COFFEE SHOP PIONEER
This morning's New York Times included a column heading that read:
A coffee shop pioneer murdered. More than two
decades later his wife and her brother found guilty.
As intriguing as this was, It was the phrase "coffee shop pioneer" that really captured my imagination. I never fail to be amused by both the New York and Los Angeles Times' attempts to make provocative something that is entirely mundane. I assume the editors of these papers maintain a list of superlative labels to draw from which includes pre-revolutionary brew master, trail blazing philatelist, swashbuckling entomologist, etc.
With newspapers I recommend reading only the headlines as one's imagination nearly always takes one to a better place than the actual story. A perfect example was another of this mornings headlines:
Family finds insensitive a streaming video from
doctor informing man he has only days to live
I gathered from this that the family would have preferred an appointment had been arranged where the doctor would hold off on sharing the bad news until it could be done in person. Maybe it's just me but I think if I only had a few days to live I would appreciate finding out as soon as possible. Evidently this family would have rather had the poor bastard blow at least half a day of the few he had left, dragging himself down to the doctor's office and sitting in the waiting room. The best part of this story would be of course that once having viewed the video, the man informed his family via skype.
At some point newspaper editors must have determined that stories about animals sell papers. On any given day, there is ample coverage devoted to the animal kingdom and this morning was no exception.
As pigs await slaughter at
Farmer John,
strangers offer
water, love and comfort
aid of the pigs had no former association with them. These caring souls (including what looks to be Dracula in a green hoodie) came forth out of the goodness of their hearts despite the fact that the pigs didn't know them from Adam. One wonders if the actions of these strangers may have helped calm the pigs while later being butchered by slaughterhouse workers who were also complete strangers.
80 injured when a Japanese ferry collided
with an object believed to be a whale
For Christ's sake, stop pussy-footing and just say it was a whale. If Trump hasn't sued the paper for liable surely the whale won't. Besides, what else could it have been? Unless it was low tide and the object was a sunken Japanese ferry.
Jane Smiley:
The deaths
at Santa
Anita remind
me why I
don't miss
horse racing
Jane Smiley is the author of over 20 works almost all of which are about horses including several on horse racing. Can we assume when she says that she doesn't miss it she means going to watch horses race because she's certainly not adverse to writing about it and making a living off it.
Headlines in the business section of the paper this morning indicate that while Netflix continues to pour its money into producing original content (and scaring the shit out of the Motion Picture Academy), Amazon has countered with adding more old movies to its prime subscribers.
Although I am not a subscriber, I do think Amazon would be smart to include the following two oldies.
The Secret Lives of Dentists
Based on a book written by Jane Smiley (one of her few books not focused on horses and horse racing) and based on her photo may be a form of vendetta.
Plot: "David and Dana Hurst are dentists who are married with three daughters and share a dental practice in upper New York State. Dana is in the chorus of a community opera production, and when David goes backstage to give her a good luck charm, he sees her in the arms of another man. As he contemplates how to handle this, he begins having imaginary conversations with a difficult former patient. When the whole family gets the flu, everything is brought to a head."
The "former patient" is Dennis Leary and is the sole reason to watch this one.
This one features Anthony Hopkins and Russel Crowe and offers the viewer a chance to watch two big stars trapped in a terrible movie that is harder to sit through than a root canal.
Plot: "An expert on productivity shows wacky workers in 1966 Australia how to run their moccasin factory like clockwork."
Getting back to the Times, seeing as this was the Sunday edition, the range of non-politicized articles was quite varied. There was an feature that related how a peloton instructor spent her Sundays. I had to look up "peleton" and discovered it has replaced "stationary" or "exercise" when referring to a bicycle.
The term peloton when added to what previously was sold as exercise equipment has taken the price from the low hundreds up to models as high as $3,995 and spawned an industry that provides people with employment as instructors.
I am curious what "instruction" might consist of. "The waist high narrow horizontal tube in front of you is referred to as the handle bars........"
Food gets coverage in every issue and based on this mornings offerings may be running out of things to talk about:
A week of bright and bold meals
capped off with fried rice
I have always liked fried rice but it seems to me that even the most zealous of fried rice enthusiasts might question if the dish truly deserves to be promoted in this manner. The sort of feeling that comes over you when you realize you may have over done things. Which is how I felt about spending my time looking at headlines when I caught this one in the Los Angeles Times:
I took my two year old daughter to
Captain Marvel - and I'm glad I did
You go girl.