trinacriabob

wake

So, do you own one? Dopo tutte le volte che sei andato alla Messa in Latino, ti permetti a usare la parola "Xmas?" Scandaloso. :wink:

Be careful what you ask for. Seriously, when I took delivery of the new Regal, I said a brief prayer to the same effect. :rotflmao: I don't think the salesman had seen that before. Well, here it is, after 17.5 years and 262,000 miles. BTW, Anna Nicole Smith and Howard K Stern showed up on one of those popular searches on a home page. It links you back to some biographical stuff. What a messed up life. Incidentally, her "best" measurements were a little bit bigger than in the OP, foretelling that she would struggle with her weight. Every last one of these entertainers can cash in their chips at 40 or 45, do pro-bono and charity work, and live a full life. What's so hard to figure out?

I thought getting a subway near and through the LaBrea Tar Pits area presented a major problem. I wonder if they are planning to do "cut and cover" (I think that's the term) or do it with a less disruptive tunnel boring machine. The thought of a subway extending another 12 or so miles under one of the most expensive and built-up real estate corridors in Los Angeles is mind-boggling. Isn't it overkill to do both an Acqua Line through Culver City on to Santa Monica AS WELL as a Purple Line to Santa Monica? About the 710 Tunnel, how much is it supposed to cost? I sort of understand the need for the Big Dig in Boston as that is its central artery in the very dense downtown core, but that was budgeted at $2.8 billion and wound up costing $14 billion (almost 5x the budget). I think that four-laning the Pasadena Freeway in each direction is much more necessary than the 710 tunnel, IMHO.

boat

river

Tina Turner

representation

tithing

Couldn't resist without starting a thread. A Protestant minister goes to the dentist for a cleaning. Protestant minister: "What do I owe you?" Dentist: "Nothing, you're a religious man. I wouldn't charge you." The next week, the Protestant minister sends the dentist's office a gold-leafed Bible A Catholic priest goes to the dentist for a root canal. Catholic priest: "What do I owe you?" Dentist: "Nothing, you're a religious man. I wouldn't charge you." The next week, the Catholic priest sends the dentist's office an ornate crucifix A Jewish rabbi goes to the dentist for a filling. Jewish rabbi: "What do I owe you?" Dentist: "Nothing, you're a religious man. I wouldn't charge you." So, what does the Jewish rabbi send to the dentist's office? Another rabbi. My Dad loved this joke, since he did a type of work largely done by Italian and Jewish people in Los Angeles. Everybody chuckled at it. * waiting for the hand on the hip of indignance* Oh, lighten up...

almanac

tetracycline

dopey looking

Nice! Sometimes the best part of being Catholic is being able to laugh at it...and 16 years of Catholic school. It seems that most survivors of the Catholic school system seem to bond around some of the great rites of passage and fairly unique experiences one would have missed if they had gone to public school.

extra scoop of ice cream for the spelling response to thread: tracker

Between you and a good childhood friend that lives in Las Vegas, I have pretty much written off the Southwest and the Intermountain West. It's pretty damn bleak, aesthetically speaking.

movin' on up to response to thread: the East Side

Thank you for that excellent link to the rapid transit map. It's fairly cluttered, but once you get wade throught it, the heavy rail ambitions are weak. When I was a young and first rode on BART as a tourist, I instantly thought L.A. should have the following: 1. Red Line as a subway - ditto - BUT extended out to West Valley, with NO stupid busway to pick up the slack from North Hollywood westward 2. Purple Line as a subway - ditto - BUT extended out to Santa Monica, or the beach* 3. Gold Line - not ditto - to Pasadena and beyond as heavy rail 4. Blue Line - not ditto - to Long Beach as heavy rail 5. Green Line - not ditto - east to west as heavy rail 6. A line out to El Monte, West Covina, La Puente and Pomona as heavy rail 7. A very important belt line, essentially following the 405 - coming from at least the base of the Valley, picking up the airport, hitting the flatlands of the South Bay and terminating at what is now the Blue Line SEVEN lengthy heavy rail lines would have made the city of L.A. and many major suburbs quickly navigable by rail. Look at how BART covers so much area, except for monied Marin County and the Peninsula (the latter of which has apparently regretted it). * I am laughing my ass off as I see ONE stop in BH at Wilshire and Beverly. That must have been a "political" gesture of goodwill by the people of Beverly Hills to the commoners, while they were quaking in their boots. Sadly, pow, most of us who left Los Angeles and whose lives have taken us somewhere else love coming back to L.A. and seeing a rapid transit system unfold, though we will probably never move back. I was hoping for more heavy rail and was hoping it was sooner than later.

Jeff Spicoli

Sounds like you like all those demographic and statistical charts. They're interesting. They almost become predictable cliches. Lowest SAT scores/highest teen pregnancy/lowest high school graduation: It's the inland, non-coastal Southern States (MS, AR, etc.) and Nevada (a very white trash kind of place) Highest SAT scores/lowest teen pregnancy/highest high school graduation: It's the (Nordic) Upper Midwest (MN, WI) and New England (more so NH, VT) Back to the topic at hand, (Southern) California failed to instill a commuter rail/heavy transit rail lifestyle as it should have for its intended growth, giving rise to a mind-boggling freeway system and those ramps/interchanges that postcards are made of. They're doing rapid transit 40 years later, after all the infrastructure is in place and sprawl has occurred. It embarrasses me that my hometown of L.A. has a despicable rail system (with the only line that's worth a damn being the "Red Line" because it's a fully grade-separated heavy rail subway system on a dedicated track) and all the other lines are essentially trolley cars (Green, Blue, Gold, and future Acqua lines) that run through the streets of South Central. Nice. Come on, this is America's gateway city to Asia and Oceania. Atlanta, where I lived for 2 years and really enjoyed, has a stellar transit system in its MARTA Rail (it's similar to BART and the DC Metro). Well, looks like the Bay Bridge will be open for Monday morning's commute...and BART trains will be less crowded.

Today: We had the office Halloween party. Sections were broken up into themes. Our area was "Old Western Town." I was going to set up my office as the town bordello (a lot of red velour, and not much else). That didn't fly. (Damn, virtually every Western town of any significance had a bordello). So, instead, they gave me rolls of paper and I did mural type drawings of Western landscapes (mesas, cactus, sagebrush, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, and bighorn sheep, etc). to cover the walls. I ate so much I have to go lay down (quantity of what people brought in "potluck" style, but not necessarily quality). Tomorrow (actual Halloween Day): Not a damn thing...looking forward to a quiet weekend. Your Halloween plans?

surfer

I was waiting for this. (I was a year off, thinking it was 1937, but, what the hell, they had the foresight to do 5 lanes in each direction on different bridge decks. That's right. The architectural statement was unnecessary. While the old cantilevered East Span was hideous, a sleek, high up in the air causeway would have done the trick. The insertion of that suspension component with the tower that looks kind of modern/kind of retro/kind of Coit is large part of the bridge's cost (overrun).

That's because Sarah Palin comes from that area...kind of makes sense :wink:

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