So, my brother and his wife and their baby Kate are in town and went with us to Disneyland yesterday. I confess to being skeptical ahead of time: How much could a one-year-old get out of Disneyland?
Quite a bit, it turns out. Proving that she is, indeed, a Yarbrough, she clapped and squealed with joy both times she went on Pirates of the Caribbean (the revamped ride is pretty slick, and the Captain Jack Sparrow animatronics are eerily accurate in their sculpts), enjoyed the teacups and wanted to climb out of the boat and play in the waterfall on the Jungle Cruise.
But the evil genius of Walt Disney was most apparent when we rode It’s a Small World. Yes, it’s a somewhat (OK, not “somewhat”) obnoxious ride for adults, but Disney’s “Imagineers” knew what they were doing. Kate was entranced and at the end of the ride, tried to leap over Joel’s shoulder to crawl back into the ride on her own.
I shot photos and videos of the entire day — including her deciding that Eeyore was scary, not sweet, something that will have to be rectified with lots of Pooh stories, I think — and will be posting them once my computer is back in the land of the living. (It’s in the shop for yet another day, in what I’m increasingly convinced is some sort of intervention.) True, the videos of Kate on It’s a Small World might be only of interest to grandparents, but what the heck.
MONTGOMERY, N.J. – Barbara Lehman has lived in this central New Jersey community for 30 years, but her time here is nearing an end.
She sent her children through Montgomery’s well-regarded schools. And she enjoys the rolling landscape even as housing developments have spread across it in recent years.
But her property taxes have climbed 56 percent since 2000 to a knee-buckling $14,000 a year — a heavy load for a high school French teacher whose salary goes up only about 3 percent a year.
“Oh, it’s terrible,” Lehman said.
Despite efforts by governors and lawmakers to do something about it, New Jersey has the highest property taxes in America — a burden that is alarming young couples and retirees alike and deepening public cynicism in a state with a long and rich history of graft and self-dealing.
The average property owner in the Garden State pays about $6,000 a year in property taxes, twice the national average.
Wow, pay a premium rate to live in New Jersey. Awesome.
(And yes, I’ve been there. That’s why it amuses me so much.)
It does what it says on the label: This is Dashiell Hammett-style LA noir — complete with period dialogue — set in a contemporary Southern California high school.
Gritty, violent, sometimes baffling, “Brick” works better than I think anyone could expect and better than it has any right to.
Unreservedly recommended to fans of film noir, detective stories and, yes, Veronica Mars.
At least two band members have a significant problem with how Lukas sings. He’ll be gone after Zayra.
Final three: Dilana, Magni, Storm
If the band doesn’t want a female lead singer (which, frankly, is the novelty they need in order not to become Velvet Revolver II), it’s Magni.
If they are open to a female lead singer, it depends on whether or not they care if she can write a song. (See above video clip.) If they do, it’s Storm.
If they are open to a female lead singer and feel they have enough songwriters as-is, it’s Dilana.
Thursday, August 10, 2006, 13:30
Section: Miscellany
Sure, I could just ask, but I think it might also be fun to track everyone automatically (including those who wouldn’t otherwise respond). The following tracks IP addresses for regions of the world, but doesn’t otherwise identify anyone. All I can tell is that someone from, say, Southern California visited.
For now, it’s just people who see this message. If I like how it works out, I’ll stick it in the sidebar to the left as well.
Click on the graphic to see where visitors to LBY3.com are from.
Update: Twenty-four hours later, it turns out I have a ton of vistors from Texas and the Northeast United States, which is kind of a surprise, but not as much of a surprise as to see that people in Israel and Japan are visiting. It’s a wacky Internet out there.
