The New York Times reports that the soil on Mars could support plant life. The story leads with this paragraph:
"Stick an asparagus plant in a pot full of Martian soil, and the asparagus might grow happily, scientists announced Thursday."
Mmmmmmm...Martian asparagus...
Read the whole story here.
So there are signs of life on Mars. Here's hoping it's intelligent life and not the kind that wants to come here and blow stuff up, like in the movies.
Ira Tucker, the lead singer with the gospel group, the Dixie Hummingbirds, has passed away at his home in Philadelphia. He was 83.
The Hummingbirds were best known to a generation of music fans as the group that backed up Paul Simon on "Loves Me Like a Rock. But Tucker and the rest of the group has huge success with its emotive gospel, recorded at their peak in the '40s and 50s, with songs like "Thank You for One More Day," "Trouble in My Way" and "Bedside of a Neighbor."
Tucker's style influenced a generation of soul singers, from Jackie Wilson to the Temptations to Stevie Wonder.
Read the New York Times obit here.
Bo Diddley has died.
The rock'n'roll legend was 79.
Here's one of my favorite tunes of his, Road Runner, from a live performance in 1972.
Watch this interview with the guy who sets gas prices in York County, speaking from his secret, undisclosed location in Manchester Township.
My Friday column is a follow-up to the Intown Motors story.
It seems that, at one time or another, Intown Motors has towed away just about every car in York County. The other night, at the town meeting I attended with WGAL's Janelle Stelson, among others, it seems everybody in the audience had a story about Intown Motors. (And again, thanks to all of you who came out the other night.)
So post your Intown Motors stories here.
WHTM-TV (Channel 27) got around to doing a story about the billboards around town touting an upcoming gun show at the York Fairgrounds. The billboards depict a blond woman holding targets.
Gives new meaning to the phrase "gun rack."
Just saying.
A colleague said, "I guess guns aren't the only thing bitter small-town people are clinging to."
The marketing person says the ad targets a specific audience for gun shows. She doesn't add that they apparently are the socially and emotionally retarded.
My Monday column recounts the battle between Alene Meckley, a 76-year-old woman, and Intown Motors, which towed her car while she was paying her taxes last week.
Guess who won?
Post your own thoughts, impressions and car-towing stories here.
Today is National Columnists' Day in honor of Ernie Pyle, one of the greatest columnists in the history of American journalism. The day was set aside by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists to help remember Ernie and call attention to columnists. (Full disclosure: I am the current president of this organization. I'm still not sure how that happened.)
Anyway, to remember Ernie, read this , perhaps Ernie's masterpiece, called "The Death of Captain Waskow."
This has craptacular written all over it. Oliver Stone, who, I read somewhere, hasn't made a decent movie since the Zapruder film, is making a bio-pic about Dubya.
The script was leaked to ABC News. It's pretty amusing and, according to ABC, contains this passage:
"(Bush) interrupts a meeting with Prince Bandar, in which he informs the Saudi ambassador about plans to invade Iraq, so that he can catch the rest of the 2002 Miami Dolphins-Baltimore Ravens playoff game. Bush is later shown choking on a pretzel and passing out during the second quarter."
It doesn't get any better than that.
Click here to read the first four pages of the script. (It's a pdf file and Adobe Acrobat is required.) Click here to read the ABC story that summarizes the script.
Josh Brolin has been cast to plat Dubya. I think Stone should have gotten Will Ferrell. Seriously. Just watch this:
Case closed.
Here is a video of a speech by a delegate of the Virginia legislature, lamenting the fact that nobody was taking his proposal to ban truck nuts seriously. The real fun begins about a minute and a half into it.
Enjoy.
Lots of people have been asking, "So how's Ed Berry doing?"
Ed's doing all right.
If you'll recall, he was badly injured in a fight a couple of years ago and was temporarily paralyzed. He still has some lingering problems from that, but he's doing OK, generally.
Anyway, I talked to him for Friday's column and as usual, when you get to talking to Ed, there was some stuff that didn't make the column. Here it is.
We were talking about bar arguments and Ed told me about the time he was almost shot in the old King George Tavern. He was in there, after his shift at Cole Steel, watching some guys play pool, when another guy came through the front door and pointed a gun at Ed.
"Hey, Tom, where's my dope and my money?" the guy demanded.
Ed said he wasn't Tom and he didn't have the guy's dope or money.
The guy insisted and everyone in the bar starting saying that Ed wasn't Tom. The guy was getting confused and Ed thought he was going to buy it right there in the King George.
He survived a couple of tours in Vietnam -- on the ground with the 82nd Airborne -- only to die on North George Street.
"I thought that would be about the worst thing that could happen to me, to be shot my mistake," Ed said. "Had I been Tom and took his dope and money, I probably deserved to be shot. But I wasn't."
The guy approached Ed and looked closely at him.
"You're not Tom," he said.
And he left.
Ed's also a master of trivia. Here's one: Who built the biggest battleship during World War II?
"Everybody says the Bismark," Ed said. "But it wasn't. It was the Japanese, the Yamato."
And another one. Ed said this question took his friends four years to figure out.
Who was the voice of Mister Ed?
Of course, this was pre-Internet and there was no easy way to look it up. For four years, they guessed and nobody got it. For a while, they thought Ed didn't know himself. The show's credit only listed "Mister Ed: Himself."
Ed only knew it from reading a book about B Westerns.
Finally, after four years somebody got it.
It was Allan "Rocky" Lane.
Lane, it seems, was embarrassed to be playing a horse and he was upset that they used wires to move the horse's mouth -- he thought it was cruel. But he needed the money and agreed to do it only if his name didn't appear in the credits.
There you have it.
This passage, from the New York Times, about says it all:
"Question to our Keystone State readers: What is it with this Pennsylvania fetish for bizarre world food combinations? In Johnstown, this New Yorker encountered the artery-clogging prospect of cheese-fries. And here in this diner in a perfectly lovely corner of this Berks County we come upon the Marvel Mess, a sandwich combining eggs, potatoes, onions, cheese, green peppers and Shiva only knows what else. (And in Philadelphia, my college son Nick tells me they serve up a sandwich called the Roethlisberger, named after the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, which sound so utterly and purely disgusting in its bouillabaisse combination of mystery meats and cheeses and coarse spices, as to induce a stomach-throbbing ache just hearing of it)."
Answer for our New York friends, what are you talking about? Last I heard, it was possible to get cheese fries in New York.
I suppose Pennsyltucky is a like a foreign land to our brethren in New York. Hey, we even speak English. Well, sort of.
Here, you'll find a video I did to accompany my Sunday column. In it, you'll learn which York lawyer holds the record for scarfing down three hubcap-sized pancakes at the Country Cafe in Central Market.
We seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties. Stupid computer...
David Letterman did a Top 10 list of the excused offered by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer in the wake of his involvement in a prostitution scandal.
No. 3 was "Whether it's a hooker or your wife, you're always paying for it...you married fellows know what I'm talking about."
If you'll recall, during the prostitution scandal involving our own state Sen. Dan Delp, District Attorney Stan "The Man" Rebert joked that "we all pay for sex" and told reporters to take a look at his wife's diamond ring.
Stan The Man: Ahead of his time.
It's good to know that if this whole D.A. thing doesn't work out, Stan can get a gig writing for Letterman.
Sunday night, "The Wire" came to a conclusion and that conclusion can best be summed up that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Bubbles had a happy ending and got clean. But Dukie takes his place.
For the most part, the bad guys won. Rawls got to be state police superintendent. Carcetti got to be governor. Valchek got to be city police commissioner.
Meanwhile, McNulty is out. Freamon is happily retired, making his dollhouse miniatures. Sydnor became the new McNulty. Carver became the new Daniels. The lawyers and developers move on. Marlo walked. The fabulist reporter got his big award and Gus, the saintly city editor, got demoted. Cheese got dropped. Michael becomes the new Omar.
Bunk stayed the Bunk.
And at the end, the game continued. Cheese's last words summed it up: "There ain't no back in the day. Ain't no nostalgia. Just the street and the game."
Great ending to a great show.
This Sunday, the best show to ever appear on the small screen will end.
"The Wire," created by former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon, will finish its five-season run on HBO at 9 p.m.
If you haven't seen it, do so. Great show.
The figure for all of the claims against the federal government for its lousy response to the Katrina disaster is in.
And it's pretty big.
It's $3,014,170,389,176,410.
That's more than 3 quadrillion bucks, for those keeping score at home.
For comparison, the gross domestic product of the United States, the entire country, is $13.2 trillion.
Now, it may sound like a lot, but one the lawyers' fees and expenses are deducted, the people of New Orleans will get about $3.98.
This is from a story about a robbery reported in York Friday morning:
"Stephanie L. Perez, 41, told police she was at the Exxon convenience store in the 1000 block of West Market Street when two men approached laughing and demanded money as she was getting out of her car, police said.
"Fearful she was going to get hurt, Perez turned over her wallet and that of her mother just after 9 p.m.
"Perez ran into the convenience store, told the clerk she was robbed and asked to use the phone to call police. The clerk told her to go outside and use the pay phone, police said. Police arrived to find Perez on the pay phone."
You know, if that store clerk were to let her use the phone, all the people who get robbed outside the store would want to use to the phone.
Right? Right?
OK, maybe we have a nominee for Keith Olbermann's Worst Person In The World!
We all know about Jeff Koons, York County native, artist.
Well, he's no starving artist.
His sculpture, "Hanging Heart," a nine-foot-tall, 3,500-pound bright magenta red stainless steel heart hanging from a golden bow, sold this week for a record $23.6 million.
It is the most expensive piece by a living artist ever sold, according to the Sotheby's auction house.
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