Uncategorized – Page 12 – A Jaunty Little Blog

March 5, 2010

Great, Now What?

Friends,

I’ve been trying to write a post about an interaction I’m in the middle of on Facebook, but every angle I try to take on the subject seems, well, not interesting. That story is hereby spiked. What will go up is something else entirely, starting with another picture of an oddly proportioned Japanese car from the way-back machine…

1961 Subaru Roadster (that may have a different name that I can’t read because it’s in Japanese on their site). Rear-engine, 23 horsepowers of fury!

We were all entertained yesterday by the news that fierce gay rights opponent, Republican State Senator Roy Ashburn was pulled over for a DUI departing from a gay nightclub on Wednesday morning. One of those universe self-leveling moments, I think. Then I learn this morning that legal gay marriage in Mexico City had taken effect yesterday. Predominantly conservative and Catholic Mexico City? The one in Mexico? And we can’t manage it in California, which I still find baffling.
As you know, I’m a registered Democrat, but I have been fairly vocal about my “Anybody but Barbara Boxer” campaign this November. The problem is that the opponent with the highest name recognition in California is Carly Fiorina. If you put aside my animosity against her based on her record at HP that killed my last job, her mouth isn’t doing her any favors right now. She thinks that she’s a better candidate because Boxer beats white men, she’s anti-choice, and shares Sarah Palin’s values (whatever that means. sounds like pandering to tea partiers to me. – ed Check!). So maybe not anybody-anybody. Maybe Tom Campbell can help…
You remember former speaker of the California assembly Karen Bass, don’t you? She’s running for the Congressional seat being vacated by Diane Watson this year. She’s also the one who donated $20k to a ballot initiative to dissolve the citizen’s redistricting panel. Well, as a parting gift to her Democratic caucus foot soldiers in our very broke state assembly, she promoted twenty staff members and gave them 10% raises in her last days as leader. Could stunts like this account for the deep financial hole the state’s in? Is this the same speaker who kept banging the drum about “revenue enhancements” to plug the state deficit?

Whew! Now that we’ve covered that, what’s for lunch?

Your pal,

– bob

March 2, 2010

Monday Not Dealing With Real Events Post

Friends,

The brilliant Hemmings blog has been running a series on the history of the Nissan Skyline, known to most here in the states as the mighty GT-R. While you should check in on all of the posts in the series (Ken and Mary!), today’s installment features this bit that made me laugh out loud…

1981 Nissan Skyline hatchback 2000 Turbo GT-EX RHR30. Eighties turbo hatchbackery–does it get any better? NO IT DOES NOT shut up.

Checking in on bizarre Japanese high performance weirdness seems preferable today to dealing with the phone monopoly at work, the unreasonable demands of my co-workers, and other work things. Basking in the bright-white glare of yesterday’s future, for me anyway, keeps me off the dock in tomorrow’s (justifiable) homicide trial. You can get behind that, can’t you?

Your pal,

– bob

P.S. Not sure what to do about the nattering nabobs of negativism up here who thought my idea to save the Chamber of Commerce’s site was rubbish. Should we go ahead with it anyway? Thoughts?

February 24, 2010

Gentlemen! Start Your Denials!

Friends,

Toyota USA President Jim Lentz testified in front of Congress today and let members of the country’s most hated profession ask him pointed, self-aggrandizing questions filled with OUTRAGE! Lentz brought the statements, though, including this prepared thing…

“We are confident that no problems exist with the electronic throttle control system in our vehicles. We have designed our electronic throttle control system with multiple fail-safe mechanisms to shut off or reduce engine power in the event of a system failure. We have done extensive testing of this system and have never found a malfunction that caused unintended acceleration.”

Throttle-by-wire systems scare the snot out of me as a rule. Look, the robots are clearly out to kill us, that’s a given. The idea that a company as gigantic, wealthy and pervasive as Toyota can’t design an economical car without resorting to cutting the mechanical throttle linkage is pretty troubling to me. Can’t figure that out? Really?

Maybe they have let their customers down—by being punks.

– bob

February 22, 2010

Tremendously Tremendous**

Friends,

I heard on the radio this morning that a minor league baseball team has decided to upgrade their menu with the Twinkie Dog, which would be a hot dog served in a fried Twinkie, smothered in cheese. This turns out not to be true. Minorleaguedugout.com has the story on the new delicious treats served up this season by the Atlantic City Surf. And it just so happens that there’s no cheese on their Twinkie Dog because “that’s just gross.” Wipe that tear from your eye right now, gourmands. The Surf’s Twinkie Dog does wrap the hot dog in bacon, which I presume is not gross.

The Twinkie Dog pictured above is from a 2008 episode of Good Food on KCRW, and does feature cheese. The larger question in all of this is how much larger do you need to be? Personally, not much, and I have no desire whatsoever to try these things, the Atlantic City Surf’s Surf Burger, (Two quarter-pound hamburgers, three pieces of cheese, four slices of bacon, lettuce and tomatoes, between two funnel cakes.) or the now classic Krispy Kreme Chicken Sandwich, made popular at county fairs across this expanding land of ours. I need a Tums just thinking about it.

– bob

** Hey, how about that hockey game yesterday? I don’t remember watching hockey on television ever being so engaging. Maybe it was because our team was winning, or there was a lot on the line, or maybe it was the running commentary. Wish they could all be like that.

February 19, 2010

Unexpected Evidence of Slack

Friends,

This video from USA’s late, much lamented, mostly experimental show Night Flight. I spent a lot of time in the 80s watching that show on a dodgy black and white teevee over a cobbled together cable connection, and it informed a lot of things you see here. Back to the show, though, can you imagine the network that now airs endless House reruns ending a block with a little something from the Church of the Subgenius?

You’d be forgiven if you find that notion highly unlikely. Stupid PINKS.

– bob

February 17, 2010

Two Sentences From A Book – Name The Year Edition

The Little Jaunty Players
– Proudly Present –
– From The Hard Working Staffers at Jaunty Central –
– Burning The Midnight Oil –
– So We Could Get Something Out On The Floor Before Spring Recess –

It’s Two Sentences From A Book!

“It was a time of gloom in the country among social and political liberals, who saw the carefully built but still incomplete structure of the Kennedy-Johnson extension of the New Deal undermined by the Nixon administration. The antipoverty program was being whittled away; racial justice was impeded by benign—and not so benign—neglect; efforts to move forward in health and housing were frustrated.”

And then Congress adjourned and everybody got on their yachts and knocked back a couple highballs.

February 13, 2010

Old Cars, East Asia Style

Friends,

I’m a sucker for new words, coined sometimes on the fly, perfect for the task, melodious to the ear. Today I stumbled upon a word that is so precise and that I can really wrap my arms around that I had to share:

“Mazdafarian”

A definition isn’t really required when you gaze upon this page from the brilliant Japanese Nostalgic Car blog. Mazda fans who approach the hobby with a laid-back but religious zeal? That’s as good as any.

I could waste a lot of time poking through their collections of weirdo Japanese transportation built back in the days when they weren’t intended to be appliances, but as emotional as they could be. The “J-tin” collector hobby is growing, particularly on the West Coast, and I’m gonna need to head to Orange County for the next event. I wonder if I could find a nice rotary pickup for cheap…

I don’t need another car. I don’t need another car. I don’t need another car. I don’t need another car. I don’t need another car. I don’t need another car.

– bob

(via the indispensable Hemmings Auto Blogs. Thanks!)

February 12, 2010

Idyllwild Photo Blort – Winter 2010 Edition

Friends,

Hey, lookee here. I took some shots last Sunday before the latest snowfall and forgot to get them off the camera. It’s a quiet time in my little burg, early in the morning before the shops open and people wipe the syrup and pancake crumbs off the corners of their mouths and get out in it.

The automatic locks at the post office clicked open and let me in to get my mail, but the market was still closed. Only minutes remaining to buy beans and tomato sauce for Super Bowl chili. Plenty of time for another shot…

The cloud layer has changed, foretelling the snowfall later in the day. Maybe. Or they’re moving in the wrong direction.

Much prettier than a drive to Hemet, at any rate. Just saying.

– bob

February 7, 2010

The Junction of Highway 74 and Goodbye

Friends,

This has been a pretty big storm, but without the media play that the last received. Sure the snow was inconvenient, but the rain over the last few days has been unrelenting. Mix into that the already saturated hills and the denuded burn areas from the Cottonwood Fire, and now we seem to be missing a big chunk of Highway 74 just outside of Mountain Center.

As always, please read the Town Crier Breaking News blog for more details (without any sort of judgement about whether it may be a blessing to not have to go to Hemet) and if you’re really bored, go take a look at the Press-Enterprise’s wall-to-wall coverage (very short walls, btw).

We could lay some 2x6s across that chasm and be ready for the Monday commute—if you’re really, really careful.

– bob

February 5, 2010

America’s Very Cleanest Forest, Not Kidding

Friends,

Remember how I promised to get back to the “America’s Cleanest Forest” subject a couple posts ago? My hope was to write a little something about the old Welcome to Idyllwild sign coming down and maybe work in something about how the new sign just doesn’t bring the charming like the old one. I was even going to shoot a picture of the new sign to prove the point. I needn’t bother.

In the 4th February 2010 edition of our very own hometown paper, the Idyllwild Town Crier, a new column by our resident historian, Robert B. Smith, lays out the origin of “America’s Cleanest Forest.” With permission, I’m offering it here because I love the story. The chutzpah of Idyllwild’s patron saint, Ernie Maxwell, here seems unmatched. Enjoy!

Before Our Time
by Robert B. Smith

A clean forest…

Shortly before year’s end, an icon disappeared from the corner of Highway 243 and South Circle Drive.

I speak of the former welcome sign, now replaced by a classy new version. Its weatherbeaten boards had seen better days, but like most old, familiar things, they have a history worth recalling. Fittingly, its key components now reside with the Idyllwild Area Historical Society.

Chief among those components was the proclamation “This is Idyllwild — Entrance to America’s Cleanest Forest.” I noticed it shortly after settling here permanently, and my first thought was, “how could you know that?” Does somebody survey the country’s woodlands, evaluating cleanliness? As I became more familiar with our forest, by walking hundreds of miles back and forth along its trails, I had to agree. Compared with other regions I’ve traversed, the local trails did seem remarkably litter-free. But “America’s cleanest?”

As far as I can reconstruct, the slogan was pulled from thin air in 1950 within the young Idyllwild chapter of the Izaak Walton League. That group was perpetually led by the ubiquitous Ernie Maxwell and had a permanent influence on the character of Hill communities.

Maxwell and his wife, Betty, arrived in Idyllwild in 1946 equipped with a love for the outdoors and an activist’s bent. Once they founded the Town Crier late that year, it became a bully pulpit to proclaim their values, especially wilderness conversation from a fish and game enthusiast’s point of view.

Ernie was automatically absorbed into the Chamber of Commerce, which has long aspired to fill the vacuum created by absence of any local government. There, he formed a Wildlife and Conservation Committee, which by autumn 1948 sought an independent existence.

On Oct. 12, 1948, a group of eight citizens met to form a “San Jacinto Mountain Fish and Game Club” to organize conservationists and sportsmen more effectively in developing the recreational potential of the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa ranges. Led by Maxwell and USFS District Ranger Don Bauer, the group from its outset sought greater leverage on forest policy by affiliating with a larger entity. Their ultimate choice was to align with two groups, a newly created Riverside County Conservation Commission and the national Izaak Walton League.

The Idyllwild chapter, who called themselves the “Ikes,” immediately attracted 25 members and grew within a decade to 118. Collaborations with the Forest Service, the Chamber of Commerce, the Boy Scouts, the Sierra Club, and the Fish & Game Commission got them into a wide variety of projects.

One was a “Junior Ranger” program at the Idyllwild School; another was the anti-litter campaign, for which they invented the “cleanest forest” slogan. There was a natural marriage between these two projects, and the Junior Rangers went about gathering up trash to fill the Ikes’ scattered barrels.

The Programs eventually faded, and after many years the League chapter folded, but the slogan lived on, emblazoned on the old welcome sign at the main entrance to Idyllwild.

Squeaky clean.

Your pal,

bob

February 2, 2010

Happy Marmot Day!

Friends,

As you know, I’ve been railing against the idiocy of Groundhog Day for years and years (forty four of them? -ed Not quite, but nice plug.), but now that Alaska has got into the act of rodent-based Winter weather prediction festivals, I think we should just place a moratorium on the whole practice. After all, those kleine vrachtwagens vol van hondsdolheid as the Dutch might say, aren’t slaving over a hot weather map every day like our dear Idyllwild Weather Clam. What do they know?

– bob

February 1, 2010

Happy February!

Friends,

Just wanted to drop you a little note wishing you a happy February. Yeah, I know, it’s Monday and things haven’t been working out for you today. The sink is clogged, the rain has finally leaked into that hole in your shoe, your cat has asthma, the budget you submitted is running a trillion dollars in the red…

But hey! It’s can’t be all bad, it’s February!

– bob

January 29, 2010

And Tar and Feathers May Encourage The Chicken Dance

Friends,

Our state legislature and the capitol building that houses their bizarre efforts, should clearly be cordoned off from the rest of society. We can instantly rename the facility the Al Lowenthal Center for Severe Mental Health Disorders if you like, or just paint the whole thing black and turn our backs on it. Either way, these cats never fail to amaze (and depress). Here’s today’s story from the L.A. Times (they still print that thing? -ed Yup, but you better hurry.) that details the State Senator’s idea to convince cities to reduce or remove free parking. As you know, parking encourages driving, and driving encourages buying and burning fuel, and that encourages THE DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING WE HOLD DEAR! OMG!!!1!!one!!

Big Al’s premise is simple…

State lawmakers are taking aim at what some of them see as a menace to California’s environment: free parking.

There is too much of it, the legislators say, and it encourages people to drive instead of taking the bus, walking or riding a bike. All that motoring is contributing to traffic jams and pollution, according to state Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), and on Thursday he won Senate approval of a proposal he hopes will prompt cities and businesses to reduce the availability of free parking

So if you’re not following the crazy, this proposal contends that driving also causes traffic, which is a lot like saying that combining bread, peanut butter and jelly causes sandwiches.

Tune your brain caps to 20 and please be seated. Al’s not done…

“Free parking has significant social, economic and environmental costs,” Lowenthal said. “It increases congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.”

But wait, here’s the kook graf:

“It’s nice that we’ve been treated to this luxury,” Lowenthal said. “The problem with free parking is it’s not free.”

Just like freedom!

– bob

January 29, 2010

As Easy As Pi

Friends,

We here at Jaunty Central love the Riverside Press-Enterprise. They make our lives easier almost every day. Sometimes we don’t even have to write the joke, it just issues forth from their ink-stained fingers straight to our pixel-punished eyeballs. This is one of those times:

Editors. Who needs ’em?

– bob

January 29, 2010

Idyllwild Weather Clam Presents: Fact-Based Facts

[This Jaunty Weather Update is brought to you by the Idyllwild Weather Clam who is taking some personal time to knit a sweater this morning.]

Friends,

Our very own Idyllwild Weather Clam constantly checks all of the weather reporting agencies and when she stops laughing, becomes disgusted at how wrong most of them are. This morning, for instance, the Yahoo! Weather Widget for the iPhone (which draws from the notoriously dim Weather Channel who are currently reporting that it’s 22°, which is also wrong.) said that it was a balmy 40° Fahrenheit at 4:30 this morning. The actual readings from the Idyllwild Weather Clam Mega-Skyview Ultra Doppler 8000 Super Computron in HD thing showed that the temperature was actually 26°. Quite a difference, and another reason why you shouldn’t trust anything that you read at all, unless you read it here. (and it’s written by a clam. -ed)

Your pal,

bob