samhexum

Is it just a co-inky-dink that this was today's strip?

A California man was fatally struck by an alleged drunk driver — just after leaving an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, local reports said Wednesday. Ray Galindo, a proud member of the program for the last 15 years, was killed on April 23 in Modesta when 22-year-old Braxton Howze allegedly ran into him,KOVR reported. Galindo, 58, had been speaking to an AA newcomer outside the Living Sober Fellowship and sitting on the tailgate of his parked pickup. That’s when police say Howze, who was allegedly wasted, swerved off the road and hit him. “It’s like my heart sank in my chest,” one of Galindo’s AA group leaders, who was named as Mark G., told the TV-station. “Ray was a standup guy, he was a very helpful person, he always wanted to lend a hand.” He leaves behind three sons, two who are adults and a 9-year-old, according to the Modesto Bee. “He was such a good dad,” Dee Dee Leslie, the child’s mom, told the newspaper about Galindo. “He wanted (his son) to have a good education and all the stuff he couldn’t have.” Howze, who was allegedly driving on a suspended license from a previous DUI, faces charges including hit and run, DUI, and gross vehicular manslaughter. He appeared bleary-eyed, bloody and bruised in a mugshot released by the Modesto Police Department. Howze was being held on a $1,000,000 bail. He’s due back in court May 11.

Well, there goes your nomination for THAT award! ? ? ?

Still enjoying...

Drew Robinson makes San Francisco Giants' Triple-A roster despite losing eye in 2020 suicide attempt Drew Robinson, who lost his right eye in a suicide attempt last year, made the Opening Day roster for the San Francisco Giants' Triple-A affiliate and could play as soon as tomorrow when the Sacramento River Cats open their season with a six-game series in his hometown of Las Vegas. Robinson, 29, signed a minor league deal with the Giants over the winter, six months after he shot himself in the head. After a harrowing 20 hours that followed the attempt and more than a year of rehabilitation, a late-spring surge in Robinson's performance during minor league spring training convinced the Giants to place him one step from the team with the best record in the National League. "I don't know if I'll be able to fully describe how excited I am for these next six games, but I know that this is going to be another powerful experience and I'm so ready for it," Robinson told ESPN on Wednesday. "Our game isn't even until tomorrow, but I already had a hard time staying asleep last night because of how excited I am for these games and this experience as a whole. "After going through most of my life not fully appreciating what was happening, I can promise that I'll be taking in every second of this season with a new understanding of how special all of this is." Robinson's family, friends and doctors will gather at 7:05 p.m. PT Thursday at Las Vegas Ballpark, where Robinson spent much of the offseason taking live batting practice - and hit his first home run since he began his comeback attempt. His work at the stadium, just two miles from the house where his suicide attempt took place, convinced Robinson that his desire to play baseball again could be a reality. He began the spring playing shortstop, a position Robinson hadn't regularly manned in nearly a decade, and struggled to adapt to its speed. When the Giants moved him to the outfield, where he played the majority of his 100 games with the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals from 2017-19, Robinson's comfort returned. Along with it came more offensive production. The concerns about the left-handed-swinging Robinson's ability to track pitches without his lead eye were palpable, but Robinson proved adept at discerning balls and strikes - and unleashing his massive power. He had rebuilt the rest of his body through a consistent workout regimen, adding nearly 20 pounds of muscle onto his 6-foot-1 frame and showing up at minor league camp a shredded 200 pounds. Hard contact proved elusive early in spring training, but when Robinson squared balls up, they soared into the Arizona sky. He hit a pair of home runs, the latter a 450-foot shot on a high changeup. The Giants, whose support after the suicide attempt was vital in Robinson's recovery, were convinced. He wasn't just a great story. He was worthy of another shot at returning to the big leagues. Even making it back to the minor leagues is stunning. The last player in the major leagues with one eye was Pittsburgh pitcher Whammy Douglas, who threw 47 innings in 1957. The questions about Robinson went far beyond the limitations having one eye might place on him, too. For years, the vagaries of baseball had preyed on Robinson - the game's inherent failures, the up-and-down nature of a player who never quite got a toe-hold on a big league roster. His suicide attempt April 16, 2020 surprised friends and family, who always had seen Robinson as the wisecracking, good-natured life of the party. Four surgeries, including the removal of his eye that was damaged by a bullet, stabilized Robinson physically. Rebuilding him mentally was a far more difficult task, one that continues today through regular therapy, meditation and medication. It is the foundation that allowed Robinson to rejoin the sport that brought him joy and pain - and to apply all he has learned so that his family's fears of baseball sending him back to a dark place would be unfounded. There were moments this spring that were frustrating, disappointing, problematic, but Robinson's perseverance won out. And now, with those closest to him there - his parents, his siblings and his best friend, Daiana Anguelova - he'll be where he belongs: playing professional baseball again.

Data obtained by bouncing radio waves off Venus – treating it, as one scientist said, like a giant disco ball – is providing new insight into Earth’s closest planetary neighbor, including a precise calculation of the duration of a Venusian day. The study also measured the tilt of the Venusian axis and size of the planet’s core, allowing for a deeper understanding of an enigmatic world sometimes called Earth’s ‘evil twin.’ It was already known that Venus has the longest day – the time the planet takes for a single rotation on its axis – of any planet in our solar system, though there were discrepancies among previous estimates. The study found that a single Venusian rotation takes 243.0226 Earth days. That means a day lasts longer than a year on Venus, which makes a complete orbit around the sun in 225 Earth days. The researchers transmitted radio waves toward Venus 21 times from 2006 to 2020 from NASA’s Goldstone Antenna in the Mojave Desert of California and studied the radio echo, which provided information on certain planetary traits, at Goldstone and at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. “Each individual measurement was obtained by treating Venus as a giant disco ball. We illuminated Venus with a giant flashlight, the radar at Goldstone and observed the reflections as they swept over the surface of the Earth,” said UCLA planetary astronomy professor Jean-Luc Margot, who led the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. “Venus is an amazing laboratory for understanding planet formation and evolution and it’s a stone’s throw away. There are likely billions of Venus-like planets in the galaxy,” Margot added. The new data showed that the Venusian planetary core has a diameter of about 4,360 miles, comparable to Earth’s core. Previous Venus core estimates had been based on computer modeling rather than observational data. Its core is almost certainly composed of iron and nickel, though it is unclear whether it is solid or molten, Margot said. Venus spins on its axis almost upright – meaning it lacks discernable seasons – while Earth has more of a tilt. The study calculated the Venusian tilt at about 2.64 degrees. Earth’s is about 23.5 degrees. Venus, the second planet from the sun, is similar in structure but slightly smaller than Earth, with a diameter of about 7,500 miles. Above its foreboding landscape is a thick and toxic atmosphere that consists primarily of carbon dioxide, with clouds of sulfuric acid droplets. With a runaway greenhouse effect, its surface temperatures reach 880 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead. Venus spins from east to west, the opposite direction from all other planets in our solar system but Uranus. In another quirk, its day-night cycle – the time between sunrises as opposed to the length of a single axial spin – takes 117 Earth days because Venus rotates in the direction opposite of its orbital path around the sun. Venus has received less scientific attention than Mars, Earth’s other planetary next-door neighbor and other solar system destinations. “I don’t think that Venus would be more difficult to understand than other planets if we had adequate data, but there is a deplorable scarcity of data about Venus,” Margot said. “There have been no NASA missions to Venus in almost 30 years and about a dozen NASA missions to Mars in this time interval,” Margot said, adding that the new findings on how Venus spins could help any future landing attempts.

We Asked the Bushwick Piano Building’s Architect: Why? “It just hit me, the idea of doing a piano, since we had room for it” is the architect Yochi Nussenzweig’s not entirely satisfying explanation of his design for a new building on Evergreen Avenue in Bushwick. It’s an eight-unit rental (with three apartments designated affordable), ready for occupancy in the next few months, and it has, as you have perhaps noticed, a giant 60-key piano keyboard scaling its façade. Nussenzweig further explains that when he realized there was an unadorned strip of brick up the center of the building’s street front between the windows, inspiration struck, and five octaves of aluminum ebony and ivories were soon on the way. When Brownstoner posted the renderings a few days ago, they elicited a there-goes-the-neighborhood groan online. One person on Twitter wrote that “Bushwick is going to overtake Williamsburg in the most insufferable Brooklyn neighborhoods ranking within a year.” Is it, in fact, an attempt to attract “creatives” who might be musicians? Nussenzweig, who is 28, doesn’t have much to add beyond “this client likes unique and interesting designs,” and certainly this qualifies. (Though perhaps “distinctive” is more accurate than “unique”: The Country Music Hall of Fame comes close.) It generally fits into the long tradition of architectural follies and curios, buildings that make little sense in their context but are charming enough to become, on occasion, distinctive and even beloved bits of a cityscape over time. If a hot-pink brownstone can become enough of a local phenomenon that repainting it brown is newsworthy, why can’t a Billy Joel apartment building become a local landmark? It is the 1980s piano-key tie (I had one of those & it’s still hanging in my closet) buildings. Does Nussensweig, who also designs offices, synagogues, and houses, play the piano himself? He does indeed, a little. Growing up in Williamsburg, he says, “we used to have a keyboard at home, so I got to know how,” he says. This megakeyboard, of course, is unplayable — and any pianist will tell you that the black keys are rendered a little too small. But if they’d been laid down on the sidewalk instead of on the façade, you just know that they’d end up being a local guidepost. You could, conceivably, tell people “Meet me by the low C,” and grownup 1980s kids would be reenacting Big out front every weekend. ARTIST'S RENDERING: FINISHED PRODUCT: INTERIOR:

No, whenever I fly, I prefer to use an airplane.

Aren't 'fake' and 'Los Angeles' synonymous/redundant? ? ? ?

T.G.I.F.= THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY Y.W.I.F.= YOU'RE WELCOME IT'S FRIDAY (IT TOOK ME A MINUTE TO GET IT, TOO)

Isn't that what makes him a unicorn? At least, that's what the term is now used for in the sports world.

I've always found that whenever something is "updated" and "improved" it becomes frustrating and more of a pain to use. Just saying... ?

I'd love to try them, but the only one in NYC is in Yankee Stadium, and I have never been to the new stadium because it's so hard for me to get around. I'd have had the same reaction. When I was a young'n we were on a family vacation in Virginia and I went into a Dairy Queen and asked for a frank. One worker said something to another about not having heard it called that in a long time (they were called hot dogs on the menu board), which I thought was funny since hot dog is just a slang term and frank is just a shortening of the actual word frankfurter. Umm... Anyone who watched ROSEANNE does.

NYC’s bougiest restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, goes completely vegan Eleven Madison Park, one of the world’s most acclaimed restaurants, has announced its menu is going vegan, according to a statement by chef-owner Daniel Humm on Monday. In an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal, the Swiss-born chef said, “If Eleven Madison Park is truly at the forefront of dining and culinary innovation, to me it’s crystal clear that this is the only place to go next.” The relaunched menu is described as “an eight- to 10-course menu in the main dining room consisting of entirely plant-based dishes,” according to their website. The three-Michelin star restaurant at 24th Street and Madison in Manhattan will reopen for service on June 10 after shutting down during the pandemic. Humm admitted that their tradition of offering milk and honey service with coffee and tea would still be provided, noting that they wouldn’t technically be 100% vegan. The move sets a whole new precedent in the world of fine dining, where few have been bold enough to commit to plant-based ingredients. Earlier this year, French restaurant ONA, an acronym for origine non-animale (“animal-free origin”), in Arès near Bordeaux, was the first of its kind in the nation to receive its first Michelin star. Last year, New York City’s vegetarian eatery NIX also earned the coveted honors — just before closing due to pandemic setbacks. Humm told NPR that he began thinking more earnestly about health and sustainability while the restaurant was closed last year. “The way we have sourced our food, the way we’re consuming our food, the way we eat meat, it is not sustainable,” he said. The 45-year-old restauranteur also helped to feed out-of-work and underprivileged families across the city last year, an enterprise that has continued into 2021. Despite the average $500 price tag on a meal at Eleven Madison Park, Humm assured that the culinary experience would remain top-notch. “Guests have never come to us to just eat a piece of steak or lobster,” he told NPR. “They’ve always come to us to be on a journey.” As always, Humm added, “Of course, it’s about deliciousness in the end.”

THIS WAS MY INITIAL REACTION TO YOUR POST: So sad that he died so young of ALS. ☹ THEN I REALIZED: He never had a handlebar mustache. That was Rollie Fingers.

FUN FACT (or maybe just an urban legend): Kate Jackson (who I thought was very good in Making Love) was offered the Meryl Streep role in Kramer vs. Kramer, but the producers of CHARLIE'S ANGELS wouldn't allow her the time off to do it. Can you imagine Streep in her role in Making Love and the resulting 'sliding doors' world in which they swapped careers? I doubt Streep would've been anywhere near as good in SCARECROW AND MRS. KING.

SO SORRY YOU MISSED IT... These die hards slogged hard for sliders. Fans came out en masse to celebrate Orlando’s new White Castle — the largest ever outlet of the fast-food chain — on its opening day Monday, with some even camping out overnight to wait on line. “I could not sleep last night,” Sheila Santiago, who got in line at 3:30 a.m. Monday, told the Orlando Sentinel of her intense anticipation of the new location. “I literally have chills because I feel like it’s just brought me home.” Santiago was far from alone in her exuberance for the beloved chain’s new 4,567-square-foot branch, which is set to eventually operate 24 hours a day, every day of the week. Local tweets showed the area completely swamped in traffic jams from revelers waiting to make their first orders at the freshly ribbon-cut restaurant. “The entire area is an absolute nightmare. Every road in the area is at a standstill,”tweeted one witness to the vehicular hellscape. Eatery devotees Fred Olderr and Joshua Mendoza proved the most committed to White Castle Orlando, according to a tweet from Orlando news reporter Ezzy Castro, who revealed the two to be the folks first on line when the doors opened. The pair got to the new location at 8 the previous night. White Castle higher-ups correctly anticipated that Floridians would be uniquely hyped for the location. “This is the largest White Castle in the system and we built it because we figured that in Florida they would have the largest craving for our products,” White Castle CEO Lisa Ingram told the Sentinel while wearing a “Slider Queen” shirt. “Florida’s obviously a very big state, so we’re excited about being here in Central Florida and look forward to our continued relationship.”

I was much more attracted to Michael Ontkean. Since I'm sure 99% of forum members 55+ have seen the film, who would you rather have boffed? http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WjaNqudozhQ/TWV_XO2J18I/AAAAAAAAySU/_mCChzMNpdM/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/mo2.JPG

They have medications for that...

I'd say yes. ?? Yes... yes I do... though I'm usually too humble to mention it.?? What do you want to discuss with me? ?? DEAD?!? That's not really much of a compliment.?? Then I guess you'll never sleep with Michael Ontkean. ☹