Downsizing your carbon footprint
Saturday, June 14th, Woodruff Park
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My friend Rodney Ho wrote a nice story in the AJC yesterday about the growing popularity of WGCL-TV weatherwoman Dagmar Midcap.
Why is Midcap a hit with viewers?
The auburn-haired Vancouver native possesses a soothing voice, a pretty face and a warm personality.
True.
There’s also this. And this. And don’t forget this.
Oh, and these.
(Note: The original caption named the incorrect venue. I apologize for my error.)
The Department of Transportation says that several southbound and northbound lanes of I-75/85 will be closed near downtown this weekend. Here are the specifics:
Southbound:
- Four inside (left) lanes will be closed between 17th Street and I-20
- Two inside (left) lanes will be closed between I-20 and University Avenue
Northbound:
- Three inside (left) lanes will be closed between University Avenue and I-20
- Four inside (left) lanes will be closed between I-20 and 17th Street
These closures are necessary for crews to safely work in the fourth (center lane). During the weekend crews expect to lay more than 13,000 tons of asphalt brought by more than 350 dump trucks. There will be more than 200 workers within the work zone.
These closures are expected to cause significant delays. Georgia DOT advises motorists to utilize I-285 to avoid backups.
I’ve forgotten about these warnings every weekend and paid dearly for it. Learn from my mistakes and take public transit if you can.
On May 28, the Democratic Party of Georgia challenged Georgia’s voter ID in Fulton County Superior Court. State Republicans say a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling settled the voter ID issue in their favor. State Democrats say the opposite is true.
“We think there are close to half a million people who are registered voters but won’t be able to vote.”
-Emmet Bondurant, lawyer for the Democratic Party of Georgia, as quoted in the Fulton County Daily Report on May 28.
On Friday, May 23, millions of Georgians were busy planning their Memorial Day weekends, writing letters and making phone calls to loved ones serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, and remembering family members and friends who paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. That same day, the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG) was busy on a different matter: filing a fourth lawsuit against the State attacking the voter ID law.
-Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, responding to the suit in a letter appearing on the Peach Pundit blog May 29.
We were invited to the grand opening of the W Hotel on 14th St. last night, and even though we missed His Airness, Michael Jordan, we got a small taste of Tinseltown in the A-town. Check it out on our Ed Loves Bacon blog.
“30 Rock” actress Katrina Bowden (Photo by Edward Adams)
Sada Jacobson is an Olympic saber fencer from Dunwoody. In 2004, she won a bronze medal in the Summer Olympics and hopes to win gold this year. She and her sister Emily, also a champion fencer, are members of the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
“It’s very difficult to be a professional fencer in the U.S. Most of the pros are from Europe. It’s a more popular sport there.”
“I started fencing when I was 15. 15 is old to start fencing. At our club [in Midtown] we start them when they’re big enough to hold the mask.”
“Originally, fencing was training for sword fighting. The target area is from the waist up. It comes from cavalry. [In cavalry sword fights] you had to attack your opponent without wounding the horse.”
“Fencing is safe. The sabers aren’t sharp. Punctures are rare. The most common injuries are the repetitive stress injuries you get in all sports.
“I’ve never been in an actual physical confrontation. I don’t think I would fare well.”
“You’re trying to symbolically kill the person in front of you. You have to be very centered and calm, but also aggressive. That’s hard to achieve.”
On Tetanus shots: “I actually need to get one.”
The most common response when she tells people she’s a fencer: “1. They do air-poking at me. 100% of the time they do that. 2. They say ‘Whoa, I wouldn’t want to mess with her. She’s dangerous.’ I’ve heard it a million times.”
“It’s a real sport. It’s not a desire to live out a fantasy.”
“I like to make drinks with the little swords in them. I’ve made kabobs once. “
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
We’d like to thank the record number of readers who have entered into our Summer Guide Contest for tickets/passes to 11 of the 111 best things to do this summer. (I say record number in that, it seems like a ton more than last year, which was my first year doing this, which will then count as the entire history of CL Summer Guide contests. So there.)So consider this a final reminder of the deadline for the contest, which is today (Friday), 5 p.m. We’ll then gather up all the applicants and place them in a lottery system so complicated I probably couldn’t even explain it to people. (Although it might involve printing out the answers, wadding them up into balls of paper, and drawing from a garbage bag. We’ll see.)
We’ll announce the winner on Monday, June 2, in the PopSmart blog. Until then, if you haven’t played the game, you have about two hours left. It’s really easy: Simply visit the Summer Guide online (either by clicking here or on the Summer Guide tile on our homepage), and scan through the 111 options, looking for hyperlinks on 11 of those coolest of cool events, and then filling out the form as described. We’ll take it from there.
Get crackin’.
So much of Screen on the Green on Thursday night, with its showing of Jaws, felt familiar. There was the huge signature banner covering the monster screen. There was the crowd of picnickers camping out on the sloping grass, this time Centennial Olympic Park. There was the sort-of entertaining pre-screening music act, this time in the form of Athens’ Blue Flashing Light. There was, ultimately, a really cool community vibe that makes Screen on the Green one of my favorite Atlanta experiences.
For the entire PopSmart post and a gallery of photos from the event, click here.
The election for the DOT Board seat left vacant by Mike Evans — he who fell in looooove — wasn’t nearly as contentious as the one earlier this year. Those races left a couple of state representatives who didn’t side with Speaker Glenn Richardson’s pick finding themselves relocated to less prestigious offices and losing committee appointments.
But that’s the past, man. Everybody behaved themselves this go-round. And now that Evans and DOT Commissioner are planning their nuptials, we, the gridlock-enslaved scribes of the city, present to you…Steve Farrow! (He’s a former state senator and attorney who oddly enough, seems to have never been photographed in his life. No, I don’t think this guy holding the lobster is him.)
After the jump, the requisite press release giving you the background on Farrow.
WE FIT: Atlanta’s the sixth-fittest city in the country, according to a report released Thursday.
TAXES TWO-STEP: City Council, worried about approving the mayor’s property-tax increase, may not adopt the budget by the June 30 deadline, a delay the mayor says could affect city services such as public safety and trash pickup.
TRIBAL STUDY: Researchers shoot aerial photos of an Amazonian tribe that hasn’t had contact with the outside world while the tribe aims arrows at their plane. Survival International says the group is one of about 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide.
INTERPOL: Posts red-flag alert online for Columbus, Ga., double murder suspect.
HUSBANDRY: Decatur woman is indicted for allegedly being married to six men simultaneously to help them become U.S. citizens.
BEAR KILLED: The menagerie that is I-75 — where a zebra and a pig were hit by cars in April — suffers another casualty, this time a bear that was hit and killed at I-75 and I-285 in Cobb.
GREASE DE RESISTANCE: Restaurants are beginning to lock up their grease barrels as gas-price-weary thieves have been stealing thousands of dollars worth.
FRAUGHT TRAINS: The nation’s rail network is creaking under the strain of added workload on aging infrastructure.
No, the burger behemoth isn’t opening a store in the alt-hippie neighborhood. But a crew was filming a commercial in the parking lot in front of Junkman’s Daughter this morning.
So the ultimate fast-food chain comes to L5P in search of scenery that it can use to brand itself as authentic, i.e. non-chain-ish. Isn’t that kind of like self-hatred?
ROCKET SCIENCE —
There are few opening scenes in the history of cinema that will match the introduction of “My Cough” in subtle textures and old-fashioned innocence: Here is my cough, the familiar but forgotten villain, barely audible over the din of a subway.
He is a light, quick explosion of air due to a faint itching in the throat. So soft is his entrance that we immediately see my cough as weak, harmless, inconsequential. It’s a startlingly simple scene, and the summer heat that surrounds it seems to imply that my cough and his self-titled production will end here. Coughs do not thrive in the late summer, after all. Of course, we are wrong.
In the gripping narrative that follows, first unfolding as languid moments in the sultry heat, and then elevating to full-throttle hell-on-earth psycho-drama, my cough transforms from a meek afterthought in conversation into a raging lunatic capable of leaving all men broken and gasping for air. It is wildly frightening stuff, the kind of sick entertainment that leaves one feeling guilty for witnessing it in the first place. And then my cough eventually goes from whence he came, quieting, quieting, quieting, until we are left with mere traces of him that will perhaps never vanish from our soul.
“My Cough” is at once an authentic blockbuster and an overpowering, gut-wrenching work of art. And this is its star at his finest — controlling, demanding, incapable of allowing others to engage in even the simplest of dialogue.
In one turning-point scene of “My Cough,” wife Angelique unveils her feelings over breakfast: “I said, ‘I love you.’ Did you hear me?”
Of course, the response is my cough. Seemingly at the sound of Angelique’s voice, my cough devilishly drowns out her sweet confession in a hacking, loogie-inducing spasm. It’s so grotesque that any idea of love is quickly and sensibly forgotten. Things get worse from there.
At a work conference, the boss launches into his status-quo humdrum, and you can practically feel the tickle dying to get out. But my cough holds himself in until an infinite volley of throat-sore explosions is the only answer. My cough continues through dirty looks and, finally, the plea from a witness, the boss’s right-hand man, “Why don’t you just go get a drink of water?” It is a beautiful and tension-filled moment stolen by my cough and the now silly notion that a drink of water could actually calm this savage beast. (more…)
ROCKET SCIENCE —
1 When waiting for an accident to clear off the parking lot of traffic known as I-75/85, an hour late for your first job interview in weeks, do not succumb to that specific urge, the one that tells you to pick out the nearest dump-truck driver and make faces at him, including the one where you put your thumb to your nose and waggle your fingers.
2 When the dump-truck road-rager shoots you the bird, do not claim that his face is your steering wheel and then begin punching your steering wheel. And do not simultaneously shout, “I hit you like this! And this! I dare you to come over here!”
3 When the dump-truck road-rager exits his vehicle and walks through stopped traffic in the direction of your car, do not leave your doors unlocked nor your windows open. When he screams at you and threatens to break the glass of your driver’s side window with one punch, and when he describes to you how he’s going to kick your mother-fucking ass if you ever get the courage to get out of the car, just hold your hands up, surrendering to his anger, and say through your window, “Hey, hey, easy there. I’m chill, I’m chill.”
4 When traffic begins moving again, and you time it just right so that you cut off the dump-truck road-rager while going 75 mph, forcing his lumbering piece of shit into the emergency lane, do not follow the maneuver with rearview-mirror taunts in the spirit of “Hahaha, you stupid mother-fucker, I beat you! I beat you! Hahaha! You suck ass!” This will only antagonize the road-rager.
5 After cutting off the dump-truck road-rager, do not, under any circumstances, slam on your brakes, assuming he will care whether he runs into the back of you.
6 When the dump-truck crazy mother-fucker of a road-rager rams into your car and forces you into the cement wall dividing northbound and southbound lanes, do not lose consciousness. IMPORTANT! You must remain conscious in order to escape the vehicle, not so much because it might be on fire, but because the road-rager is coming after you, like Jason in his hockey mask. Break the glass of your windshield if you must — anything to escape your vehicle, and the road-rager’s mindless wrath.
7 When the dump-truck road-rager chases you with a gun through six lanes of speeding, swerving traffic, do not back down now. Instead, stop at the line dividing the fifth and sixth lanes of traffic and challenge your nemesis to a “tight-rope competition” down the lane divider. This should distract him from killing you, at least for a second. Walk on those long dotted lines, hands outstretched, as though there’s hot lava below. Walk as far as it takes to lose him.
8 When the road-rager collars you and uses his brute strength (not to mention his gun) to force you to lie face down on the hot pavement of the interstate, and the cops close all northbound and southbound lanes in an attempt to save you from this total psycho, tell the road-rager everything’s going to be OK, that the choppers above mean nothing — they’re just pretty birds, that’s all.
9 When the dump-truck road-rager tells you how he’s just sick and tired of all the bad drivers out there and how they seem like they’re out to get him, do not, under any circumstances, bring up his less-than-stellar driving habits (not to mention his butt-ugly truck). Instead, actively listen as he tells you his troubles: the overdue mortgage. The troubled teen daughter. The wife who takes him for granted. The stripper who keeps calling his cell phone. And the traffic. The goddamned, mother-fucking, stink-ass, stupid traffic.
10 When he says, “Fucking city planners have ruined my life,” do not intimate that you were once a city planner before getting fired, that you know any city planners, or that you might know someone who knows city planners. Instead, agree with him. Say, “Fucking A, right.” But most of all, just lie still.
11 When the cops arrest the scumbag road-rager, but witnesses to the accident and attempted murder try to pin the blame on you and your driving, do not antagonize them with claims that they, too, suck ass at driving, or that they might be part of a grand road-rager conspiracy against you personally.
12 And finally, when the head cop tells you he’s going to haul you in for questioning, do not criticize the choice of tires on his cop car as being “sort of feminine.” Also, do not threaten to sue the cop if he doesn’t take you to your job interview “right this very fucking instant, Pinkie.” And do not, under any circumstances, kick him in the shins. Cops are very sensitive road-ragers.
This column was previously published in Creative Loafing on June 26, 2003.
Jamie Allen is an Atlanta writer whose column, Rocket Science, appears occasionally on Fresh Loaf. To read more Rocket Science columns, click here. He’d very much like you to visit The Duck & Herring Co.’s Pocket Field Guides website, which he edits.
ROCKET SCIENCE —
You know, sometimes I’ll be out and about in public places and I’ll hear someone talking loudly on his cell phone. So loudly I can hardly think. Many of us have experienced that before. Sometimes I’ll say, “Hey, could you keep it down a little?” Often, I’ll get the finger.
But you know, I think I have a right to say something because that kind of inconsiderate behavior makes me angry. Just as it makes me angry to know that you’re sitting there, listening to public radio, just like you do every day, and you still haven’t sent us a single cent. You’re as bad as the loud cell-phone talkers.
— So please, call now and give a pledge to public radio. —
I was at the market the other day, and I asked the butcher if I could see the prime rib. He pointed it out in the glass case. I asked him if I could hold it. He gave me a funny look, as butchers often do, but he proceeded to pull a nice prime rib out of the case, wrapped in wax paper. I took hold of it, thanked him, and ran out of the store. Within moments of leaving the parking lot, I was pulled over and arrested for shoplifting prime rib.
— Public radio is a lot like prime rib. You’re stealing it from us right now by listening and not paying. We’re going to have you arrested unless you donate today. —
The other night, I was out for an evening walk through the city. It was a nice autumn evening, featuring the kind of cool weather that makes you happy to be alive. I happened upon a young fellow busking for change. He was strumming guitar into the dusky air, and his guitar case was open. Inside the case, strewn about haphazardly, were an impressive number of dollar bills and some spare change. While watching him play, several more people walked by and dropped cash into his case. Needless to say, that disturbed me. I went home and cried myself to sleep.
— Please don’t give your money to that well-meaning but amateurish guitar player. Public radio needs your money more. Call us today. —
Remember when you were in eighth grade and you were masturbating in your room and your mother walked in with the clean, folded laundry and caught you? And then, after most of the embarrassment had cleared and you walked out of your room, you realized that your mother had fainted shortly after leaving your room and knocked her head so hard that she suffered a slight concussion? And you felt so guilty? Do you feel guilty now? Sitting there? By yourself? Listening? I think you know the answer.
— I’d like to ask you to come out of your little room and make amends for the trouble you’re causing by sending a $300 pledge our way. —
I was in Starbucks the other day and I saw a man buying a large — I think they call it Venti — cappuccino. I stopped him and asked, “Do you buy a $4 coffee every day?” He admitted that he did. I said, “Give me your cappuccino. That belongs to public radio.” A struggle ensued. The drink spilled on my face, and I suffered second-degree burns.
— I’m now suing that man for $1 million. Would you like to be sued? Or do you think it would be easier to send $4 a day to public radio? —
Let’s face it: You’re a horrible cheapskate. I mean, you went dutch on your date with your co-worker the other night. And you were the one who asked her out to the nice restaurant in the first place. What gives? Did your mother not raise you properly? And why did you still expect a kiss at the end of the date? I suppose if you had paid for the dinner, you would have expected sex?
— I don’t know — it just seems like you’re awfully comfortable with the idea that you’re owed something. But you don’t owe anyone anything — is that it? Listen, don’t call me. Not until you’re ready to treat me with some respect. I deserve respect in the form of a $500 pledge today. —
Once, when I was in kindergarten, a bee stung my finger during recess. I cried out, and my teacher came over to help me. She took me back to the classroom, pulled out one of her cigarettes from a pack in her purse, broke open the cigarette and emptied the tobacco onto her desk. She then used Scotch tape to wrap the raw tobacco over the point where the bee had stung me, claiming it would “make it feel better.” I suppose we didn’t have a proper first aid kit around.
— That is what happens when you don’t fund things properly: Children are introduced to the healing powers of cigarette tobacco. Please call our station with a pledge to public radio today. —
This column was previously published in Cre
