Not news, but my neck of the woods. Here's a short (2 minute) video from my beloved neighborhood, Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn:

I suppose one side of the house was under Arnold's control and the other Maria's!

Anyway...Arnold made a legitimate try at straightening up CA. I think the very people who elected him then turned right around and defeated him on that special election that had to do with teacher's pay. I forget the details but they turned against him big time, and that measure alone would've saved the State millions. I think he lost some of his passion after that.

This year, if CA chooses to elect Brown and re-elect Boxer, it truly deserves what it gets. Schwarzzeneger will go back to making movies and do just fine.

Apple

Very cool. You can get a bus to Manhattan there.

Or did that say Manhattan beach?

The bus in the video goes to Manhattan Beach, but you can get a bus to Manhattan, as well as the subway.

The street that the bus is on was the set for "Glengarry Glen Ross", one of the best dramas ever filmed. I was coming home from work one night, getting off the subway only to find the street cordoned off by police (for the movie filming). There, about 100 feet away was Al Pacino walking in the street!

Ricky Romo? I've never seen that movie yet. Guess Comcast needs to put it on the On Demand list. haha.

It's a GREAT movie.... I see a stocking stuffer in your future.

Stocking stuffer? That has so many meanings.

Ooooh, you fresh girl.

What time can I be at your place tonight?

However long it takes to swing by and get a L&B square and Nathan's dog.

I knew it.... I knew it.

You just want me for my food.

Your food? Ok, this is a PG site....I'll keep my comments to myself.

Hey, hey, hey!!!! Break that stuff up. Take it to PM..

But Beth if you have never seen Glengarry Glen Ross, SC is 100% right. Great movie. All Star cast. Baldwin should have got an Oscar for what was essentially a cameo.

Just PM? Well it's AM, so I guess it's ok then. haha.

OK, this ain't from my neck of the woods (thankfully) but it's worth a look:

Woman demands sexual favors from husband and his friend at knife point.

By Chris Stephens
Jackson Newspapers

Fairplain, W.Va. — An unwanted sexual advance landed a Ripley woman in jail after she allegedly brandished a knife to get her “request” met.

Jackson County Sheriff’s Deputy R. Mellinger responded to a possible domestic dispute at the I-77 Motor Inn near Fairplain last Friday. Upon arriving, Mellinger met Danny R. William, James A. Watson and Melissa L. Williams; Danny and Melissa are estranged spouses who live four doors down from each other within the I-77 Motor Inn.

Mellinger stated he observed Melissa to be naked from the waist down, sitting in a living room chair, inside Danny’s apartment.
According to the complaint, Danny and Watson told Mellinger that Melissa came to the apartment intoxicated, asked each of them to perform a sexual act on her and took off her pants and underwear, which Mellinger observed lying on the floor at her feet.

Danny stated that he declined the invitation, however, Watson agreed he would perform at her request. The complaint states that as Watson approached Melissa, he became overwhelmed by horrible vaginal odor and declined to precede any further.

It was at this point Melissa allegedly produced a lock-back folding knife, pointed it at Danny and stated, “somebody is going to [perform a sexual act on me] or I’m going to cut your [expletive] throat.”

According to Mellinger, there was a small black handled lock-back knife lying on the coffee table in front of Melissa but when asked about the knife she stated “It was already here”; he also stated that all subjects appeared to be intoxicated and smelled badly of an alcoholic beverage.

Melissa Williams, 42, of Ripley was charged with domestic assault and brandishing; her bond was set at $3,000


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Only in West Virginny, or Arkansas, or Miz-or-ree, or South Carolynah....."horrible vaginal odor".....lovely image.

It's her life and her business but I would bet almost anything this must be weight related. She's got to be pushing 325# easy. That much weight isn't good for anyone.

Queen of Soul cancels concerts

Aretha Franklin's decision to postpone all professional activity for the next six months has some worried about the state of the Queen of Soul's health.

Among the casualties of Franklin's announcement, which was spurred by doctor's orders, was a planned Dec. 9 Christmas concert at Detroit's Fox Theatre. The concert, which was to feature former Temptations lead singer Dennis Edwards, was announced just last week.

"I'm not upset about the cancellation; I'm more concerned about her health," Edwards said Friday. He said he had tried to get in touch with Franklin but couldn't because she had recently changed her phone numbers, which he said she does often.

"We go back 40-50 years, from the early Motown days and growing up in Detroit," he said. "She's a personal friend of mine, and her health is more important to me than the show."

Up in the air is Franklin's involvement in the Thanksgiving activities at Detroit's New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, once pastored by her father, the late Rev. C.L. Franklin. The church is hosting a Thanksgiving dinner billed as "Aretha's Thanksgiving Gospel Feast," but the Rev. Robert Smith, the current pastor, said by e-mail Friday that he wasn't sure whether Franklin would attend. There has been "no word from her," Smith said.

The Fox Theatre concert is among a rash of recent concert cancellations from Franklin. The Fox show was announced the same day Franklin, 68, canceled a concert appearance in Charlottesville, Va., "for health reasons," according to her representative. The next day, Franklin pulled out of an Oct. 30 concert at Drury University in Springfield, Mo., also citing health concerns....
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New Bethel is right down the street from where I grew up.

The show must go on???


Aretha Franklin's annual free gospel concert will happen as planned even though doctors have ordered the Queen of Soul to take it easy until May. Franklin was released Saturday from Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit after treatment for an undisclosed illness.

"She is up and about and doing real good but not well enough to perform right now," said her longtime friend, Fannie Tyler of Detroit. Franklin is expected to be present at the event later this month. Franklin began offering a free gospel concert and feast to Detroiters seven years ago -- kind of a pre-holiday gift to the city.

Sometimes she performs or joins others performing, but usually other artists are the focus of the gathering.

This year, "Aretha's Thanksgiving Gospel Fest" will be at 6 p.m. Nov. 25 at the church she grew up in, New Bethel Baptist Church at 8430 C.L. Franklin Blvd. in Detroit. A portion of Linwood Boulevard was renamed in honor of her late father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, who was pastor at New Bethel for many years.

Among those scheduled to perform are Dorinda Clark-Cole of the Grammy Award-winning Clark Sisters, Esther Smith, Paul Porter of the Christianaires, Spencer Taylor and the Highway QCs, Slim and the Morning Echoes and the Mighty Voices of Wonder....

The New York City Marathon is being run today.

Some 45,000 runners will be taking their shot at the 26 mile course. 45,000!

It's about 40° under a bright, sunny sky. The men's race just started; the women started earlier.

I'm getting old.. This was the place to be once upon a time. There was always some wannabe musician playing harmonica outside the store. This was one of the gathering places for what was left of the counterculture in the 80's and 90's. And the store wasn't exactly the cleanest place either. But then again neither were the students who shopped there..
Village Corner Closes




Since 1970, the Village Corner party store stood at the southeast corner of the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus, a dusty, dark cavern of all things fermented that supplied libations to four decades of students and wine lovers.

It was eclectic in its product lines: Schlitz, Pabst and Budweiser for the college set; fine wines from France and Germany for those with a more refined taste.

They came together in a store that was, well, far more Midwestern beer vault than snooty wine shoppe.

"It looks like a dive," said Leslie Roberts of Ann Arbor, a fan who bought several bottles Friday night. But she said that with a knowing smile. "I know good things can come in dingy packages."

Saluted by wine lovers from across the country — and by students who knew the store had a ready supply of toilet paper and beer — the Village Corner, at least at its location at South Forest and South University, is gone.

Friday and Saturday marked its last weekend as it makes way for redevelopment that will include a high-rise student apartment building. Owner Dick Scheer hopes to reopen soon in the area, but he said he hasn't decided where that will be.

"We're moving," he said Friday night, as customers buzzed in and out to take advantage of a 20 percent off sale on wine. "We're not quitting."

That's good news for wine fans like Steve Shoemaker of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who has been a Village Corner customer since his wife, Julie Wolin, was working on her Ph.D. at U-M in the 1970s. He got past the store's appearance to appreciate its affinity for wine and its employees' willingness to help.

Wine for a concert

In 1984, he sought some advice. "I said, 'I'm going to see Billy Idol. What wine would you suggest?" Unruffled by a half-joking reference to the bleached-blonde punk rocker, the clerk had a reply: a Cote du Rhone.

Yes, perfect.

"It's really a different store," Shoemaker said.

Scheer and his wife, Sally, have run the store for 40 years, enjoying a remarkable run fueled by students' thirst for beer and liquor and older adults' growing love of wine. They tapped into a wine craze that started in the 1960s and has grown for generations. "We hitched our wagon to that," said Scheer, 67, a graduate of U-M.

A few things have changed. Today's students are also interested in microbrews as well as wine. Years ago, students walked right past the wine and headed for the coolers. "A lot of the students today are really savvy," he said.

While the beer accounted for the most sales, the wine helped the owners weather the ebbs and flows of the school year and made them famous; the store is known around the country for its selection of smaller vintners from Europe.

Wall of shame

But for many students and local residents, the store might bring back other memories: like the wall of fake ID shame --Â an "X" in each eye -- that once lined the area behind the counter. It was Scheer's way of alerting too-young customers that, hey, if you're not old enough to buy beer, don't even think about it.

Mike Anderson grew up in Ann Arbor and remembers the wall and the fear it created.

"The impact, of course, was the sheer volume of them, row after row, a rogue's gallery of failure, a platoon of the disappointed," he said in an e-mail.

Those IDs, stuffed in paper bags, are now part of what has moved on. Everything had to be out of the store by midnight Saturday, Scheer said, and he expected a busy day. But sadness didn't seem to be part of his moving equation.

Victorian Style Homes in Detroit

I LOVE Victorian houses - all that gingerbread and the delightful paint jobs. They also often have such delightful little nooks and crannies inside. There are several river towns near me that have the most beautiful old homes. Many of the ones on the water have widow's walks. They're just beautiful.

Yes, those are nice homes SB.

LANSING, Mich. – A group of friends and family is obscenely rich after winning a nearly $129 million jackpot with a lottery ticket bought at a Detroit-area porn shop. And some of the money will be devoted to sacred purposes.

Mike Greer, a member of the group, came forward Friday to claim the Powerball winnings on behalf of the others, who chose to remain anonymous. Greer — who said only that the group has more than two members and fewer than 100 — indicated some of the riches will be going to a church.

"The only thing I can assume is that the Lord trusted us to do certain things with the money that He bestowed upon us," he said. "That's the only thing that I can gather."

Greer said he didn't buy the ticket himself and doesn't know whether it was purchased inside the Uptown Bookstore or at its outside, walk-up lottery window. And he said that among the group's members, "nobody cares" where it was bought.

Many customers of the adult bookstore in a depressed section of Highland Park buy their lottery tickets without setting foot inside the place and getting an eyeful of its X-rated videos and magazines.

The group will take its winnings in a lump sum of $69.6 million instead of annual installments.

Greer, a 49-year-old from Farmington Hills, said he is self-employed in the digital imaging business. He would not give details on the others except to say that most are from the Detroit metropolitan area.

Story

They bought their ticket in a porn shop and the winnings were $69 million??? Such irony!

Wasn't the big MegaMillions winner from a few drawings ago ($100+ million) also from Michigan?

A vase that somebody found in their loft in London and was put into auction to possibly raise a couple of hundred pounds was eventually sold for £43 million..........

Some ancient old pot apparently that was looted from China by the British Empire......

Its gone home now and left some happy soul a tad better off!!

Yes, yes he was. Well he was a yooper, which still counts...

Winners

Atlantic City is at it again. A recent investigation by "The Press" uncovered years of outrageous litigation payments in attorney fees and settlements. Apparently there are no city govt controls on litigation fees and contracts; so the lawyer community has been soaking the city. Of course too there are the brother-in-law of the mayor type things. They have a dozen law firms with their hands in the pot.

Then to top it off they make exhorbitant settlements and many have been with city employees for such things as harrassment. Some of the settlements have gone to high ranking police officers and elected officials, even mayors.

Nucky Johnson would be proud. Boardwalk Cash Cow.

There might not be any paczki for a while. Times are really getting tough around here.

Hamtramck Bankruptcy

This is getting a lot of attention now.
Missing Kids