Rain on Friday – this is getting a touch crazy, I think – this odd, wet and cool summer, as noticed by NY Times’ Sam Roberts.
I’m a little behind on this – but this a hilarious edition of “Pearls Before Swine” – the comic strip about Rat, Pig, Zebra, Goat, and the stoooopid crocodiles (intentionally misspelled in the style of the crocodiles’ dialect). Cartoonist Stephan Pastis makes his appearances in the (mis)adventures of the crew, and here, he walks in on their “Hands Across the Comics Page,” a desperate attempt to save the newspapers and comics pages – wherein Pig replies to Pastis’ contention that “papers aren’t going anywhere”: “Oh, good, ’cause if you’re wrong and the comics page goes away, you’re gonna have to be a lawyer again.”
This causes Pastis join in the holding hands and singing songs for the cause, ’cause he apparently doesn’t want to practice law again. Ha! The official Pearls Before Swine blog also appears to be funny too. Ah, ex-lawyers who go creative!
There’s also the running series in the Daily News about the comic/lawyer Alex Barnett, the latest being where Barnett talks about contract lawyer work still giving him stress even as he’s trying to move up in the career as a comic. I thought the juxtaposition of the photos of Barnett as a lawyer in front of 60 Centre v. him as a stand up comic was funny.
As noted previously, I’m not a big Paul Krugman reader. It’s not that I’m intimidated by his shiny pretty Nobel Prize in Economics; it’s that me and economics don’t quite get along. But, his latest columns are very clear in talking about health care/health insurance reform. A lot of these issues fly over my head, but Krugman makes some good points here on why free market isn’t the answer (link to the Krugman blog; I guess that’s why he’s a Noble Prize winner; he seems to know what he’s talking about anyway).
Plus, Krugman makes some good points that not enough of us understand health care/health insurance and how much the government is already involved in it. The topic isn’t easy, but are we willing and ready to get ourselves educated on it and make it better?
DiFara’s pizza is now $5 a slice; this better be the best pizza in Brooklyn, or else is it worth it? You could always do what Grimaldi does – sell by the pie, not by the slice. (Disclaimer: I still haven’t been to DiFara’s yet; it’d be cool to eat the pizza there).
Re: Obama’s hosting Henry Louis Gates and the policeman, Jim Crowley – “Sometimes a beer is just a beer” … Well, I thought this whole commentary on what beer will be drunk at the White House went too far, but Slate’s John Dickerson explained it better. Plus, I do think it’s a male thing, but anything that encourages dialog, I’ll applaud.
Plus, Gates – since he has a website and he is a writer – put in his own final comment, before he’ll get to work (and let Obama go back to the many other things on the plate).
Obama’s awarding Justice O’Connor the Medal of Freedom (and others, like Archbishop Tutu, the late Jack Kemp, the late Harvey Milk, and so on).
The passing of Corazon Aquino – see Time magazine and NY Times observances.