It Just Has To Be Said

teh
Governor Rod Blagojevich has declared Sangamon County a disaster area. Does this mean he will come visit it now?

Seriously though, I think this may have been one instance where having the Gov living here would have been an advantage. Normally, I’m a traitor to the community by insisting it mostly doesn’t matter where in the state the governor lives. But had Blago been here last night, I think he might have been able to assess the situation better and called off work for all non-essential State employees earlier. I’m not at all close to that situation but listening to the coverage this morning, I got the sense that there was a lot of unnecessary confusion among State workers as to what the plan was.

Bad News at Home

teh
Today's high winds are ripping the siding off my house. I guess last night weakened it just enough. Lovely.

Storm Damage Pictures

teh
Courtesy of Poor Michael here.

Tornado Blogging: The Next Day

teh
I’ll put up here anything I deem interesting related to the tornado that hit Springfield last night.

WMAY is still broadcasting on all of its FM sister stations (WNNS, WYVR and WQLZ). WUIS is still off the air.

One report indicates that Wal-Mart at Parkway Point lost much of its roof including 3 of 4 car-sized air conditioning units. And apparently they are really lost. No one knows where they are. Check your back yard.

Much of the city is still without power at 8:00 am.

Interstate 72 is still closed both east and west of Springfield.

Update 8:38 am: Some of the worst damage has occurred along the Wabash corridor on the city’s southwest side. It occurs to me that one of the first tornado warnings I remember, some time in the late 1960s, happened when there was a report of a tornado sighted near West Wabash. I remember that vividly. Our family huddled in the hallway of our one-story (no basement) home which was in the path of the alleged twister. Nothing came of that storm but all these years later its odd to me that that’s where one did eventually hit and apparently ran through my old neighborhood.

Update 8:50 am: Hmmm…I’m hearing that the Barrel Head was pretty much wiped out. Too bad that didn’t happen 10 years ago under the old (*cough* Kitty *cough*) management. I imagine the chairs having been blown around and out of place would have greatly disturbed the previous owner.

Update 9:35 am: WMAY has cut loose its sister stations.

Update 10:00 am: The National Weather Serivice is confirming it was a tornado that hit Springfield. Well, duh.

Tornado Blogging: Springfield Edition

teh
A tornado hit the city of Springfield tonight shortly after 8:00 pm. Lots of damage. So far, no reports of casualties. So far.

It missed my neighborhood in the northwest part of the city but we still have roofing shingles all over the place and it destroyed the trampoline in our back yard. The worst damage seems to have occurred in a swathe running west to east in the southern part of the city. Hard hit include the White Oaks Mall area, Jerome and the South Central part of the city.

Update 11:00 pm: Power is still out in much of the city.

Marie at Disarranging Mine was live blogging the tornado event but her posts suddenly stopped at 8:23. I'm assuming that's when the power went out.

It looks like this thing went through the city from a line roughly running from the White Oaks area northeast to the intersection of Dirksen and Clearlake on the east side.

I don’t believe there has ever been anything like this in the city in the 43 years I or members of my family have lived here with the exception of the 1978 ice storm.

Update 11:10 pm: Both WMAY and WICS have pretty good live coverage. I'm assuming other local media outlets are doing as well but I'm watching/listening to these two.

Update 11:15 pm: I've lost blogger Jerome Prophet's cell phone number. Shit. The Village of Jerome was pretty hard hit and I can't even call him. Some friend I am.

Update 11:25 pm: Man, this thing is really starting to sink in. Right after the storm, I went out looking for damage in my section of our neighborhood (I’m a block representative in our neighborhood association). All looked pretty good; a few small braches down, some roofing shingles in yards but that was about it. I felt relieved. My first reaction was to let that be the end of it and assume the rest of the city was OK too. Then I admitted I was kidding myself and began to tune into local radio and TV. My suppressed fears were realized: the city had been struck by a tornado.

I think I already knew this as my family and I were sitting in the basement listening to the house shake rattle and roll overheard for about ten minutes tonight. Looking at all the weather data at the time, I had estimated that it would move slightly to our south. I didn’t realize just how slightly.

While the storm was passing the pressure in our house changed and our basement door shook. We heard a whistling sound from the basement window. I’ve never experienced this before. It turned out we had a window upstairs open a few inches that was allowing the wind (and rain, dammit!) into the house. But even that didn’t explain the intensity of what we were experiencing.

Geez, and there are more storms on the way.

Update 11:46 pm: District 186 schools will be closed tomorrow. I suspect a lot of the city will be shut down tomorrow.

Update 11:55 pm: Jim Leach on WMAY just made a great point: The reason we haven’t had reports of lots of casualties is that people headed the warnings. We did and thank God others in the path of this thing did too. It sucks that so much damage occurred but who gives a shit as long as we get through this without any major injuries or deaths.

Update 12:06 am: I'm heading to bed. Good luck Springfield; we'll pick up the pieces and be even better in the end.

Update 2:00 am: You gotta be shittin’ me. Another warning? I’m out of bed and have the family in the basement again. I think someone is trigger-happy on the warning button. The radar doesn’t look like tornado to me.

Update 2:25 am: Tornado round 2 fizzed. I guess going to work tomorrow is now out of the question.

Update 2:42 am: Back to bed.

Update by dawn'as early light: Not much sleep but I'm going into work anyway. Daylight has revealed no new damage to my place. Much of the rest of the city, particularly in the south sections, appears to be in bad shape. No more updates on this post.

Getting Fixed

teh
I'll be out of blogging range today and probably tomorrow. My wife is taking me to the vet this morning to be fixed. Anyone hoping to someday be impregnated by me is now officially out of luck.


Talk to you, in a much higher voice, later.

Friday Beer Blogging: Palestinian Edition

teh
I had no idea. Apparently there is a Palestinian beer brewed in the West Bank (aka Palestine). It’s called Taybeh. It’s the ONLY Palestinian made beer.

The Taybeh Brewing Company web site has this description:

Taybeh Beer
The Finest in the middle east.
The only Palestinian beer.
Brewed with the only finest selection of ingredents.
Art and Science make a good beer.
What's inside makes Taybeh Beer so special.

Taybeh beer is brewed in the town of Taybeh. I found it fascinating to read the directions to get to the brewery.

Follow signs to Jerusalem, follow signs to Ramallah
After seeing the Jerusalem Airport on your left
Take your first right
The sign should say Mishor Adummim 437
Or follow signs for Maale Mikhmas

Stay on the main road; travel straight (approximately 10 minutes)
After seeing the sign for the Ramallah Bypass
Take a right at the junction
The sign should say Maale Mikhmas 457

Stay on the main road; travel straight follow curvy mountain road (approximately 10 minutes)
At the Israeli checkpoint at the intersection
Take a left to Taybeh, no sign
Taybeh is opposite to the road to Jericho
Ask the soldiers to pass towards Taybeh.

When you enter Taybeh, pass up the Village center
Take your first left at the rotary,
Go straight, the brewery will be one block down on the right

Here’s an interesting aspect to Taybeh Beer. They are rolling out a non-alcoholic version of the beer and calling it Hamas. Marketing genius given the results of the latest Palestinian election.

TAYBEH (AFP) - Like any good entrepreneur, Palestinian beermaker Nadim Khoury knew that adaptation would be key to his brewery's survival under a government led by the Islamists of Hamas

So anticipating the hardliners' rise to power in January's general election, Khoury decided to develop a new product -- a non-alcoholic microbrew brandished with a label that coordinates perfectly with Hamas's trademark color.

"I figured why not have a green label so it will match?" said Khoury, who runs the Taybeh Brewing Company, the only brewery in the Palestinian territories. "All customers will notice the green for the Hamas flag."

The alcohol-free version of Taybeh beer, with a label inscribed only in Arabic and whose name means "delicious," is to be released this summer and will target the "local market," he said.

Non-alcoholic beer is already popular in a number of conservative Gulf Arab countries which officially ban booze sales.

Photo courtesy of Middle East Online.

Yeah, good luck with that. You know, near-beer is not totally devoid of alcohol. Well, I guess you don't have to tell the hardliners.

I hope Taybeh lives long and prospers. I'll be looking for it here.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Investments

teh
The spectacle of financial companies trying to co-opt the “counterculture” is getting cartoonish –literally. Fidelity Investments is currently running a TV ad featuring Iron Butterfly’s classic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida complete with psychedelic flowering artwork growing on the screen. Give me a personal break.

Fidelity joins Ameriprise which has an ad (that’s on ALL the damn time) featuring a bunch of 50-somethings embarrassing themselves by acting 17 while a Spencer Davis Group tune plays in the background. Oh, sure nothing has changed in 40 years, you’re still able to dance, skateboard and play the electric guitar! All you need now is a financial plan so you have enough money to buy your weed in retirement, man.

I can’t decide if this is pathetic or insulting. I guess it depends on if the target audience, Baby Boomers, is buying. If they are, it’s pathetic. If not, it’s just insulting.

Technically, I’m a Boomer. The so called Baby Boom generation was born between 1946 and 1964. That’s a huge spread and since I come in toward the end of that era, I have little in common with the leading “Woodstock” contingent. Most things attributed to Boomers have nothing to do with my high school class of 1978 much less the class of 1982! Geez, we missed everything by about ten years. I mean, the ‘60s were over before we were even ten. What a rip.

I will say pulling up the rear on this most over-exposed generation has benefited me in as much as I have always been able to see what’s just around the corner for me as I watch my older Boomer peers age. I’m just hoping it doesn’t include being pandered to by financial planning companies and their cheesy commercials. I guess I should be on the look out for Merrill Lynch ads featuring The Clash.

Update: Just as I post this, CNN has this idiotic story up on its web site. The headline reads:

Baby boomers or bums?

Looking to the '60s generation for lessons on how to plan

Then the first paragraph:

(CNN) -- In the 1960s and '70s they burned their bras and draft cards, marched on
Washington, founded Earth Day and vowed never to trust anyone over the age of 30.

It gets worse from there. Sigh

Update II: I just noticed there is a Fedelity ad right next to the above story. In-a-gadda-da-vida honey, don'tcha know that I love you?

The Devil Is In The Details

Well, what do you know; just as I predicted the Alabama church burners weren’t “devil worshipers”. Actually, the perps are more insidious than mere “devil worshipers”. They’re bored dumbass white-boy college students! Ahhhhhhh!

The case was broken by indentifying the kind of tires on the get-away vehicle via tire tracks at the crime scene. Does the Southern setting and the case-breaking tire evidence remind anyone else of My Cousin Vinny? OK, the bored dumbass white-boy college students were innocent in that movie, but still.

Kristi: Media Superstar

teh
Cheerleading great and Springfield native Kristi Yamaoka was interviewed on the Today Show this morning. Here’s the video link. Kristi’s SIU cheerleading squad and coach also appear in the segment.

Hat tip to the SJ-R online.

The Java Gene

teh
Bad news for coffee drinkers:

A study of 4,000 coffee drinkers has found that two or more cups each day can increase the risk of heart disease — but only for those with a genetic mutation that slows the breakdown of caffeine in the body.

In diverse urban areas, the mutation is found in 54% of the population.

People without the mutation can drink as much coffee as they like with no added risk of a heart attack, the scientists said.

Unfortunately, there's no commercial test for the mutation, which now puts coffee die-hards in a bit of a quandary.

[snip]

People who metabolized caffeine slowly and drank two to three cups of coffee each day had a 32% higher risk of heart attack, according to the study. Those consuming four cups or more had a 64% greater risk.

A single cup of coffee had no effect on heart attack risk, researchers found.

Are we to assume this is true of all caffeinated drinks (amount varying depending on concentration of caffeine)? I personally have been staying away from caffeine for more than 25 years now after being nearly addicted to the stuff in early college. I quit because I felt it was messing with me. Perhaps I have the bad caffeine gene.

In any case, this I believe is rather big news. Unless a way is found to test for this gene, I think we are going to see a lot of people switching to decaf. For those not inclined to quit, the good news is you can almost certainly expect a coffee industry funded study to come out shortly refuting these findings.

Taking Debate

teh
I didn’t see the debate between the Republican candidates for Illinois governor last night but I have seen some of the coverage which, predictably, is devoid of any discussion of the issues that might have come up during the debate. Of course, that criticism is contingent on whether the candidates themselves actually said anything substantive on issues.

I was particularly amused at WICS Ch. 20’as coverage of the debate last night when they went to a segment where they got the reactions to the debate from five DEMOCRATS. Ummm, who the hell cares what a bunch of Democrats has to say about the slate of Republicans who, theoretically, will be voted on by other Republicans? I know, I know, anyone can take a Republican ballot. But wouldn’t it more relevant to hear the opinions of Republicans on how the debate went?

My overall sense is that my prediction of a second Blagojevich term is becoming more and more likely to come true. I don’t see any of these guys catching fire, burns from the political flame war during the primary not withstanding.

The Local War on Bioterrorism

teh
I’m glad to see Ray Cooke has a new position following the merger of the Springfield and Sangamon County health departments. He was a good administrator of the now defunct Springfield Health Department. However, I can’t help but feel the job he’s now been given is, well, made-up. Cooke has been given oversight of something called the Sangamon County Office of Bioterrorism Preparedness. In fact, he is the entire Office of Bioterrorism Preparedness; it’s a one man show.

My question is this: Had Cooke taken a position somewhere else would there still have been an Office of Bioterrorism Preparedness here in Sangamon County?

Another question would be, are there other communities our size with an office dedicated solely to the very specific task of preparing for bioterrorism?

Cooke is an asset to our community and I’ve always thought him to be a great guy in my interactions with him, but I’m wondering if his talents aren’t being wasted on an unnecessary position.

There’s nothing wrong with having contingency plans for terrorism or any other disaster but is the extremely minor threat of bioterrorism here really worth the resources that have now been allocated to it?

Taking One For The Team

teh
Talk about a trooper. Did you see this story in the SJ-R about SIU cheerleader and Springfield native Kristi Yamaoka?

Yamaoka fell from the 15-foot apex of a cheerleader pyramid with about four minutes remaining in the Missouri Valley Conference basketball championship game
between SIU and Bradley at the Savvis Center in St Louis.

The crowd of 14,000 people - and a CBS-TV audience - watched in hushed suspense as Yamaoka lay motionless. Finally, Yamaoka waved and made cheer moves with her arms, the only parts of her petite body not strapped to a gurney, in time to the band playing the SIU school song.

“I didn’t realize I got knocked out,” Yamaoka said Monday. “My legs ... I just remember not wanting to move. I thought ‘Don’t touch me. I’m broke.’

“My arms went numb. But I heard the fight song, and as a cheerleader, it’s my job that the crowd is riled up. I’m there to support the team. I didn’t want the ballplayers to get distracted worrying about me. I wanted them to keep moving on.”

Wow. I think I’d be yelling, “You f**kers, you dropped me!” as they wheeled me out. So much for my team spirit. Thankfully, Kristi has a better attitude.

The Southern Illinoisian has a good account too.

Get well, Kristi!

Supplemental Beer Blogging: Beers, Sodas Lose Life in Fire

teh
Randy at Photos Etcetera has a series of photos of the aftermath of a tavern fire. Here’s one pic showing some of the casualties


The horror.

Best Movie Theaters

teh
In keeping with the movie theme generated by Sunday’s Oscars extravaganza, I’m reminded of recently driving past the now shuttered Esquire theater on South McArthur in Springfield and feeling kind of sad that its life is over. Once Spingfield’s best place to see movies it was, in its final years, left to deteriorate having become the “cheap theater” where you could see films for a buck before they left town.

Friday night I saw Walk the Line at the new “cheap theater” – the White Oaks Cinema. It occurred to me that this facility was also once the best place in town to catch a flick. How long before it closes?

All this got me thinking about the migration of the city’s best movie screens. Here’s what I came up with beginning with the Esquire.

Mid 1970’s – The Esquire It, I believe, was Springfield’s first multi-screen facility. I spent countless Saturday Afternoons there as a teen. You could go from one movie to the next without going outside!

Late 1970’s into the 1980s-White Oaks Cinema Even more screens! New theaters opened with the mall in 1977.

1990’s – Parkway Point 8 and Showplace 8 (tie) More and better twin operations.

2003 - Kerasotes ShowPlace West 12 Stadium seating and you can butter your own popcorn!

I’m not sure I can judge the “best” place to see a show before my teen years. In my memory, The Senate, The Fox, The Roxy and the other single screen movie houses of my early youth were all roughly the same, at least from my perspective at the time. I saw my first movie (Mary Poppins) at the Orpheum when I was like 4 but it was torn down a year or so later and I have no real memory of it. I understand it was the place to go back in the day.

Feel free to add to the list if you can.

Obligatory Oscars Post

teh
Since every blogger must, MUST have a post (or 400 if you’re Arianna Huffington) about the Academy Awards, here’s mine.

I didn’t watch the awards show. None of it. I saw only one of the major nominees this year and I saw it only Friday night so it would have been a bit of a waste of time; something like watching a foreign language film without subtitles.

I was kind of hoping Brokeback Mountain would win so wingnut radio and blogs could continue going ape shit over the Hollywood agenda to turn us all gay. But now they’ll have to find some other cultural offense to become exercised about.

I will say the one Oscar nominated file I did see, Walk the Line, is a good film. I’m a sucker for bio-pics (and biographical works in general). Plus I’ve always had a lot of respect for Johnny Cash, both the man and the musician. So, I was predisposed to liking Walk the Line.

I’m one of those people that thinks everyone has a story and if that person also happens to be particularly interesting they have a great story.

One thing I really liked about Walk the Line is it took up the part of Cash’s life I was unfamiliar with. The movie ends in 1968 which is about when I became of Cash in real time. However, I suspect younger people are not aware of the rest of the story and will be left with the image of Cash as the drug-addled musician who couldn’t handle super-stardom. Since the rest of Cash’s career and life were much more level, this is a little unfair.

I have not read any comprehensive biography of Cash but my understanding is that he was a deeply spiritual man. This doesn’t come through at all in the film. This may be because during his early career, the subject of Walk the Line, he wasn’t. I don’t know but I would like to know more about that side of Cash and how reconciled that with the music industry in which he worked. I’d also like to know more about the end of his life. He became strangely relevant again in the 1990s as the aging rebel musician and ended his career with the haunting rendition and video of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”. I guess I’m either going to have to pick up a biography or hope for an equally well-made Walk the Line II.

Stunningly Stupid

teh
This from the If You Don’t Laugh, You Have To Cry Department:

Two Iraqi women whose husbands and children were killed by US troops during the Iraq war have been refused entry into the United States for a speaking tour. The women were invited to the US for peace events surrounding international women’s by the human rights group Global Exchange and the women’s peace group CODEPINK.

In a piece of painful irony, the reason given for the rejection was that the women don’t have enough family in Iraq to prove that they’ll return to the country.

Yeah, that’s all we need; Iraqi women with no family left sneaking into this country to take more jobs from hard working Americans who support the war. They must hate freedom.

Inflate This

teh
Sometimes its fun, or even necessary, to figure out what inflation has done to the price of things over the years. For example, a few years ago when we looked into having someone mow our yard, I had no idea what was a good price to pay. It had been 30 years since I did regular lawn mowing as a kid. Back then, $5 was a decent wage for an average south-side Springfield yard. So, as always when in doubt, I hit the internet.

There are a number of “inflation calculators” to choose from. I use this one because it’s really, really simple. Putting in my $5 from 1974, I found that now translated to about $20. That seems like a lot for having someone mow my lawn but that’s because I used to do it for $5 and that number has stuck with me. But there’s inflation.

The other day I got to wondering from what point have prices double and triple and so on. So I used my inflation calculator to provide an answer. Here’s what I found:

Prices have doubled since 1982. That is, something that cost $10 in 1982 now costs $20. Prices have tripled since 1978, quadrupled since 1974 and are ten times what they were in 1947.

If you really want to get depressed, put your current salary in the inflation calculator and run it against the year you got out of high school or college or whenever you first became aware of relative salaries. It turns out you’re not making as much as you think you are.

Friday Beer Blogging: Beer Car Edition

teh
One for the road!

It’s not good to drink while you’re driving but who says you can’t drive what you’re drinking?

Good – Bud car


Better – Beer can car


More Better – Car O’ Beer


Simply Awesome – Bar Car

Drive safely.