Category Archives: Ron Santo

The Pencil Today:

THE QUOTE

“Some believers accuse skeptics of having nothing left but a dull, cold, scientific world. I am left with art, music, literature, theater, the magnificence of nature, mathematics, the human spirit, sex, the cosmos, friendship, history, science, imagination, dreams, oceans, mountains, love, and the wonder of birth. That’ll do for me.” — Lynne Kelly

THAT’S RICH

The most ironic story of the last few days is the news that Washington, DC, host city of the 2012 International AIDS Conference, has an HIV-positive rate of some 3 percent. That’s similar to some nations of Africa, a continent, we’ve been told, which is rife with HIV and AIDS.

AIDS 2012 Opening Day Marchers, Yesterday

It’s the perfect illustration of how weird and busted our health care system and overall economy are. Richest nation in the history of the world — millions of people uninsured, poverty-stricken, uneducated, and sick.

Oh, that invisible hand.

THE NATION’S HAND-HOLDER

Barack Obama showed up in Aurora, Colorado yesterday to console the families of the victims of that legal gun owner, James Holmes.

Obama In Aurora

You, know, Ronald Reagan perfected this aspect of the presidential portfolio. Say what you will about Saint Ronald — and I’ve said plenty about the most terrifying president of my lifetime — he was brilliant as our chief cheerleader, mourner, and tucker of the nation into bed at night.

Mike Royko once wrote that Reagan was a miserable prez for domestic issues and a riverboat gambler when it came to foreign affairs, but he was so good at the above-mentioned tasks that he ought to have been named king for life. He could handle all those warm and fuzzy duties while staying as far away as possible from the more pressing work of the White House.

And that was George W. Bush’s undoing. His abominable showing after Hurricane Katrina led to his downfall, the fracturing of his party, and the election of Obama himself. Reagan would have spent many an hour letting the folks of New Orleans he was with them.

Bush, for his part, seemed blase about the whole deal, his most memorable utterance being that famous frat-boy backslapping, “Brownie, yer doin’ a heckuva of a job.”

It’s Yucky Down There

Obama’s got this part of the job down pat.

HILLER THE WOODSMITH; HILLER THE WORDSMITH

Our own Nancy Hiller has a big piece coming out in the October edition of Fine Woodworking (#228).

From Fine Woodworking Magazine

The author of “A Home of Her Own” is a terrific keyboard banger.

A little shameless promotion here: we’ll be carrying the mag at the Book Corner. Oh, we’ve got the book, too. See you there.

CRAZY — TERRIFYINGLY CRAZY

This weekend I noticed a number of references on Facebook to the deranged theory that the Aurora, Colorado shooting was a false flag op carried out by one-worlders eager to strip the the planet’s citizenry of their sacred armaments

The theory goes like this:

The United Nations is pushing its Arms Trade Treaty. See, some of the nations of Earth are making tons of dough selling pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, rocket launchers, mortars, and every other conceivable firearm short of nuclear bombs to the poorer countries so those little guys can shoot themselves up good.

The UN is saying, Hey, let’s slow this biz down a little, huh.

Business As Usual

Natch, the gun people in this holy land think this is the absolute worst infringement on our rights imaginable. They feel the UN treaty is only the first slide down the slippery slope to the seizure of all guns from all god-fearing Americans.

Don’t ask me why they think that. I can’t begin to explain the psycho-sexual love people have for guns around these parts.

Yeesh!

Suffice it to say, though, that the Great United States, Inc. is the world’s largest exporter of firearms. Every war in every corner of the Earth is being fought with Americans guns.

It couldn’t be that those simple folk fretting about our sacred rights are being set up by American gun manufacturers and dealers, could it?

Anyway, this weird, weird conspiracy theory holds that James Holmes is sort of a Manchurian Candidate who was hypnotized or drugged to do his dirty deed Friday night, thereby whipping up the namby-pamby nannies of the nation to shriek for gun control.

Yeah, I know, it can’t get any more psychotic.

In fact, I put a post up on Facebook myself the other day saying the next person who espoused this lunacy would be de-friended by me immediately and gleefully.

My old trivia competition pal Andy Wallingford of Louisville took note of my post. He sent me a message and a photo.  “Remember,” he wrote, “when conspiracy theories were fun?”

The US Air Force Tunnel Borer

The conspiracy theorists have put forth a variety of reasons the United Sates Air Force would own the machine picture above. The top among them include the idea that the federal government is creating a vast series of underground mountain tunnels in the western United States, wherein our leaders can retreat and live in splendor while the rest of us die horrible deaths from disease, war, poison gas, asteroid collisions or some other such calamity.

Another theory holds that the tunnels have been created to house extraterrestrials who are working in concert with the feds to be able to skitter underground to all the nations on Earth and then implant their seed in unsuspecting humans.

Try to forget the fact that the proponents of these theories might be living on your block and just enjoy their beauty and unfettered creativity.

Look, I fantasize making sweet, sweet love with Anne Hathaway. My fever dream has about as much chance of coming true as those of the conspiracy theorists.

Oh, Big Mike…

GOOSEBUMPS

My favorite baseball player of all time, Ron Santo, was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday afternoon.

Santo’s Plaque

Here’s a portion of the acceptance speech given by his widow, Vicki Santo.

For the entire speech, go here.

Beautiful words: “God, how he loved the Cubs, and the Cubs’ fans.”

Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

I Love ChartsLife as seen through charts.

XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

SkepchickWomen scientists look at the world and the universe.

Skepchick

IndexedAll the answers in graph form, on index cards.

Flip Flop Fly BallBaseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

Mental FlossFacts.

Caps Off PleaseComics & fun.

SodaplayCreate your own models or play with other people’s models.

fish_school On Sodaplay

Eat Sleep DrawAn endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

Big ThinkTapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

The Daily PuppySo shoot me.

Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

City Hall, Common Council Chambers — Wage Theft Summit, open to the public; 1:30-3:30pm

The Player’s PubSongwriters Showcase: Host TBA; 8pm

The BishopDJ Donovan; 8pm

◗ IU HPER, room 107 — Ballroom dance lessons; 8:30pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron CenterExhibits:

  • John D. Shearer, “I’m Too Young For This  @#!%”; through July 30th
  • Claire Swallow, ‘Memoir”; through July 28th
  • Dale Gardner, “Time Machine”; through July 28th
  • Sarah Wain, “That Takes the Cake”; through July 28th
  • Jessica Lucas & Alex Straiker, “Life Under the Lens — The Art of Microscopy”; through July 28th

◗ IU Art MuseumExhibits:

  • Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald GalleryExhibits:

  • Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show; through July 21st
  • Bloomington Photography Club Annual Exhibition; July 27th through August 3rd

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery“Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly LibraryExhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break

Monroe County History Center Exhibits:

  • “What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
  • Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

The Pencil Today:

THE QUOTE

“Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we’ve always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.” — Stephen King

CLOSE THAT BARN DOOR!

I understand movie theaters around the nation are now banning the wearing of masks.

Thank god!

At last!

I feel safer already.

Any Busty Woman Who Wears A Lincoln Mask Is Dangerous

SANTO

Ronald Edward Santo enters the National Baseball Hall of Fame this weekend.

Ron Santo & The Black Cat, September 9, 1969, Shea Stadium, New York City

My favorite baseball player of all time.

The bastards waited until he was dead to vote him in.

Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us (via the comments section) and if we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.

I Love ChartsLife as seen through charts.

I Love Charts

XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”

SkepchickWomen scientists look at the world and the universe.

IndexedAll the answers in graph form, on index cards.

Flip Flop Fly BallBaseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.

Mental FlossFacts.

Caps Off PleaseComics & fun.

Caps Off Please

SodaplayCreate your own models or play with other people’s models.

Eat Sleep DrawAn endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.

Big ThinkTapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.

The Daily PuppySo shoot me.

Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.

Showers Plaza, City HallFarmers Market; 8pm

Monroe County Public LibraryJill Bolte Taylor reads from “Miss Rumphius”; 11am-noon

Jill Bolte Taylor

◗ IU Wells-Metz TheatreMusical, “You Can’t Take It with You”; 2pm

◗ IU Fine Arts TheaterRyder Film Series: “Oslo August 31”; 7pm

◗ IU Wells-Metz Theatre“The Taming of the Shrew”; 7:30pm

Cafe DjangoPaul Kirk Quintet; 8pm

◗ IU Memorial UnionUB Films: “Dazed and Confused”; 8pm

Joan Shelley At The Bishop

◗ IU Woodburn Hall Theater — Ryder Film Series: “Oslo August 31”; 8pm

The Player’s PubGordon Bonham Blues Band; 8pm

The Comedy AtticHannibal Buress; 8 & 10:30pm

◗ IU Fine Arts TheaterRyder Film Series: “Gerhard Richter Painting”; 8:45pm

The BluebirdCrooked County; 9pm

The Root Cellar at Farm Bloomington — Oldies dance party, ’50s & ’60s music; 10pm

The BishopJoan Shelley & the June Brides, Joe O’Connell, Andrew Iafrate; 8pm

Ongoing:

◗ Ivy Tech Waldron CenterExhibits:

  • John D. Shearer, “I’m Too Young For This  @#!%”; through July 30th
  • Claire Swallow, ‘Memoir”; through July 28th
  • Dale Gardner, “Time Machine”; through July 28th
  • Sarah Wain, “That Takes the Cake”; through July 28th
  • Jessica Lucas & Alex Straiker, “Life Under the Lens — The Art of Microscopy”; through July 28th

◗ IU Art MuseumExhibits:

  • Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
  • “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
  • Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
  • Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
  • “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
  • David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
  • Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
  • Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
  • “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st

◗ IU SoFA Grunwald GalleryExhibits:

  • Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show; through July 21st
  • Bloomington Photography Club Annual Exhibition; July 27th through August 3rd

◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery“Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st

◗ IU Lilly LibraryExhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st

◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break

Monroe County History Center Exhibits:

  • “What Is Your Quilting Story?”; through July 31st
  • Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th

The Pencil Today:

AIM HIGHER

Dr. Timothy Leary said it: “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

Timothy Leary In 1992, Covered In Psychedelic Images, Natch

FOUND MONEY

This time of year Hoosiers reach into their hall closets for those coats they haven’t worn for nine months or so. They dig into the pockets and, lo and behold, find folded up five dollar bills.

Happens all the time.

Gov. Mitch Daniels did the same thing yesterday and was so pumped that he called a press conference.

Only it wasn’t a fin he found. It was $320 million.

That is, 64,000,000 five dollar bills.

“I’m Gonna Go Check Under the Sofa Cushions Now!”

The Indy Star reports the swag was found in some hidden-away bank account by a State Department auditor. The dough was revenue from corporate income taxes. It was all a happy accident, Daniels said, beaming.

Yeah, what a thrill. Especially for Indiana school districts which — mirabile dictu! — have suffered some $300 million in funding cuts over the last three years.

The whole charade stinks, no?

OLD NUMBER 33 IS 55

Happy birthday, Larry Bird.

ILLITERATES

So, Bloomington’s unofficial poet laureate Ross Gay comes into the Book Corner yesterday afternoon. We chat about our work habits. He tells me he likes to get up at 5:30 in the morning and write for three hours or so. Then he says he isn’t disciplined enough. I tell him he’s nuts.

Poet Ross Gay

Then he browses for a few minutes, comes back, and puts a couple of small books on the counter. One of them is by Marcel Proust.

Anybody who hopes to be considered intelligent must read Proust. Me? All I know of Proust is from that movie, “Little Miss Sunshine.”

You know, where the Steve Carell character has spent his life studying Proust? And finds himself pretty much in nowheresville?

I confess to the lanky rhymer: “I’ve never read a word of Proust.”

He exhales as though he’s relieved. “Neither have I!” he says.

Cool. Ross Gay and me.

JUNK SCIENCE

Let me get this straight. Investors the world over were thrilled that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy agreed on a plan to put wayward European Union nations back on the right track.

Money Can Buy Me Love

Markets went up in the US, China, Japan, and Europe itself. Even those stuffed shirts in the UK started investing again. The party lasted a single day.

Standard & Poors issued a warning Monday night saying the honchos took too long to come to an agreement. So, S&P just might downgrade the credit ratings of 15 eurozone nations. And now the markets are going all to hell again.

What is it about this shell game that I don’t get?

Besides everything.

CATS AND MACHINES

Click the thumb below and see Episode 5 in Grover & Sloan’s tale of the cat and the air pump.

BASEBALL IN DECEMBER

I’m still giddy over the election of my favorite baseball player of all time to the Hall of Fame Monday. Ron Santo had an Italian daddy-o, was as emotional as an opera singer, loved pizza, and hit home runs for the Chicago Cubs in the 1960s and early 70s. When I was a little kid, I imagined he was a member of my own family.

So shoot me if I have the diamond game on my mind. Luckily, baseball junkie Eric Van Gucht reviews the book, “Satch, Dizzy, and Rapid Robert” on our Salon page. This kid is good and I hope he’ll do a lot more writing for us from here on out.

WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

◗ Only one link today: Facers were particularly unimaginative last night and this morning. This one, though, is well worth standing alone.

Krista Detor, our town’s sweetest canary, is putting on her annual holiday show Thursday, December 15, 7:30PM, at the Bloomington Convention Center. Whip out that wallet and splurge. You’ll thank me — and Krista.

The Pencil Today:

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST?

Bingo from C. Wright Mills: “People with advantages are loath to believe they just happen to be people with advantages.”

C. Wright Mills Photographed By His Wife, Yaroslava

TREE STOLEN. WAIT — WHAT? TREE STOLEN?

The Herald Times reports this morning that vandals stole a tree from Bryan Park.

The tree,  a blue spruce, was donated by a neighbor some 22 years ago. The neighbor was able to look at the tree each morning through his apartment window. He’d nursed the tree through some tough times and considered it his “baby.”

A Typical Blue Spruce

And yesterday he discovered that some punks — apparently — had sawed the whole damned thing down and hauled it away!

If that isn’t bad enough, city tree boss Lee Huss says it’s not terribly unusual. Huss says some twelve trees a year are stolen.

Man. Have I not awakened from my beauty sleep yet and this is just one of those stupid dreams?

COFFEE CHATTER

Did you catch the puff piece on Soma Coffee in the weekend IDS?

If not, here it is.

THE JANUARY SAGA CONTINUES

Chad Carrothers, the big boss at Firehouse Radio, says January Jones resigned as WFHB News Director to, in her words, “spend more time with my family.”

Sheesh. I can’t even make a smart-assed comment about that other than to say any good news hound — and January was a fine news hound — knows that’s what you say when what you really want to say will burn bridges.

Her resignation was, in Chad’s words, “unsolicited and unexpected.”

The news operation at our town’s community radio station undoubtedly will suffer without her even though Assistant News Director Alycin Bektesh is among the sharpest pencils in the drawer and would be a fab choice as January’s permanent replacement.

I’ll redouble my efforts to get January’s take on the split.

THE WATER CYCLE

Go see another comic by Randall Munroe, the brain behind the strip “XKCD.”

WE DO FACEBOOK SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

◗ The radical attorney Jerry Boyle, who’s been running around downtown Chicago for a couple of months now trying to keep the town’s Occupy people out of hot water, posts a Venn diagram of the US Government-Goldman Sachs unholy union.

I’ll have to repro the diagram here. Dig it, and then tell me our elected officials will do their utmost to rein in those cash cowboys.

Man! It’d be like Jack and Bobby Kennedy putting Sam Giancana in charge of the Justice Department.

◗ Delia Chandler of Brighton, UK, reminds us Sunday was the anniversary of the assassination of charismatic Black Panther leader Fred Hampton — in his bedroom — by Chicago cops, the FBI, and members of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office in 1969.

Don’t be confused by the line in the Democracy Now! teaser calling it the 40th anniversary of the rub out. Amy Goodman‘s piece ran in 2009.

◗ Bloomington video auteur Chris Rall discovers some good clean spiritual fun for the kids.

Bleeding Heartland Roller Girl Shanda Rude takes her life in her hands by blaspheming Oprah. Or at least pointing out — approvingly — that Bill Maher has soiled the name of the most powerful woman on Earth.

Check the vid — if you dare. Maher skewers Oprah’s consumer goods orgy during her farewell week prior to being assumed into heaven.

Me? I didn’t worry about watching it — I’m slated for hell already.

◗ Finally, uber-Cub fan Al Yellon, proprietor of the Bleed Cubbie Blue fansite gushes over the long-awaited election of Ron Santo to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

If you’re wondering about my own feelings on Ronnie’s canonization, you need only read my Salon.com piece on his death, almost exactly a year ago.

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