Did Bush Know?

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Behind-the-curtain statement by a Redstate editor:  "Bush knew Gilligan was sick and he didn’t lift a finger."  What say an open thread?

101 thoughts on “Did Bush Know?”

  1. Only the Professor, Mary Ann, and Ginger are still alive. I think the former two were the only characters I could stand on the show. It didn’t occur to me at the time I was watching, but if the other characters had all died everything would have gotten much more interesting.

  4. How many stars besides Denver and Bob Mitchum have been busted for pot? Probably a lot and I wasn’t paying attention because it is no big deal, but for some reason I remember those two.
    I also remember watching Dobie Gillis in its first run. Denver as Maynard, Tuesday Weld, Warren Beatty guesting, the Rodin opening….good times.

  5. Are you restricting it to acting stars, bob? Because Art Garfunkel just got pinched for a second time. And, of course, there’s the infamous Paul McCartney Japan Prison Tour.

  6. “Bush knew Gilligan was sick and he didn’t lift a finger.”
    Well, why should he have? After all, you know, the Presidency is a lot of work – HARD work — and, as Maynard G. would have said…
    “WORK????”

  8. I can’t remember if Tuesday Weld got busted, But I think she tried real hard.
    Very underrated actress, too. Was up for “Lolita”.
    “Pretty Poison”… superb. “Who’ll Stop the Rain” .. very good.
    And then, of course, “Sex Kittens Go to College”, of course, he said, hitting the Netflix button.

  9. Wait a minute!. Didn’t Bob Denver get busted for pot once during some post-Gilligan, goofy brat pack period?

  10. !. Didn’t Bob Denver get busted for pot once during some post-Gilligan, goofy brat pack period?
    I believe he argued that it was sent to him by an overly generous fan and was given probation. I now wonder if the name Mary Jane (who, by the way, wins in a walk) was some sly joke.
    Incidentally, I’m sorry that these Gilligan related musings compelled Tac to step down from Redstate. I’d just like to know if it was a specific problem with Gilligan’s Island or some sort of overall sitcom thing…

  11. Behind-the-curtain statement by a Redstate editor: “Bush knew Gilligan was sick and he didn’t lift a finger.” What say an open thread?
    Posted by Charles Bird at 07:35 PM in Humor | Permalink
    It’s the local government’s responsibilty.

  12. Behind-the-curtain statement by a Redstate editor: “Bush knew Gilligan was sick and he didn’t lift a finger.” What say an open thread?
    Posted by Charles Bird at 07:35 PM in Humor | Permalink
    It’s the local government’s responsibilty.

  13. I watched near infinite amounts of Gilligan’s Island as a child. And Gilligan’s Planet the animated show.
    Pieces of those shows rattle around in my head now.
    It’s just hard to believe he’s dead.

  16. John T., you’re thinking of Sue Lyon in Lolita — she was nominated for (and won) a Golden Globe. Tuesday Weld wasn’t in that movie. She would’ve been WAY too old; she was already 19, three years older than Lyon and five years older than Nabokov’s Dolores Hayes.
    That aside, you’re right about everything else. I don’t know what kind of music you consume besides The Beatles, but Matthew Sweet has a classic album called Girlfriend whose cover is naught but the title and a head shot of Weld. Perfection.

  17. Tony Curtis was busted for pot at an airport. At the time he was doing anti-cigarette commercials and when asked about the contradiction responded” I never said don’t smoke pot”. “Yonder is my fadders castle”,an immortal exercise in mid-english seen and heard in The Black Shield,envied by Sir John Gielgud.

  19. Phil:
    You are right. I was unclear. I meant one of two things: either I seem to remember reading that Weld was considered for Lolita, or she would have made a great Lolita ..probably both.
    But Sue Lyon was wonderful. There is a look she gives James Mason (Humbert Humbert) in the car as he spirits her away from summer camp that is stunning acting — pure, matter-of-fact knowledge of his inverted carnality (and hers) veiled over with teenaged naivity.
    I’ll check out the Sweet record. Thanks for the heads up. On a Jimmy Eat World kick at the moment — listening closely to see if we can figure out engineering and mixing-wise how they get that great space around their vocals — on the “Bleed American” record mostly.
    Also XTC.

  20. Tim Allen did time for trafficing long before he made a name for himself as a comedian. It became a minor issue when Home Improvement started to take off.

  21. It was well known that Steve McQueen smoked the wacky weed and the aging Cary Grant had a fling with acid but I don’t remember them having legal hassles about it. My mother refused to let my older brother play drums because Gene Krupa got busted with some herb. He never did take up the drums but he still does weed these forty years later.

  22. Everyone who hasn’t already read Gilligan’s Wake ought to do so now.
    In other news, it’s mighty hard to disagree with today’s NYT editorial. Just think how much easier Karen Hughes’ job would be if we were taking the high road.

  23. And here, btw, is the policy statement from the American Correctional Health Services Association regarding hunger strikes:

    The management of a hunger striking prisoner presents an ethical conflict between the obligation to preserve life and relieve suffering on the one hand, and the obligation to respect patient autonomy on the other. Correctional health care providers should make every reasonable effort to honor patient self-determination. However, the deprivation of freedom which incarceration imposes will affect decision making by the inmate patient. Therefore, special efforts in patient education and counseling are indicated.
    A prisoner may begin a hunger strike for various reasons. If pursued, it may have a fatal outcome, unless there is medical intervention. Correctional health care providers have a special duty to protect inmates from self-destructive behavior. When a prisoner initiates a hunger strike, and efforts to counsel and dissuade are not successful in terminating the strike, the responsible physician is obligated to obtain thorough medical and psychiatric evaluations and to monitor weight loss and other parameters of deteriorating health in an appropriate medical setting. Treatment of intercurrent medical problems must be offered. The hunger striking inmate should be informed that authorization will be requested to intervene with forced feeding when life is in danger.
    Since forced feeding is a form of involuntary treatment, the responsible medical authority must seek the consent of the court or a legally appointed guardian, following the local requirements for involuntary treatment. The physician should make it clear to the court and to all others concerned, however, that ethical medical conduct in this setting demands medical intervention to preserve life from actions that are self-destructive.
    ACHSA members should give careful consideration to the development of policies and procedures which provide a responsible and compassionate approach to the hunger striking prisoner, and which make it clear that efforts will be made to intervene with forced feeding in order to save life.

    Since the US loudly proclaims that it is not the sovereign in Guantanamo, perhaps health care workers there need to get permission from a Cuban judge before force feeding any hunger striking prisoners.

  24. Thoughts on Dobie:
    Warren Beatty, in a small recurring part, played a hyper-confident, condescending (but kind) BMOC as perfect as Tuesday, funny because as Dobie’s competition…well, competition was unthinkable. I am trying to remember if Beatty ever played such a part again. He usually played against his looks, insecure, nervous, barely functional or competent. As opposed to Redford, who played alpha males quite often.
    Lenny Bruce had his Hollywood hills mansion directly above Tuesday’s, and when he was in a position to be able to focus his eyes, could watch her nude sunbathing.
    Tuesday Weld had a part in the Michael Douglas movie “Falling Down”, as the basket-case super-demanding wife of cop Robert Duvall, always calling him desperate for attention. Duvall at one point tells his colleagues to have some understanding:”When you have completely lost your good looks, you have lost everything.” Tuesday was well over 200 pounds in her scenes. Very unsettling, disturbing.

  25. I think Cary Grant’s fling was before LSD was prohibited.
    Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitcher Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter on acid. Curious drug: it can bestow Gandalf-like powers of focus, but if you look up for even one second, the world becomes a flaming, overwhelming Balrog.
    As Ellis, now a drug counselor (anti-, that is) would probably tell us, LSD can fry the brain. The synapses begin to sizzle and wink out in battalions. After exhausting giggling.
    Did Hunter Thompson ever get busted?

  26. Since it is an open thread:
    Anybody remember the record album (I think it was late-70s Stones, but I can’t find it) that had a large banana sticker pasted over the original cover art to satisfy the objections of censors?
    I’d appreciate the name / band if anyone recalls. Phil?
    Also, thanks for the link to the John August Governator letter, dutchmarble. Agree with Edward: Wonderful stuff… and the thread of discourse following is – if a bit shrill – worthwhile.

  27. In light of Johnt’s Tony Curtis reference, I will point out to him that if he actually spaces after his punctuation, it will seem to many as if his IQ has gone up 20 points if he chooses to make a space after he makes a punctuation mark.
    I realize this is the sort of thing one points out to someone in third grade, but given the need, I trust he won’t be insulted, and will welcome being treated as someone who is at least eight years old, and capable of punctuating. Given that, in writing, we grade people according to writing ability. Presumably he’d welcome the upwards change in regard.

  28. “As Ellis, now a drug counselor (anti-, that is) would probably tell us, LSD can fry the brain.”
    The fact is that if you take it several times as a teen, you might wind up blogging a lot in your forties.
    Apparently.

  29. Gary: re johnt & punctuation: been brought up a time or two. IIRC, the author’s response was something like “I’m going to do it on purpose just to annoy the shit out of you.”
    Still, appreciate your revisit.
    One can always hope.

  31. xanax, it sounds as though you’re conflating two different albums. The first Velvet Underground album, ca. 1966, had a giant banana skin sticker; peel it off and it revealed…a banana! The Stones had a zipper cover for Sticky Fingers (1970?); pulling down the zipper revealed the Stones “tongue” logo, I think. I stopped paying attention in the mid-seventies, so it’s possible that some later album did a variation on one or both of these.
    Oh, yeah: and I don’t think I’ve yet seen any evidence that acid had any kind of detectable physiological effect on the brain. Most of the acid casualties I knew had psychological damage, not physical.

  33. “The Stones had a zipper cover for Sticky Fingers (1970?); pulling down the zipper revealed the Stones “tongue” logo, I think. I stopped paying attention in the mid-seventies, so it’s possible that some later album did a variation on one or both of these.”
    I’m so reminded of one of my favorite acid stories, speaking of the devil. The time that guy who no longer acknowledges I exist (initials now PNH) and I did the thing at our home of Annie Hall in East Lansing, summer of ’77, and I tried to show him the peanut butter and jelly sandwich Jefferson Airplane double cover album which turned out to be a re-edition single cover version.
    “No, really, there’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in there! It’s not the acid! I swear! Really! Honest!”
    P did try to be kind, to be sure. It wasn’t long after the trip to Lansing to see Fantasia under similar conditions, after all.

  34. Gary:
    There is no punctuation on an acid trip, with the exception of the occasional exclamation mark!! That bright blue one, over there in the corner, eating my stereo!
    Speaking of punctuation and spelling, I’m usually a stickler, but for some reason in e-mail I have some sort of dyslexia in which I can’t spot mistakes and proofread properly. There is something different about looking at text in a little box on a computer screen as opposed to a physical typed or hand-written page.
    Like now. I’m sure something is wrong in this comment but I’m not seeing it.
    But off it goes.

  35. Thanks, Saiyuk. I’ll check the V.U. Maybe that’s it.
    Also, since it’s an open thread: My budding little poet, Clara (with whom ObWi commenters were so generous back in April) just turned 5 and wanted you all to know that, as of this morning, she can now ride a two-wheeler WITHOUT TRAINING WHEELS all by herself! (She is very proud… and her papa – if a bit winded – is proud too.)

  36. “There is no punctuation on an acid trip….”
    I only tried to write it up a couple of days later, to be sure. Apas, that is, “amateur press associations,” which is to say, the stuff we printed, stapled together, and passed around each week or month or quater, punctuated, actually. MISHAP, the Michigan APA, was only monthly, though Oasis, which we then ran, was six-weekly. This seems to be a digression, to be sure. Oops.

  37. Gary Farber, my you’re a bitter bugger. Why flatter yourself and boost your obviously degraded ego by telling me how I might be regarded. By who,you? Considering that this was a non political post and being normal I really don’t see or understand the pathology that racks the remnants of a once malfunctioning brain. Perhaps too many tormented nights in the hospital. Seriously,you’re wasting my time and although your life is as nothing you’re wasting your own as well. We’ve covered this but if you wish to carry out your obsession go ahead. At some point a few of the bloggers may start to wonder who the real fool is. Until then be advised that I spend little time on trash,human that is. Now take your pills and get back into your crib.

  39. I’ve been down the same road with Gary, JohnT, but it hardly warrants the sort of personal attack you’re throwing back here. In lieu of any other ObWi authors being around, can I ask that you bring it down a few hundred notches, please. Seriously, argue the points, not the person. His comments about understanding were rude, yes, but they were limited to the context at hand.

  41. Edward- Maybe you have to wait for another front pager, but I think that kind of cruelty calls for at least a temp banning if not a permanent one. I realize we are short on conservatives here, but I don’t think johnt has ever really added to a discussion.
    Gary may tell you johnt’s comment didn’t bother him, but it certainly bothered me.

  43. Edward: sorry, didn’t see that you’d gotten there first (I think we might have cross-posted.)
    I think ‘human trash’ is out of line, but would be happy to talk it over.

  44. And xanax: here’s a message to show Clara:
    YAY CLARA!!! NOW ASK DADDY FOR A TITANIUM MOUNTAIN BIKE!!!
    also:
    YAY XANDER!!!

  45. This being an open thread, I hope you’ll indulge me a bit of showing off. One of my hobbies is miniature modeling and building wargaming and tabletop RPG terrain out of plaster and just about anything else. My current project is making terrain for my friend’s tabletop game, and he uses a hex map so can’t really use anything that has a floor on it. As a result I’ve been making walls and other scenery/obstacle pieces.
    The latest started when I was walking through Michael’s and saw some pillars intended for holding up wedding cakes. They started out hollow, so I filled them with plaster and let them sit overnight. Then I did a little bit of sawing around the outer shell and snapped them in thirds. The two end pieces will be stand alone pillars, while for the middle piece I built a base out of a thin piece of MDF board.
    Standing pillar
    Fallen pillar
    The first one is almost done (need to touch up the base a little and dullcoat it), while the second has a basecoat, ink wash, and sand base, but is only about half done (in fact, the picture was taken while the sand was still drying).

  46. 1) Thanks, hilzoy! Clara read your message and is fairly beaming;
    2) Excellent enforcement of the posting rules;
    3) Brilliant & beautiful construction project Catsy;
    4) hilzoy for Sec. of State;
    5) Catsy for FEMA director.

  49. Catsy, the interior marbling pattern on that standing pillar looks great. That’s, like, SFX-quality miniature work there. Nice job.
    S’long as we’re braggin’ about stuff, I offer one of my few moments of outright boasting here, a pictorial comparison of my weight loss over the last year. My wife and I just went out on a lengthy walk today, starting at Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac, walking down the GW Parkway as far as the 14th Street Bridge, across into DC, up through the memorials and parks back to the Memorial Bridge, then back over to the VA side and done. Probably 8-9 miles. It would have been impossible for me to do that walk two years ago.

  51. Finally got thru to my parents this morning, I knew they were all right, and my brother had access to a satellite phone at his workplace, but not just getting a chance to talk has the mind spin out all sorts of scenarios. My sister-in-law’s store is a complete loss, but they were able to get most of the stock out after the storm. My brother works at Valspar, and apparently, they will try to get the place where he is working up and running.
    Those my mom (and I’m presuming many of the others on the Mississippi Gulf Coast) know that New Orleans got hit hard, there is no knowledge of all of the peripheral discussion, because for media, they have been limited to single radio channel.

  52. *more coffee*
    They will try and get the Valspar factory up and running *this week*, as it came through the storm pretty well.
    Also, ‘though my mom’ not ‘those…’

  53. Anarch: Thanks for your shout out. Inexplicably, Clara’s reaction to my reading her your comment was: “Dad, now I’m feeling a little shy.”
    Tell me, do you have that effect on all women?
    And phil: props and then some… you’re my new hero.
    hilzoy: re “NOW ASK DADDY FOR A TITANIUM MOUNTAIN BIKE!!!”
    She just got one for her 5th birthday. Well, not so much “titanium” and “mountain” per se… still it’s a Trek “Mystic” big people’s bike. Purple. With purple, white and lavender handle-bar streamers. And a little white basket in front. Very special. I think I’ll be spending a lot of time watching bike riding in Munchkin Land.

  54. Phil: That’s awesome. Keep up the good work!
    LJ: Sucks about the property destruction, but most excellent that your family survived intact.
    xanax: Tell me, do you have that effect on all women?
    Sadly, yes.

  55. Xanax:
    My middle son turned 5 in May this year. He biked without sidewheels in February and this is the picture taken right after his first tour. He really beams with pride 😉 after this important milestone. So I can fully relate to you and Clara. Congratulate her from me.
    Phil: Chapeau!! I am envious! I allready lost 55 pounds this year, but still have 45 to go before I am back at the pre-pregnancies level. It is wonderfull though to see how much more you can do after the weight is gone. Three more weeks till my first basketball game of the new season; can’t wait to show my recovered rebound abilities 😉

  57. dutchmarbel: your son is adorable! Thanks for posting the link/pic. It’s refreshing to get a concrete image or two from the lives of fellow obwi posters.

  60. Dear dutchmarble,
    The boy with the red bike looks nice. What is his name? Is his jacket warm? My bike helmet is pink.
    Your Friend, Clara

  61. dutchmarbel
    Thanks for that, but I’m a mac-ophile, so I can’t install it on my computer.
    Don’t mean to cast a pall on this thread, but if you go to flickr.com and type in various keywords, you’ll get some pictures of the destruction there. Registration is free and people choose their own keywords, so various keywords can bring up some striking images. But you don’t need to register to explore it and they’ve set up some semantic clustering analysis software that lets you move through linked keywords.
    the NOAA site has 7,000 images that were made in an aerial survey of the destruction. I don’t know if it is comparable to the Google Earth images, but if you know your way around the Gulf Coast, it is useful.
    More in keeping with the tenor of the thread, my 6 year old shed her training wheels about 4 months ago.
    btw, flickr works very well with blogger, and we’ve used it for my daughter to work on he English and keep in touch with her grandparents. It is easy to take pictures with a mobile phone and post them to the blog where she can provide an ‘after-action report’. My wife has expressed some reservations about the amount of time that my daughter spends on the computer some time, but my feeling is that it’s not too bad.

  62. LJ, your daughter looks already impressively punk! Both your and Dutchmarbel’s children convey vibes of well-loved across the internets. Something about the trusting gazes towards the camera.
    Ack, since I hung out with my niece and nephews a month ago, my hormones have been saying reproduce, oh go on, make children–never mind the fact that my current financial position makes children impossible, and never mind the fact that my current relationship is new and fragile enough to make discussion of children almost impolite. Is it hormones or is it socialization?–very hard to say, but the urge been tugging me in the belly ever since my niece trusted me enough to fall asleep in my lap.
    Hey, this was an open thread, wasn’t it?

  63. Jackmormon: I had always laughed at the idea of women in their late twenties suddenly feeling an overwhelming urge to reproduce. Ha ha, I said, clearly socialization; won’t happen to me. Then I hit my late twenties, and my uterus started saying things, like: (at first, politely): you know, we have been very patient, watching you do all those things that don’t involve me, but could you please hurry up and pay attention to me? and then – well, if it had had a foot, it would have begun tapping it very loudly, and eventually it was exactly like having a kid in the back seat trying to get your attention.
    Completely unnerving.

  64. That’s great work, Phil. I’ve lost a few — 25 I guess — and they had to put a new picture of me on my bio page on the firm website. I’m just getting started on a new round, trying to get rid of 15 more. Think I’ll ride my bike downtown tomorrow, inspired by your example. (I gain a bit in the summer, because the weather in DC is so awful, and because I drop my low carb diet and eat pounds of cherries and apricots. Then Labor Day rolls around, and it’s back on the wagon).
    Went to the bio page, just to make sure the new picture was there, and I saw a number of horrible typos.

  66. Do guys get that sudden hormonal–make children now, now, now, yes you know you want them, go for it, now, yes, now–urges?
    As a woman in my latish twenties, I’m finding this whole yes now, yes go for it, yes reproduce unbelievably distracting. I’m sitting here, trying to grapple with my dissertation, and my body seems to be saying what you really want is to make babies. Such a strong compulsion I feel I should resist, as a good latter-day Puritan, but this weird hormonal compulsion piles on the other, more general insecurities about pursuing an academic career.
    I find this urge almost humiliating in its insistence. But I suppose that it’s some comfort to know that other women of about my age experience similiar physiological instructions.

  67. Jackmormon: I decided to volunteer in battered women’s shelters during grad school for various reasons, but one was: to expose mself to actual children on a regular basis, lest I do something rash. I absolutely love kids, but this did remind me, on a very regular basis, how much time they take, which actually helped me to deal at least with the more irrational temptations.

  68. “my body seems to be saying what you really want is to make babies.”
    Mine sometimes tells me to go to sleep or that I better eat if I don’t want to have a headache, but it’s never expressed a complex idea like that to me. Is this further explicable?

  69. An excellent point. One of my goals for this school year is to find a volunteer tutoring gig in Harlem, which is literally next door. The selfish motive of surrogate parenting makes me slightly queasy, but my more objective recognition that I have a great deal to offer to these students should help me overcome my worry about my own motives. After all, psychologizing aside, there is work to be done, neh?
    (Quiet, hormones, quiet! I’m working on it, er, sorta… Shut up! Shut up or at least be constructive for a change!)

  70. Do guys get that sudden hormonal–make children now, now, now, yes you know you want them, go for it, now, yes, now–urges?
    I never have — I’m 36 in three months — and, as far as I know, neither has my wife. If she has, they’ve been completely overcome by what hilzoy describes, and from spending time with our own nieces and nephews, and with friends’ children. And our own strong feelings about not wanting to raise kids.
    With all the DC-area ObWiers, I swear we should have a meet-and-greet or something.

  71. That last comment responded to Hilzoy’s rather than to Rilkefan’s. (Cross-posted)
    Ok, so now I’ll try to express what it feels like to have one’s body urge reproduction.
    It has something to do with seeing other people’s children and thinking: God, that kid is so cute, but I bet my kid would be even cuter. And then this idea stays with you in a really pathological way; you look at your partner, imagining the genetic mingling and result. You find yourself waving and making faces at random children on the NYC Subway. Annoying screaming somehow magically make you smile indulgently. It’s freaking wierd; and the gradually trust I earned from my nieces and nephews over the course of my family’s weeklong reunion got me feeling possessive in a way I had hoped to avoid.
    My cousins’ children were clearly not as nice/good-looking/courageous/strong as my sister’s children were, and while I know I’m prejudiced, I am absolutley convinced of my sister’s wonderfulness and my love for them is absolute. This is the sort of irrational mine, yes, go for it kind of reaction that I’m almost terrified of.
    And Phil, your idea of an ObWi meet-up is attactive, except that I know I’d want to play bridge with Sebastian Holscaw and Bernard Yomtov–even knowing that I’d bid all wrong–yet SB lives very far away. At the very minimum, such a meet-up could attenuate the very very abstract arguments between long-standing posters here.

  72. Oh, hell, would someone please delete my triple posted ignomny?
    I swear I tried to avoid such a result, refreshing rather that reposting, and yet, bon beh voila quoi.
    Many apologies.

  73. Hilzoy:
    First, it’s the chirpy vaginas and their imprecations in favor of chastity. Or whatever they might be chirping.
    Now, we have the impatient uterus, muttering its polite but firm protestations, with foot tapping no less, that whatever the other might be chirping, when do I take part in this?
    It’s like a Robert Altman film, with many conversations, variously and partly heard, layered onto the soundtrack.
    Then, there’s a guy standing there, glasses a little askew like Woody Allen, wondering, HunH? It’s so noisy.
    Please think that is funny, the two of you.
    Jackmormon asks about the hormonal urges of men regarding children.
    Here’s my take. My son, now almost 16, was conceived when I was 38 and my wife 36. Only my right knee is 54; the rest of me is maddeningly immature and youthful in appearance, he said, slicking his eyebrows; nevermind that.
    I very suddenly wanted a child right then. My wife was indifferent and not thrilled but not particularly resistant either.
    I don’t remember it as being hormonal on my part. It was more, O.K., what’s next, let’s go for it. Maybe there was some sort of legacy thing going on too, as in, well, I haven’t exactly made a mark on the world, so maybe we need a mini-me to prolong the process of not making a mark.
    So we did it. And, we did it. Best decision ever. Not one regret. The kid is a joy.
    My wife, the indifferent one, took one look at that kid in utero and became devoted Mom.
    I’m the idea guy, she actually carried through.
    Plus, the conception part of the thing became way too organized given my wife’s driven nature. Charts, graphs, schedules .. I think a bosun’s whistle sounded on a regular basis, whatever that means. And, the obligatory “Gitty up Cowboy” from her, to keep me interested in my fantastic kid idea.
    Anyway, if it happens, you’ll be great parents, unless all this blogging is completely misleading. If it doesn’t happen, that’s O.K., too.
    Jackmormon: “physiological instructions” is a funny ha ha way of putting it. I remember 1968, when the entire baby-boomer generation recieved physiological instructions simultaneously.. in a bar in Columbus, Ohio.
    Even Bill Bennett thought it was fun. What a mess!

  74. I don’t remember it as being hormonal on my part. It was more, O.K., what’s next, let’s go for it. Maybe there was some sort of legacy thing going on too, as in, well, I haven’t exactly made a mark on the world, so maybe we need a mini-me to prolong the process of not making a mark.
    That’s how it feels to me without a steady relationship and with an extra urge of yes, yes, you know you want to, yes. Part of the urge is egocentric: your kids will be the best, genetic and developmentally! Part of the urge is existential: suddenly, one feel that one’s highest calling is to make children, nevermind all those all goals one had though important.
    I am in no position to consider having children, and I am the stereotype of the Godless Coastal Elite Feminist, and all that, but, wow, the rush of reproductive desire is something else.

  75. Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter on acid
    Um, no. He pitched several innings, but gave up a whole lotta walks and some runs. It wasn’t a no-hitter or acid might have become fashionable again. It was already retro at the time he did it (early 1980s)… I had the newspaper clipping on my fridge for years.

  76. Jackmormon: my version had no such complicated thoughts. It was more like: Excuse me? Excuse me? EXCUSE ME?????, combined with an alarmingly heightened version of my normal delight in kids.

  77. Since you’re around, Hilzoy, would you please, oh pretty please with a pony, delete two of my three posts and this one. I am squirming with embarrassment seeing all three of those up.

  78. Oh, that’s your brain telling you to have kids, not your body. My brain tells me stuff all the time, most of which I ignore for my own good or the good of humanity.

  79. rilkefan: trust me, it wasn’t my brain. Just like PMS, only instead of irritability, an intense desire to have a kid.
    Jackm: righteo. Here I go, transforming into Moe.

  80. jackmormon, now that it’s over and everybody can look back and laugh, you had not three but four identical posts. But as far as I’m concerned, you can duplicate your posts as much as you feel like.

  82. Anybody remember the record album (I think it was late-70s Stones, but I can’t find it) that had a large banana sticker pasted over the original cover art to satisfy the objections of censors?
    Wouldn’t be Sticky Fingers, would it?

  83. Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitcher Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter on acid.
    The guy was 5’10” and 150 lbs. dripping wet. The only way he could’ve thrown a no-hitter was via heavy dose of illegal substance. Glad to see he’s now a counselor.

  84. Cocaine sounds more likely than acid, and speed much more likely than either, but none is in the same league as steroids.
    Did David Wells say he was hung over when he pitched his perfect game?
    “Oh, you’re the charmer, rilkefan…”
    I did manage to get married, and given my lack of other positive qualities you must be right.

  85. Re the Stones: we were at a crafts fair today, and there was a flutist playing to some recorded keyboard tracks. She had a nice tone, though I could (in my aspect as a flutist) hear from her phrasing that she had been playing too long and didn’t have enough air to support held notes. I thought to myself, “If I weren’t happily married I might find her sexy”, but then I realized she was performing a rather Zamfirish version of a song I thought of as “Angel”. When I sang a few bars Mrs. R. said that the song was called “Angie”. But I have a strong sense that Jagger makes some sort of a velarized alveolar lateral approximant at the end of the word. Am I just a total Beatles fan?

  86. claraxanax: unfortunately the boy (Daniel) lives in a different timezone, so his mother had gone to bed (at three in the morning here). He loooooooooves biking!
    jackmormon: LOL, I assume of many posters that they are female, but the Jack put me on the wrong foot again.
    hilzoy & jackmormon: I had these ‘reproductive urges’ too at 29, but only met my husband/soulmate two weeks before my 32d birthday. After 4 weeks we both, at more or less the same time, said that we should tell the other party that we wanted kids – lots of them. I bet his urges were less ‘belly oriented’ than mine, but they were surely present.
    Unfortunately we had fertility problems so we had to wait till I was 36 and the IVF took before we became parents. Very hard not to get obsessive about the parenting bit in those years of uncertainty, and John, you have NO idea how organized the conception bit can get…
    Kids are wonderfull and I love them to bits, but you have to be prepared to be at a standstill for many years (money, career, time for yourself). All the energy those bouncy creatures display is leeched directly from the parents ;). Had I succeeded earlier in becoming a mum we might have more kids (3 to 5 we aimed for…). But I understand childless friends who decided against having children as well as fertility challenged friends who have to struggle against despair when things don’t work out.
    Rilkefan: I liked the Stones better than the beatles, but find that the beatles songs stuck in my head for longer. Bowie is my hero though 😉

  87. Went from Beatles to Stones to Hendrix to punk, but not sure if that was growth or regression. Contemplating a head-banging rocker post.

  89. “First, it’s the chirpy vaginas and their imprecations in favor of chastity.” – John Thullen
    The Chirpy Vaginas.
    Man O Man… if I ever have another band…

  91. rilkefan: Fabulous purple rhyme. Beats all hell out of the two legit ones.
    And on the subject of music. Beatles: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Stones: Seminal – but they get old (no pun here). I’ll take The Band any day.
    I was lucky enough to be stuck in the Bay Area over Thanksgiving in 1976 (no dough to go home from college). Some pals had an extra ticket to The Last Waltz at Winterland in SF. First time (now many, many, many) to see Dylan, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Eric Clapton and on and on and on. Changed my life.
    Really, it did.

  92. Music!!
    I, as suits my well known character, have become obsessed with twee. Sarah and Shinkansen Records, early and mid nineties.
    Jangly guitars, Byrds with a dance rhythym, hyper-romantic English broken heart can we still be friends sung by high pitched girls, wanna-be-girls, college guys trying to out-sensitive each other. Great stuff.
    Also listening to all kinds of slowcore and sadcore, The Fall, and Nine Inch Nails. And really bad 60s psych.

  93. thinking about the groups I loved as a youngster (Dutch groups like the Nits and Gruppo Sportivo) I did some search on the internet and found that Gruppo was together again and made a new album – which I now ordered. Funny how open threads can waver in all directions 😉

  94. Ugh — I could go into a whole thing about music. Suffice to say that my music collection contains everything from the Beatles to the Dead Boys to Stravinsky to Coltrane to XTC to Sleater-Kinney to Dave Brubeck to Rick Springfield. I do not believe in limitations of musical taste, and those that do exist are generally self-imposed and ideological or for external aesthetic purposes.
    On the topic of having kids, in an intellectual, purely analytical way, I do wonder, “What would be the result of combining my DNA with my wife’s?” But I’ve never wanted kids, and for a number of reasons I’ve always known I wouldn’t have them. And I think I would be a bad parent: I’m selfish, I’m very impatient and quick to anger, I bore easily, etc. Sure, part of my thinks, “When I’m old, there won’t be anyone to take care of me or carry on family traditions,” but those are the wrong reasons to have children. My wife feels largely the same way on all those things as I do, with an added, “What if I didn’t like my own children?” I guess there’s a couple of us in every crowd.

  95. Okay, not that it matters now, but I was confusing the Cincy-P’burgh game where Ellis hit the first five batters with the no-hitter that he claimed years later was pitched on acid.
    See here.

  96. Tag ends:
    Charles: My Baseball Encyclopedia has Ellis at 6’3″ and 205 pounds. No mention of “dripping wet”, but if we’re 5 inches and 55 pounds apart on THIS, how are we going to work out the whole apportioning blame thing on Katrina, considering we’re both completely objective. And, another thing ..
    oh, never mind …. 😉
    Phil: The great thing about kids (your own), should you change your mind, is that when they are a certain age (3 to, say, 8), they come up to you and say, “Daddy, you’re selfish, you’re very impatient and quick to anger, and you bore easily (especially when I insist that we play “Uno” 17 times a day). but I love you anyway.” Believe me, if being selfish was an impediment to fatherhood, I would have been as sterile as a mulish cuckoo, without a petrie dish and a team of emergency IVF scientists in sight to buy me dinner and romance me.
    (Later, of course, they occasionally come out with the “I wish I’d never been born” thing, to which I say “Well, your mother and I are stuck with you, aren’t we.?”) Also, from Neil Simon: Me: “Would you please, (pick a chore)? The kid: “Nowww?” Me: “No, next year when I’m dead!”
    Beatles vrs Stones: Lennon and McCartney were in a club with the early Stones one night and the latter needed a song. So, L&M went off to a corner for 20 minutes and finished “I Wanna Be your Man” (originally for Ringo to sing), doing their little whistling thing back and forth. Here you go, lads. That’ll be a hit. Jagger and Richards looked at each other and decided right then that maybe they should write, too, instead of recycling rhythm and blues covers. It was one of the Beatles worst songs, which is why the Stones got it. Peter (Asher, Jane’s brother) and Gordon got some nice ones, as did, I think, Gerry and the Pacemakers.
    Both great bands. But its the Beatles’ song-writing that was the thing — willingness to break outside keys with cool chords, and to go beyond simple thirds in the harmonies, among other things. It was fresh. They could sing anything. Plus, the cheeky humor. I can’t remember a funny Jagger interview or comment, although Richards is a bit of a hoot now because we can’t get over the fact that he had himself fully embalmed and can still move his lips.

  97. My preferred response, when I ask my son to do something he doesn’t want to do and he asks why, is to tell him “because Daddy’s mean and cruel.” You can’t use it too often, but used judicially, it generally causes the kid to get sidetracked into defending me and forgetting that he’s supposed to be protesting doing what he’s supposed to do.

  98. DaveL: For a while, I was babysitting my two nephews for a weekend a year, to give my sister and her husband a chance a break. Every year we’d have a certain number of ‘guilt-trip Auntie hilzoy” conversations, until they’d remember, from the last time, that they didn’t work.
    “Mommy and Daddy ALWAYS let us do that!”
    — Unfortunately, Mommy and Daddy are in New Hampshire now, so we can’t ask them.
    “Youre MEAN!!!!”
    — Yes, I know. And what’s even worse is that your parents left such a horrible, mean, awful person as me in charge for the weekend. How could they do something like that?
    And so on. Eventually, we’d get into one of those full-bore “hilzoy is so mean” conversations, in which the kids are trying to come up with the most completely, totally outrageous way to say how mean I am, and we’d end up dissolved in giggles.

  99. Wow, you’re harsh! Usually the auntie is supposed to be the soft touch. Although come to think about it, my wife does a whole lot better job of getting one nephew to behave than his parents do, so maybe not.
    It is always a lot more fun for all concerned if you can head off the full-on contest of wills and divert the issue into humor. I believe strongly that if you do find yourself in a contest of wills with your child, you absolutely must win every time, but if you let that happen on anything more than rare occasions it’s not likely to be good for either child or parent.

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