Larry Thomason died today. He was having some kind of routine surgery and his heart stopped. I’ve known Larry Joe since high school and he was a big part of The Basement Diaries. Great poker player. Good photographer. Loved politics.
The incoming rounds are getting closer.
“The new man in Sheryl Crow’s life is Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong, 32. The pair have been quietly seeing each other for the past few weeks, and sources say the rocker, 41, is smitten.”
I’d been hearing/reading that for a few weeks but didn’t think much about until getting some on-the-ground confirmation this week in Kennett. My sources tell me Lance spent Thanksgiving with Sheryl and her family in Kennett. Okay, that’s surreal enough. But the five time Tour de France winner is reported to have gone cycling while in town. Don’t know the full route but he apparently biked down HW 25 to Senath. I just don’t have the words to express how bizarre that strikes me.
Some will flinch and cringe that I would post such data, but Barb has embraced the passage with her usual enthusiasm. She’s been wearing a rhinestone tiara for two days and is totally convinced she has yet to reach the half-way point in her life. Barb continues to drink deep from the beer bottle of life. Her sister threw a little bash for her last night and it was wonderful to be in the room with someone so loved.
He was at home with friends and family nearby. He was 83 and –until very recently– worked his morning shift at a local radio station. I won’t attempt to sum up such a full, rich life. I had the good sense to sit down with him a few years ago and record some of his memories from the early days at KBOA. Mr. Rudy was a radio personality at a time when that really meant something and it was the perfect medium for him. Radio –and those of us that knew Mr. Rudy– are poorer for his passing.
No blogging this past week while visiting my brother Blane (with ball) and his family. They live in Bandar Lampung, Indonesia, and are home for just six weeks. Two years since we last saw each other and likely to be two more before next visit. I went bowling for the first time in 45 years. Played putt-putt. What is more important than family?
“Recently Kevin Phillips, former chief political strategist for Richard Nixon and author of “Wealth and Democracy,” said he no longer believes that democracy even exists in this country, but has in fact been replaced by a plutocracy — a government controlled by its wealthiest individuals to promote their own specific agenda.” Full article. [via JOHO]
Mark Cuban thinks he’s ready to turn filmmaking on its ear: “Why can’t I preorder a DVD and receive it the day the film is released in theaters? Or buy it on my way out of the theater if I liked what I saw? One thing I learned from the Mavs is that you can watch the game on TV, but you’ll still go to the game, because it’s a different experience.” [Wired via Boing Boing]
Barb
Ripley
Family
Friends
Health
Hope
Faith
Prosperity
Job
Home
Peace
“Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
–George S. Patton
One of my first posts was a quote from Lawrence Block’s Everybody Dies:
“When you die, it is said you see your whole life. But you don’t see it minute by minute, like a speeded-up film. It’s like everything you ever did in all your days was a brushstroke, and now you see the whole painting all at once.”
Poet Billy Collins has a different view:
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
From The Art of Drowning