Breast In Peace: Pamela Anderson passes away at the age of 72. Her lifeless body was found floating face-up in a Los Angeles pool. The buxom actress flourished in her second career as a Senior Olympic gold-medal swimmer, excelling in, of course, the breast stroke.
___ . VISIT THE FOLLOWING SITES FOR MORE WRITING FROM CHRISTOPHER C. WUENSCH . ___
OUT, BUT NOT DOWN
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Photo by Scott Schroeder.
On a muggy, opening night in August, we were introduced to hope. And the
uncertain promise that things could be better.
When...
WOODEN SOLDIERS...
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John Wooden came about as close to sainthood as one can get without
sprouting wings. On June 4, 2010, the former UCLA coaching legend passed
away, taking...
Griffey Jr. XXL
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Throughout his 21-year Major League career, Ken Griffey Jr. has feasted off
a robust buffet of flat cheddar, ripe fastballs and hanging curveballs that
da...
STILL IN PROGRESS AT PRESS TIME...
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All too often, an Olympic hockey team will take on the persona of its
country.
The rink rats of the young, on-the-go United States squad can skate laps ...
THE PUBLIC SOUNDS OFF ON..."NO AUTOGRAPHS PLEASE...UNLESS YOU'VE GOT $10."
"Great article! I'll never forget as a teenager, seeing Carl Yastrzemski at a show. I waited in line, not realizing he was charging for his signature (I didn't pay). It's sad. You grow up idolizing these guys and want to honor them by asking for their autograph, all they want is the money."
- Abdulhadi Ahmedi, via Facebook
SIPAPT: It really is a bummer. Among some of the nicer athletes I've met, I'd have to include Tommy John and Martin Brodeur. Oh, and nice work on correctly spelling 'Yastrzemski.' !! ...
"I'm still waiting for Jerome Walton's $8 autographs to live up to its price tag. I think I bought like 8 of them and waited an hour on line in a mall. And I don't think he said a word to me."
- Gary Housman, via Facebook
SIPAPT: You can get an autographed Jerome Walton bat on eBay for $72. If you hadn't bought all those autographs back when Walton was considered a young phenom and not-a-future bust, you'd have enough to buy that bat today...and still have enough left over to buy a Bob Feller signature. ...
"Since my uncle, Jesse Hill was head football coach at USC in the mid 1950's and later A.D., I've got every Trojan Heisman winner on a correct period football program.
"But my prized Heisman winner autograph is Glen Davis of Army, who won it in 1945. Back in the '70's, I was working at the L.A. Herald-Examiner and went to the Times Grand Prix on a press pass, and Davis was the PR guy for the Times in charge of the press. I had to have him sign my press pass so I could get into the Press Patio for the free lunch and beer.
"I kept the signature because I had heard that when he was married to his 1st wife, Terri Moore, Davis had caught her and Howard Hughes making love on the couch in his living room one evening and he knocked Howard out, over the couch, and threw him out on the front lawn, naked before throwing the clothes in the trash. I shook his hand, too.
"I got this story from Jim Bacon, who was Howard's PR guy, and was my co-worker at the Her-Ex later.
"Yer pal, Ferrari Bubba"
- Ferrari Bubba, via TucsonCitizen.com
SIPAPT: Wow.
...
"When I was 15, I worked as a caddie at the really nice local golf course in my hometown. It was the middle of summer and I had other things to do than sweat it out for some rich bozo on a Saturday morning. "Anyhow, I get to work at 7 a.m. and I get the 'privilege' of being assigned to carry the bag of former St. Louis Cardinal pitcher Bob Forsch. For a guy who slammed 12 home runs and threw two 'no-no's,' he couldn't hit the green to save his life. I know, because I was carrying that 1/4-ton bag of his. Mind you, I've played enough golf to give tips to the guy if he's struggling (He did listen, too). "So, 18 holes, four hours and what seemed like 15,000 yards later, it finally comes time to pay out. After he signs my pay-card, I look at it, and there it is in all it's glory. "Right next to this 168-win, 1,100+ strikeout, 3.75 ERA Cardinal great's John Hancock: $2. "I guess Major Leaguers didn't get paid that much in the '70s and '80s."
- Scott Salisbury, via e-mail
SIPAPT: You gotta remember, back then $2 could get you and a date into a movie, popcorn, Sno-Caps, one milkshake (two straws) and still have enough left over to tip the soda jerk (insert your Bob Forsch joke here).
...
In Progress At Press Time
You Can Also Follow "In Progress At Press Time..." at TucsonCitizen.com
By Christopher C. Wuensch
"EVERY MAN FOR HIM ELF"
Thereare many times in a man's life when he's forced to choose sides.
Democrat or Republican? Sharks or Jets?
Fries or Cole slaw?
We spend the entire 'schoolyard-kickball game' that is our lives choosing sides.
When it comes to either enslaving a dwarfish race of garish Earth-dwellers or abetting their trollish ways, one is best to choose wisely.
At the start of June, the family and I moved into a brand new house, where I inherited the responsibility of ensuring the protection of its front and back yards.
The tiny question can only be asked in Shakespearean prose: to gnome or not to gnome?
The pro-gnome website 'Gnome Frenzy' boasts:
"Once you watch a few games with you new collegiate gnome you may just realize that it was (the) most important purchase you ever made."
All right, you've got my attention. But I'm not completely sold on showing off an 11 1/4-inch tall, durable-resin dwarf-holding-a-football to my new neighbors.
Perhaps Jeff Schalau can convince me. Schalau is an associate agent for the University of Arizona Agricultural and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension in Yavapai County and the authority on garden gnomes.
Says Schalau via his gnome dissertation, which he first published in the Cottonwood Journal Extra:
"It takes a special person (that's me), usually someone with uncommon fortitude (roger that), to successfully incorporate garden gnomes into their home landscape."
If I do decide to go gnome, I'd embed it in a flower bed close to the front door. That way it can spring upon any Arizona State trespassers.
Any vitriol my dwarf harbors, however, will be reserved solely for Sun Devil malevolence.
Garden gnomes are generally docile and inviting in nature -- and always the life of an outdoor party.
My elfish entity, the one the French and Swiss refer to as "barbegazi," will direct guests to the backyard, where we'll be throwing shrimp on the barbeque-zi.
Nowhere in the world is the delicate balance of gnome life more scrutinized than in France and its neighbor Germany, the birthplace of the garden ghoul.
There's an estimated 25 million lawn gnomes inhabiting yards and gardens in Deutschland alone.
Millions of unified Germans can't be wrong, right?
Apparently, not everyone believes a gnomes place in the world should be ornamental. It's Europe where the hot(flower)bed issue takes root.
There's a French faction that's beginning to wrap its global influence around young, impressionable minds like a fuzzy, green Santa Claus hat.
They call themselves the Garden Gnome Liberation Front and vehemently assert that it's wrong to domesticate these woodland denizens.
This is no mushroom-size militia. It has branches in Italy and an internationally-read website with strong ties to the United States.
They're a band of curly-toed shoed, foot soldiers, who aren't timid about trampling an oppressive garden in the name of gnome-knapping -- better known as to these stealth assailants as "gnoming."
Of course, ransom notes are never left. The gnomes usually re-appear en masse somewhere "free" in the wild, along a river bed or forest edge.
In late 2006, the organization took responsibility for pilfering up to 150 gnomes in two separate elf jihads from yards in Limousin, France.
It didn't take long before their influence inspired others.
Two years later, a 53-year-old man was arrested in connection to the disappearance of 170 French gnomes. The Brittany, France, resident claims he is not connected to the GGLF.
Now the sensation is making its way across the ponds of the world. In December, roughly 60 missing gnomes were discovered in a Mount Vernon, Wash., backyard.
A by-product of this 'gnoming' movement sprang up in Australia in the 1980s in a phenomenon known as the "traveling gnome prank," in which a kidnapped gnome is taken and photographed at locations worldwide. The photos are then anonymously sent to the former enslaver.
The movement inspired Travelocity's recent ad campaign where a gnome hawks vacation deals.
GGLF members are not the kind of people you want to anger; which I fear I may have already done by using improper gnomenclature such as "troll" and "elf."
Who's to say that the gnomes displaced by the GGLF aren't encroaching on the sacred land of the wood nymphs, igniting a powder keg of miniscule proportions?
The displaced gnomes would be easy prey. All the wood nymphs would have to do is find the tree that smells like cookies.
So, again, the question at tiny hand is: to gnome or not?
Do I dare flaunt a garden goblin in the flinty face of an impish terror cell of sprite-lovers?
Will their pointy little ears be able to hear me nestling my garden gnome in the mulch between the azaleas and the hibiscus?
To answer the initial query: Yes. I'm going gnome.
C)
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