Author: jbenton

Just talked to Mazie, who got card No. 30 today. I’m leaving in a couple of hours to drive down to see her, but she doesn’t know it — I felt so bad saying things like, “Oh, sorry I can’t make it down for the weekend, I’m so busy, blah blah blah.”

Former NBA player A.C. Green is getting married. Normally not big news, but A.C. gained a certain amount of fame in his playing days for being the NBA’s most vocal virgin, saying he would wait until marriage to do the deed.
So to A.C., noble warrior of many great ’80s Lakers teams, I say: enjoy!

Dave Barry in North Dakota update: Barry had a sewage lift station named after him and a potluck dinner thrown in his honor Wednesday…”I’m honored,” he said at the lift station dedication. “It’s not every day that your work is compared to human waste.”
To those huddled around him in the bitter cold after the dedication ceremony, asking questions, Barry said: “Do you people have nothing to do?” And as for the magnitude of the honor: “I’ll remember this for as long as . . . I’m in North Dakota.”

In this week’s edition of Dodged Bullet Theater, Business Week in December, 2000:
Facing shaky markets, antsy consumers, and political turmoil, Bush is shopping for a powerhouse Treasury Secretary who projects wisdom and calm–and understands global markets. In short, confesses one Bushie, ”we need someone like Bob Rubin,” the ultrasmooth Wall Street veteran who was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary before Lawrence H. Summers. But whom to pick? Transition scouts are said to be eyeing heavyweights such as retired Chase Manhattan Chairman Walter V. Shipley and businessmen like Enron CEO Kenneth Lay.

Oddest headline vocab of the day: Grandma not allowed to see child of harlot, last top cop.

So good to see that my all-time favorite political candidate, Ed Emery, is running for Congress again. This would be the same Ed Emery whose listed profession is “unemployed sociologist” — aren’t we all? — and who was arrested on election day in 1998 for stalking and resisting arrest after continually slipping threatening messages into his neighbor’s newspapers. (He was the endorsed Republican in the race, which shows how much of a non-factor the G.O.P. is in Toledo politics.) Ed was again convicted last August of puncturing a tire on the neighbor’s car and, according to the complaint against him, “scattering dog feces in her yard.”
He was last spotted “advising” the Toledo mayoral campaign of famed local looney Opal Covey, best known for her animal cruelty convictions (stemming from the 400-plus animals she kept in her disgusting home) and her listed profession: “former thrift shop owner and self-proclaimed minister.”
Now, journalists covering an election have an enormous responsibility to be fair and balanced in the way they do their work. So when, for example, Opal was running for mayor, reporters covering something one of the legitimate candidates in the race did would always have to include her in their stories. You know, things like: “Candidate Jack Ford wants to increase police salaries 15 percent over the next three years. Candidate Opal Covey, in contrast, wants police officers to all learn how to play flute, sousaphone, or triangle and form a department marching band, available to frighten children at birthday parties.”
Okay, I made that one up, but she did say her method for revitalizing Toledo’s dismal downtown was building a huge amusement park in the middle of all the pretty tall buildings. And she did say Toledo doesn’t need any public transit, because “I like riding in my own vehicle.”
Luckily, I’m no longer a journalist covering Toledo politics, so I can come out and say it: Crazy!

Met this morning with my Little Brother (not my little brother, but my Little Brother). I shouldn’t use his real name, so we’ll call him, um, Bocephus. He’s a good kid, albeit a highly unorganized one who failed half his classes last semester. We’re still feeling each other out, but he’s starting to trust me a bit. If I can just get him to stop falling asleep in class and start paying attention when he needs to, he’ll turn out okay.
Also just got handed my Olympic credential for next month. I suppose it’s finally hitting me that in two weeks I’ll be in Salt Lake City; alas, it’s borderline astounding how much work I have to do between now and then.
Having lunch with a colleague today has gotten me thinking about buying a house. I don’t know why.

Vacant corporate aphorisms of the day: There’s no traffic jam when you’re going the extra mile. We need a check-up from the neck up.

David Gardner has quite a scoop: his new book profiles Hitler’s descendents, the branch of the family tree descended from William Patrick Hitler, Adolf’s nephew, who moved to the United States and settled in Long Island under a different name. Other people have gotten close to their story — most particularly Timothy Ryback, who had a great, great piece in The New Yorker in summer 2000 about his hunt for the Hitlers — but Gardner appears to have had in depth interviews with at least a couple of them.

I was chagrined today to learn that one of my very first web sites, from the summer of 1995, still looks exactly as it did back then. It wasn’t a particularly attractive site at the time, so you can imagine how old-skool it looks now. Please forgive me for my design sins. (One thing that has changed is the backend; at the time, most of the meat of the site was still on gopher.)