Black Robe Blues

What's weirder?

A) That the chief justice of the Supreme Court is citing Bob Dylan lyrics as the rationale for his legal arguments; or
B) That with all of his Supreme Court resources at his disposal, he couldn't get the words right*; or
C) That a Washington & Lee law professor took the time to study which rock musicians are most quoted in judicial decisions, and published the results?

For what it's worth, the professor found that Bob Dylan has been quoted almost as many times (26) as Simon & Garfunkel (12), Bruce Springsteen (5), Rolling Stones (4), the Beatles (3), Grateful Dead (2) and Joni Mitchell (1) combined.

* The New York Times reports that Chief Rocker, er, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose," but the lyric actually is "When you ain't got nothing...."

WWWFD*

(* What would Will Ferrell do?)

Not sure exactly where I'm headed with this post, but here goes nothing. It's about an obit for a newscaster I'd never heard of until today, but as I dug in, some of the links ended up being kind of interesting, tragicomic or just comic, so I thought I'd share.

Looking at the Chicago Tribune's site this morning, I noticed a headline for a story on the death of Ron Hunter (as it turns out, a stage name he chose to sound more middle-American), a former Windy City TV news anchor, who in the 70s shared a desk with Maury Povich and Jane Pauley. Journalism doesn't get much better than that, does it?

Anyway, the obit also had a link to a 12-year-old story from the Tribune archives about Hunter's rapid and stunning fall from grace -- from earning six figures in Chicago in the late 70s (which should have bought him unlimited steaks at Gene & Georgetti, or just about anything else) to getting fired from jobs in smaller markets, having his wife commit suicide and having to steal $3 worth of food from his neighbor. The gist of the story seemed to be that all of this happened because he was such an arrogant blowhard that nobody could stand working with him, despite his fabulous head of hair.

A Google search led me to a site called Forgotten Buffalo -- wait, isn't that redundant? -- which had this, um, interesting remembrance and photo gallery on Hunter. The classy 70s photos alone are worth the price you've paid by reading this entire post. You'll note that the site references Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell's character in Anchorman, and after reading all of this stuff, I suspect Ron Hunter may actually have been the inspiration for that movie.

RIP.

Bright green

Years ago, someone got me a car-emergency kit as a gift. It came in a cheap yellow plastic container that never stayed shut. It had some jumper cables, the most poorly constructed flashlight ever made, some flares and a can of some substance -- perhaps air -- that was supposed to come in handy in the case of a flat tire.

I think the air can is highly pressurized and, as such, has a warning on the package instructing me not to throw it away ever -- or something like that. So for close to a decade, during which I've had two cars and moved four times, I keep taking this rusted can of tire air with me. I don't want to toss it in a dumpster and have it blow up in someone's garbage truck. And given the effort it would take to find the nearest hazmat dump site, it has always seemed easier to just keep packing it and moving it.

Any thoughts?

Aside from soliciting your advice, I mention that fascinating information because today comes good news that those orange-apron wearing do-gooders at The Home Depot -- or Home Despot, as I like to call it -- finally announced that they'd allow their stores to collect used compact fluorescent light bulbs for recycling. Unbeknownst to me, this had been an issue until now because the bulbs contain small amounts of mercury, which is an environmental hazard, although it's apparently OK to eat in seafood.

We just bought a few packs of cfls there, so I thought it was good to know. Of course, I think these bulbs are supposed to last until about 2035, by which time we'll probably be beaming them into space or something.

Fontastic!

I realize there might be something horribly wrong with me, but I think FontStruct might be the coolest web site ever invented in the history of the universe. You can create and share your own fonts or browse and download typefaces created by other users. Yippee! Or maybe, YIPPEE!

There's some background about it in a New York Times article, which also reminded me that I really want to watch Helvetica, the documentary about fonts. (Anyone seen it yet?)

Oh, I also like the NYT article because there's a prominent mention of Baltimore that doesn't have anything to do with urban blight or crack dens.

We know why you suck

OK, I'm back. Great vacation. Thanks for asking. One of the highlights was canoeing on the crystal-clear waters of Vermont's Echo Lake. Want more? Click here.

As for a lowlight: Try getting to the airport 50 minutes before your flight -- and, yes, we would've been there about 90 minutes early if not for the suck-ass traffic getting to JFK. Sorry, but traffic around NYC is definitely worse than in L.A. -- going to self check-in and learning from a touchscreen computer that you're too late to check in.

Now, I know it's not the good old days, when I could get to the airport nine minutes before a flight, smoke a Lucky and still have time to jog to the gate with time to spare before they closed the jetway.

(No, I never smoked Luckys. Not at the airport, anyway. But I just read an article about James Frey and felt inspired to add a little more color to that sentence.)

But 50 minutes should really do the trick. Of course, it probably doesn't do the trick anymore because Asshat Airlines -- I mean American -- needs more time to run your credit card for every piece of luggage you're taking with you. And this probably takes extra long because of the geniuses they have working the self-check-in-baggage-fee-collection posts at JFK.

I was annoyed, but still figured we'd be able to get on our flight until we approached a surly American Airlines employee, who I wrongly assumed was there to help American Airlines passengers. I soon realized she was only there to mock American Airlines passengers.

"We were here 50 minutes before the flight," we told her. "But the computer said we're too late to check in."

Before pivoting 90 degrees to berate another customer, she glared at us and spit out two words: "You are."

I'm beginning to wonder if American is sort of kidding when they say "we know why you fly." Unless they mistakenly think that I fly because I enjoy getting verbally bitch-slapped by evil employees, spending $3 for a bag of chips on a six-hour flight and having the option of watching "Penelope" -- possibly the second-worst movie ever -- as in-flight entertainment.

Oh, and by the way: We weren't too late for our plane. Although the system forced us to book ourselves standby on a later flight (which is the flight our luggage took), we sprinted to the gate for our original flight and got on it anyway. Oh, and of course, once we got there and took our seats, we got to wait on the runway for 30 minutes because of "some electrical situation" in the control tower.

Flying is fun.

End note

One highlight of my vacation was canoeing across beautiful Echo Lake in northern Vermont. In the spot where we "put in" (did I get that right?) there's no beach -- just a small grassy hill with big rocks on either side, and more rocks where the grassy hill meets the water. When we were getting started the other day, the grass was dewy and the footing seemed a little tenuous, especially for someone (in this case, me) wearing flip flops and for someone (again, me) carrying one end of a canoe.

I figured that if I slipped, my head would have been this close to banging into any number of the aforementioned rocks.

"No problem," I said. "Seems perfectly safe."

Then I added, "Famous last words."

Which made me wonder if anyone has ever died immediately after saying, "Famous last words."

Strength in numbers

I called my accountant today to ask why the Golden State wants me to pay more taxes. Before hanging up, I asked if I should leave my cell phone digits for her.

"You better," my accountant said. "I'm not too good with numbers."

Wish I were making that up.

With that, SFTC is probably going quiet for the next week, as I'll be on the road. But please check back next week for more.

Thanks for reading.