R.I.P. Dominick Dunne

Today, the world lost a philandering drunk who killed a girl back in 1969… and also lost a gifted crime writer:

Writer Dominick Dunne has died, Vanity Fair is reporting. He was 83.

He died of bladder cancer today at home in Manhattan, said his son, actor-director Griffin Dunne.

Dunne was a best-selling author who also spent 25 years as a correspondent and editor with Vanity Fair. He covered some of the most celebrated figures and their legal travails.

via Writer Dominick Dunne has died at 83 – USATODAY.com.

Plaza Pharmacy Commercial

Thanks to pecanne log’s Twitter feed, I was able to find this awesome commercial for Atlanta’s Plaza Pharmacy on Downhome Traces.

I have no idea when the commercial was filmed (probably some time in the late 60s or early 70s) but I do remember seeing it on late night TV when I was a kid:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnSkNHuHBmw

Ah, memories for the ATL folks… especially for my Dad. Not only did my Pops work close to Plaza, it was the closest 24-hour pharmacy to our house in Snellville when I was growing up (yes, Snellville). My mom tells me that I only liked one particular brand of pacifier when I was a baby, and she sent him out to Plaza one night at 3am (80 minutes round trip!) when she lost one and didn’t have any replacements on hand!

Hail to The Chief

Today marks the 21st anniversary of the death of Art Rooney, Sr., the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The folks over at Behind the Steel Curtain have posted this poignant essay about the man who most knew as “The Chief”:

As a humanitarian, Art Rooney had few equals. When a Pittsburgh Steeler was ever in the hospital, Rooney would visit every morning and bring a newspaper and fresh coffee. Rooney’s wife, Kathleen, would stop in later with home-baked muffins. When boarding the plane after road games, each player was handed a couple beers while Art Rooney passed out cigars to all who wanted them. No wonder the players loved him, so much so that one year the players walked to his house and sang Christmas carols.

One day at a racetrack, Rooney and a friend were approached by a little old lady. She was sobbing loudly, telling Rooney how she just lost her last dollar. Her family was hungry and her grandson needed medicine. She bet what little money she had in order to make enough to buy food and medicine. Rooney pulled $100 out of his pocket and gave it to her. His friend quickly pointed out that the lady was an impostor. She was a regular phony at the racetrack. “I know that,” said Rooney, “but did you see that performance? She earned it.”

Another day at the track, a good one for the Chief, ended with him driving home with heavy pockets. He saw a priest waiting for a bus and, with his affinity for priests, stopped and offered the clergyman a ride. During conversation the priest revealed that his church needed a new roof. Rooney asked if the priest knew how much that would cost and was told $7,500. The Chief reached into his bulging pocket, peeled off $7,500 and handed it to the priest. Astonished, the priest politely indicated he couldn’t accept money that was not legit. After Rooney identified the track he came from that day, the priest took the cash with dropped-jaw and looked to the heavens. “That’s OK,” the Chief laughed, “just say a prayer for me.”

It’s a really great piece, and worth a read for any football fan. It almost makes me kind of sad that people like Jerry Jones can be NFL owners while there were once people like The Chief running things.

via He Stood on Higher Ground: Farewell to the Chief

Mad Men recap delay

Sorry for the delay in the Mad Men recap. No downloadable versions of the episode have hit the Internet yet, and since I use those videos to make the screencaps and review the episode in detail, I’m waiting on that before I can start the recap.

As soon as it hits the Intarwebs, I’ll start on the review.

Repair Shop Saves Brett-Favre-Themed Goat

This is (by far) the strangest story I’ve read today!

It’s lucky for a Brett-Favre-themed goat that the car broke down, otherwise he’d have probably been slaughtered, says the Winona Daily News. A woman driving a Chevy Malibu came into the Winona, MN Tires Plus last Friday asking if they could replace a belt. She then informed the employees that there was a live goat in the trunk that she planned to slaughter later.

via Repair Shop Saves Brett-Favre-Themed Goat From Certain Slaughter.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-23

  • 3 hours 'til the season premiere of Mad Men!! #
  • 1 hour 'til the season premiere of Mad Men!! #
  • @terrinh73 Rachel Maddow is Eli Manning in disguise! #
  • My Mad Men recapreview is up: http://ping.fm/DB1YN #
  • My "Mad Men" recap-review is up: http://ping.fm/DB1YN #
  • @diablocody You know F. Murray Abraham was one of those Fruit of the Loom guys in the 70s, right? #
  • Happy Birthday, Bittle! 🙂 #
  • If a dog develops pica, how do you know? #
  • Test #
  • Sneaking off to the movies to see "Inglorious Basterds"! #
  • Was outside smoking and saw a cloud that looked like the monster from "Alien"! #
  • "It's never enough until your heart stops beating" #
  • getting ready for a busy night! #
  • @Dish – Heading to the cook-out soon! #

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I was (almost) right!

All versions of Firefox 3.x have been affected by a strange “bug”: all Flash-related content has a tendency to “stutter” every few seconds (especially YouTube videos, but also non-video things like those “Know It All” quizzes on Facebook).

Back on November 30, 2008 I posted this article, in which I postulated that the problem was related to Firefox’s “session saving” capability. In fact, I specifically said:

Disable anything that saves your sessions (tabs). This not only includes extensions like SessionSaver or Weave, but also Firefox’s built-in session saving tool.

So it was somewhat surprising to see that someone else had stumbled across the “solution” to the problem this week in posts at Lifehacker and Download Squad.

Do I get “attboy” and “THANK YOU!!!” posts on this site? Nooooooo, I sure don’t! Such is life on the Internet, I guess.

I will admit that the “Lifehacker solution” is a bit more elegant: go to about:config and change the value of:

browser.sessionstore.interval

from 10000 (milliseconds) to 300000 (milliseconds). This changes how often Firefox saves your session information from every 10 seconds to every 5 minutes, which, while not eliminating the stuttering completely, should drastically reduce them.

Can anyone tell me if Firefox automatically saves a session on close, regardless of the interval settings?

Quote of the Day

“I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it (smiles). When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.”

– Kurt Cobain, about how he wrote
“Smells Like Teen Spirit”, from a Rolling Stone
interview by David Fricke, 01-27-94

Big Ben & Plaxico Updates

– Plaxico Burress accepted a plea bargain today for the gun charges stemming from his “nightclub incident” last November. He was sentenced to 2 years in prison, but will likely serve 20 months.

– The suit against Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger continues to fall part. David Cornwell, Roethlisberger’s attorney, released several pages of emails today yesterday that allegedly “prove” that accuser Andrea McNulty is lying. The emails, between Andrea and “Ben” (a fictional soldier made up by the wife of a married man McNulty was sleeping with), certainly paint a light and carefree picture. I wouldn’t say they “prove” that she’s lying… but it is more evidence that she’s just after a big payday. Cornwell seems so convinced of their damning nature that he asked McNulty to drop her suit based only on these emails. Read more here.