Thursday, February 5, 2009

Today's Bonus Video Link

The F.A.A. today released recordings of the conversations between the Air Traffic Controllers and the pilot of U.S. Airways flight 1549 — the one that made that spectacular landing in the Hudson River recently. You can hear them on most of the news sites but the presentation that Keith Olbermann did on his show this evening was the clearest one I came across. It also includes Olbermann's account of a brief encounter with the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger...

• Posted at 10:56 PM · LINK

The Sporting Life

Back in this message, we talked about the Sportsmen's Lodge, out in Studio City, just over the hill from Los Angeles proper. The Sportsmen's Lodge is/was a sprawling complex of restaurants, places to hold banquets and other meetings, and a hotel. We told you in that message that it had closed...and it has, sort of. If you drive by, you'll see all sorts of signs announcing that and there have been many news reports. Apparently though, it's the restaurants and meeting facilities which have been closed for a makeover. The hotel, which has recently had some renovation work, is open and not doing so well because no one knows they're still in business.

They have only themselves to blame for this confusion. Their website still has an ad up to celebrate New Year's Eve there and it says, "Join us for the closing of the historic Sportsmen's Lodge." Still, I wanted to set the record straight.

• Posted at 6:08 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

A lot of folks, some of whom have major political differences with me, have written to thank me for turning them on to Fred Kaplan's articles in Slate. Many more will thank me for today's link to this piece which explains what the hell is going on with Afghanistan.

• Posted at 5:13 PM · LINK

Thursday Afternoon

You might not be aware of it but the retrial of Phil Spector has been going on for a few months now. Spector was charged with murder in the death of actress Lana Clarkson but his first trial ended in a deadlock with ten jurors voting to hang him and the other two somehow perceiving Reasonable Doubt. The Phil Spector Murder Trial (version 2.0) is now in its defense rebuttal stage and compared to the first go-round, it's received surprisingly little press coverage.

From what I've been able to glean, it's "Second verse, same as the first," with a few more ladies coming forth to testify that at some point, Spector pointed firearms at them. Oddly, part of the defense effort to knock down this image of Spector as guy who threatens women with guns is to establish that he also sometimes threatened men with guns, too. One of Spector's own lawyers is quoted as saying of this strategy, "The alternative is allowing the jury to believe Mr. Spector hates women and women only."

Good thinking there. If someone is always threatening women with guns and a woman gets shot by his gun, that might lead someone to think he shot her. But if he threatens everyone...well then, he's probably harmless. I can see that.

I've been unable to find any guesstimates of when a verdict might be in. This is annoying because as you may recall, I've decided that if this man is acquitted, I'm going to go on a killing spree. I'm Caucasian, I'm in show business and I even have bad hair. If Spector goes free, I'll go free. My big problem is that at the moment, there's really no one out there I want to kill. I wish they'd give me some idea of when this trial will be over so I'll know how long I have to plan out my killing spree. Also, I apparently have to make sure to threaten more people than I actually shoot.

• Posted at 3:39 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Just watch this one...

• Posted at 12:27 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

My former writing partner Dennis Palumbo is now a psychotherapist who specializes in the needs of actors, writers, producers and other practitioners of the business called "Show." In this article, he talks about a problem which, if not unique to folks in creative fields, is certainly worse in that world.

• Posted at 12:26 AM · LINK