Selectively Social

All 10 of the Station Casino properties in Las Vegas are going to have simultaneous fireworks by Grucci, choreographed to exactly the same music at exactly the same time, at 9:30pm July 4th. So no matter what Station Casino you happen to be near, the show will be identical to all the other properties.

Grucci says the nine-minute “Stations’ 4th of July Blast” will be the largest fireworks event in history.

Unlike the New Years non-event -also by Grucci- where insurance forced the displays to be launched from the ground, these fireworks are scheduled to be launched from the parking garage roof tops.

Have you ever wondered what happened to the child stars that were famous and then seemed to vanish into thin air.

Jon Provost, who played Timmy for 7 years in Lassie, for instance is alive and well, now in his late fifties with two kids, aged 25 and 23.

At age 14 he declined to renew his contract with Campbell Soup for another 3 years so the show was revamped to go on without him but it never regained it’s popularity.

He did have a recurring role as a real estate salesman – a job he had in real life – in The New Lassie but beyond that has done very little in the industry.

Probably the only thing he will be remembered for is Lassie. Which is still so popular that it’s playing in 50 countries. In fact the check shirt and jeans he wore for the entire series hang in the Smithsonian right next to Archie Bunker’s chair.

His bio, released in time for the show’s 50th anniversary, is titled Timmy’s in the Well and is in it’s second printing and he’s working on a cookbook called Timmy’s in the Kitchen due out this summer.

Known as a humanitarian and expert on dogs, Jon writes regularly for the dog-lovers magazine Fido Friendly. But the project that is closest to his heart is Canine Companions for Independence, an organization that provides extraordinary service dogs to the handicapped. He has served on its NW Board of Directors for more than 20 years.

He was also a judge in this year’s ugliest dog contest.

Copied with permission from Old Dude’s Food and Drink:

This is dedicated to the folks a PETA.

Chilean Sea Kitten in Moho Sauce: –If you can’t find anything labeled Sea Kitten at your favorite fish monger use any fresh looking Sea bass with the skin on.

Start with enough Chilean Sea Kitten fillets to serve 4

Marinade:
Juice of 4 or 5 fresh limes
4 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, crushed

Moho sauce:
4 or 5 cloves of garlic thinly sliced and chopped
1/4 cup onion very thinly sliced and chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
4 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
6Tbsp fresh lime juice
1 tsp or so apple vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 425 deg F.

Place the Sea Kitten in a covered bowl and coat all sides with the marinade. Let it sit on the counter while you make the Moho.

Heat oil in a small sauce pan and mix the onion, garlic salt pepper and cumin in a small bowl. Pour this into the hot oil and stir constantly until the onion starts to become translucent, then add the lime juice and vinegar, stir well turn down the heat and let simmer for about 5 minutes stirring occasionally.

Remove the Sea Kitten from the marinade, pat it dry with paper towels and cut into serving size pieces. Score the skin side of each piece a couple of times.

Heat a non-stick frying pan with a couple of tablespoons of oil add the fish, skin side down and sear until brown and crispy. (You may need to hold each piece down with a spatula to keep them from curling so that the skin is evenly browned. –Use a long handled spatula to avoid getting spattered by hot grease.)

Move the fish to an oven proof pan, skin side down, and bake for about 10 minutes. –Until it’s just cooked through.

Gently reheat the moho sauce, put each piece of fish on a plate with rice and peas and top with the warm moho.

A couple of points:

You need to dry the fish well or it will spatter like a bitch when it hits the hot oil.

And the “rice and peas” he mentions is Caribbean rice and peas -rice with red kidney beans and coconut milk. –Delicious.

Read the rest on Some Old Dude:

PETA is upset because the president swatted a fly.
From PETA:

PETA says it wants Obama to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he’s bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

“He isn’t the Buddha,” PETA president Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement. “He’s a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.”

From the President:

“Get out of here,” the president told the pesky insect. When it didn’t, he waited for the fly to settle, put his hand up and then smacked it dead.

“Now, where were we?” Obama asked Harwood. Then he added: “That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? I got the sucker.”

Speaking as someone who has missed more flies than he’s hit. –Yes Mr. President. Yes it was.

PETA Senior Vice President MaryBeth Sweetland on her use of insulin, which was tested on animals: –Glamour, January 1990
“I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic. Twice a day I take synthetically manufactured insulin that still contains some animal products — and I have no qualms about it … I’m not going to take the chance of killing myself by not taking insulin. I don’t see myself as a hypocrite. I need my life to fight for the rights of animals.”

In other words when it comes down to her or the animals… Fuck the critters.

Advice to PETA. Follow this link How to Make a Paper Hat on eHow. —–Now simply substitute tinfoil for newspaper.

For those of you that follow poker it’s that time of year again. The World Series of Poker is at the Rio, sponsored by Jack Link’s Beef Jerky.
From the Poker Prof’s Blog:

Here’s a few fast facts from the 2009 WSOP at the Rio Resort in Las Vegas. Through the first 20 events of a scheduled 56 bracelet events.

• 21,047 entrants

• $42,094,034 in prize money paid out

• One player has won two bracelets, Brock Parker

• Phil Hellmuth has not been charged with a timeout

• Mike Matusow has not suffered a single blow up

• Californians lead in money won with $7,517,558

The WSOP started in 1970 Benny Binion invited six of the best poker players to go head to head at the Horseshoe.

The original five games were five-card stud, deuce to seven low-ball draw, razz, seven-card stud, and Texas hold ‘em.

In those days the winner was chosen by secret ballot. – Johnny Moss was elected the first World Champion of Poker and given a silver cup.

It’s funny that the Horseshoe didn’t even have a poker room until they bought the Mint in ‘88 and expanded. And Jack was the one who technically hosted the first WSOP because Benny was an ex-felon -tax evasion- and couldn’t hold a gaming license.

(Benny may have been listed as a consultant but you had better believe that no matter what the gaming commission, the law or his job description said, Benny still ran the joint.)

As long as Rich doesn’t want to blog I think I’ll post a few things.

I doubt there will be any organization but there never was, so if anybody reads this blog they’ll never notice any difference.
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I work with people who roll up at the very last second and then start the necessary preparations for work. Which means we almost always open 5 minutes late. –This makes me crazy.

It’s not that I’m anal about time but I was raised not to be late, especially for work.

We have a new girl who has only been on time a handful of times since she started three weeks ago and everybody covers for her. This is probably because they’re late with some regularity themselves. —Not that the bosses would do anything beside give them a lecture anyway.
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I received a delinquency notice for a parking ticket I never got. I turned in my plates but it turns out that as the last registered owner I am responsible until someone else registers the vehicle.

The people I sold my old car to let it sit on the street with no plates and then ignored the parking ticket. Now if I don’t want to pay I have to produce a bill of sale and then go stand in line for about an hour to fill some sort of paperwork and if the bill of sale doesn’t suit whoever I speak to, just like the DMV, I’m still responsible for the fine.

Or I can just ignore it and have the city send it to collections for an additional 25%, and wind up with a black mark on my credit report.
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I switched to my cable provider for my land line. It saved me a few bucks but now, after many months of uninterrupted cable service, I’ve had my cable go out twice in the last week. This means I not only lose my internet, I lose my telephone as well.

I use the internet to pay bills, check my email – my primary method of communicating with the outside world – and now for my telephone.

I guess this means I’ll need to trade in my cellphone for a smart phone with data service so I’m not isolated. –And no, it won’t be an IPhone.

The AT&T coverage in this area is nowhere as good as Verizon. My friends Blackberry and my old Verizon branded smart phone are both faster than the real, as opposed to advertised, IPhone speed.

Besides, I helped someone setup her new IPhone and discovered that fat fingers don’t work for shit on that touch screen.
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On the subject of Apple. I watched an Apple rep giving a sales pitch for an IMac to a prospective buyer and had my opinion confirmed. Whether it’s applied to the IPhone or the IMac, Apple’s new motto should be: Oooo-Pretty.

If you haven’t been bored to tears by the silliness surrounding expense claims by Britain’s members of Parliament here are a couple that caught my eye.

Michelle Gildernew and four other Sinn Fein MPs claimed more than £500,000 over five years even though the Sinn Fein MPs refuse to attend Parliament

Paul Murphy claimed £35 for a toilet paper holder. —Que favorite “politicians are full of shit joke”.

Nigel Griffiths tried to defend his £3,600 claim for electronic equipment in his second home in London by insisting he had to listen to “Scottish radio” and watch “Scottish TV”.

John Reid claimed £1.50 for an Ice cube tray. —$2.50 for an ice tray? This guy needs to learn about 99 cent stores.

Frank Cook claimed back the cost of giving £5 to a church —Our cheapskate of the month.

And my personal favorite –Douglas Hogg claimed £2,115 for moat cleaning.
He has a moat?? —You have to love the English fondness for tradition. —Besides it keeps the riff-raff out.

Sunrise Ranch Bar and Grill. (If you follow the link and click on “photo gallery” you can see more pictures. Fair warning –the wet t-shirt gallery doesn’t show any boobies.)

Don’t let the grill part of the name fool you. They no longer have a kitchen. (I guess you could always get pizza delivered and maybe tip the guy with a cold one.)

The joint is run by a friend of mine who took over about a year ago. He’s cleaned the place up a lot, but it will never be anything but a dive.

Fortunately the regulars are friendly and laid-back, the bartenders pour an honest drink and it’s not a dark or as dingy as a lot of places I’ve been in.

Their latest house band is made up of Latinos but they play a lot of ZZ Top so that’s cool. -They even know how to set the sound for a small forum with low ceilings and no carpet.

The joint attracts a mixed crowd, mostly Anglos, but on Latin night it’s mostly Latins –imagine that.

And then there are nights when the place attracts a crowd that is best described as “more interesting than usual.”

Some people try to blend in…. and then there are the others.

I wonder if she knows the padding is coming out of her bra?

This is just plain scary.

The pale one in the denim jacket is the only anatomically correct female.

At the request of this blog’s now former author I have removed his posts.

Now I suppose I’ll need to go to the Galactic Poolhall blog and remove anything that relates to him.

I spoke to him at some ungodly hour of the morning and he’s still “Back of Bourke” and completely oblivious to anything as trivial as time zones.

I told him that this would be a good platform to tell the world about his “coming out.”

And if he didn’t feel comfortable doing that, the rest of the world would be interested in his trip through the outback.

I even told him that his readership had fallen by just over 96%. (96% of fewer than 10 isn’t very many readers, but the number sound impressive.)

Anyway it’s a no-go.

I guess I’ll put up a page saying watch this space –it does tricks.

I wonder how long people will stare at a page that does nothing before they give up?