A Week Off?
I don't think Vania King will make it into the Tennis Hall of Fame. Still, her name keeps popping up in this space, almost as much as what's-her-name and her sister, whozits.
Ms. King, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, is only 5 feet 5, and so the 6-foot Pam Shriver towered over her during an interview following a match at the Australian Open last week. Vania was articulate about her game, but a little surprised when Shriver said she had heard that King had a good voice and asked her to sing. Vania took a second to select a song, then gave a couple of lines from "Dream a Little Dream of Me", the song brought back by the late Mama Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. The selection wasn't hard to sing, but it was...nice. It was one more reason to like her - as a person, not just a doubles partner. I'm going to start looking for a local chapter of Geezers for Vania to join.
This week's nominee for Snappy Sports Name goes to the always cool Fab Melo, a hoopster with the Syracuse Orangemen. Let's hope he gets his little academic conundrum solved soon. The team needs him in the middle.
This week's title question is meant to ask if it's theoretically possible with everything going on for this blog to ignore the mano a mano of the Republican presidential campaign. My answer is "no", not with so much going on.
For instance, there's the term "Cayman Islands". I'm as good at geography as the next guy, but I doubt I could find C.I. on a map. I think it (they?) are somewhere South of the Virgin Islands. What clicks in your mind at the mention of this particular locale? Two words should suffice. The first one is "tax" and the other could be "cheat". "dodge" or "haven", depending on how tough you want to be.
The point is: legal or not, Mitt Romney has money parked there. That's about as smart for a presidential candidate as holding a press conference to introduce your good friend Tammi, a dancer from Las Vegas who's borrowing a little money because she's been laid off at the Boom Boom Room. But I was so busy, I forgot to tell my wife about it. Darn. Any questions? No, just good friends....
And just as soon as we start to miss Rick Perry's foot-in-mouth quotes, up pops Sarah Palin again, getting way more than her share of attention for a journalist for Fox News. Palin, while explaining her nonexistent South Carolina vote for Newt Gingrich, went on about "vetting", letting everyone know that there wasn't enough of it by the GOP four years ago.
Wait a sec. You mean four years ago, when the nominee was John McCain, the very guy who took Palin out of the deep hole of obscurity that is the Alaska statehouse? The same John McCain who opened the door for Palin to get millions of dollars from Fox and assorted speech listener/suckers for doing little except tease the voters that she could decide to run for president after all? That John McCain? The John McCain who could have conceivably been elected president if independent voters had not gone thumbs down on Palin herself?
Please, Ma'am. This isn't ancient history we're talking about here. It was less than four years ago. Even your followers aren't that thick. Are they?
Finally, a raspberry for the Republicans of Iowa. As an ex-Iowan, I have great regard for the people of the Hawkeye State, but what they (GOP leaders) did last week, stumbling back and forth over the final result of the caucus, was near criminally inept. By the time they had finally concluded that Rick Santorum had, in fact, won the vote, you couldn't blame the campaigns for screaming that they would never return and spend millions of dollars only to be treated shabbily when it was time for the Party to get it right. Maybe in 2016, the first presidential event will be in Puerto Rico. They couldn't mess it up worse.
Ms. King, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, is only 5 feet 5, and so the 6-foot Pam Shriver towered over her during an interview following a match at the Australian Open last week. Vania was articulate about her game, but a little surprised when Shriver said she had heard that King had a good voice and asked her to sing. Vania took a second to select a song, then gave a couple of lines from "Dream a Little Dream of Me", the song brought back by the late Mama Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. The selection wasn't hard to sing, but it was...nice. It was one more reason to like her - as a person, not just a doubles partner. I'm going to start looking for a local chapter of Geezers for Vania to join.
This week's nominee for Snappy Sports Name goes to the always cool Fab Melo, a hoopster with the Syracuse Orangemen. Let's hope he gets his little academic conundrum solved soon. The team needs him in the middle.
This week's title question is meant to ask if it's theoretically possible with everything going on for this blog to ignore the mano a mano of the Republican presidential campaign. My answer is "no", not with so much going on.
For instance, there's the term "Cayman Islands". I'm as good at geography as the next guy, but I doubt I could find C.I. on a map. I think it (they?) are somewhere South of the Virgin Islands. What clicks in your mind at the mention of this particular locale? Two words should suffice. The first one is "tax" and the other could be "cheat". "dodge" or "haven", depending on how tough you want to be.
The point is: legal or not, Mitt Romney has money parked there. That's about as smart for a presidential candidate as holding a press conference to introduce your good friend Tammi, a dancer from Las Vegas who's borrowing a little money because she's been laid off at the Boom Boom Room. But I was so busy, I forgot to tell my wife about it. Darn. Any questions? No, just good friends....
And just as soon as we start to miss Rick Perry's foot-in-mouth quotes, up pops Sarah Palin again, getting way more than her share of attention for a journalist for Fox News. Palin, while explaining her nonexistent South Carolina vote for Newt Gingrich, went on about "vetting", letting everyone know that there wasn't enough of it by the GOP four years ago.
Wait a sec. You mean four years ago, when the nominee was John McCain, the very guy who took Palin out of the deep hole of obscurity that is the Alaska statehouse? The same John McCain who opened the door for Palin to get millions of dollars from Fox and assorted speech listener/suckers for doing little except tease the voters that she could decide to run for president after all? That John McCain? The John McCain who could have conceivably been elected president if independent voters had not gone thumbs down on Palin herself?
Please, Ma'am. This isn't ancient history we're talking about here. It was less than four years ago. Even your followers aren't that thick. Are they?
Finally, a raspberry for the Republicans of Iowa. As an ex-Iowan, I have great regard for the people of the Hawkeye State, but what they (GOP leaders) did last week, stumbling back and forth over the final result of the caucus, was near criminally inept. By the time they had finally concluded that Rick Santorum had, in fact, won the vote, you couldn't blame the campaigns for screaming that they would never return and spend millions of dollars only to be treated shabbily when it was time for the Party to get it right. Maybe in 2016, the first presidential event will be in Puerto Rico. They couldn't mess it up worse.
posted by Mark at 9:41 AM
1 Comments:
So I was actually watching the results come in for a little bit this week of the Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota primaries and they were interviewing some guys who were chilling in a high school computer room where they were responsible for tabulating the totals for the county. I kind of chuckled to myself and thought "this is exactly what democracy looks like... some otherwise normal guys sitting in high school, counting and recounting to make sure they got it right". It kind of made me warm and fuzzy inside.
Then I got to thinking, how insanely easy would it be for those guys to cut corners, miss a number here or there and come off a bit wrong. And how much is weighing on those guys ability to do some basic addition here. No wonder the numbers were so fluid and changing. Moral of the story, bring a calculator on election night.
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