephant half his weight Wednesday as visitors to an Israeli nature park looked on in horror.Officials at the Safari park near Tel Aviv said they were unable to stop Yossi, a 33-year-old male, from attacking Atari, the 46-year-old matriarch of the captive herd, and trampling her to death.
"What happened to Yossi, who grew up all his life with Atari, and they always got along?" Yigal Horowitz, a veterinarian at the park, told Israel Radio. "Here and there were small fights, but they never had a fight like this one."
He was grief-stricken afterwards though, and vowed never to forget her.
I think this is the class my sister teaches. Look for the new FOX spin-off Are You Hornier Than A 5th Grader?:
Five fifth-grade students face criminal charges after authorities said four of them had sex in front of other students in an unsupervised classroom and kept a classmate posted as a lookout for teachers.The students were arrested Tuesday at the Spearsville school in rural north Louisiana, authorities said. Two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year old boy were charged with obscenity, a felony. An 11-year-old boy, the alleged lookout, was charged with being an accessory.
"After 44 years of doing this work, nothing shocks me anymore," said Union Parish Sheriff Bob Buckley. "But this comes pretty close."
Authorities said the incident happened March 27 at the school, which houses students from kindergarten through 12th grade. A high school teacher normally watches the fifth-grade class at the time, but went to an assembly for older students and the class was inadvertently left unattended, Buckley said. (Watch authorities try to determine if a crime was committed Video)
The class, which had around 10 other students, was alone for about 15 minutes, he said.
"When no teacher showed up, the four began to have sex in the classroom with the other elementary students in the classroom with them," he said.
It took a day for authorities to find out about the incident. A student who had been in the class told a high school student about it the next day, Buckley said. The student told a teacher, and school officials notified the sheriff's office. Detectives began questioning students Thursday.
School officials did not return calls seeking comment.
The students, who were not identified because of their age, were released to their parents after their arrests, Buckley said. They will next be arraigned in juvenile court.
A message seeking comment from the district attorney was not immediately returned.
Buckley said it was unclear what penalties the children could face.
That 13-year-old fifth-grader sounds a winner. My fifth-grade exploits, by the way, were a covert glance at an apparel-challenged tribe in the pages of National Geographic while at the dentist's office and the acceptance of a week's worth of milk tickets from a boy with mismatched socks. I'm not sure if kids still get milk tickets anymore, but if they do, I'm sure a roll of those babies nowadays is at least worth some oral sex.
In further educational news, due to poor ratings, some schools in England are canceling the teaching of the Holocaust. Programmers are scrambling to fill that slot, perhaps with a multi-cultural unit on the trials and tribulations of a group of sensitive young Muslim students in Britain forced to live among apes and pigs.
I don't want to sound all Loose Change-ish about this pet food scare, but if my own canines' new menu is any indication, I'm inclined to believe dogs cooked this one up themselves. Pretty convenient that it mainly kills cats.
Another pic of Duane in Memphis. Looks like he's hitting a very sweet note.
Wail on, Skydog!
And here's the same pic after just one application of Gregg-Be-Gone:
For those who haven't seen it yet, below the jump is a new interview with Dickey Betts about Duane.
BIG BROTHER
Guitar World Feb 2007Duane Allman led the Allman Brothers Band to success with his brilliant guitar work and supremely confident attitude. On the 35th anniversary of the group’s greatest album, At Fillmore East, Allman Brother Dickey Betts shares his memories of the late great guitarist and the album that made them famous.
“People always ask me what Duane was really like,” says Dickey Betts. “It says a lot that his hero was Muhammad Ali. That kind of supreme confidence that Ali had – that’s where Duane was coming from.”Sitting in his beautiful home in Spanish Key, a suburb of Sarasota, Florida, Betts is in the midst of his annual winter break from touring with his band, Dickey Betts and Great Southern. On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of At Fillmore East, the most celebrated of the many essential releases by the Allman Brothers Band – along with the recent passing of what would have been Duane Allman’s 60th birthday on November 20, 2006 – Betts has offered some of his time to share his feelings and recollections of one of rock guitar’s true icons.
“Duane was bursting with energy; he was a force to be reckoned with. His drive and focus, as well as his intense belief in himself and our band, was incredible. He knew we were going to make it. We all knew we were a good band, but no one had that supreme confidence like he did. And it was a great thing, because his confidence and enthusiasm were infectious. He helped us all believe in ourselves, too, and that was an essential key to the success of the Allman Brothers Band.”
Betts, born in West Palm Beach, began playing in rock bands in the mid Sixties while in his early teens. It was during this time, as a regular on the club circuit that included popular nightspots in Daytona Beach and Sarasota, that he first encountered Duane and his keyboard-playing brother, Gregg. In early 1969, the three, along with Berry Oakley on bass and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson and Butch Trucks on drums, formed the Allman Brothers Band.
Duane Allman earned his stripes as one of the true legends of rock guitar via his soulful slide and standard guitar work on such Allman Brothers releases as The Allman Brothers Band, Idlewild South, At Fillmore East and Eat A Peach, as well as through his magnificent contributions to Derek and the Dominos’ Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs; it’s not commonly known, but on Layla, Duane devised the title track’s dynamic primary riff while also contributing brilliant slide work to the song’s coda. His meteoric rise to fame ended tragically, at the age of 24, in a motorcycle accident on October 29, 1971. He was soon to be hailed as one of rock’s greatest guitarists, alongside the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page.
In the wake of Allman’s death – which was followed soon after by the death of bassist Berry Oakley – leadership of the Allman Brothers fell to Betts, under whose stewardship the band achieved their greatest success with the release in 1973 of Brothers and Sisters, which included the Betts-penned No. 1 single “Ramblin’ Man” as well as his classic rock instrumental staple “Jessica”.
In this candid interview, Betts gives us a personal and intimate view of the real Duane Allman and tells the inside story behind what many consider to be the greatest live rock album of all time, At Fillmore East.
Of all the rock guitar legends, Duane Allman remains the most enigmatic. In your words, what was Duane like?
Duane was a “triple Scorpio.” In astrology, triple Scorpios are people that are on fire – just blasting straight –ahead. There must be something to that, because if anybody ever acted a triple Scorpio, it was Duane.
Now that I look back after all these years, it was like he knew that he only had a certain amount of time to get things done. If you weren’t involved in what he thought was the big picture, he didn’t have any time for you. A log of people really didn’t like him for that. It’s not that he was aggressive; it was more a super-positive, straight-ahead, I’ve-got-work-to-do kind of thing. If you didn’t get it, it was like, see you later. He always seemed like he was charging ahead.
Duane also had the respect of so many people; he was a natural leader, but if he got knocked down, you’d feel compelled to do everything you could to get him back up and going again. In fact, he and I talked a lot about that, and we decided that would be the difference in our band as compared to every other band we’d ever been in: when someone falls, instead of kicking him, or talking about him or taking advantage of him, we’d help him and pull him back up.How did the strength of Duane’s positive attitude impact the band?
He believed in what we were doing so much that, to him, it could not fail. The rest of us knew what we had, but the kind of confidence Duane possessed was something else entirely.
Duane didn’t plan the formation of the band. It was really a joint effort, but Duane was definitely the spearhead. The comments we heard at the time were that we were too good to make it as a commercially successful band.Following the lead of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream, the Allman Brothers Band took the concept of free-form group improvisation into uncharted territory and, ultimately, set a very high musical standard. Was there a feeling among the band members that the group had developed something groundbreaking and new?
The feeling was that we had discovered the very thing that we’d all been looking for, even if we didn’t really know beforehand what that was. We could all feel that something really good was happening.
Did Duane function as the bandleader?
He didn’t see himself as the bandleader; he led by example. And you gained a lot of respect from Duane if you earned it, if you proved you could keep up with him. If you couldn’t, you’d either end up in awe of him or you might not even like him.
He was very different from Jerry Garcia, who was very easy going. Duane didn’t have time to be easy going; there was much more urgency to his personality.Do you remember first hearing of Duane Allman?
It was around ’65, ’66. I kept hearing from different people about this hot guitar player named Duane Allman over in Daytona. I started going out with a girl that had dated Gregg, and she told me about the brothers. I had a pretty good band at the time [the Jokers, name-checked famously in the Rick Derringer-penned hit “Rock’n’Roll, Hoochie Koo”]. We had the biggest crowds in Sarasota.
So my girlfriend took me over to Daytona to see Duane and Gregg’s band, the Allman Joys, and introduced me to them. I thought they were real good, but to tell you the truth, we didn’t get along right away. I thought they were stuck-up, and they thought I was some hillbilly hayseed. [laughs]
A couple of years later, they came by a club I was playing in Winter Haven and sat in with me. Duane came up onstage to play and I showed him the amp to plug into, which was on the dark corner of the stage. It was hard to see, so as he was plugging in, I tried to help him, saying, “This here is the bass and treble, and here’s the volume,” and he looked at me and said, “Man, I know how to run an amp by now, I think!” And I was just trying to be nice! So I said, “Okay, well, f***ing have at it then.” So we didn’t get along that time either.Before the formation of the Allman Brothers Band, you and bassist Berry Oakley had forged a tight musical relationship from playing together in a variety of different bands.
Berry and I started with a band called the Soul Children, which later became the Blues Messengers. By 1967/’68, we moved to Jacksonville and our band had become the Second Coming, so named by a club owner because he thought Berry looked like Jesus Christ. We thought that was corny as sh!t, but the club owner offered us double what we were making in Tampa, and he had a new club with a wild psychedelic light show, which nobody had in Florida; that was “California” stuff. The club was called the Scene, and it was the only place in Jacksonville like that, and we were the only people in town with long hair. We’d drive somewhere and people would throw sh!t at us!
At that time, nobody was coming to the club to see us, and the ones that did had “white-wall” haircuts [buzz cuts]. So we started to play for free in the park, and got some guys to put a little makeshift stage and a generator together for us.Was this Willow Branch Park?
I’m not sure of the name; it was by a place called the Forest Inn, a BYOB after-hours joint on 10 acres, and we’d set up outside on Sunday afternoons. Berry would say things like, “We’ve got to get our people together,” and I’d say, “What people?” [laughs] He’d say, “They’re out there; they just don’t have any place to congregate.” Pretty soon, the people’s hair started getting long, and we started to see tie-dye shirts and beads. We started to get really good crowds, a couple thousand people. Then the police decided to run us out of town.
By late ‘68/early ’69, Duane started showing up and he’d sit in with us. That was when I really started to get to know Duane, and we hit it off great then.Did this lead to the formation of the Allman Brothers Band?
It was around that time that Duane, Oakley, and Jaimoe decided to put a trio together, and Duane’s manager, a guy named Phil Walden, got them a record deal. So Berry started going up to Muscle Shoals to record with Duane. Ironically, Duane was helping to bust up our band, which I knew was bound to happen. What I didn’t know was what it would eventually lead to.
Their group was supposed to be a power trio, like the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream, but Duane had to sing, and Jaimoe doesn’t play drums in that style at all. Berry brought back some demos of the stuff they were doing, and even though it was good, they weren’t going to be able to stand up next to Hendrix and guys like that.Were these the tracks “Happily Married Man,” “Going Down Slow,” and “Down Along the Cove,” which were, at the time, supposed to go on Duane’s solo album? [The tracks were eventually released on Duane Allman: An Anthology Vol. I and II.]
Yeah, and they recorded some Chuck Berry stuff, like “Maybellene” and “No Money Down,” too. Duane could sing, but he wasn’t a “singer,” and the stuff didn’t have the power trio kind of sound. It wasn’t making it. So it was around that time that Berry and Thom Coucette, who played harmonica with them, started talking to Duane abut getting me into the band. They said, “You and Betts together – this is too interesting to let it slide by. F**k this trio! Let’s get Betts and also get your damn brother Gregg in here!”
At that point, Gregg was out in L.A. and they were mad at each other. It was just a brotherly thing; they fought all of the time. Duane said, “Oh, he ain’t coming,” but we knew Gregg was going to have to come. And as soon as I got in there, Oakley and Doucette and I started harping about getting another drummer, because we felt one drummer couldn’t carry the band. Berry and I had been playing six nights a week with our band, and Duane was sitting in with us every night, plus we did the jam on Sundays as an unnamed band, which would soon be called the Allman Brothers Band.
Our drummer at the time was great, but he wasn’t the kind of drummer we wanted for this new band with Duane and Jaimoe. His name was “Nasty” Lord John. [laughs] He played like Ginger Baker; he hardly ever played a straight beat. But when Butch came along, he had that freight train, meat-and-potatoes kind of thing that set Jaimoe up perfectly. He had the power thing we needed.
Now we had a five-piece band that really started to sound like something. And when Duane and I really started to play together all of the time, it was like [jazz violinist] Stephan Grappelli and [jazz guitarist] Django Reinhardt, because we played together and complemented each other as best we could.When did Gregg come into the fold?
We kept nagging Duane to call Gregg, and finally he did. Gregg showed up in the beginning of ’69, and when he heard the band play, he was floored. He walked in during a rehearsal, and he said, “I can’t play with this band!” We were really blowing; we’d been playing those free shows for six weeks by that point.
We had songs like “Don’t Want You No More” completely down, just the way it is on our first album. When Gregg got with us, we added the 6/8 part to it for the organ solo, and the segued into his song, “It’s Not My Cross to Bear,” to make it like one big tune.Once Gregg sang and played with the band, was it obvious that the ingredients were all in place, and this was something special?
We knew that what we were doing was the thing. We all had been bandleaders, we were all very experienced as musicians, and we knew what we now had.
And Duane was such a great guy for keeping things positive. He would talk about all of the things that we all had been thinking about and gave us what were, essentially, pep talks. He’d often say, “I’m not the leader of this band, but if and when we need one, I’m a damn good one!” And he was.An essential part of the Allman Brothers story that is often neglected is an acknowledgement of Berry Oakley’s many musical contributions to the band.
Absolutely. I bring up the importance of Berry Oakley in every interview, but it doesn’t always get printed. For one thing, Berry was the social dynamics guy: he wanted our band to relate to the people honestly. He was always making sure that the merchandise was worth what they were charging, and he was always going in and arguing about not letting the ticket prices get too high, so that our people could still afford to come see us.
And he also played a big role in shaping the band’s arrangements.
Oh yeah. “Whipping Post” was a ballad when Gregg brought it to us; it was a real melancholy, slow minor blues, along the lines of “Dreams.” Oakley came up with the heavy bass line that starts off the track, along with the 6/8-to-5/8 shifting time signature. When he played that riff for us, everyone went, “Yeah! That’s it!” In fact, Oakley called a halt to the rehearsal and said, “Wait a minute; let me work on this song tonight and let’s get back to it tomorrow.” By the next day, he had that intro worked out.
Oakley morphed a lot of those songs into something different than the way they had started. And the arrangement on “Hoochie Coochie Man” was all me and Oakley.Is that “Hoochie Coochie Man” arrangement a good example of the way you’d been playing in Second Coming?
Yes, it was. That was the way we played together, with all of the constantly evolving unison licks.
What were the things that Duane brought to the table, arrangement – or composition-wise?
Duane and Gregg had a real “purist” blues thing together, but Oakley and I in our band would take a standard blues and do what we did with “Hoochie Coochie Man” to it. We were really trying to push the envelope all of the time, and we didn’t care about a purist blues attitude. We loved the blues, but we wanted to play in a rock style, like what Cream and Hendrix were doing.
Duane was smart enough to see what ingredients were missing from both bands. We knew that we didn’t have enough of the true, purist blues in our band, and he didn’t have enough of the avant-garde/psychedelic approach to the blues in his band. So he decided to try to put the two sounds together, and that was the first step in finding the sound of the Allman Brothers Band.Both you and Duane were very strong personalities, musically and otherwise. It’s easy to imagine that it would have been difficult for two such formidable guitar players to work together as well as you two did.
We had an immense amount of respect for each other, to the point where it was almost like, Don’t push me too far! I didn’t push him and he didn’t push me. We talked about being jealous of each other and how dangerous it was to think that way, and that we had to fight that feeling when we were onstage. He’d say, “When I listen to you play, I have to try hard to keep the jealousy thing at bay and not try to out-do you when I play my solo. But I still want to play my best!” We’d laugh about what a thin line that was. We learned a lot from each other.
When you think about it, I was only 25 and Duane was 23, and the things we were talking about were pretty mature for guys our age. Duane was one tough, cocksure guy. He had a strong belief in himself, and he was damn good. I was damn good too; I just didn’t believe in myself the way Duane did. It wasn’t until a few years later that I thought, Well, I guess I am pretty good too.In April of ’69, the band moved up to Macon, Georgia, at the behest of Phil Walden who had by then become the band’s manager and had signed the group to his new Capricorn record label. In August, the band cut the first album, and the second record, Idlewild South, was recorded between February and July 1970. Around this time, Duane talked about wanting the next record to be a live album.
We were all real happy with the first two records, and I should point out that Duane was a monster in the studio. He taught me, and all of us, a lot about having the proper mind-set for working in the studio environment. He knew how to make a record, and he taught me how to get into the game.
But it’s true; we all wanted to make a live record by that point. I think it was Tommy Down that suggested the Fillmore East, and we said, “Yeah!” The Fillmore was our Carnegie Hall, and we loved Bill Graham so much. He never gave us one grain of bullsh!t, and he’d raise hell with other bands over all kinds of things. On the closing night of the Fillmore East, he called us the “best damn band in America,” and that floored us.At Fillmore East is a magical record, one that is widely regarded as the greatest “jamming” album ever recorded.
With many live records in those days, the joke was, “the only live thing on the record is the audience,” because just about every band would go into the studio afterward and fix the tracks. On At Fillmore East, nothing was changed; the only studio work that was done was that we edited down the length of one or two tracks, and that was it. Also, the first night we had some horn players come and sit in with us, and we ultimately cut them out, too. So, there was some technical stuff done, some solos cut down in length, but there is not one single overdub.
The opposite end of the spectrum is “You Don’t Love Me,” which goes on for nearly 20 minutes.
Yeah, we let that one go! [laughs] It’s great! The thing is, I played sh!t in there that I’d never played before in my life. Duane played his solo bit forever, so I thought, Well, I guess I’m supposed to come up with something, too!
Another groundbreaking byproduct of the popularity of At Fillmore East was that FM radio began to play album tracks like “Whipping Post,” which was the length of an entire album side.
In those days, FM radio was an “underground” thing, where the DJs would tell you who the players were and give you some background on the music. They didn’t have to follow a strict format the way AM did, so it was pretty open. There’s nothing like that now, but we came along at a time when we could get our stuff, even our live stuff, played on the radio, and that was how a great many people found out about us and became fans.
What are your feelings about At Fillmore East today?
I think it’s one of the greatest musical projects that’s ever been done in any genre. It’s absolutely honest; an honest representation of our band and an honest representation of the times.
Why do you think it’s important for people to listen to Duane Allman today?
Simply because he was one of the best there ever was. When you listen to Duane, you are hearing a truly gifted individual giving his all to the music, and there is nothing better than that.
Duane played music the same way that he rode his motorcycle and drove his car. He was a daredevil, just triple-Scorpio, God’s-on-my-side wide open. That was part of the romance. And I loved Duane. I have nothing but admiration for him.
I appreciate that Keith Richards has a reputation to uphold, but this strikes me as a bit studied:
Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all.In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine.
“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.
“He was cremated, and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,” he said, adding that “it went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”
Richards’ father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.
Plus cool points for actually snorting dad along with demerits for doing it at age 59 with too much of an eye toward the Rock-n-Roll history books. For oddest thing snorted by a rock star, Ozzy Osbourne with his line of ants is still looking good, as being authentically brain-fried from excess is a very important element in the Code of Points.
UPDATE:
His manager says he was kidding. That's better. I like him better when he just has a Baroque sense of humor.
It's about time police started getting serious about juvenile crime:
When two policemen turned up unannounced at Alan Rawlinson's home asking to speak to his young son, the company director feared something serious had happened.So he was astounded when the officers detailed 11-year-old George's apparent crime - calling one of his schoolfriends 'gay'.
They said primary school pupil, George, was being investigated for a 'very serious' homophobic crime after using the comment in an e-mail to a 10-year-old classmate.
According to Interpol, George is part of a junior name-calling crimewave that's international in scope. So far American authorities have left private citizens in the form of school administrators to cope with the situation, citing manpower shortages due to newly established smoking response teams.
Isn't this truck beautiful? It's from a new automaker called the Southern Motor Company:
"A new stylish, modern classic street rod will soon be turning heads on the highway.On Tuesday officials from the start-up automaker, The Southern Motor Company, met with a handful of Southwest Florida investors to discuss the company’s plans for the retro-looking Southern 358.
The vehicle, modeled after a late 1940s and early 1950s Chevrolet pickup, will be manufactured in South Carolina, fully hand-crafted and assembled from stainless steel. Under the hood, the Southern 358 will have a 330-horsepower Mustang V-8 engine.
Arlene Brunner, president of Automotive Insight Inc., a Bonita Springs-based automotive marketing and research company, said among test markets in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Knoxville, the vehicle rated higher among 500 potential buyers than any other make or model."
Right now one will run you $58,000, but that does include having them paint your truck any color you desire. I'll take mine in mauve, please.
Girls, don't waste your time on Tree-Hugging Sister's son Ebola. According to his own admission in the New York Times, he's flat broke. Unless your idea of a good time is sitting on a curb talking and perhaps sharing a swig from his wrinkled-paperbag clad screw-topped bottle of Budweiser, it's best to move along.
Never say I overlook popular culture. It's not true. I have my finger on the pulse of American Volksgeist.
I have, however, been neglecting our international desk. As always, embedded journalist INDC Bill of INDC Journal has up-close and fascinating articles from Iraq.
I'm crossing my fingers that this man runs:
It looks as if Fred Thompson is getting ready to run for president. Friends of the former Tennessee senator turned actor (anonymous to protect their relationship) say he's increasingly tempted to enter the 2008 Republican primaries, fueled in part by new polls that show he's got a serious shot at the White House. A Gallup poll released last week found Thompson ranked No. 3 behind front runners Rudy Giuliani and John McCain with 12 percent support among Republicans—all before he's even formally launched a campaign. Last week Thompson was spotted in Washington lunching with former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who has publicly urged his longtime friend to run for president. On April 18, Frist and Tennessee Rep. Zach Wamp will host Thompson on Capitol Hill, where he'll meet with House and Senate members to discuss his possible candidacy. Wamp, who heads a draft-Thompson committee, told NEWSWEEK that so many lawmakers have expressed interest in the meeting that organizers had to reserve a bigger room and extend Thompson's visit from one hour to almost a full day. "I really believe he's in," Wamp says. "I think it's only a matter of him getting his personal affairs in order."One longtime Thompson friend, who declined to be named while discussing the former senator's personal life, tells NEWSWEEK that Thompson is looking into his contract obligations to "Law & Order" and talking with producers about how his run could affect the franchise. Election law requires equal air time for candidates. If enforced, the law could mean that more than 100 episodes over the past five seasons of "Law & Order" and its various spinoffs might have to be removed from the airwaves during Thompson's run—or other candidates could demand equal air time. (But not their own show, says former Federal Election Commission official Larry Noble: no " 'Law & Order: Straight Talk Express' or 'Law & Order: It Takes a Village.' ")
Another issue: his address. Thompson and his wife, Jeri, sold their Tennessee home last year and moved to the D.C. suburbs, a closer commute to New York, where "Law & Order" is filmed. A spokesman for the Tennessee Division of Elections tells NEWSWEEK that Thompson was purged from the state's voter rolls last November. Thompson's son Fred Jr. told reporters his dad is currently "looking to buy a place" in his home state.
Is Thompson, who often complained about long hours in the Senate, up for the rigors of a lengthy campaign? "If he decides to do this, Fred will work as hard as anybody," says Tennessee GOP chairman Bob Davis, a former Thompson aide. "These things don't come around very often, and I think he knows that."
Fred is the only one who could stir me from my electoral torpor. His mellifluous voice and soothing accent is like a cool cloth on a fevered brow. I'm fairly sure we're for the same stuff too.
The Muliipu family is feuding with their neighbor yet doesn't drop a dime on her for growing dope? Doesn't anyone know how to make someone's life miserable anymore?:
In a quiet street in Grenada North a war between neighbours is entering its third year, with little sign of resolution.In the past two years police have dealt with more than 70 incidents in Tobago Crescent in the north Wellington suburb.
There have been allegations of animals disappearing, bottles being hurled at houses, intimidation, assault and death threats.
Hostile T-shirts have been distributed, one man has been evicted from his Housing NZ home and "urgent" neighbourhood meetings have been called.
The dispute will feature on a television show, Neighbours at War.
...
Next door, Hope Taylor tends a pretty garden filled with pot plants, white angel statues, and canaries chirruping from the aviary.
The perfect opportunity to make their enemy undergo a body-cavity search and yet they just sit there.
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy hires a hit man and gets arrested, boy gets girl:
A woman whose boyfriend is accused of trying to have her killed testified in his defense Wednesday and said that despite a court-imposed order of protection, she continues to visit him and is working to have him vindicated.
"Because I love him," Sherry Nohar said of her reasons for defending Kabeer Din, a former Baltimore police officer and New York Police Department recruit who was arrested last summer after meeting with an undercover police officer he thought was a hit man to discuss killing Nohar for $3,000.Nohar said she has attended Din's trial in Suffolk County Court on Long Island "to make sure he knows that I'm here for him and, of course, that I love him."
Din, 22, is charged with conspiracy to murder and could be sentenced to as many as 25 years in prison if convicted. He wanted his girlfriend killed because she didn't want to marry him and he feared she would "report something that would be damaging to him" to the NYPD, prosecutor Jeremy Scileppi said.
Aww. Go on, Kabeer; ask her to marry you again.
