"Don't Dress For Dinner" - Theatre in the Heights

Very funny farce, where everyone lies to each other, and the resulting calamities just exacerbate the dilemmas.

Cell Block Mansplaingo

Leaning Towards a Chupacabra

I was out front watering plants about 1 a.m. Sunday morning when I heard a commotion down a side street. Some kind of animal was thrashing and thumping against a parked car. It sounded like a rabid dog devouring a whimpering puppy, but as I approached in the dark, I could tell it was just one animal, not two. In the poor light I could see the glow of eyes. Fear stabbed my chest.

I didn’t want to approach any wild animal in the dark without being able to see it clearly, so I ran home to get a flashlight. My mind ran through the possibilities: raccoon, skunk, dog, chupacabra, wolverine, bear, werewolf, Cujo.

When I returned, the gnashing, thrashing animal had retreated down a driveway at the end of the street. No way was I going to pursue a wild animal down those tight, dark confines! I returned home, and even though it was a warm night, I hid under my covers.

Saturday Night Dinner at Cafeteria 15L

Some people (like me) had worked the "It's About Time" event in Davis, and others had seen "Mamma Mia" at Music Circus.

Penance

Long DMV Lines and the Holocaust

John Cox visits local Sacramento DMV, and makes cringing comparison between long lines there and the Holocaust. (Myself, I rather enjoy DMV visits, because you get to meet your neighbors. I'm not saying I enjoy the Holocaust):

“How long have you been waiting,” he asks the woman, who responds “close to an hour.”

Cox then relays a story of a conversation with a man he met at a DMV in Southern California:

“You know, I met a Holocaust survivor in Long Beach. He survived concentration camps, and he said this was worse. He’s 90 years old and he had to wait four hours down in Long Beach. Can you imagine that?” Cox says.

THIS is How You Deal With Trump Supporters

Make them pay for their positions:

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A Trump supporter claims he was attacked by the lead singer of a punk rock band when he jeered the frontman’s political statements.

Tim Hildebrand of Galt says the attack happened at a Social Distortion concert at the Ace of Spades in Midtown. Hildebrand says he grew up listening to the band’s music and was excited to attend one of their shows, but never thought he’d leave bloody and bruised at the hands of a famous musician.

Cellphone video taken at the concert captures the moment the Social Distortion fan says he was beaten up by the band’s frontman, 56-year-old Mike Ness.

“I wasn’t able to defend myself because people in the crowd were holding me back,” he said.

Hildebrand says he the singer gave him two black eyes, a busted lip, a concussion and almost knocked out one of his teeth. The chaos broke out at a concert on July 17, but before things turned physical, Hildebrand says the show turned political.

“I pretty much said I paid for your music, not your politics.”

Hildebrand says the singer started badmouthing President Trump and America and the Republican farmer from Galt didn’t like it.

“I stood pretty much with my silent protest with my middle finger up for the next two songs.”

Ness didn’t like that and in the video, you can see him motion Hildebrand to the stage, where the singer spits in his face. Hildebrand says the two were yelling at each other when Ness lunged toward him.

20th Anniversary of "...Baby One More Time"

Britney!:

It was …Baby One More Time that convinced Spears of the merits of pop. She initially saw herself as making “Sheryl Crow music, but younger”, while Larry Rudolph, an entertainment lawyer friend of Spears’s mum Lynne who had been tasked with getting her signed (he’s now her manager), had her record a clutch of songs originally recorded by Toni Braxton. It was those recordings that lead to auditions for Mercury, Epic and Jive (the first two labels said no; she signed with the latter) which included Spears covering Whitney Houston’s version of I Will Always Love You. With the more R&B-leaning early material not working, and with a clause allowing Jive to terminate her contract after 90 days if they felt an album wasn’t on the horizon, A&R Steve Lunt approached Martin, who had already delivered success for Jive’s boyband the Backstreet Boys. A meeting was set up with Spears in New York. “I was pretty young at the time, so I was nervous,” she says, “but he was so nice and put me right at ease.” For Martin, his song had finally found its home.

My Next Project

I have an ability - one of my few real talents - to associate random images obtained in the Albuquerque area with their physical locations. I have used that ability to explore the "Breaking Bad" universe in depth.

Now (by request), I'm doing something different - trying to quickly assemble an atlas of significant filming locations for movies and TV shows filmed in the Albuquerque area. Since New Mexico's famous tax credit went into effect in the 90s (which lowers costs for film crews), filming has proliferated throughout the state, numbering at least a hundred completed projects and more on the way.

Since I've seen almost none of these films, caring as much as I do only for "Breaking Bad," my first task has been to quickly scan a whole bunch of films that have little to do with each other except for having been filmed in the Albuquerque area. I've started with about 2 dozen films.

So far, the movies I've been watching fall into three categories: 1.) Post-apocalyptic America, 2.) Cynical border dramas, and 3.) Quirky character studies.

I've started with post-apocalyptic America. As you might expect, the Albuquerque area looks pretty battered after the Apocalypse, with large robots and dangerous flying machines of all sizes zipping hither and yon across the desert. People rarely bathe after the Apocalypse, but fortunately important landmarks like addresses and street signs remain.

Nevertheless, I haven't determined very many post-Apocalyptic filming locations, either because they happened to have been interiors with no reference to the outdoors or required so much work to prepare for the camera that filmmakers didn't like to break free of them.

Cynical border dramas share some of these same flaws. A dungeon still looks like a dungeon, no matter which side of the border it happens to be. When torture is on the menu, no one ever asks 'are we there yet?'

I'm much more optimistic about finding quirky character study filming locations. The lack of investment in any one place frees characters and film crews to wander across the landscape for their many quirky adventures. I'm moving to these filming locations next.

Skeeter Davis - "The End of The World" (1962)

Coping with the premiere of Season 4 of "Better Call Saul." Thinking this would be a good song to feature:

Sovereign Citizen is Apparently a Literal Arsonist Too

Firing squad for the bastard:

Reporter J.J. MacNab, who is currently a fellow George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, has written a lengthy Twitter thread reporting that Clark’s Facebook page shows that he is a long-time conspiracy theorist “who believes in just about every kooky conspiracy out there, including QAnon, Pizzagate, Jade Helm 15, flat earth theories, NESARA, Jesuit [conspiracies], shape-shifting lizard overlords. You name it, he believes it.” Tied to these conspiracy theories is Clark’s apparent adherence to “sovereign citizen” ideology, an anti-government worldview that has sometimes motivated political violence.

Dance Scene From "Kites" (2010)

A friend suggested I should write a guide to all filming locations in the Albuquerque area, not just "Breaking Bad." So, I'm scoping out movies filmed in New Mexico. There are lots and lots of such films, such as this Bollywood film from 2010 with great dancing.

Hamlet 2: "Rock Me Sexy Jesus"

Really surprised. This movie was filmed at West Mesa High School in Albuquerque, my alma mater:

Flat-Earther Fear

Crisis Actor

Making Ballet Toe Shoes

Gazing Into The Abyss

44th Anniversary of a Glorious Day

Following high school graduation in the summer of 1974, I took a trip around the western U.S. and parts of Canada with my friends David and Jeff. We climbed several mountains and did lots of hiking.

The Watergate scandal was at its height. I was anti-Nixon, David was pro-Nixon, and apolitical Jeff was exasperated, joining whichever side of the argument seemed most entertaining at the instant. We argued and bickered incessantly.

Forty four years ago today, at beautiful Lake Louise in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, we learned from hikers that Nixon was resigning. We hurriedly returned to the lodge there, and tried to locate a TV, but there weren’t any: TV signals from Calgary couldn’t penetrate the steep glacial valley. Instead, we watched Canadians station themselves at trailheads and inform out-of-touch American hikers of the news, and listened to the whoops of joy. The thrilled Canadians just grinned.

Forced A Bot To Watch

Ankle Bracelets

Anxiety Companion

Forgot ID

If Only I Had Checked Myself

Strange Bedfellows

If a war lasts forever you end up with strange bedfellows. In the War on Terror, the U.S. fears the Houthis so much that it is now allied with a branch of Al Qaeda:

The official story is that the United States is supporting Saudi Arabia in a two-front war in Yemen against both a group called al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Houthis (Iranian-backed Shiite rebels). But a blockbuster report from the Associated Press Tuesday contradicts this official story. Instead, the AP reports, Saudi Arabia regards the Houthis (and Iran) as a far bigger threat, so have adopted the policy of co-opting al-Qaida fighters and forming a de facto alliance with AQAP. The American military is well aware of this alliance but has decided to ignore it.

California, Home of Orange Luminescence

Tornado, North End of Eagle Nest Lake, NM

Well, Crap

🔥Today's simulated wildfire smoke forecast across the West. This illustrates the total smoke in the atmosphere.#idwx #orwx #wawx #cawx #utwx #nvwx pic.twitter.com/iLAlDNehgM

— NWS Boise (@NWSBoise) August 7, 2018

Cough, Cough

Women Laying in Ponds Distributing Swords, 2020

Managing A Chronic Condition

Monday, I’m at the Ethel McLeod Hart Senior Center, across the street from Harlow’s, for a rather vague-sounding insurance-company-sponsored seminar about how to manage your (fill in the blank) condition. I hope they have good ideas about (fill in the blank). For generations, people have become invalids without the proper training or management, and we can’t have that. If good management fails, I can cross the street and get plowed with the 21-year-olds at Harlow’s.

What’s interesting to me is that the insurance company sponsoring the seminar isn’t my insurance company. I don’t know what it means. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does.

This is all very vague stuff. Sharing and encouragement and targets. Six weeks too. Like struggling through spider webs. But maybe I need it too. I’ll stick around.

Lake County Fire Footprints for 2015, 2016, and 2018

It seemed to me Lake County, California has been the center of a lot of fires lately. Here is a map of fire footprints for 2015, 2016, and 2018. (I was having some trouble with file sizes, so 2017 fires aren't even here.) Still, it's clear fires have mauled the hills on every side of Clear Lake over the last four years.

Well, the Terrorists Came to Taos

But it was just sad:

Authorities swarmed a filthy compound in rural New Mexico on Friday and rescued 11 children, ages 1 to 15, after an armed standoff with one of two men, who have since been arrested.

Eight members of the Taos County Sheriff's Office converged on the residence in Amalia, described by authorities as a "makeshift compound" surrounded by tires and an earthen berm that had no electricity or running water, after securing a warrant to search the remote property for a missing 3-year-old boy who was allegedly kidnapped from Georgia by his father, 39-year-old Siraj Wahhaj.

Instead, deputies found five adults and 11 other children who "looked like third-world country refugees," living in squalor with little food and no clean water, according to Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe.

"I've been a cop for 30 years. I've never seen anything like this. Unbelievable," Hogrefe told ABC News Radio in a telephone interview. "These children were hungry, they were thirsty, they were filthy."

Nine Year Limbo

In August 2009, in the wake of the economic downturn, my friend Joe the Plumber lost the house he was staying in and asked to store a bulky Golds-Gym weight lifting machine on the floor of my garage. This morning, nine homeless years later, after having lost or having had stolen so many of his other possessions along the way, and after finally having got a new place following years of living in his van, and camping beside the American River after the police towed the van for failure-to-register, Joe finally reclaimed the dusty thing. Let no one stand between a man and his exercise machine!

Not Ever Going To Quite Finish?

In a weird state of suspended animation this Saturday afternoon. Like a series approximation falling short of its limit. Jack the contractor fellow who has been painting my house and fixing stuff, has been slowed down and frustrated by all kinds of things, but mostly by the difficulty of working with the gutter.

Today we were certain the job would end, for sure, but he discovered he lacked a critical piece. He headed off to the hardware store, but after apparently purchasing it, his truck broke down. So, maybe we won't finish after all. I just hope he doesn't give it all up and join a monastery instead.

We're Right in the Smoke Plume

I'm thinking visibility of four miles. Not good for the lungs.

I'm just puzzled why the smoke is here. Winds are from the south, from the wrong direction.

Interesting photo from The Atlantic. Caption reads: "A DC-10 air tanker drops fire retardant along the crest of a hill to protect the two bulldozers below that were cutting fire lines at the River Fire (Mendocino Complex) near Lakeport, California, on August 2, 2018."

That Ranch Fire is making a big break east. Like trying to stop a freight train.

Orange Sky At Dusk

The unrelenting orange light of a typically apocalyptic California summer. With four major fires within 150 miles radius of Sacramento, and any number of smaller fires, there’s just no escaping the smoke plumes.

Getting Attitude From My Candy Bar

Where The Wind Blows (From Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby")

Can't shake this song:

Healthy, Then a Heart Attack

I guess I wasn't alone when I had my heart attack in February. This 46-year-old Sacramento personal trainer simultaneously suffered something very similar, but was hospitalized at Mercy instead.

I find this puzzling. About the "surge" they don't actually say. But there was a lot of flu and cold viruses going around at that time, people were getting sick, and I bet others were experiencing the same thing at the same time.

Robinson said that, for most of his life, he had been the guy who saw a doctor only once a year for an annual checkup. Last February, though, he got sidelined for a short time by the flu virus, he said.

Once Robinson felt better, he said, he returned to the gym but felt really tired. He took his dog out for a walk near his home in midtown Sacramento, he said, but he felt so exhausted he had a hard time getting back home.

“I was thinking it would just get better, but I noticed it wasn’t getting better,” Robinson said. “I checked my heart rate with an app on my phone, and my heart was beating at 155 beats a minute nonstop, so I made an appointment with my primary care.”

The doctor’s assistant took his vitals and then told him to get to a hospital right away, Robinson said, and even though he felt a little better, he went over to Mercy General Hospital in east Sacramento. The waiting room in the emergency department was packed with people who had the flu, Robinson recalled, but as soon the staff took his vitals, he got pulled to the front of the line.

Maybe Heading Towards a Truce?

I find these peace talks to be intensely-interesting. At least since 2011 it's been clear that that there was a path for the Americans and the Taliban to settle their differences, with the Taliban pledging to not host foreign terrorists and the Americans dramatically reducing their presence, but both sides kept fighting. Suddenly, though, both sides want to settle. Even though the article doesn't mention it, part of impulse may be the arrival in Afghanistan in 2014 of ISIS. The Taliban is likely as powerful now as it's ever going to get and they need to lock in their gains now:

In November, Chris Kolenda and Robin Raphel boarded a plane to Doha, Qatar, for a conversation with Taliban representatives. It was the beginning of a quiet channel, never authorized by U.S. officials—who neither paid them nor asked them to carry any messages—that proved to be instrumental in convincing the Trump administration, and particularly senior Pentagon and U.S. military officials, that there was a real chance to broker an end to the war.

Kolenda, an Afghanistan veteran himself, had been here before. He had been part of an ultimately fruitless attempt during the Obama administration to talk with the Taliban. But this time, talking with the Taliban in Doha, “I was struck by what I detected was a much higher level of seriousness about bringing the conflict to a close than I saw in 2011,” Kolenda told The Daily Beast.

An EF-3 Fire Tornado

Powerful!:

The fire whirl, or fire tornado, that swept into Redding, California on July 26, appears to have had winds as strong — if not stronger than — an EF-3 tornado, according to the National Weather Service.

Why it matters: The Carr Fire now ranks as one of the state's largest and most destructive wildfires on record. The extreme fire behavior exhibited on July 26 allowed the blaze to jump a natural fire break — the Sacramento River, and enter the city of Redding. So far, the fire has claimed at least 6 lives.

The National Weather Service typically conducts damage surveys after suspected tornadoes, and determines the strength of such an event based on the damage it causes. In this case, the Weather Service and CalFire are conducting a joint investigation.

So far, they've found evidence, including transformers that were twisted and thrown to the ground, of winds in excess of 143 miles per hour, according to a tweet from the Weather Service office in Sacramento.

“It was definitely a massive one, and that just speaks to how intense the heating was,” National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Kochasic told the Los Angeles Times. “It created such a massive whirl that it looked like a tornado … and it takes an impressive amount of heating and local wind swirling up to create something like that. It was quite a monster.”

Maybe the most powerful tornado in California history:

The Los Angeles Times reports that the so-called fire tornado lasted about an hour and a half, measuring up to 500 yards (five football fields) in diameter, with wind speeds estimated as exceeding 143 miles per hour. Fire tornadoes are caused by the extreme amount of heat often generated by long-burning wildfires, the Times notes, but are still exceptionally rare. “Depending on the final number, this might actually be the strongest ‘tornado’ in California history, even if it wasn’t formally a tornado,” one scientist told the Times. “But this fire whirl was almost certainly longer-lived, larger in spatial scope and perhaps even stronger from a wind speed perspective.”

Here's Hoping!

I'll believe it when I see it:

The National Rifle Association warns that it is in grave financial jeopardy, according to a recent court filing obtained by Rolling Stone, and that it could soon “be unable to exist… or pursue its advocacy mission.” (Read the NRA’s legal complaint at the bottom of this story.)

The reason, according to the NRA filing, is not its deep entanglement with alleged Russian agents like Maria Butina. Instead, the gun group has been suing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state’s financial regulators since May, claiming the NRA has been subject to a state-led “blacklisting campaign” that has inflicted “tens of millions of dollars in damages.”

In the new document — an amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in late July — the NRA says it cannot access financial services essential to its operations and is facing “irrecoverable loss and irreparable harm.”

Specifically, the NRA warns that it has lost insurance coverage — endangering day-to-day operations. “Insurance coverage is necessary for the NRA to continue its existence,” the complaint reads. Without general liability coverage, it adds, the “NRA cannot maintain its physical premises, convene off-site meetings and events, operate educational programs … or hold rallies, conventions and assemblies.”

Madden-Julian Oscillation

The last month, what's known as the Madden-Julian Oscillation of the atmosphere has favored the Western Pacific with tropical storm formation, and depressed storms most other places. I've never seen a month like July 2018, where summertime skies were mostly-clear all the way between Florida and Africa, and summertime Atlantic tropical storm formation was non-existent.

That favorable pattern probably won't last the entire season, but every day without a tropical storm nearby is a good day.

That Building Rising at 19th & J Streets is Coming Along

"Treasures: Lost, Found, and Created" - Ballet Studio Summer Showcase - July 27, 2018

McClatchy High School Auditorium.

Lisa Gardner and her tiny charges.

"A New Attitude": Dana Urban-Cole, William Alexander Freeland, and Erika Black-Mary.

Final bows.

"Streets of London"

Love these iPhone apps. Yup, 93 decibels in here.

Enjoying Baz Luhrmann Talking About His Version of "The Great Gatsby"

Awkward in the Neighborhood This Morning

It's August 1st, and two doors down, there is an enormous pile of furniture and personal belongings in the street.

Recreating The World of Ancient Greek Music

Getting a better understanding:

[T]he sense and sound of ancient Greek music has proved incredibly elusive. This is because the terms and notions found in ancient sources – mode, enharmonic, diesis, and so on – are complicated and unfamiliar. And while notated music exists and can be reliably interpreted, it is scarce and fragmentary. What could be reconstructed in practice has often sounded quite strange and unappealing – so ancient Greek music had by many been deemed a lost art. Indeed, ancient Greek music has long posed a maddening enigma. Yet music was ubiquitous in classical Greece, with most of the poetry from around 750BC to 350BC – the songs of Homer, Sappho, and others – composed and performed as sung music, sometimes accompanied by dance. Literary texts provide abundant and highly specific details about the notes, scales, effects, and instruments used. The lyre was a common feature, along with the popular aulos, two double-reed pipes played simultaneously by a single performer so as to sound like two powerful oboes played in concert.

But recent developments have excitingly overturned this gloomy assessment. A project to investigate ancient Greek music that I have been working on since 2013 has generated stunning insights into how ancient Greeks made music. My research has even led to its performance – and hopefully, in the future, we’ll see many more such reconstructions.

Another Day, Another Meal

Roundworms:

Cryogenic freezing is considered to be more sci-fi than actual science, but now, worms that were trapped, frozen in ice since the late Pleistocene epoch — Ice Age — woke up from the longest nap and started looking for food and eating as if nothing had happened.

Ancient roundworms, also called nematodes were found in a chunk of Siberian permafrost that solidified about 42,000 years ago and remained frozen since then.

Researchers who made the latest find discovered that as soon as they thawed, they started moving and looking for food. The team of researchers includes scientists from Princeton, reports RT.

Carr Firenado

The Carr Fire continues to amaze:

The Carr Fire's rotating smoke plume acted as a chimney, venting heat and smoke away from the blaze, and sucking in air from surrounding areas. Plume-dominated fires, Lareau told Axios, occur in settings with relatively light winds but plenty of instability in the atmosphere, and their behavior can be erratic.

What's so rare, though, is to have a large part of the plume spinning like a tornado one might see in Oklahoma, creating damaging winds on its periphery, and rendering firefighting efforts futile.

1.) Lareau said when the rotating part of the smoke plume intensified, the top of the smoke plume suddenly ballooned from 18,000 feet high to 38,000 feet, a feat that might not have been possible otherwise.

2.) This growth sucked more air into the fire, and indicates it was burning hotter.

A key area of inquiry is how the fire's exhaust plume began rotating in the first place, at around 6:50 p.m. local time on July 27. By 7:45 p.m., the core of the vortex had stretched vertically all the way to 15,000 feet, a phenomena normally seen in intense tornadoes.

Physics is Just a Pesky Secondary Concern

Back in the 80's, I talked to an Electrical Engineer from India, who rolled his eyes as he described a Bollywood scene where the villain flicked a switch to detonate explosives tied around a distant damsel, yet the hero was able to race on horseback and rescue his beloved before the signal arrived.

Dog Stole the GoPro

Perspective

Hotel Transylvania 3

Saw this a week ago. It just wasn't me. OK film, if you aren't me.

Trump's Tariffs Are a Protection Racket

Good points:

Why did Trump start a trade war? The answer seems to me blatantly obvious. The tariffs and trade war are basically a big shakedown aimed not at foreigners but at Americans.

It goes like this: the tariffs, by instituting an international trade war with our country, were intended to create hardship not only abroad but more importantly, in the US. This provides the Trump administration a splendid opportunity to offer "protection" to its loyal supporters. Protection could come in the form of exemption from the tariffs for specific business sectors or in the form of cash payoffs to offset the financial burden. A shakedown racket depends upon creating problems for those to be shaken down. And, as the hardships deepen, the protections Trump provides his supporters will become all that more valuable.

As for those who don't support Trump? The administration can simply respond, "No can do. There's a trade war going on. Blame Europe for your problems. Blame Obama for the lousy deals that forced us to institute tariffs in the first place. It's not our fault."

That's it. The trade war really isn't about international trade. Of course, if Trump can shake down some foreigners, too, hey, why not? But they're not the primary marks for the grift. This is really about establishing Shakedown Nation, where supporters are openly protected and all other Americans face ruination. This is an attempt to accumulate and maintain political power here at home.

...The major challenge the Trump administration faces in creating Shakedown Nation is to properly calibrate the amount of protection. It's essential that the protection never be complete, making those "protected" ever more desperate to prove their loyalty in order to get what they can from a too-small pool of goodies. But it's also important that the protection not be so inadequate as to create an organized revolt.

..."But wait a doggone minute!" you might object, "They're just not that smart. Everyone sees that this is a Trump-created problem in the first place! In fact, the article makes it very clear that Republicans are howling right and far right about the trade war and explicitly blaming Trump. There's no plan at all, let alone for a shakedown. This is just Trump being his stupid self, out of his league, blundering into major serious trouble." Here are two responses to this objection:

1. Attention-spans are short, the media are subverted, and the base loves Trump. In a month, all that recipients of the farm aid will see will be (some) cash handed out to them due to Donald Trump's largesse. They will gullibly watch Fox News while propagandists falsely assert that Obama was really responsible for the trade war (and the mainstream media will carefully parse the effects of Trump's grants on the Homeland). A large number of people will believe this. And congressional critics, facing Trump approval ratings among Republicans that hover between 85 and 90 fucking percent (!!), will shut up. Fast.

2. I never said they were smart. A shakedown racket is a really dumb idea that doesn't work for very long. But if you're dumb enough to think a shakedown is a good idea, you'd also be prone to thinking that a trade war with other nations is a terrific way to shake American businesses down.

Just as the separation of children from their mothers was both utterly immoral and fully intentional,* so this trade war is utterly irresponsible and fully intentional. With immigration, the intent is to pander to Trump's base by restricting immigration. Shutting borders by placing children in cages is an incredibly stupid away to go about that but that's exactly what they did. With the trade war, the intent is to consolidate Trump's power in the US by creating loyalty to the Trump administration. And setting up a protection racket is just about the dumbest way imaginable to try to do so, but that is exactly what they are doing. Yes, indeed, these are incredibly stupid people.

California National Day of Dance, 2018

A moment from the Kickoff Ceremony for California’s National Day of Dance, 2018:



I never even made it over to the State Capitol, per usual habit.

Technically, I’m a dancer. Actually, I’m just confused.

At the Benefit Dance Concert in the evening.

“Street Vybz” performs (with Jaimee Elliott, Kim Bernadette, Jessica Flores, and friends).

Lions.

Lions.

Lions.

Lions pose with kids.

5Pepper Von (Step One Dance and Fitness), little girl (my partner in the street dance), and Miss T Sandifer (Studio T Urban Dance Academy).

6

Adeola Advocacy (Leukemia fundraising, among other activities.)

9'Dream Big' wall in the Sacramento Community Theater lobby.

A number of dancers formed a cheering gauntlet as the guests went down the halls to their seats. It was a bit ridiculous, but I loved it. It was like I scored the game-winning point. The girls with their shimmering costumes from BlyueRose Dance Project were particularly enthusiastic!

10'Lion Dance,' Honor Kung Fu Academy.

11A traditional Chinese dance by Fresh Meadow.

Ignite Dance Academy presents 'Gaston' from "Disney's Beauty and the Beast."

'Mr. BoJangles' by Sam Williams.

Interview with Jessica Flores (center) and Jaimee Elliott from Jamaican Dancehall group "Street Vybz."

California Greenhouse Gas Triumphalism

Yeah, bitch!

TV News Bloopers

I'm in love with the Weather Girl at 23:30. The Inflatables segment at 26:30 is awesome!

Banishment

I'm looking for a credit card now. Because I put it where no thief would ever find it.

Trolls Are Entering America's Power Structure

This Paris Wade guy is running for Nevada State Assembly:

A week before Election Day in 2016, BuzzFeed News revealed that young men and teens in Veles were running over a hundred websites that pumped out often false viral stories that supported Donald Trump.

...But after reviewing social media posts, government records, domain registry information, and archived versions of fake news sites, as well as interviewing key players, BuzzFeed News, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and the Investigative Reporting Lab Macedonia can now reveal that Veles’ political news industry was not started spontaneously by apolitical teens.

Rather, it was launched by a well-known Macedonian media attorney, Trajche Arsov — who worked closely with two high-profile American partners for at least six months during a period that overlapped with Election Day.

One of those Americans, Paris Wade, is now running for office in Nevada. Arsov also employed other American and British writers, including at least one who currently works for US right-wing conspiracy site the Gateway Pundit.

The investigation also reveals that at least one member of Russia’s “troll factory,” who has been indicted by US special counsel Robert Mueller for alleged interference in the election, was in Macedonia just three months before the web domain for the country’s first US-focused politics site was registered.

...By reviewing domain registration records of Macedonian politics sites, reporters were able to determine that Arsov, along with his brother, Panche, registered the domain name of the first politics site in Veles, USAPoliticsToday.com, on Sept. 23, 2015. The site would soon set off a chain reaction in Veles, spawning many imitators. The Arsovs eventually established their own network of nearly half a dozen sites and associated Facebook pages — which had a total of over 2 million followers — that operated until the social media site finally took them down this April.

...Arsov said the brothers briefly tried running a car site, but soon discovered that politics — especially of the conservative brand — performed better.

“I follow the Macedonian politics, the US politics, Russian politics,” Arsov said. “My idea was, ‘OK, you can start with something different, not healthy food, not sport, no cars. You can start with politics.’”

Though Arsov considers himself a right-leaning libertarian, he says he first attempted to also crack the market in liberal content. But on Facebook, republishing conservative articles was just better business, he said.

“We found that the names of the groups where we could stay longer, where our profiles were not removed, were related to conservatives, to Republicans, to Trump,” he said.

“If you found 100 groups for conservatives, you could only find 10 for liberals.”

Burglars Have Needs Too

Can anyone lend a hand?:

A Palo Alto, California, couple woke up early Sunday morning to a terrifying surprise: There was a stranger in their bedroom, according to police.

It was a 17-year-old burglar, and he startled the 60-something residents awake to ask for access to their WiFi network, according to Palo Alto police. The burglar had a garment obscuring his face, the victims said.

The burglar never got WiFi access, though. The man got out of his bed and forced the burglar out of their bedroom, down the hall and out the home’s front door, according to police. The couple called police right after that, around 12:30 a.m. Neither victim was injured. All that was missing from the home were two kitchen knives, the couple told police.

Officers quickly got to the scene and arrested the suspected burglar a block away, police said.

...But it wasn’t the suspected prowler’s first crime of the weekend — or his first request for WiFi, according to police.

...The residents told the 17-year-old to go away, according to police, and he rode off on a bicycle.

But the residents didn’t realize until the next day that a bicycle was missing from their backyard.

Mountain Lion Napping In Oregon Woman's Home

Michelle says: "You have to click on the Facebook link within the article to get the WHOLE story...trust me it is worth it...":

After entering the home, the cat was startled by Taylor's roommate, who screamed upon seeing the mountain lion. This prompted the wild animal to hide behind the sofa, where it snoozed for several hours.

Taylor made a noise to wake the feline, but then “gazed lovingly into her eyes, and communicated using feline-speak eye blinking to calm her,” she wrote.

“It was amazing to realize that this worked. I gazed lovingly then blinked hard and then she did it back,” Taylor continued, adding that the cat then went back to sleep. “She clearly felt safe and she showed no inclination to leave."

Changes Come to Kingman, AZ

Pachelbel's Chicken

Pallid Bats Get Sneaky

The live around here too.

Toddler Distraction

Knock, knock, knock. Who's that? Evangelists at the door again, this time identifying as Jehovah Witnesses, urging me to return to Psalms 37 (New International Version):

34 Hope in the LORD and keep his way. He will exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are destroyed, you will see it.

This time the evangelist brought her mom and toddler son. I may not even notice when the wicked are destroyed, due to toddler distraction.

Long Reach

Work continues on my house. Glad Jack knows what he’s doing.