I know a lot of you aren't exactly fans of women's soccer, but you have to see this clip from ESPN.
I'll wait while you watch it.
Oh my God.
Just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse. Someone really should test that girl for steroids.
Shocking news. Retired Judge Emanuel "Mike" Cassimatis died while vacationing in Rome at age 83.
Judge Cassimatis was one of the great ones, a judge whose temperment and knowledge of the law placed him in the upper echelon of our judiciary.
Beyond that, he was just a good man. I always recall running into him at the Greek Food Festivals at the church -- he usually ran the cash register. One of the reasons the line moved so slowly is that Judge Cassimatis had to talk to everybody coming through the line. It wasn't a bother because it was always good to see him and have a chance to say hello and you knew that others felt the same way.
Every lawyer in town has probably heard the story he always told to describe circumstantial evidence. The story involved cookies with powdered sugar and his son.
He was an advocate for children. As longtime juvenile public defender Barbara Lee Krier, Cassimatis's law clerk in 1981-82, said, "Everything done in the commonwealth in the last 30 years concerning juvenile justice is based on his work."
Read Judge Cassimatis' obit here.
Utz called if off, citing paperwork required by the Federal Trade Commission.
It sounds kind of fishy. There's probably more to it. Stay tuned.
The Harp & Fiddle is expected to re-open. Matt DeRose, who owns Heritage Hills, is taking it over.
Wish him luck. He'll need it. The perception of downtown is that venturing down there after dark is suicidal. That's ridiculous. Downtown needs the Harp. If anything, it gives you a place to go after ball games.
The York County Commissioners this week answered the prayers of the What Have We Learned team by bringing up the topic of men having sex in county parks.
Yes, the comedy gods were smiling upon us. Must be all of that good living. And staying the hell out of county parks.
Much is being made of the historic nature of Tuesday's election. It was historic, but it was fairly predictable. The best candidates won. That they happened to be African-American was not a big deal to voters -- at least the ones I talked to.
Kim Bracey, I think, will be a fine mayor. She certainly has her work cut out for her. Her victory reminded me of the headline the satirical Web site The Onion ran last year when Barack Obama won: "Black man given worst job in the nation."
The most surprising thing that came out of the election is that Chuck Patterson, one of our new judges, is 60 years old. He doesn't look it.
As readers of this blog know, one of my literary pet peeves is the continued existence of Dan Brown. I don't object to Brown's ideas or stories. I object to him because he's such a terrible writer.
Another one of my literary pet peeves has to do with the continued existence of Ayn Rand. She is viewed as a great thinker of our time by a lot of people -- something that baffles me. Her notions -- which can be boiled down to the simple conclusion that selfishness is a virtue -- strike me as infantile and sociopathic. Her entire philosophy is a rationalization for behaving selfishly and having absolutely no regard for any other human being.
She is enjoying a resurgence in popularity now -- well, she would be enjoying if she weren't dead -- thanks to a lot of conservatives who share her belief that selfishness is a virtue. She is hot in publishing and is the subject of two new biographies.
A review of the two books on Slate magazine begins:
"Ayn Rand is one of America's great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"--her readers--were 'lice' and 'parasites' who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave. She regularly tops any list of books that Americans say have most influenced them. Since the great crash of 2008, her writing has had another Benzedrine rush, as Rush Limbaugh hails her as a prophetess. With her assertions that government is 'evil' and selfishness is 'the only virtue,' she is the patron saint of the tea-partiers and the death panel doomsters. So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon?"
Here is a passage that reflects just how nuts she was:
"The newspapers were filled for months with stories about serial killer called William Hickman, who kidnapped a 12-year-old girl called Marion Parker from her junior high school, raped her, and dismembered her body, which he sent mockingly to the police in pieces. Rand wrote great stretches of praise for him, saying he represented 'the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. ... Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should.' She called him 'a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy,' shimmering with 'immense, explicit egotism.' Rand had only one regret: 'A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy [Hickman] was not strong enough.'"
She probably would have thought John Wayne Gacy was an exceptional clown.
The review concludes:
"The figure Ayn Rand most resembles in American life is L. Ron Hubbard, another crazed, pitiable charlatan who used trashy potboilers to whip up a cult. Unfortunately, Rand's cult isn't confined to Tom Cruise and a rash of Hollywood dimwits. No, its ideas and its impulses have, by drilling into the basest human instincts, captured one of America's major political parties."
And if that weren't enough, in my opinion, anyway, as execrable as her ideas were, she was a terrible writer.
York City will make history on this election day, electing the first black mayor.
Amazing that it took so long for this to happen, but considering York's history with and its troubles reconciling the issues of the past, maybe it should be surprising that it took so long.
York, as you all know, is a very traditional place and by traditional, I mean it takes this town a long time to accept things that are taken for granted elsewhere.
Let's hope this election is step toward getting away from that.
OK, how about them Eagles!
They crush the Giants, 40-17, to secure a tie for the division lead. But it is puzzling: How on Earth did this team ever lose to the Raiders?
Then, Sunday night, nothing much to say about the Phillies. They gave it a shot. But in the end, fell to the Yankee's winning pitcher, Brad Lidge. Yes, I know Lidge is the Phillies closer, but his implosion in the ninth doomed the Phillies. Tonight, the Phils try to extend the series with their ace, Cliff Lee. Too little, too late.
There's always next year...
Saturday morning, driving in the left lane of Eastern Boulevard, I was behind one of those mini-SUVs, a Suzuki or whatever, that was going very slow and drifting across the lanes. A car was beside me and that driver was afraid to pass the slow-moving dingbat.
I approached the light at Kingston Road and got in the turn lane and looked over, expecting to see, perhaps, a senior citizen.
Instead, it was a person who appeared to be in his 20s. He was looking down at his cell phone and typing.
He was texting while driving.
I'd heard about this, like all of you have, but it was the first time I've seen it in person.
Idiot.
Now, I've seen people reading while driving. I've seen women putting on makeup while driving. But this was the worse.
As you prepare to celebrate Halloween and gorge on Reese's Peanut Butter Cups until you enter a state of sugar-fueled euphoria, heed these words from Kimberly Daniels, posting on Pat Robertson's Web site.
"The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes. These activities include:
* Sex with demons
* Orgies between animals and humans
* Animal and human sacrifices
* Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
* Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
* Revel nights
* Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
* Release of 'time-released' curses against the innocent and the ignorant."
Man, we never get invited to the good Halloween parties.
She also writes, "For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches."
Even my Reese's Pieces? Does this mean Hershey Foods employs a squadron of witches to pray over candy bars?
As Frank Zappa said, the torture never stops.
A story in the Onion includes this passage:
"To put into perspective just how long the Phillies have gone without a championship, the earth has almost made one full orbit of the sun since the franchise last paraded through downtown Philadelphia holding the famed Commissioner's Trophy.
"'We have a good group of guys this year, and if we block out all the stuff about how we haven't won a World Series in more than 5,000 waking hours, we'll be fine,' (Ryan) Howard said. 'Frankly, I'm tired of all that talk. Yes, I know Michael Jackson was still alive the last time we won, and I know Boston Legal was gearing up for its final episode. But look, when the umpire says 'Play ball,' none of that matters.'
"'After 364 days of constantly coming up short, I think this is finally our year,' Howard added.
And this, from a fan:
"I guess part of me feels like the long wait will make a title all the more special," season-ticket holder Mike Oliver said. "And even though I don't like to compare teams, this Philly squad feels similar to the one who beat the Rays back in the day. They had guys like Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Cole Hamels, Jamie Moyer--guys who could really play the game and knew how to win; not like today's players."
"Man, whatever happened to Jamie Moyer?" Oliver added. "He's got to be dead by now."
WGAL's Ron Martin snagged an interview with former Mayor/murder defendant Charlie Robertson.
Nothing really insightful, but it's Charlie. He always seemed to have lack of self-awareness.
He did say, "You never get over it," regarding his arrest for murder in his alleged role in the 1969 race riots in town.
Well, yeah, getting arrested for murder, that would seem to stick with you.
Mike Argento, a York native and graduate of York Suburban Area High School and Penn State, first came to the York Daily Record in 1983. He even had gray hair back then. After stints covering everything from cops to city hall to state government to the environment, he began writing a column for the paper, three times a week, in 1989. His column can be about anything and so is his blog, which encompasses life in York County and beyond. And, for the record, as he told his wife the other night, he wishes people would stop asking him, 'What's wrong with you?' He really doesn't know.
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