Here's a Test

Gust Avrocados: "All right, here's a test. You see the nerdy-looking kid in the white shirt. playing [chess] against the four guys at  once? Which one of them is a strategic weapons expert with the CIA?"
Charlie Wilson: "Oh.... Huh...."
Gust: "It's a trick question, Charlie - it's the nerdy-looking kid in the white shirt. No reason this can't be fun, you know."

Charlie Wilson's War

Here's a test....

A free copy of Out of Ideas to the first person who can tell me who Grissom, White and Chaffee are. Don't google it - that's cheating. If you already own an e-copy your gift certificate will buy anything on the Wild Child menu. Winner to be determined by me.

Not one of us...EVER

RE: The asshole that killed two people who had nothing to do with anything, then shot a bunch of cops and killed one of them.

You were never one of us. We are dedicated to life. We protect the vulnerable, the frightened, the souls who are damaged and distraught. We run toward trouble, knowing we are the best equipped to handle danger, to suggest, facilitate and as a last resort impose solutions. We are brave when scared, focused though exhausted and accepting of criticism from those with half of the information we possess and even less sense. We prevail, we embolden and, through our sacrifice make ours a better community.

We don't publish a murder manifesto and then carry it out.

You were never one of us. Your former employer had you pegged.

UPDATE - for some unknown, insane reason the guy doing the killing has become a folk hero to a very small, deluded few. I don't really remember his name and will make no effort to do so. Michael Crain, on the other hand, lost his life in ambush to this madman. Officer Crain was a Marine Corps veteran, a SWAT cop and a field training officer. He left a wife and two young children behind.

Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence were his first known victims - she was twenty-eight and he twenty-seven. Their sin? Her father represented the asshole in his termination hearing and didn't win.

Hero?

UPDATE: "Awaiting identification of the remains...."

So, the book is closed, except - two more officers shot, one fatally. Another family robbed of years with their loved one, another community mourning the loss of a hero. Senseless, pointless. In the end a single gunshot from the suspect that said "I'm a coward. I can't face you unless I have a gun and an advantage."

Dirt in the Skirt

Ernie Capadino: Mmm-hmm. They'll pay you 75 dollars a week.
Kit Keller: We only make 30 at the dairy.
Ernie Capadino: Well then, this would be more, wouldn't it?

Lavonne Paire Davis passed away this week at 88. She was 19, and a welder in a shipyard in 1944 when she was recruited to play professional baseball in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. She played the better part of ten seasons, and served as consultant, and template, for the 1992 movie A League of Their Own. Fictional lead character Dottie Hinson (played by Geena Davis) was inspired in large part by her experience.

In the great scheme of professional athletics an asterisk? The league stood up during "the war years" because so many male baseball players had entered military service. Major league baseball didn't suspend play and, eventually, the women's game faded into history.

The movie itself spawned several memorable lines, chief among them Jimmie Dugan's "no crying in baseball." My favorite: