Jock lives over there in those condos and this is the second year he’s sent me a postcard from his wife’s family home in Chile. Matt saw only the photo side and said, “Hey, Popodopolis, what’s with the postcard”? I told him to read the back. It’s so much better than, “Having fun, wish you were here.” Which reminds me of my favorite Freudian slip version, “Having fun, wish you were her.”

Goose’s  comment sent me to his blog, not that I don’t already check it three or four times a day. At least he posts more than once every five months.

Dear Mr. Miller,

Nice day for one — I hope you were out, too, ideally at the beach of which you recently spoke.  I posted some pics.

Your Humble Servant,

A.K.

Adam’s daily NYTimes’ scour turned up this link for rakkity. Though similar themes rak’s pictures are better.

I Knew Gene Kelly. The President Is No Gene Kelly.

To the Editor:

Re “Soft Shoe in Hard Times” (column, March 16):

Surely it must have been a slip for Maureen Dowd to align the artistry of my late husband, Gene Kelly, with the president’s clumsy performances. To suggest that “George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly” represents not only an implausible transformation but a considerable slight. If Gene were in a grave, he would have turned over in it.

When Gene was compared to the grace and agility of Jack Dempsey, Wayne Gretzky and Willie Mays, he was delighted. But to be linked with a clunker – particularly one he would consider inept and demoralizing –
would have sent him reeling.

Graduated with a degree in economics from Pitt, Gene was not only a gifted dancer, director and choreographer, he was also a most civilized man. He spoke multiple languages; wrote poetry; studied history; understood the projections of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. He did the Sunday Times crossword in ink. Exceedingly articulate, Gene often conveyed more through movement than others manage with words.

Sadly, President Bush fails to communicate meaningfully with either.

For George Bush to become Gene Kelly would require impossible leaps in creativity, erudition and humility.

Patricia Ward Kelly
Los Angeles, March 16, 2008

I Knew Gene Kelly. The President Is No Gene Kelly.

To the Editor:

Re “Soft Shoe in Hard Times” (column, March 16):

Surely it must have been a slip for Maureen Dowd to align the artistry of my late husband, Gene Kelly, with the president’s clumsy performances. To suggest that “George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly” represents not only an implausible transformation but a considerable slight. If Gene were in a grave, he would have turned over in it.

When Gene was compared to the grace and agility of Jack Dempsey, Wayne Gretzky and Willie Mays, he was delighted. But to be linked with a clunker – particularly one he would consider inept and demoralizing –
would have sent him reeling.

Graduated with a degree in economics from Pitt, Gene was not only a gifted dancer, director and choreographer, he was also a most civilized man. He spoke multiple languages; wrote poetry; studied history; understood the projections of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. He did the Sunday Times crossword in ink. Exceedingly articulate, Gene often conveyed more through movement than others manage with words.

Sadly, President Bush fails to communicate meaningfully with either.

For George Bush to become Gene Kelly would require impossible leaps in creativity, erudition and humility.

Patricia Ward Kelly
Los Angeles, March 16, 2008

This link sent today by pesky godson.

I think of this as a religious video. And here is the author’s story which is almost as funny as the video.

I think of this as a religious video. And here is the author’s story which is almost as funny as the video.

How would you like to wake up on a Saturday and find something like this  as you fumble around for your morning coffee? Sure beats fire alarms and thick smoke.

Way back I wrote about a truck driver for my local lumberyard whom I described as looking like a toothless, tattooed pirate, with a beard but no peg leg. Given his looks and his job, I was flabbergasted by his knowledge of digital cameras and laptop computers, until I found out that he’d also written significant software for some major Boston firms way back in the C++ days. He’d tired of computers and suits, but not of work, and drove trucks to busy.

The blog post was one of my what-an-idiot-I-can-be stories, which happens to be my favorite kind. However, because I’d added a link to his wife’s high level Flashy website, she’d followed my tracks back to the story and roasted my ass with a fiery email. How can I call her husband toothless? How can I make fun of his tattoos? She’d missed the premise of my story.

There are really smart talented people out there and they don’t all come in BMW’s with a Harvard degree stapled to their foreheads. Readers of the blog, and Adam in particular, know I’ve embarrassed myself in the past by jumping to similar wrong-headed conclusions.

I tried to explain to her that I didn’t really think John looked like a pirate (He wasn’t toothless, he didn’t have that many tattoos), and that I embellish my stories to keep the attention of the three people reading them. Didn’t matter. Lobbing reason at her was like bouncing tennis balls off the hull of a battleship. She was religious, she said, and she didn’t want other people thinking unkind thoughts of her spouse. No, I don’t know what being born again has to do with protecting your reputation against cyberspace writers.

Because I was going to have face John, whom I liked, I apologized and I pulled the story from my website.

We met only once , months after his wife’s email, and neither of us said a thing. He showed no anger, but I did notice he’d filled those empty spaces in his not-so pearly whites. Since then he’s fallen to the deep cuts of an industry in trouble.

Sometime back around January 19th Matt lost his iPhone. Today, after three months of snow that haunted and howled and refused to go away, and after torrential rains that kept my basement sump pump spewing water onto the front lawn, Hannah, Hil K’s sister, found it under some leaves on the outside ledge of her front porch. Matt plugged it in and after a full charge it works as if it’d never left his pants pocket. Riddle me this. Where has it really been? I swept the snow away from that porch back in January, before I raked the white mounds piled at the base of the house. Add Matt’s determined search, and Jen whom I kept hecktoring and Hil whose vigilance ping-ponged from Daryl’s house to that black topped area where Matt had briefly stopped, and you have a phone but not an answer.