Well Hey There, Lil’ Feller

Some readers may have already heard this news — others may not have known it was even in the works. But anyway …

I became a grandfather yesterday, May 31. My stepdaughter and her husband were blessed with the birth of a son, Benjamin.

He arrived almost four weeks early, the morning after an exhausting Saturday for my stepdaughter during which she co-managed a six-hour charity yard sale in the morning/afternoon and oversaw her dance school students performing in a three-and-a-half hour dance recital in the evening.

Benjamin’s weight at birth was 6 lbs. even. Since arriving he has developed some issues typical for early arrivers. It doesn’t sound like anything serious but we’re told that to be on the safe side he will likely remain in the hospital for an indefinite period after his mom is discharged tomorrow.

Newly minted grandmom Mrs. QC uncles sons #1, #2, and #3 are thrilled — as am I, natch’.

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Unseconded My Notion

Mowing season is arriving in QC-country, so this past Sunday my car’s parking accommodations switched from the cushy garage to the exposed driveway.

I’ve always locked my car overnight when it’s parked in the driveway. We’ve lived here since 1992. There’s “Black Beauty” right there:

But to lock it I either have to

• use the key

or

• close the driver’s door, open the same-side passenger door and then reach in and push down the lock button on the driver’s door.

A puzzling design decision — them Swedes are, um, quirky.

Anyway it’s a bit of a pain. So for this mowing season I got the notion I would leave the car unlocked overnight. The car is 15 years old, I don’t keep anything of significant value in it, and the neighborhood is pretty safe.

Little Green Doggy Bag

My favorite DJs on Blip.fm have turned me on to several cool songs I’d long forgotten. In some cases I’d either forgotten or never knew the title and artist — like in the case of “Little Green Bag” by George Baker Selection, a number 21 hit in the U.S. in 1970.

You know how a song gets stuck in your head? Well, usually it’s just part of a song — the part of the song that contains what music industry insiders refer to as “the hook” — because it grabs you.

Can a song be one large hook? I ask because “Little Green Bag” is stuck in my head in its entirety.

Suffice to say, “Bag” is hook-laden. I warn you: Don’t play this video unless you’re prepared for a musical brain imprint that could take days to fade.

Smiling yet? Go ahead. Play it again. Or play one of the many other videos of this song on YouTube. I can wait.

One Year in the Blogs

Quiet Clown celebrates its first birthday today.

On March 25, 2008, I posted Tech writer’s block and followed it up later the same day with Remembering DJ Jackson Armstrong.

Here is a list of the 10 most popular posts:

1. My Long-Legged, Celebrity Colleague From Childhood 237 views
2. Blip.fm DJs — What’s Your BLA? 151 views
3. My Visit to a Service at WellSprings UU 150 views
4. Remembering DJ Jackson Armstrong 129 views
5. FiveThirtyEight: 11%(!) Chance of Obama Winning EV, Losing PV 104 views
6. Matching Mismatches 92 views
7. Bobbie Gentry’s Mystifying Mississippi Tour 86 views
8. Finally! 2001 Anthrax Attacks are Back in the News 77 views
9. Was ‘McCain Would be Better Than Bush’ an Obama Gaffe? 74 views
10. ’tis the Season for Throw-Up Coats 60 views

There’s more I could say to mark the occasion … but I really don’t feel like it.

Photo credit: Flickr user kymai100 (Brenda), used here in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons license.

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Think of “The Zink”

UPDATED 6/25/09, 9:54 pm:
I found this 1984 Sports Illustrated article on The Zink. (H/T “rlee” on the Association for Professional Basketball Research forum)

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As many Philadelphians know, the 42-year old Wachovia Spectrum arena — simply “the Spectrum” to aged purists like myself — is scheduled for demolition later this year. The Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA, one of the Spectrum’s principal tenants from its opening in 1967 until the opening of the CoreStates Center (now the Wachovia Center) in 1996, will return to the Spectrum for a single nostalgic farewell game this Friday night, March 13, against the Chicago Bulls.

I am happy to pass along word that the Sixers will not neglect to pay tribute Friday to their legendary former public address announcer, the late Dave Zinkoff. I loved “The Zink”. He worked the Sixer games at the Spectrum and before that, Convention Hall, until his death on Christmas Day, 1985. (In this 1982 picture, from Wikipedia, he evidently was working a pro wrestling event — look at the build of the athlete next to him.)

As reported by Dan Gross in the Philadelphia Daily News via Philly.com:

Late great PA announcer Dave Zinkoff’s voice could be heard booming through the Spectrum the other day. It wasn’t Zinkoff, or a ghost, but comedian and master impressionist Joe Conklin, who was rehearsing and recording classic “Zinkisms” that the Sixers will play Friday when they face the Bulls in the team’s final game at the Spectrum, their longtime home.

Awesome! I’ll skip the game, as fun as it would be to be there, due to budgetary constraints (tickets were still available as of this morning starting at $19.76). I will, though, count on Conklin’s recordings eventually finding their way online at Sixers.com or JoeConklin.com.

Route 30 Gives My Head the Business

Last night Mrs. QC and I found ourselves on the way from Frazer, PA (Chee burger Chee burger) to Downingtown (Wegmans) via Lancaster Avenue, US 30. As we approached US 202, the Exton Bypass beckoned. If we wanted to stay on US 30, we would have to be seduced by the bypass’ call, for Lancaster Avenue becomes US 30 Business — “Business 30″ as we call it — at that point and remains so until the expressway ends past Parkesburg about 20 miles to the west.

The Exton bypass is the newest expressway in the Delaware Valley — it opened about 10 years ago — and I’ve only had occasion to drive on it maybe ten times even though it’s only five miles south of my home.

I haven’t done much expressway driving in our relatively new car, so I said, “Let’s take the bypass and I’ll open this baby up.”

As we cruised over the southern edge of Exton at the breakneck speed of 65 mph, I experienced the same disconnect I’ve experienced most other times I’ve driven on the bypass: The distance covered on the bypass seems much greater than that covered by Business 30.

Batting Cleanup — Moe Howard

UPDATED 3/10/09, 7:50 am:
Joe Conklin posted the Moe Howard/Ryan Howard comedy bit described in this post on his own site. To hear it go to Conklin’s media page. The bit is in the “Audio” column; it’s currently at the bottom.

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Yesterday morning comedian Joe Conklin did a 3 Stooges bit on the WIP radio morning show. The inspiration for the bit was an interview in which retired baseball star/manager/disgraced gambler Pete Rose referred to Ryan Howard (pictured), the slugging first baseman of the Philadelphia Phillies, as head Stooge Moe Howard.

It took several minutes searching, but thanks to Google and USA Today, I found the interview. It turns out the interviewer was WIP’s veteran afternoon drive host Howard Eskin and the interview was originally broadcast on, not surprisingly, WIP. Rose’s gaffe occurs about three-tenths of the way into the interview — unfortunately the WIP audio player doesn’t display elapsed time.

Now Rose’s error is funny on its own. Most current events relatable to the Stooges are — to me at least.

The error becomes doubly funny when one recalls Rose wore his hair in the “bowl cut” style as an active player — the same hair style sported by Moe Howard when he was in character. One need only google “Pete Rose” “Moe Howard” to verify that this comparison has been made by many over the years.

Unfiltered Perception

UPDATED 2/24/09, 12:52 pm:
I’ve read this picture is fake.

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That President Obama — boy it was fun to write those two words next to each other — was a cigarette smoker (and may still be) is well known, but I had never seen (nor sought) photographic evidence. So I have to laugh at this picture from a Facebook sidebar ad for an I.Q. test that’s been running in recent days.

Amazing how much less confidence he inspires in this picture.

Thanks, Facebook. Was that really necessary?

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Raining in Baskets

What a day brightener! Only minimal basketball knowledge is needed to enjoy this CBS Evening News clip (running time 2:45):

Thanks to my friend Pete S. for posting it on his Facebook profile.

An ESPN clip on McElway has more detail and the game footage is in color, but the cheesy music is distracting in my opinion — plus it’s twice as long as the one I’ve embedded. The detail I thought most interesting is that McElway actually missed not two but six shots. But that hardly detracts from his achievement.

I can imagine Tom McGinnis, the excitable Philadelphia 76ers radio play by play announcer, calling McElway’s hot streak. By McElway’s third three-pointer, you’d hear McGinnis’ trademark “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?”. The fifth would cause McGinnis’ head to explode — leaving you to deduce from the crowd reaction and buzzer that McElway hit a sixth to end the game.

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Every Day is a Gift

In our culture how do we primarily mark the passage of time?

• A year seems an overwhelming increment — until the moment you sit back and wonder where they all went.
• Weeks and months have their rhythms but those rhythms are subject to disruption, sometimes intentional, other times circumstantial.
• Seconds and minutes fly by too fast.
• Hours are rather nebulous. If the metric system were ever to be applied to time, I’ll bet the hour would go through the most radical transformation, likely whittled down from 24 per day to 10.

Ah, did someone say “day”? We mark time primarily by days, don’t we? What is unique about the day is it correspondence with our circadian rhythm. Only the day is demarcated by an activity necessary for survival. That activity is, of course, sleep.  Each day is  back-ended — well, technically front-ended — by a period of restorative sleep — during which the body rests but the mind stays active.

On MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the host famously marks time in days — counting up the number of days since the Bush administration’s declaration of “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq and counting down, originally, the number of days until the 2008 election, and currently the number of days, now in single digits, until the inauguration of Barack Obama as the next U.S. president.