What I Heard This Week! March 8, 2018
Tourists catching a flight out of Las Vegas can now dump their leftover legal marijuana in metal containers set up at the airport. The 10 green bins are named “amnesty boxes” and are there to prevent agents from finding pot on passengers during security screenings since the drug is legal in Nevada but still banned by the US government. Years ago, I remember Hobby Airport allowing me to mail my baby buck knife back to myself because I had left it in my purse. If someone had told me then that someday we would be dumping pot at the airport…
In 2005, Franklin Graham visited Angola Prison (Louisiana State Penitentiary) where the Graham family had donated more than $200,000 to help build chapels and support prison ministry. In earlier years, a new warden had decided that prisoners shouldn’t be buried inside crate-like boxes not much sturdier than cardboard, so a casket-building program was started. When the younger Graham visited, he asked to have the carpenters make a casket for his mother, Ruth Bell Graham and his father, then to burn the builders’ names into the wood. The caskets cost $215 each. Ruth Bell Graham died in June 2007 and Rev. Billy Graham died last month. The caskets said, “Hand-Crafted by Richard Liggett, Clifford Bowman and Paul Krolowit.”
eeeeeek. A woman was at Memorial City Mall one morning last week before the retail store where she worked opened for the day. A man attacked her in the restroom, choked her with a plastic bag used as a rope, hit, kicked and stomped on her then left her unconscious on the floor. She sustained injuries to her face and lost several teeth. Warning. Never let your guard down. It can happen anywhere.
Anne-Elisabeth and I went to the Rodeo on Friday evening and saw Leon Bridges perform. He was, of course, spectacular. The new stage rolled out, his band members were dressed in sharp black suits, the lights went down, and Leon Bridges appeared in black and white silk polka-dotted shirt and black pants. No boots and jeans for these guys. It was perfect. But, there are no words to describe the new stage. We had $6 tickets and it cost $7 to ride in from the Reed Road Park-n-Ride. So, for $13 each, it was a very affordable and entertaining evening. Go see the stage!
Rodeo Food: This year there is a bacon cheeseburger with a funnel cake bun, bacon-wrapped cinnamon rolls, deep-fried cookie dough on a stick, chocolate cobbler, fried bread pudding on a stick, pizza on a stick, cookie-dough parfait, liquid-nitrogen-dipped blobs of cotton-candy-flavored whipped cream…artic bonbons that disintegrate on your tongue and create plumes of smoke in your mouth, a foot-long corn dog slathered in crushed Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and more. Oh, and salad.
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos were the invention of then 55-year-old Richard Montanez, who was a janitor at a Frito-Lay plant. He was inspired by the Mexican dish Elote (corn dusted with spices) so he thought to add some chili powder to unflavored Cheetos. The rest is history and now Fox Searchlight will film a movie about his wild success story. Nope, I’m not kidding. Coming soon to a movie theatre near you.
Experts are warning that video footage is becoming very easy to recreate. It’s call a deepfake – an ultra-realistic fake video made with artificial intelligence software. Until now, computer-generated video was a laborious pursuit only available to big-budget Hollywood producers, but recently hobbyists (that’s a nice word for them) have been experimenting with more powerful tools which make it so easy to make fake, look real. So, if you find a “Lisa Does Dallas,” don’t believe it. Just kidding. Experts worry that people will use it to blackmail others. The article said that we need to educate people that this is a possibility, so warning. You read it here first.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Actors James and Oliver Phelps are 32. Harry Potter. Author Tom Wolfe is 88. The Bonfire of the Vanities. Actress Laraine Newman is 66. Saturday Night Live. Singer Jay Osmond is 63. Pop musician John Cowsill is 62. Rock singer Jon Bon Jovi is 56. Actor Daniel Craig is 50. Singer Chris Martin is 41. Magician Penn Jillette is 63. Actor Dean Stockwell is 82. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is 68.
Musician Emilio Estefan is 65. Actress Patricia Heaton is 60. Gay rights activist Chaz Bono is 49. Actor director dancer Tommy Tune is 79. Hall of Fame auto racer Mario Andretti is 78. Actress Bernadette Peters is 70. Country singer Jason Aldean is 41. Former CBS newsman Bob Schieffer is 81. Former professional wrestler Ric Flair is 69. Actress Tea Leoni is 52. Latin singer Julio Iglesias Jr. is 45.
David Ogden Stiers who was the tall, balding, somewhat snobbish surgeon on M*A*S*H, died at the age of 75. He was also the voice of Cogsworth, the strong-willed pendulum clock in the 1991, Beauty and the Beast.
My peeve for the week. Lowe’s on Saturday morning. The lines were really, long outside, so I decided to do self-checkout lines inside. Huge mistake. I was carrying everything because someone had borrowed my basket while I was looking the other direction, (hope you enjoy that Boston fern that I hand-picked). There were “only” about ten people in each line inside ☹. Three registers out of four were working. The fourth one had a bag over its head like an empty gas pump. It was excruciating to watch the difficulties involved in getting through those lines. By the time I left, there was only one register working. Wouldn’t it be better, more cost & time efficient to have a trained real person to check people out?
According to Wikipedia: A pet peeve is a minor annoyance that an individual identifies as particularly annoying to themselves, to a greater degree than others may find. Its first usage was around 1919. The term is a back-formation from the 14th-century word peevish, meaning “ornery or ill-tempered”. So, there is it. I’m ornery and Ill-tempered.
The Oscars: Jennifer Garner had on a drop-dead gorgeous cobalt blue gown with her hair parted and swept to one side. It was stunning. She was stunning and my favorite. Ben Affleck, eat your heart out. You didn’t deserve her. Rita Moreno showed up wearing the same dress that she wore 56 years ago (1962) when she won the Oscar for “West Side Story.” The skirt fabric was Obi, which is the sash that Japanese women use in their kimonos. She simply changed the neckline and added a necklace. That’s true style in my book, but she shouldn’t have changed the neckline. Lupita Nyong’o was another perfect look in gold. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in anything BUT perfect. Helen Mirren looked fabulous. She has so much style. Emma Stone wore a silk pant suit that was really, nice. Did you know that until 1940, women could be arrested for wearing pants in public and it wasn’t until 1972 that girls were guaranteed the right to wear pants to school. I remember my first pant suit – the top matched the pants and was the same length as my fingertips, khaki-colored polyester double knit that is likely still around today because polyester doesn’t die. Oh, yes. The Oscars. Keala Settle performed “This Is Me” from “The Greatest Showman.” Nice. Eddie Vedder played Tom Petty’s 1999 single, “Room at the Top,” which was beautiful, while the Academy recalled the lives and legacies of those that had left us this year. Many were upset because they missed some important people like Robert Guillaume, John Hillerman, Adam West, Jim Nabors and Rose Marie but it would be hard to remember them all. They’re dropping like flies. 😊 A man was arrested after stealing Frances McDormand’s trophy during the Governors Ball. She was reunited with Oscar and celebrated with a double cheeseburger from In-N-Out Burger.
Thank you for reading this today.
Hope you have a great week…
– Lisa
