If you want to get your copy of "Going Rogue" signed by "Serra Paylin," she will be in the area this weekend.
Lisa Ann, the porn star who portrayed "Serra Paylin," in a video whose title I cannot mention here for propriety's sake, will be at Al's Diamond Caberet in Reading this weekend.
Not much else to say about it...
The Harrisburg Patriot New's David Jones reports that Penn State will be selling seat rights at Beaver Stadium as a means of raking in more cash from the football program.
Essentially, the university is considering upping the contributions you need to make to the Nittany Lion Club in order to buy season tickets.
Jones explains:
"But, on the other hand, this is not a flat, one-time fee with a long-term commitment. It will be annual and people can opt out any year. And the cost can vary depending on one's seat locations, annual level of giving and all the arcane details of the plan. So, in that strict sense, it's not a PSL (Personal Seat License).
"The reported prices I believe are accurate or very close. A $600 annual fee per seat for the best seats between the 40 yard lines; $300-400 annually for each seat between the goal lines and the 40s; $100 annually for those wrapped around the end zones who are not in student or club seating., one-time fee with a long-term commitment. It will be annual and people can opt out any year. And the cost can vary depending on one's seat locations, annual level of giving and all the arcane details of the plan. So, in that strict sense, it's not a PSL.
"The reported prices I believe are accurate or very close. A $600 annual fee per seat for the best seats between the 40 yard lines; $300-400 annually for each seat between the goal lines and the 40s; $100 annually for those wrapped around the end zones who are not in student or club seating."
OK, the university -- my university -- has the right to wring as much money as it can out of the football program. The money it makes from football supports all of the other sports at Penn State. If only the university would funnel some of the money into making the school more affordable for students and working-class families. But I digress...
Jones writes:
"Where I have a real problem with Penn State is part of the product - the pansy scheduling that so transparently reeks of money-grubbing. As a fan of college football, I hate seeing the current trend, not just here but around the country, of power schools scheduling pancakes just in order to get a home game and an extra payout."
Exactly. I think until the Nittany Lions can prove they can beat, oh, the Ohio States and Iowas on a consistent basis, this gouging is outrageous.
Still, I'm reminded of the the words of a friend who's a professor at the university. He always says State College is a drinking town with a football problem.
The big news Monday morning, if you gauge news value by what the morning shows waste time on, was someone wrote a book. Well, that someone didn't actually "write" the book. Someone wrote to the book for her and she slapped her name on it.
Now some people are seeing this as a grand achievement, that this person was able to "write" a book without actually "writing" it.
Anyway, the news programs are all over it, treating this person like the second coming of William Faulkner, or maybe Dean Koontz. And because of bulk sales to right-wing Web sites, it's made the best-seller list.
It kind of strikes me as the Coors Light of publishing -- a book for people who don't read, much like that dreck from Colorado is beer for people who don't like beer.
Truly a great moment in American literature.
State Rep. Ron Miller, R-Jacobus, put it this way: "It cast a shadow over the Legislature and the whole state of Pennsylvania."
It must be really bad, considering, for a moment, the performance of our esteemed state Legislature in recent years.
A bunch of Republicans were indicted this week, including former House Speaker John Perzel, R-Philadelphia, for orchestrating a complex scheme for political gain that ultimately cost taxpayers more than $10 million.
And that was on top of the indictments last year of a bunch of Democrats for handing out bonuses to state workers to conduct political business. Also in that investigation, it was revealed that Republicans also handed out bonuses. That scandal, according to reports, wound up costing taxpayers about $3.8 million.
So you can conclude that both parties were corrupt, but apparently, the Republicans were a lot better at it, and better at trying to cover it up since their malfeasance came to light in a non-election year.
Now, this might all smack of political gamesmanship, but it reveals something fundamentally wrong with our elected officials in Harrisburg. They seem to be much more concerned about winning elections, and staying in power, than actually governing the state.
And that's the real shame here.
And the real shame is, too, that nothing will change. Maybe some people will get convicted, maybe not. I would be willing to bet that none of these clowns will wind up in jail.
Meanwhile, it'll be business as usual in Harrisburg.
I hear he's going to work for Telemundo.
Or maybe's heading to Texas to work on the wall to keep the Mexicans out.
Here is The Onion's take -- "U.S. Deports Lou Dobbs."
The York County Park story -- you know what we're talking about -- is the gift that keeps giving. We return to it again. We'll probably be back at it next week. We just love this story.
That and jokes about the Catholics looking for aliens, Bill Clinton offering advice and one man's alleged skill in watching after his girlfriend's kids.
As a Penn State fan, and alum, I've been following the exploits of fellow Penn Stater Larry Johnson, the running back formerly with the Kansas City Chiefs.
He was a great college player and one of the few Penn State running backs to make it big in the pros. I always thought, if not for injuries, KiJana Carter and Blair Thomas had the most pro potential of any of the great Nittany Lion running backs over the years. But it turned out that Johnson was the one who made it big.
So how does he respond to his success?
By blowing it.
First, he is accused of beating up women. A real man. And then, he is run out of Kansas City after making gay slurs against a coach.
The guy brings shame upon Penn State. If the university ever bestowed a degree upon this nimrod, I would hope it would consider taking it back.
Over the decades, Penn State has built a good reputation for scholarship cohabitating with athletics. The school has a great record for its athletes earning degrees and being successful in areas outside of athletics. For instance, look at a lot of players on the 1986 national championship team. A lot of those guys -- quarterback John Shaffer and linebacker Trey Bauer come to mind -- were very successful even though their lives after Penn State did not include football.
Now, Johnson is available to other NFL teams. Let's hope he can rehabilitate himself and grow up. Let's hope he can make Penn State proud.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Legends of the Wall | ||||
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Leave it to "The Daily Show," a comedy program, to put the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in perspective. John Oliver's riff on it later in the clip is both hysterical and kind of depressing.
Not much to say about this video other than, never, ever give ewoks vodka early in the morning.
This story in today's New York Times reviews recent studies revealing that pigs are very smart.
"(Researchers have) found that pigs are among the quickest of animals to learn a new routine, and pigs can do a circus's worth of tricks: jump hoops, bow and stand, spin and make wordlike sounds on command, roll out rugs, herd sheep, close and open cages, play videogames with joysticks, and more."
Pigs are smarter than your honor student. Who knew?
And they are valued, the story said.
"In parts of New Guinea, they're so important to villages that they're suckled by people," one researcher said.
Mmmmmmmm...bacon...
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.
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.
