It’s little wonderthat these people used to drink like fishes and smoke dope. Prozac hadn’t been invented yet, and they had to deal with trivial bullshit like this all the time.
FAO Schwarz is closing its flagship Manhattan store because the toy giant can not keep up with the rent increases. The 5th avenue store was harrowing and a far cry from the satellite stores that existed in the 1960’s and 70’s. Ours was in a suburban Philadelphia shopping mall that also housed Lord & Taylor and B. Altmans – it was a place that invoked an almost unconveyable magic. Founded by a German Immigrant in New York in 1862, these stores offered exclusive toys you never saw anywhere else. There was the menagerie of scratchy, glassy-eyed animals from Steiff: itty-bitty mice called “pieps” in aprons, bears in lederhosen, giant schnauzers handmade from felt, mohair, and alpaca. The store’s enchanting doll department had pyramids of 8″ Madame Alexander dolls from exotic lands, and behind glass were the 14″ storyland lasses.
Unlike the massive phonebookian Sears Wishbook, the FAO Schwarz catalogs were slim and understated, with tiny images of a very limited selection of toys. But those were special toys.And expensive! There were the big-ticket toys, that the stores didn’t carry and that we would never get. Like the child-sized replica of a 1950s soda fountain, impeccably rendered, with little, spinning red stools, where children could experience “the thrill of working behindas ice cream fountain server serving sundaes and sodas and other delicious concoctions”.
I just watched “The Stepford Wives” again, criminy that’s a great, ahead-of-its-time feminist movie.
If they could *build* a woman to cook, clean, provide buttsecks, wash their car, etc.., how many Republican men would be tempted? No alimony when you traded her in on a newer model. Or put’em to work, buy booze etc., with their pay. That was how the Roman Republic worked.
from NYTimes
Sure wish someone was “videotaping”
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Jeb Bush at a town-hall-style meeting in Reno, Nev., on Wednesday.Credit James Glover/Reuters
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RENO, Nev. — “Your brother created ISIS,” the young woman told Jeb Bush. And with that, Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student, created the kind of confrontational moment here on Wednesday morning that presidential candidates dread.
Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, had just concluded a town-hall-style meeting when Ms. Ziedrich demanded to be heard. “Governor Bush,” she shouted as audience members asked him for his autograph. “Would you take a student question?”
Mr. Bush whirled around and looked at Ms. Ziedrich, who identified herself as a political science major and a college Democrat at the University of Nevada.
She had heard Mr. Bush argue, a few moments before, that America’s retreat from the Middle East under President Obama had contributed to the growing power of the Islamic State. She told the former governor that he was wrong, and made the case that blame lay with the decision by the administration of his brother George W. Bush to disband the Iraqi Army.
“It was when 30,000 individuals who were part of the Iraqi military were forced out — they had no employment, they had no income, and they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons,” Ms. Ziedrich said.
She added: “Your brother created ISIS.”
Mr. Bush interjected. “All right. Is that a question?”
Ms. Ziedrich was not finished. “You don’t need to be pedantic to me, sir.”
“Pedantic? Wow,” Mr. Bush replied.
Then Ms. Ziedrich asked: “Why are you saying that ISIS was created by us not having a presence in the Middle East when it’s pointless wars where we send young American men to die for the idea of American exceptionalism? Why are you spouting nationalist rhetoric to get us involved in more wars?”
Mr. Bush replied: “We respectfully disagree. We have a disagreement. When we left Iraq, security had been arranged, Al Qaeda had been taken out. There was a fragile system that could have been brought up to eliminate the sectarian violence.”
He added: “And we had an agreement that the president could have signed that would have kept 10,000 troops, less than we have in Korea, could have created the stability that would have allowed for Iraq to progress. The result was the opposite occurred. Immediately, that void was filled.”
He concluded: “Look, you can rewrite history all you want. But the simple fact is that we are in a much more unstable place because American pulled back.”
Mr. Bush turned away. The conversation was over.
Some anti-Muslim extremists in garland, Texas were attacked by a couple of Muslim extremists yesterday, proving that America needs to take much more extreme measures to protect itself from Muslim extremists.Paid for by psychopath Pam Geller, her American Patriots and gun-toting jihadists. My only regret is that they all couldn’t be stuffed in a wormhole and sent on a one-way trip to Andromeda Galaxy. For that matter, the same goes for anyone who engages in the sort of religiously-motivated “my Skygod is bigger than your Skygod!” tripe that gets a lot of people killed to no good end. The arrogant and blatant disregard for the safety of others in this charade is disgusting. This is provocation, pure and simple. and I hope the family of the wounded cop sues the pants of off everyone responsible.
The Jimmy Winkfield Stakes
June 12, 2014 | by Michael Lipkin
A racetrack in obsolescence.
Every year on the third Monday of January, the Aqueduct Racetrack, in South Ozone Park, Queens, runs a six-furlong race in honor of Jimmy Winkfield. The choice of date, Martin Luther King Day, is not accidental. Of Winkfield’s many accomplishments, which include winning the Russian Oaks an incredible five times for Czar Nicholas II, he is best known as the last black jockey to run a winner in the Kentucky Derby, in 1902.
To be black in the world of horse racing was no easy thing in the early part of the twentieth century. Winkfield, born in Kentucky, had enjoyed a storied career in Russia and France, but when he returned to America he was forced to enter a reception held in his honor through the hotel’s service entrance, with the bellhops and the kitchen staff.
Because of the raw January weather, attendance at the Jimmy Winkfield Stakes is usually rather sparse compared to the bigger events at the height of the racing season. This year, my older brother Ilya and I saw the race completely on a whim—we thought it might be fun to trek out to the Aqueduct like we used to when we were younger. Back then, if the weather was fine, our father would drive us to the track out in Ozone Park, a favorite destination for the unattached men in the neighborhood. Edik from the dry cleaners down the street was a fixture there, as was Pavel, the bartender at the Pennant Sports Bar on Northern, and Parsons, whose brother was an orderly at the elder-care facility where our grandfather died. To me, gaining admission to that world of working men was no less exciting than the races themselves. I watched with great interest as they quaffed beer and studied the odds on the board and cursed when they invariably lost their money. Being a bit older, Ilya had a better sense of what was actually going on. He nagged Pavel until the bartender showed him how to decipher the near-hieroglyphic racing form. The one time my father let him place a bet, we won eighty dollars. It proved to be a red-letter day, because that same afternoon, I fed a carrot to Cigar, the Hall of Fame thoroughbred, just before the first big win of his career. (The Aqueduct now runs a race in his honor as well.)
There are two ways to look at global warming:
The Good News–Global warming is caused by human activities. This is good because we can do something about it.
The Bad News–Global warming is NOT caused by human activities. This is bad because we can’t do a damned thing about it.
The Bad News COULD still be good news if we figure out ways to deal with bad stuff that isn’t caused by human activities through applying, oh, I dunno, SCIENCE? Alas, the shitturds in the GOP is turning The Good News into Bad News by applying bribes and prayer to bad stuff that is caused by human activities. It’s a lose-lose situation. The anti-science bullshit that goes on in this country is going to kill us all. How the rest of the world puts up with us, I don’t know.