Goodbye, Sandy Allen

Sandy Allen, the world's tallest woman, has died. She was 53.

She was immortalized in the 1982 Split Enz song "Hello, Sandy Allen."

7' 7"!

AP obit also says:

Coincidentally, Allen lived in the same nursing home, Heritage House
Convalescent Center, as 115-year-old Edna Parker, whom Guinness has recognized
as the world's oldest person since August 2007.

Hoosiers represent! James Whitcomb Riley's spirit is also said to roam the halls there in the night, asking in vain whether anyone has seen his souvenir pennant from the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame...

Can't find a video for said song, but here is "Message to My Girl":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUC_jE78FNE
http://www.hoopshall.com/

King Khan's big night out

From the jam-o'-the-day dept. comes King Khan and the Shrines' fantastically-and truthfully-named "Took My Lady Out to Dinner," a gourmandariffic tale of doing just that! 60s scuzz-tone guitars, strutting horns [and, on this song, for 3:20 I can suspend my usual fatwa against rock horn sections, the last refuge of high school marching band geeks...seriously, I wanted to die every day of the 'swing revival'] and lyrics which sweatily invoke "fifteen miles of ribs..." and how "[his] lady don't fit in no taxi"...

These guys are from Berlin, formerly of Montreal, but I have no proof, really, that it's not some sort of elaborate Dave Doughman prank, given that I've never seen them in the same room together.

"Swimming, everyone?"

I'm happy as hell for Phelps and his teammates - this, even though his good-natured all-American friendliness makes me think of those kind of never-had-a-problem kids who get excited because "the Final Four is coming up soon!!!" - but, yeah, good for him!

I do worry, however, that this will lead to an inevitable explosion in the popularity of swimming, although it does not require much in the way of pricey gear like a bicycle or a horse or any other to-be-lavished-over-fussily equipment. Just some, y'know, water and a swimsuit.

Also, lemme be (close to) first to call Phelps "THE MICHAEL JORDAN OF SWIMMING," "THE TIGER WOODS OF SWIMMING," "WATER'S DALE EARNHARDT" and "Le STEVE FOSSETT DE LA PISCINE," so I can go down in history as the grand-pere of such soon-to-be-everywhere coinages.

Collateral

Cheating on your wife who has stage-4 breast cancer is not exactly the classiest act of political self-immolation one can imagine...indeed, Mr. Edwards will have the rest of his life to try to sink himself into some suitably inobtrusive cause (a la Gary "No Nukes" Hart) and ponder ruefully his place in the pantheon of cad-dom.

However, for all the dashed hopes and eggs-on-faces of his formally ardent supporters, a side-effect of this scandal no one could have sensibly foreseen is this:

(CNN) — Author Jay McInerney may have John Edwards to thank for a likely influx
of book royalties.
His twenty-year old novel [The Story of My Life], based on the life of Edwards'
mistress when she was a young adult, is soaring in sales rankings — so much so
that the book's publisher has commissioned an additional 2,500 copies for print
on Monday.

ARGH! This book is SUCH a mess that it defies adequate defamation! All of the worst 80s cliches ham-handedly told in a first-person SO shallow and ditzy it's beneath serious consideration at all, much less Joe and Sally CableNews hearing of it and paying any more than 25 cents at the local Goodwill for it. Even more repulsive than the rubbernecking at this presumed "portrait" of Ms Hunter is the fact that no one seems to REMEMBER it's trash. It was reviled on publication as crap and no one knows this? We're in worse shape than I thought.

Plus, Jay himself is such a maroon - he was (probably) mean to Marla Hansen even! Bah!

Greatest record sleeve ever

( and not album cover, this was a 12" inch single):















Still kicking myself for not buying a huge wall-sized version of this I saw once on ebay, like a mega- flyposter probably intended for tube stations. But I loathe ebay - if I see something I like, I want to buy it and not get involved in some protracted bidding scrap with a nerd perhaps more nerdy than even me, possibly with software that will snatch my lusted-for booty out from under me [entendres sort of intended!). BOO! That the entire infrastructure of the once-mighty American economy hangs on the withering thread of what is basically an electric raffle is terrifying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98Micc6sG60

(nice perm, Neil!)

The end is nigh...?

Seriously, just overheard this not five minutes ago, here in the "office" where I "work":

"I'm not so sure when the 'left behind' is going to occur..."

Y'arnt?

These are the dudes who pontificate constantly about how Biblical foreshadowing is being played out right now in the Middle East, yet, had you stumbled by their work areas twenty years ago, they would be talking about how the spot on Gorbachev's head was the Beast's Own Mark (for certain!) and how Qadaffi was born with a tail...

UPDATE, forgot this: http://www.unicornmuseum.org/

Goat horn pepper sauce!

Bought about ten different hot sauces over the weekend, then went to dinner at a friend's on Sunday and had some stuff called Chili from Chile, made by someone called that Cilantro Co. Goat horn chilis! Probably the official hot sauce of the Nordic death-metal scene, with the "goat horn" and all..."Count Grinaschke approved!"

It's like a sriracha-type sauce, but deeper. Darker in tone, maybe a bit saltier...

So, I went to the supermarket where said sauce was purchased and it's a discontinued item; probably had been six bucks, but was now ONE THIN DOLLAR! Bought three bottles, one for my brother to blow his mind...