Friday Fish Postcard Fry - Top 10 Signs You Are from Northern Michigan

Today's "Friday Fish Postcard Fry" entry also features a Top 10 List.

These are the top 10 signs you are from Northern Michigan:

- You can hold up your hand and indicate the middle finger... and it's just an indication of where you live, and not an insult
- You've seen a swan the size of a Toyota and a trout bigger than a Buick.
- You've long since learned not to snicker over town names like "Buckley", "Grawn", and "Mesick"
- You have friends with Subaru's
- You know that "Charlevoix" does not rhyme with "Magnavox"
- You can separate Michael Moore from his politics
- Detroit is way down south somewhere
- You pronounce the name of Chevrolet's new "Traverse" model with the accent on the first syllable instead of the 2nd like everyone else does
- When you mention going to "the mall", no one asks which one.
- When you say you are going to Acme, no one asks if you are picking up a case of dynamite for the coyote.

Postcard of the Day

Oh yes, here's the "Friday Fish Postcard Fry" entry. This is the giant trout of Kalkaska referred to above. The National Trout Festival just recently ended, but if you visit the web site you will see a much older view of the giant trout.

Snap, Crackle, Spock - Kellogg's Star Trek Badges

I had to get some Rice Krispies today to make Rice Krispie treats. I found a good deal at Walmart. And, even better, the boxes contained free Star Trek combadges. These light up, too. The one on the right is a Command badge, and when you press a button it, it acts like a green/yellow LED flashlight. The one in the right is an Engineering badge, and it acts like a red LED flashlight. If one were to wear such things to Star Trek movie premieres, these might not be too bad.

Kellogg's (including Keebler) has a bunch of other Star Trek box goodies, including T-shirts and flash-drives. plates, and movie passes. Click here for more details. Wear a Star Trek Red Shirt to the Star Trek movie premiere, and see if you last to the end of the movie.

Movie Review - Dudley Do-Right

"Dudley Do Right" is a film from ten years ago, and is one of those movies that the Cinemax cable network pads out its schedule with in order to save money. And so I found it, channel surfing. I did not watch it al the way to the end. I quickly lost interest. I pity the person who has to get stuck watching this through to the end.

The original "Dudley Do-Right" was part one of the those suites of 1960s Jay Ward cartoons, along with Peabody and Sherman, Bullwinkle and Rocky, Fractured Fairy Tales, Commander McBrag, Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog, and many others. Over time, as movie producers mine classic television for material for movies, more and more of these get adapted into live-action movies (such as Bullwinkle... twice, I think, George of the Jungle, and Underdog). I liked several of the original Jay Ward cartoons, but the track record of the live-action film adaptations seems hardly better than the track record miserable genre of "video game adaptation movies".

This movie stars Brandon Fraser, Alfred Molina, and Sarah Jessica Parker ("Sex and the Mountie", anyone?). I think that pretty much everyone is mis-cast. It is a challenge, but it is not impossible to find actors to play even rather inhuman-looking human beings from cartoons. Difficult to pull off, but well-done examples like the live-action Homer Simpson come to mind, as does Barney Rubble as played by Rick Moranis in the live-action Flintstones movie. But none of these three properly reminds me of the three main Dudley Do-Right cartoon characters. For example, Molina played Snidely Whiplash. While the cartoon character is not fat, the movie character is. To make sure we know what character he is supposed to be, everything Snidely is involved in (vehicles, etc) has a logo of the Snidely cartoon character on it

Among the silliness of the movies is an Indian tribe called Kumquat Nation. They live, with tipis and canoes and all, in a village that looks like part of a miniature-golf attraction. The joke Indian names, such as "Standing Room Only", are inspired by "Dances With Wolves" and were already a cliche by the time the "Dudley Do-Right" movie came out, and the casting decisions for them (Italians playing the Indians) come right from the 1950s.

My rating? 1 1/2 Eberts out of 4. That is described as "Pretty bad, but some things here and there might be good. Maybe you will be lucky and see only the good 10 minutes of it on cable"

Roger Ebert liked it more than I did. You can read his review here. The movie was shot with a generous $70 million budget, and it made back $9 of this in domestic total gross.


Postcard of the Day

Dudley Do-Right took place in western Canada, so this entry takes us to Canada, of course. The postcard to the right is of Moraine Lake, in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, in Banff National Park in Canada. It was postmarked in 1961, and is a Scenic Art "The Canadian Rockies in Natural Color" postcard.

Swine Flu Report - Live from Mexico

There's just so much with swine flu reports in the news that it is the usual overkill (like the pirates were a week and a half ago). It is hard to tell what is worth paying attention to.

However, fellow blogger Héctor is in Mexico, where it is hitting the hardest. His latest post gives a first-hand account of how the situation is looking to him. Check it out.

Top Pontiac Car Movies (Movies with Pontiacs)

It was all over the news today: it is official: GM is going to shut Pontiac down. It's Pontiac Week on this blog, so here is today's entry.

For this post, I figured I would do a list of movies that featured a Pontiac in a major way. It falls short of a top-ten list ("Top 10 Pontiac Car Movies). The original "Knightrider" gets an honorable mention, with its talking Pontiac Trans-Am, but I could find nothing that could be called a movie as part of the original series. I'd include a movie about Chief Pontiac if one existed. Did I miss any movies in which a Pontiac had a major role (as opposed to just popping up somewhere in the movie)?

XXX (Vin Diesel). This Vin Diesel action movie featured a plot that makes it virtually unGooglable. If you don't believe me, just go google xxx movie. This movie had a 1967 Pontiac GTO featured prominently in it.

Transformers (Shia LaBeouf). The Autobot transformer named "Jazz" is a Pontiac Solstice convertible. This has to be the only movie with a Pontiac as a character.

Transformers II. "Jazz" is back. This film is out this summer.

Smokey and the Bandit (Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleeson, Sally Field). The Bandit. The girl. The hound-dog. The truck. The archetypal Southern sheriff. And the car: a black 1977 Pontiac Trans-Am.

Smokey and the Bandit II (Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleeson). The Bandit. The girl. The hound-dog. The truck. The sheriff. The car (a 1980 Trans-Am).... and this time, along for the ride, an elephant.

Bonneville (Jessica Lange, Christine Baranski). The only Christine Baranski movie you will find on this list. This one features a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville convertible.

Smokey and the Bandit Ride Again. Yes, there actually was a third movie in the series. They have a problem keeping the cars from the previous installations, and this one features a 1983 Trans-Am.

Pontiac Moon (Ted Danson). This one has a much older car: a 1949 Pontiac Eight convertible .

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Postcard of the Day

A large-letter postcard from the mid 20th century featuring the city of Pontiac in Oakland County, Michigan, birthplace of the Pontiac division of GM.

From left to right (inside the large letters): People's Store Building, Pontiac car factory, courthouse, St Joseph's Mercy Hospital, Orchard Lake, Fisher Body Plant, and Cranbrook School. Chief Pontiac appears in the upper-right.

Bookstore duck

I saw this duck lingering outside of a bookstore yesterday. Maybe she wanted to warn everyone not to buy "The Ugly Duckling"

Dreams - Thunder only happens when it's raining.

This morning, I suddenly remember the odd dreams I was having during the thunderstorms early Saturday morning.

It was one of those dreams where I found myself back in Junior High. Has anyone ever had any dreams like this? I was visiting the library inside the grade-wing. All three grades of junior high had its own library. Sitting around a table were Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young singing their most famous song, "Suite Judy Blue Eyes". Someone was standing nearby in a full Altrusian costume. Or Sleestak costume. The thing is, it was green, like a Sleestak, but everyone in the dream called it an Altrusian costume. It was worn by a friend of mine, an imaginary character who existed only in the dream (and nothing to do with any real person who might make such a costume). The photo to the above-right is of someone in an "Enik the Altrusian" costume dancing at a new years party. The costume in the dream was better than this one (and green, for some reason), and the friend who made it by hand was talking about mass producing it.

Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, and Enik. That was my dream.

Below is the Youtube video for the famous Fleetwood Mac song, with Stevie Nicks singing ("Thunder only happens when it's raining...."). The song is about thunderstorms and dreams. I think in the Land of the Lost, thunder only happens when someone has messed with a pylon.

Raingods blowing up Deathstars

We've had some pretty big thunderstorms since last night

Below is the storm, with a view of the State Theatre showing "Sunshine Cleaning". The lightning is hard to see in the video, but you can hear some thunder along the way. The rain was well needed (I don't think it had rained for weeks), in order to clean the streets and water the new spring plants. But it wasn't any sort of "sunshine cleaning". It was overcast cleaning. I got this with the camera this morning.

During the storm last night, there was a huge explosion. A blast. It wasn't "giants bowling in the sky" anymore. It was like raingods blowing up Deathstars. It turned out to be a transformer going off like a bomb due a lightning strike. That was a scary sound, and it is not easy to go to sleep after that.

You can hear the thunder more in the following Youtube video of "Arrival" from "Fall of the House of Usher" by the Alan Parsons Project. It was the second piece of thunder-related music that came to mind. The first I could not find on eBay. The third piece of thunder-related music that comes to mind is the song "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac (with lyric "Thunder only happens when it's raining.")

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Postcard of the Day

Morel mushroom season is about upon us. The morels wait until about this time of year to "pop", especially when there is warm weather and rain. Well, we have now had that, and should be seeing the mushrooms any day now. The postcard below is a current "front the rack" tourist postcard that shows wild morel mushrooms.

Savory mushroom, memories, thrilling thunder tales, storm song titles, and as usual any other comments are welcome.

Christine Baranski Friday Postcard Friendship Fish Fry

The Christine Baranski Friday feature finally meets the Friday Postcard Fish Fry feature, and also the multi-blog Postcard Friendship Friday feature.

Unfortunately, there are no postcards of Christine Baranski fishing. Let alone Christine Baranski postcards. No surprise, huh? But there are some close connections, in a "6 Degrees of Separation" sort of way. Perhaps a "6 Degrees of Fish".

For starters, there is "Welcome to Mooseport", the 2004 Christine Baranski movie. The image to the right looks sort of like a large-letter postcard, but it is actually from a large-letter billboard.

"Welcome to Mooseport" was directed by Donald Petrie, who also directed "Grumpy Old Men". While "Welcome to Mooseport" is not a fishing movie, "Grumpy Old Men" definitely is. It stars Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In the picture to the left, they are having some sort of fish-fight on a frozen lake at Wabasha, Minnesota. I usually like the Matthau/Lemmon movies. They did several together, and of course many movies apart. They did two "Grumpy Old Men" movies, neither of which starred Christine Baranski. However, around the same time they also did a movie called "The Odd Couple II" (see the photo to the right), an which did star Christine Baranski. It's not common to have a sequel to a movie 30 years later.

We passed through Wabasha in this post, and now it is time to go back there for the postcards. Below is the old Wabasha-Nelson Bridge linking Wabasha, Minnesota and Nelson, Wisconsin. It was built in 1931 and was only 19 feet wide. It has long since been replaced by a straighter bridge. Before, it had two sharp right angles (seen in the postcard below). I recall a conversation on a long bus ride in Minnesota a few years ago, in which an elderly gentleman recalled the bridge. He remembers a large semi-truck trying to cross the bridge, and it actually got stuck in one of the angles. The angles were a problematic approach to getting vehicular traffic high enough so barges could pass under, but upriver in Hastings their old bridge had an even more problematic approach. This bridge had a corkscrew ramp.

Below is a much older postcard, probably from a hundred years ago, of the boatyard fire at Wabasha. That event probably ruined at least a day of fishing.
Below is an Amazon "carousel" list of links to items discussed in this post. I've read the book and seen all of these movies.

The tourist problem

I heard this on the morning AM radio program about a half hour ago:

Host 1: "There's a lot of discussion about whether or not we should use harsh interrogations techniques, like waterboarding, on tourists."

Host 2: "Maybe we could take away their fudge"

It was a slip, and Host 1 quickly corrected himself, but it was funny. Below is one of the many tourist-season bumper stickers that are out there.


(Today's Fish Postcard and Christine Baranski Friday entry will come later in the day)

Ninja Robber

"Cops hunt sword-waving ninja after robbery bid" - a headline I just now read.

What is it with all the weird robbers? I blogged in the past about the Dracula Bandit and the Klingon Robber, and I remember a Homer Simpson Bandit from a few years ago. According to the story, "A man dressed like a ninja used a sword in an attempt to rob a dry cleaner, police said. It took place in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Ninjutsu, the art of the ninja, is described as "the skill of going unperceived" or "the art of stealth". A Ninja is therefore "one skilled in the art of stealth." or "one who uses the art of remaining unperceived".

Well, this guy must not be a very good Ninja if he was seen, wasn't he?

To the right is a picture of a well-attended Ninja Parade. In a perfect Ninja robbery, the victim has no idea that he is being robbed until he notices something missing. The suspect is described as being in his 20s, and the place victimized was a dry-cleaner. Well, this means that four names can be removed from the list of possible Ninja suspects: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles aren't in their 20s (being teenagers, of course) and would rather rob pizza if anything. Certainly not a dry cleaners.

There is indeed a national "Talk Like a Ninja Day", but it was on March 19th. It passed me by completely without me perceiving it. Which makes that it went perfectly, doesn't it?

And below you will find a nice selection of Ninja-related items from Amazon.com. Cowabunga? Shhhhhhh......

Watch More TV This Week

An organization has organized a "Turn Off Your TV" week. I usually have some sort of gut reaction against groups that declare things like this. There are some groups that don't want us to shop on the day after Thanksgiving, and it makes me want to shop more.

Basically, TV is like anything else. There's a lot of good on it, and a lot of bad. And I don't see books as inherently "better". To see my point on this, tell me, whose horizons are being opened more: someone who is watching a Ken Burns TV miniseries on the history of jazz, or someone who is reading a cookie-cutter Harlequin romance novel? Someone watching a History channel program on Romans.... or someone reading a 1999 book called The Y2K Personal Survival Guide? Of course, it goes the other way: we all know that there's a lot of crap on TV and a lot of wonderful books, too. Everything in moderation, and keep Sturgeon's Law in mind.

So, ruffle the feathers of those who want us to shut out part of our world. Is the idea of "Kill Your TV" really so far from "Burn Your Books"? Enjoy some TV this week. Don't miss Lost on ABC tonight. And next week, visit your local bookstore and pick up a book. There's no good reason that next week can''t be Read More Books week after we enjoy TV this week. There's something good to be found in any medium.

Comments welcome as usual. Is anyone participating in the no-TV week? Or has anyone seen any good shows this week, or have any to recommend. Book recommendations are welcome too.

Jackie Chan's Comments - No More Mr Nice Guy?

I've recently read in the news about some comments from film star Jackie Chan:

"I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

and

"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic"

They look pretty outrageous to me.

For one thing, it looks racist about Chinese people, and seems similar to statements over the past few hundred years about how Native Americans need to be controlled (in reservations), African-Americans need to be controlled as slaves, the Irish can't rule themselves and need British control, and many other examples.

For another, look at Hong Kong. It is more controlled, and less free since China annexed it. Before China annexed it, the less "controlled" Hong Kong allowed the artistic and business freedom which launched Jackie Chan's career in film. If it had been any more "controlled", Chan would not be rich and famous now, would he?

Finally, does anyone have any impression that Hong Kong and Taiwan are wild places? No, not me.

I've been a fan of Jackie Chan and have seen many of his movies. I am often able to overlook what celebrities say and do outside of their movies (as in the case of George Clooney and Tom Cruise, until recently). But these statements by Chan do come as kind of a surprise, and my opinion of him has gone down a lot.

Postcards of the Day

To the left is a postcard view of a ceremony at the Confucius Temple in the city of Taipei, the national capitol of Taiwan. It does not look very "chaotic" to me.

Below to the right is a 1980s street scene postcard in Hong Kong. This is from before the time China annexed Hong Kong and started to control it more, and the 1980s were a time when Jackie Chan's Hong Kong film career was in full flower. Does this look like a situation to "control", or more like an example of vibrant urban life? Jackie Chan has himself spoken about how wonderful Hong Kong is.

Dracula bandit convicted

I heard on the news today that the "Dracula Bandit" of Georgia (Atlanta area) has been conviced to a 20 year prison sentence. He was convicted of armed bank robbery and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence (during which he wore a Dracula mask). I wonder if the gun had a silver bullet in it, just in case he encountered the Wolfman? U.S. Attorney David E. Nahmias says the sentence “drives a stake into the heart of a simple yet dangerous crime: robbing banks.” The whole story can be found here. No doubt he will demand a garlic-free diet in prison. And steak tartare, hold the steak. Any prison surrounded by a stream should be secure, due to the "can't cross running water" weakness of vampires. I'm surprised that he was robbing money-banks instead of bloodbanks.

Below to the right is an actual photo of him from one of the robberies. He reminds me a little bit of Count Zappula.


Some facts:

• Dracula: actually Nathaniel Little Jr. of Decatur, Georgia. 43 years old.
• The victim: CDC Federal Credit Union in Atlanta. Little robbed it twice in 2006.
• Other opinions: Fark says: "Dracula bandit won't be seeing the light of day for at least 20 years. Sucks to be him"

At least he didn't have a bat'leth


Postcard of the Day

The postcard below is a modern-era postcard of Castle Bran in Romania, popularly known as Dracula's Castle.

Top 10 Science Fiction (sci-fi) Songs

I'm not including the following: fantasy songs (such as "Ramble On" by Led Zeppelin), horror songs ("Moon Over Bourbon Street", which is Sting's song about the vampire Lestat), any movie-related songs (such as "We Don't Need Another Hero" by Tina Turner, the Rick Dees movie songs, the entire "Flash Gordon" sountrack by Queen, or "Godzilla" by the Blue Oyster Cult), obscure songs that were never really hits ("I Robot" by the Alan Parsons Project) , non-science-fiction songs that have come to be associated with science fiction ("All Along the Watchtower), and filk or fan songs. Each of those could easily get its own category.

Here are the 10 I came up with, in no particular order:

--"Silent Running" by Mike and the Mechanics. There happens to be a great old science-fiction movie about a spaceship called "Silent Running", but this fine song is about surviving the apocalypse. Unfortunately, I can't find the great old video for the song anywhere. The linked youtube video shows some sort of digital music player.
--"Calling Occupants of Interplanetery Craft" by The Carpenters. While this is not a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" song, this ties into the alien craze of the 1970s.
--"Mr Roboto" by Styx. Songs about our robot servants fit into a common science fiction theme found in works ranging from the new "Battlestar Galactica" to "Terminator"
--"Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley, from 1958.
-- "Sample and Hold" - Neil Young's cyber love song from the "TRON" era. This one might be very obscure, but I think I remember it getting airplay.
--"In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans. A sort of time-travel-into-the-future song.
--"She Blinded Me With Science" by Thomas Dolby, a great mad-scientist-type song.
--"Walk the Dinosaur". A sort of time-travel-into-the-past song.
--"Iron Man" by Black Sabbath. While the song was originally inspired by the comic-book superhero Iron Man, it is actually about another character (a vengeful traveller of space and time who is stuck in stasis).
--"Rapture" by Blondie. A song about alien invasion. Perhaps the 1980s version of "Purple People Eater".
--"Space Oddity" by David Bowie. Not many songs have "re-imagingings", but this one did. The song "Major Tom (Coming Home)" by Peter Schilling was a re-write of the story in "Space Oddity", with different lyrics and a different tune. This one might be familiar now because a cover is featured in a current commercial for the Lincoln MKZ car. I'm putting these two songs in one entry because while they are about space exploration, they really aren't very "science-fictional", being pretty close to the reality of the 1960s space program. Elton John's "Rocketman" is another rather similar song. I'm putting all three of these "Real Space" songs into their own entry, because they are so similar to each other. They are almost, but not quite, science fiction, and together they count for more than just one of them alone.

The video below is the Lincoln MKZ ad currently running on TV that features a cover of Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)"

Am I missing any?

Postcard of the Day - Greetings from Iowa City

This postcard is a "Large Letter" postcard of the type popular in the mid-20th century. Iowa City is the former home of the state capitol and the current home University of Iowa, as you can see in the images inside the letters.

Friday Fish Postcard Fry - Postcard Friendship Friday

The season of Lent is over, but there are still plenty of fish to fry, so the "Friday Fish Postcard Fry" series goes on, for at least one more week. It is also "Postcard Friendship Friday". Today, there's a fine kettle of fish postcards from around the country.

This photo postcard from 1908 shows two women and a man fishing in a river at Corvallis, Oregon.

Indiana has a very short Lake Michigan shoreline, but there are plenty of lakes and rivers in the interior of the state. The major river in the state is the Wabash River.

I featured a postcard of Fisherman's Wharf in Venice, Florida. earlier. This crabby postcard is from the most famous Fisherman's Wharf: the one in San Francisco.

They say that everything is big in Texas. This must include the fish. The man in the J.R. Ewing hat has a very red face: time for him to get out of the sun.

138-Year-Old Cake For Sale

Msn.com reports an Assocated Press story: "Would you pay 145 pounds ($215) for a slice of very stale cake? That's what an antiques fair in Birmingham hopes to earn Thursday when people bid for the remnant from one of Britain's most controversial royal weddings...."

It's a 138-year-old piece of cake said to be from the wedding of one of Queen Victoria's daughters. I can't help but be reminded of the Seinfeld episode ("The Frogger") in which Elaine can't help but eat a piece of cake that her boss J. Peterman bought for $29,000 at an auction. She tries to deny it, but gets caught:

PETERMAN: Do you know what happens to a butter-based frosting after six decades in a poorly ventilated English basement?

ELAINE: Uh, I guess I hadn't--

PETERMAN: Well, I have a feeling that what you are about to go through is punishment enough. Dismissed.

Well, I've had one year old wedding cake. It's not bad, but I can't imagine it compared to 60 year old wedding cake, or Victorian cake. However, there are a bunch of Victorian enthusiasts out there (the Victorian era's version of trekkies: vikkies?). Maybe one of them would like to have the ultimate Victorian dining experience and eat the 138-year-old cake. And then they can dance like this.

The question for this one has to do with the oldest thing you've ever eaten. Come to think of it, I've seen some really old looking cakes at the bakery.

ABC-TV "LOST": Hurley Strikes Back

Last night's episode of "Lost" had me laughing out at the prospect of Hurley, finding himself in 1977 and placing a great priority on helping George Lucas by writing a script for "The Empire Strikes Back" for him. He figured he could save Lucas time, and also make some fixes for him that would improve the story. I like "The Empire Strikes Back" less than I should. Less than the first "Star Wars" movie (1977). Less than "Return of the Jedi" even. But much more than "Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones". Most everyone else, including Roger Ebert, view "The Empire Strikes Back" as the best of all the "Star Wars" movies. I can't see a way to improve "Empire" myself: it is just that I enjoy watching it less than the film before and the film after it.

One thing Hurley said, though, that everyone would probably agree with: "The Ewoks sucked, dude". Even though Hurley is a bit like a man-sized Ewok himself. I'm sure that if 1977 Hurley met George Lucas, he would say "Dude? That Jar Jar idea? Don't do it! No, Dude, don't!". Click here for someone else's interesting detailed discussion of this episode (which was entitled "Some Like It Hoth"). I am looking forward to seeing Ted Foo's comments on the episode, but as of the time of the writing of this post, he has not chimed in yet.

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Meanwhile, tonight's "CSI" takes place at a science fiction convention. I have read elsewhere that there will be a few "Battlestar Galactica" fans on it. The commercials for the episode show a lot of "Star Trek" influence. Either way, perhaps they might be trying to tap into the fans who help make "Big Bang Theory" a hit. I wonder if they will have Summer Glau?

"CSI" now stars Laurence Fishburn, who is most famous as Morpheus from the Matrix ("Free your mind"). One would imagine that if he showed up at a science fiction convention, he'd be mobbed by fans saying that he looked just like Morpheus.

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Did anyone catch "Lost" last night? Or do the Hurley references totally mystify you, and you wonder "Hey, why is that shaggy guy from Becker in your blog?"

Postcard of the Day - Clovis, New Mexico

This view of Clovis, New Mexico is from the 1950s or 1960s. The city lends its name to "Clovis Points", which are Native American artifacts from around 13,000 years ago.

I've only really seen one city in New Mexico (Las Cruces), but I think between Santa Fe, Roswell, Carlsbad, and other places are on a long list of places to see someday.

Tax Day Tea Party - Traverse City, MI

The numbers in the protest swelled to 650 when the protest moved to a park, but here seemed to be a couple hundred people in front of the post office for the "Traverse City - Tax Day Tea Party". You can click here to leave comments or scroll to the bottom of the post to click the comments link as usual. The protest was generally against the budget polices of the Obama administration. There were a few signs about other subjects, such as 2nd Amendment rights and health care, too. I did not see the media in evidence, other than someone who was doing an interview and had a tape recorder like something Carl Kolchak would use. There were no counter-protests that I could see. The Green Party was there, but they are always there on tax day, and they were not protesting. Hopefully the captions for the pictures below will appear somewhere near the actual pictures they are describing

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"Toss Obama" sign

The only evidence I saw of any tea was on this sign
A "Tar and Feather" sign, with feathers

Maybe this Suttons Bay guy's sign is just too long to read when driving by

"Stop the Bailouts" sign

This woman is steamed

A big sign about Socialism

Is the Russian Revolution again upon us?

It was kind of hard to get in and out of the post office

The organizer of the event with a megaphone

Protesters on the other side of the street in front of Northwestern Bank

"Keep the Change"

Who mentioned Hitler?

The local Green party was there, with a table set up for a penny game