Geoff Fox: My Permanent Record
Back when I was in school teachers would always scare me with stories of how my exploits would end up in my permanent record. I believe this is it! – Geoff Fox
Also featured, three dead guys, someone from Hazard, KY, a production wiz, a limo company owner and the owner of a voluminous collection of 45s!
John Harper found this photo on Facebook. What must one enter in the search box to come up with this?
I’m second from the left. The guy in the middle is my friend Bob who visited last weekend. Also featured, three dead guys, someone from Hazard, KY, a production wiz, a limo company owner and the owner of a voluminous collection of 45s!
He had also been linked to a prostitute across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky. God love him – Jerry paid by check!
It was a Saturday night, years ago and I was aimlessly watching TV in the family room when Stef walked in. The set was tuned to C-SPAN.
C-SPAN is to middle school girls what kryptonite is to Superman. I expected her to immediately leave. She did not.
On the screen, a man was in the middle of a lecture to an auditorium full of college students. C-SPAN’s search engine tells me this clip doesn’t exist, but I saw it. Stef did too. The lecturer was Jerry Springer.
She watched in total amazement.
It wasn’t something we talked about, but obviously Stef had seen some of Springer’s low rent, daytime circus on TV. This was, however, a very different Springer. She was confused.
He was smart. He was well spoken. His words were well thought out and elegantly chosen.
I don’t remember her exact words, but “why” is a reasonable summary of her question to me. Why is someone like this doing something like that?
I tried to explain only someone like Jerry could do what he did. It was too demanding for a lightweight. The content might have been awful, but the execution was masterful, and that was the show’s real strength.
Even then, I knew he had been in politics. He had been mayor of Cincinnati and a highly rated, and well loved, local TV anchor.
He had also been linked to a prostitute across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky. God love him – Jerry paid by check!
This Saturday, while listening to my shower radio, I heard the whole story. It was on NPR’s, “This American Life.” Like his C-SPAN appearance, this was an unexpected find.
Jerry Springer’s story is stranger than fiction. How could it be otherwise? Still, whatever you expect, there’s more… a lot more. He is everything good and everything awful, with little in the middle.
This time, as opposed to C-SPAN, the aircheck does exist¹. If all you know is what you’ve seen (I know you’ve seen his show – don’t deny it) this is must listening.
¹ – The Springer story starts around 4:00 in.
I woke up this morning to the news of a Comair regional jet crash in Lexington, Kentucky. The circumstances were unusual, to say the least, as it looks like the plane never got airborne, or barely lifted. Weather conditions seem not to be a factor.
Now there is word (and this is unconfirmed as far as I can tell) the plane took off on the wrong runway!
I’ve attached the Blue Grass Airport layout. The small picture on the left is clickable for a larger image. It’s not hard to see the relative difference in length between those two strips of asphalt.
How could this happen? The tower should have had a clear sight line once the plane moved beyond the terminal. If I’m reading correctly, the top of the tower is 118 feet above the runway, meaning the controller was about 100 feet above.
And yet, it’s happened before. This is from FlightAware:
FlightAware’s airport information page for Houston Hobby (KHOU) shows the following disclaimer: “DUE TO COMPLEX RY CONFIGURATION; WHEN TAXIING TO THRS 12L & 12R AND 17 CHECK COMPASS HEADING BEFORE DEPARTING.”
Any time you hop aboard an airplane, you put your safety in someone else’s hands. You’d like to think everyone’s going by the book, taking no shortcuts which compromise safety.
I’ve never seen any business where that’s true 100% of the time.
I usually take a casual look at the maps from the Storm Prediction Center. In this day of weather specialization, these guys watch for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.
In the past I have been critical of their work in the Northeast where severe weather responds to different stimuli than in the Plains. They do a good job in giving people like me a ‘heads up.’ We’re much better off with them, than without them. More flexibility in issuing watches here would be helpful.
I’ve watched with great interest over the past few days as they’ve posted a high risk outlook for severe weather over a large area. ‘High risk’ and ‘large area’ are rare and usually mutually exclusive.
ZCZC SPCPWOSPC ALL WOUS40 KWNS 151652 ARZ000-ILZ000-INZ000-KYZ000-MOZ000-MSZ000-OHZ000-TNZ000-160045- PUBLIC SEVERE WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER NORMAN OK 1052 AM CST TUE NOV 15 2005 VALID 151652Z - 160045Z ...OUTBREAK OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS EXPECTED OVER PARTS OF THE OHIO...TENNESSEE AND LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEYS LATER TODAY AND TONIGHT. THE NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER IN NORMAN OK IS FORECASTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FEW STRONG...LONG-TRACK TORNADOES OVER PARTS OF THE OHIO...TENNESSEE AND LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEYS LATER TODAY AND TONIGHT. THE AREAS MOST LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE THIS ACTIVITY INCLUDE CENTRAL AND EASTERN ARKANSAS SOUTHERN AND EASTERN ILLINOIS MUCH OF INDIANA WESTERN AND CENTRAL KENTUCKY SOUTHEAST MISSOURI NORTHERN AND CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI WESTERN OHIO WESTERN AND MIDDLE TENNESSEE SURROUNDING THE HIGH RISK AREA...THERE IS A MODERATE RISK OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS FROM SOUTHERN LOWER MICHIGAN INTO LOUISIANA...SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI AND WESTERN ALABAMA A WIDESPREAD AREA OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS...INCLUDING SOME WITH LONG-TRACK TORNADOES AND VERY DAMAGING WIND...WILL AFFECT A LARGE PART OF THE EAST CENTRAL U.S. LATER TODAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY MORNING.
The operative words are “strong” and “long track.” That’s the recipe for disaster.
So far, there’s been one report of 65+ knot wind in Southwest Missouri. The day is young.
This weather system gets to us in Connecticut tomorrow. To quote Dorothy, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” There will probably be storms, just not as intense or with as much damage.
Meanwhile, if I were in the bullseye on the SPC map, I’d be sweating bullets today. Someone’s going to get hurt, or worse.
Saturday was another beautiful day. Hot and dry. I think the dry is starting to take a toll. More than once I started to feel a little weak or light headed. I’m attributing it to dehydration and am going to ramp up the water intake.
I have to remember that even inside the dew point is low. Outside, the difference between the temperature and dew point encourages the rapid loss of body fluid. You DO perspire in Las Vegas. It just evaporates so quickly that you never notice.
I played some poker Saturday. So far I had won at every non-tournament session and lost in every tournament. I’ll explain why I’m separating those two when I summarize the trip from Connecticut.
I lost $307 – and lost it in a hurry. I didn’t play bad. I was attacked by a long string of unlikely occurrences. Someone who wouldn’t lay down a 10-J off suit to my Kings – even when the bet had been raised 4 times. Of course, in the end, she caught a straight.
If you calculated the odds for that happening, it was quite unlikely. But even an 80% probability is wrong 1 in 5 times.
This happened time-after-time-after-time. My Jacks with a King kicker lost to an Ace kicker.
Anyway, I watched $307 disappear as if the chips were evaporating like sweat in the Vegas sunshine. I’m not happy about what happened, but my play was fine. This kind of setback is absolutely expected, just as incredible hot nights are expected every once in a while.
I didn’t go on tilt. I didn’t try and chase my money. I stayed calm.
For at least five years, maybe longer, Helaine and I had talked about seeing Mac King at Harrah’s. Mac King performs twice daily at 1 and 3 PM. It is a family oriented comedy magic show.
As many times as we’d said, “This year for sure,” we’d never crossed the street to see him. On Saturday, with Steffie, Melissa, Michael and Max in tow, we did.
The show is dirt cheap to see. Helaine had 3 – 2 free ticket coupons. Our only obligation was to buy a $7 drink. With tax, 6 of us went to see Mac King for $49.20.
Playing off his Kentucky hayseed upbringing, he is very funny. The magic is simple, yet effective. The tricks are well done and folksy. There are no live animals, no expensive props. The charm of the show is, he’s charming.
I watched Max and Steffie, both laughing – Max on the level of a 6 year old and Steffie as a late teen. Seeing them smiling was part of my fun.
We had dinner at the Mirage buffet again. My capacity for ‘buffeting’ is rapidly diminishing. I worry about how much diet reversal has taken place in this week.
With time running out, I decided to play poker again. The losses from the afternoon continued. Before long I had lost another $175. With $25 left in my chip rack I started to recover and left the table, after four hours, with a $32 loss.
This late night $6/$12 table was one of the most lively and fun tables I had played at. A dealer from Imperial Palace sat at my right. A few seats farther was Lance from Texas. He reminded me of Rock Hudson in a Doris Day movie.
Lance was countrified and over-the-top Texas at the same time he was sophisticated. He was the grease that kept the table laughing and moving along.
In one hand, where the two of us were heads up, I felt guilty beating him and extracting extra chips. He had that kind of charm.
Blogger’s note: I continue to add photos to the gallery for this trip. You can see them by clicking here. The whole Vegas trip has its own category, which means you can link to these stories specifically by clicking here or read about the 2003 Vegas trip here.
