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I will never go to WalMart again.

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MY FAVORITE TWEET OF THE DAY

@emptywheel
While press was watching Weiner’s Weiner & Palin’s emails, Calculated Risk’s list of problem banks went up over 1000. http://bit.ly/mlNPIP

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LIVE on the Plaza, 9June11 edition

If you aren’t catching some of the action on NW 16th and Indiana on the second Friday of the month then you’re missing out on a great bit of what makes Oklahoma City so liveable these days. It’s a street festival with street food, bands, stores with discounts and people having lots of fun. Last night, I went to Saints for dinner and saw several friends including PopModern and Samantha Lamb and the place was packed. I’ve always had good luck with the menu, although last night I ordered dinner while applying for my first driver’s license and didn’t get any food until my first Social Security check was dispensed. Fortunately, there was enough smoozing to fill the time. There was a modeling display of individualized fanny packs on 80s theme dressed models worth the trouble of driving and one of the Fox25 on-air dolls was raising money for Children’s Hospital Foundation over by No Regrets Tattoos and SpyFM and a taco truck and … well, you get the idea that there was lots going on.
Don’t know when you’re reading this, but for me it’s Saturday afternoon and Jane4oh5 of Picasso’s on Paseo hooked me up with a press pass for DeadCenter and I can’t wait to grab some movie time at one of the top 20 film festivals in America that goes on right here in Oklahoma City. If you hit the link, it contains the schedule of events. Having a highly regarded film festival here in town also makes me glad to live in this town.

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This beer ad is genius!

There was an exhibition of the sculpture of G. Goodacre at JRB Gallery on First Friday and I couldn’t resist the above photo of a woman named “Pat” talking on her cellphone next to the other life-like statues. It was a relatively quiet weekend for me and about the only other thing I did last weekend was go see X-Men: First Class, which was about as good as the other X-Men movies but nothing to get too excited about.

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The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The poet who wrote this died last week and in this video, reads his work.

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Rules for dating was filmed in the year of my birth, 1949. Unfortunately, I still seem to be operating on these rules.

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As Time’s Karen Tumulty notes, the U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) scandal is the first entirely 21st Century sex scandal because the technology that enabled it didn’t exist 12 years ago. Other than that, I’m glad I’m not sitting at the dinner table at his house this week. Oh, and did I mention that Andrew Breitbart is a dick? Well, he is.

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The half term governor and FOX entertainment figure has only the most hazy of recollections of the historical event of Paul Revere’s ride, as she demonstrates in this short video. In the 30 minute “interview” she did with her personal FOX publicist, Greta Van Sustern, La Belle Sarah managed to blurt out four big whoppers, according to the fact checkers at the Washington Post.

The always funny Jolly Dr. Max sends me this video to remind me why I look at the People of WalMart website every day:

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Meanwhile, John X, who has a stupid funny imaginary phobia of “the little people” sends me this bit of strangeness:

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If you want to know one of the reasons I retired from practicing law, how about THIS story from Arizona:

The latest news reports suggest that 73-year-old Carey H. Dyess, angry over a contentious divorce, killed his former wife, her divorce lawyer and three others before turning the gun on himself. Dyess also shot a seventh person, believed to be a friend of his ex-wife, but that person survived the attack.
The lawyer, 62-year-old Jerrold Shelley, was killed while packing up his office on his last day of work, the Associated Press reports.

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On a lighter note, Jimmy Fallon cracks my face

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It’s First Friday on the Paseo and this week JRB Gallery features a sculpture retrospective by Glenna Goodacre who designed the Sacagawea dollar coin.

The pool at Mom’s house is now open and I’m thinking some pool time Sunday afternoon followed by the Stringents playing the Twilight Concert Series at Myriad Gardens (GRAND LAWN) in Downtown OKC 7:00p.m.-8:30p.m. is sounding good.

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Yeah, just because I can

The 100 greatest film threats of all time.

Last night, I got a flashmob alert from the redoubtable MCARP that the Red Cup coterie would be meeting up at the grand opening of Saints on the Plaza to welcome Dr. Maureen back to OKC from her Wisconsin home. We got to meet her neice, Ginny. The food was delicious: I had the potato and leek soup and it was very tasty, the fish and chips were nothing like the greasy stuff you get in London, it was corn crusted and baked (I think) and very tasty, the lamb “pie” was great, and although I didn’t taste it, I was assured the beef and barley soup was top shelf and so was the meatloaf. They had a guy playing an upright piano and I’m accustomed to seeing him at Junior’s, but I don’t know his name but he added to the ambiance nicely. The hipster crowd tweeted the bejeezus out of the opening and I got to meet a couple of tweeps IRL that I’ve been following for some time. Oh, and one last note: Patrick’s grrrl is f’n gorgeous. I’m envious as hell.

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Things I found interesting on the internet today.

50 things to give up today. This list is fabulous and I printed it out and intend to keep it with me as a reminder.

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Jon Stewart goes ballistic over the pizza shared by Palin and Trump, making me LOL.

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The War on Drugs has FAILED. In a related story, the federal sentencing guidelines have changed regarding crack cocaine and this means 12,000 prisoners, mostly black, could receive early release, according to THIS NPR interview.

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Rachel Maddow gets to the bottom of the Wiener matter. So far, my favorite “pun” about this non-story is the unintended one by Andrea Mitchell who writes that the Wiener scandal coverage is “over blown”. Har Har Hardy Har.

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Some good news! Glenn Beck’s last television episode on Fox will be at the end of the month, POLITICO reports.

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Last Thursday, after going to OKCMOA’s roof to celebrate Lynne X’s retirement, a group of us went to Cafe do Brazil for dinner. While there, the redoubtable Debster asked me about my “typical” day of retirement. I said the only thing I typically do is go to an AA meeting. That’s true, but what I wished I’d done is sing this great Tom Waits ditty. And, of course, add that it’s pretty clear the Debster doesn’t read this blog or follow me on Twitter or she’d know how boring my life is.

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Blogblah! and I went to see Hangover 2 last night. Neither of us thought it was funny, and I found it depressing. I don’t find anything amusing about shootings, drug overdoses, bodies stuffed in ice coolers, self-mutilation, etc.

This is MCARP’s blog comment about our Memorial Day evening in which we continued our string of intentionally screening bad movies. He was right. Hangover II, in my opinion, was a very bad movie. However, what he doesn’t say is that we went for coffee afterwards and skewered the film for its badness and, to me, that was the point. It wasn’t as bad as Season of the Witch with Nicholas Cage, but nothing will ever top that rotten tomato.

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This Wednesday is not my day. Can’t explain it. I’ve got some new meds and they are doing a very good job of reducing my perceived abdominal pain. A year ago, I was in ICU and I’m grateful for this much recovery and pray I’m never there again. That said, I feel like home-made, hammered shit. I’ve got the don’t want to attitude in spades today. Ah, well. I’ll think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.

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This (above) video cracked me up. It’s the zombie puckishness in my soul to love this vid. Don’t hate me for it.

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My Memorial Day Weekend started Thursday, which is OK because I stopped the holiday Monday and isolated, taking the day off.

Thursday, I went up to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art rooftop to celebrate the retirement of my long-time and much-beloved friend Lynne X. I caught a camera shot of Lynne and the redoubtable Oz together on the roof seemingly having the same good time I was having. There were lots of other friends there and I think we all enjoyed the warm weather and good time.

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On Saturday night, I went to the Plaza District to hear a couple of my favorite local bands play. First up (not really, the bands started at 5 p.m. and I didn’t arrive until about 730 or 800 p.m.) was my absolutely favorite local band, The Non. If you get a chance to see or buy their CDs, you must do so. They are really great. Their music is instrumental in the main and the lack of vocals makes you focus on the musicianship of these young men and it is nothing short of phenomenal. I highly recommend them, as you can tell.

While I was there, I caught one of Oklahoma City’s premiere photogs taking pictures of the bands, J.D. Merryweather. J.D. has recently branched out to other work and his focus these days is on his craft beer brewery, COOP Aleworks. After 50 years of this part of the country belonging to 3.2 Coors, COOP beers are now dominating this market and in no small measure due to the tireless work of J.D. COOP now sponsors the band that closed out the night, Pretty Black Chains. Here’s a phone pic of Dan, the drummer, watching The Non.

Pretty Black Chains closed out the night at Warpaintrags, the host of the evening and they really brought the rumpus. The lead singer reminds one of Jagger when he was still so very young, Dan’s beat is reliable and driving, the bass lines are brilliant and the lead guitar is manic. All just as rock ‘n’ roll should be.

This was the release party for their CD “Awakening”, they played the whole CD and did an encore of some of their new stuff. Everyone had such a great time that a senior citizen like me had the dubious duty of telling a rather overweight and tipsy young woman who couldn’t walk on her wedge shoes that she wasn’t old enough to ride this ride. A copy of the CD was provided when you paid the cover, so I’ve got the CD if you want to listen to it before you buy it and I think you’ll be sure to want to buy it because it’s just that good. It’s in my car stereo right now.

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Sunday was Paseo Festival for me and it was one hot s.o.b. and that shortened my visit a good bit. Just about the first people I saw that I knew were Mr. and Mrs. Randy Marks and they were both in good health and spirits. I don’t care if she is married to one of the nation’s best sculptors, I’ll always love Sharon because she’s just the bestest ever. I didn’t linger long, though, because I was in a hurry to see the Rexall Rangers, fronted by my long time friend, Howard Brady, on the South Stage. Very different music from The Non and Pretty Black Chains, but I’m always moved by Howard’s original and deeply soulful music. It speaks to deep waters in my guts. I’m not the only one because there was a pretty good crowd.

I have no idea why, but there was a guy dressed as an astronaut in the crowd and I have no idea why he was dressed this way or what he was advertising, but I’m willing to bet the farm that the helmet was hotter than Hades. I always like going to the Paseo festival. It’s a part of every year in OKC I look forward to (Dear Ms. Smith, please forgive me the preposition at the end of that sentence.) As long time columnist and former Daily Oklahoman women’s editor Joan Gilmore remarked to me, the Paseo Festival these days is what the Spring Arts Festival was 20 years ago when there was a more intimate, neighborly feel and a real person could afford the art.

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Today is Memorial Day. We honor those who served and gave their all in combat. About 6,000 men and women have give their lives in war in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past 10 years. I pray for an early end to those endless wars.

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I watched this movie again last night and once again I was stunned by how good this Ed Harris directed and starred film really is. Of course, the way alcohol dominated and destroyed his personal life was a hard-hitting reminder to me personally about how drinking was horrible for me. That’s not the lesson I took from the film this time. The lesson I took this time is this: Paint a new way. Get paint on your shoes. Get paint on your pants. Get paint on your shirt. Get paint on your hands. Get paint on your face. Get paint on the floor. Get paint on the walls and ceilings. Drip the paint. Splash the paint. Pour the paint. Welcome the accident as intentional. Letting go of absolute control = Genius.

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P.S. to 340 a.m.: I don’t judge you by your looks. I like you for who you are and what you do. Any asshole, male or female, who is judging your looks is not someone you want in your life in the first place. Let that shit go and play the hand you are dealt, it’s a winner.

But it was the birthday weekend for my son, Jack, and grand-daughter GK. Big love to both.

George Carlin speaks for me:

I want to discuss ketchup for a moment, or “catsup” if you prefer. I have some mixed feelings about this condiment and I just want to go ahead and get them out in the open.

(It’s very tempting at this point to repeat the joke from “Pulp Fiction,” but I’ll leave it to you to either remember it or not need to.)

Ketchup is the only condiment I know of that has been politically divisive. First, during the Reagan administration, the Department of Education or somebody decided, in their wisdom, to allow ketchup to be classified as a “vegetable” for the purposes of school lunches. Nutritionally nonsense to begin with and, since tomatoes are a fruit and not a vegetable, factually incorrect. In addition, the FDA controversially allowed the ingredients of ketchup to include a small amount of “bug parts” without including this in the label ingredients. Don’t worry, it’s small bugs and therefore the parts are even smaller. This helps keep down the cost of the product blahblahblah and who cares about your health anyway? What, you thought the FDA was supposed to protect the public instead of support the food industry? What are you, a naive bitch?

As far as I know, the only thing controversial about mustard is that the top of the squeeze bottle turns into vinegar if you let it sit in the fridge too long and you get this watery crap that comes out instead of the yellow stuff you want.

As a condiment, ketchup is really neither here nor there for me. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don’t. I don’t put ketchup on my burgers or dogs and think it even sounds yukky. I like ketchup on French fries and onion rings, but not always. Sometimes I prefer Ranch dressing or BBQ sauce. If I do have ketchup on my fries, I’m one of those people who has to have a topping of pepper, preferably coarse ground, covering my two tablespoons of ketchup. I will take the top off the table’s pepper shaker in order to get sufficient pepper on my ketchup. If you don’t like it, don’t ask me if I’m going to finish those fries, n00b.

All of this comes to the forefront because today I threw out a metric buttload of those little ketchup single-serving foil packets that fast food places glob into your sack.

Now, as much as I sometimes like ketchup on my fries, I find ketchup in the car to be a very bad idea. Even if the car is parked and not moving, I don’t seem to be able to open three or four of those packets and put the ketchup on my fries without getting some red blobs on my clothes — sometimes on my pants, sometimes on a tie or shirt, and even on a coat or socks or the toe of my new, white athletic shoes. This is odd to me since I can eat ketchup at home or in a restaurant and 99.9% of the time never get a single drop on myself. It’s only when I try to use those little foil packets that it gets slung all over everything.

Are the serrated tops of those puppies individually greased up at the factory or does McDonald’s do that in their own kitchen? The reason I ask is that one of the prime times the ketchup gets on the front of my white dress shirt is when I’m trying to open one of those slippery things. Once opened, things aren’t much better: try to squeeze some out without at least a drop or two going at light speed towards my silk tie.

Since these packets are invariably on top of my food, I have to fish them out before I can get to my bacon cheeseburger with mustard, no mayo. Then, I gather up the remains from my open seat and dutifully put them in the center pocket part of the car between the front seats. Then, when I’ve accumulated a 100 or so, I take them inside and put them in the fridge. Eventually, they fill up one of the shelves in the door of the fridge. At that point, I realize that some of them are, like, from last century and I throw them all away. Seems like a lot of wasted time, effort and ketchup.

So, my question is, if we stopped wasting so much ketchup and the foil used to package the ketchup and didn’t have to throw them away by the metric buttload, could we have ketchup without bug parts?

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A follow-up on my post on 5/12 re: McCain’s rebuttal of the torture apologists:

After Rick Santorum said that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works” — despite the fact that McCain was tortured during the Vietnam War — Greg Sargent asked McCain’s office for a response and received a one-word reply: “Who?”

From Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire

I’ll pass on the obvious “pussy” and “fag” joke and note that it is REALLY hard to quit smoking. Don’t smoke, kids. It will kill you.

I didn’t make it to the Museum roof on Thursday, but I did go to Live on the Plaza Friday night and had a great time. I had some sightings of long-lost friends like Lexi M and Sandy T., for example.

I also got to be there for the opening of Saints, which is Red Cup friend Patrick’s new venture, aided and abetted by the also Red Cup associated Kristen, and patronized by the ever-dart-throwing Tim, sans LaNeice.

They were showing the Thunder vs. Grizzlies game on the wide screen, so I watched OKC’s disappointing Game 6 loss at the last of the fest, but the Fest couldn’t be ruined for me since it started with a fashion show put on by Velvet Monkey celebrating their 2d anniversary and the models and creations were outstanding. Here are some of the visions I caught out on the street:

I really tried to get every model’s name, but my memory isn’t what it used to be and there were lots of them. In fact, the ones I got pictures of were but a tenth or so of the 30-40 models who were loosed onto the streets. Also, my iPhone photo taking skills aren’t all that great, so there were photos that just turned out kinda crappy. Here’s a couple more I thought were interesting to see.

All the models were very polite when asked for a photo, I might add, and I gave some of them the name of this blog and I hope they will email me, etc., so I can send them their photo.

There were musicians plying their trade in almost all of the Plaza venues and in addition there were street musicians like my law school classmate Beth Isbell. Street vendors with their art lined the sidewalk outside Bad Granny’s.

That about wraps up my coverage of Plaza Fest. The crowds are somewhat smaller than First Friday on the Paseo, but they’ve only had Plaza fest for a year or two now and it’s a good bet the crowds will grow over time because it is a very laid back bit of family-oriented fun presently dominated by hipsters, Wayne Coyne/Flaming Lips fans and neighborhood families. There were lots of things to do in OKC last night and this is one of them that has made my hometown much more liveable in the past couple of years.

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