ATL 10/29/07 - Soccer

More Happy Halloween..from 28 years ago...ma and pa as Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae.
Cutest girls in the world...

ART/MOVIE/FRENCH/LOCAL/NEIGHBORHOOD/WEB NEWS

ART NEWS - Decatur Wine Festival 2007 from 1-4 PM this Saturday, 11/3.

Actor's Express 'Cabaret Benefit' with ingenue Libby Whittemore.

MOVIE NEWS - The trailer for "One Missed Call", partly filmed across from us here at Metropolis - trailer. (Seems a little "Final Destination - AT&T" to me...)

FRENCH NEWS - A new book was published in the U.K. during the summer on the subject of bread in France; "Good Bread is Back". Having recently read "Paris in the Fifties", "Suite Francaise", and "The Story of French" this year, it seems like a good next read. It seems that into the 18th century, bread was a basic, carbohydrate staple in France, England, and Italy, until England supplanted flour with sugar and Italy exchanged bread for pasta. Thank goodness France hung onto the baguette.

FRENCH MOVIES - I liked, but didn't love, "Ratatouille" and I guess that makes me still not very French; they loved the movie to the tune of $60 million in ticket sales (more than "Titanic"). ...but there's still hope for me. If they can love a rat that much, maybe I still have a chance...

U.S. NEWS - Southern California is burning down and there's a party in the San Diego football stadium. It didn't take long for one media outlet to begin to draw a comparison between that evacuation center and the Superbowl during Katrina. They had the nerve to question the government's responses to the two disasters, but refused to speculate what differences there might have been between the attitudes/backgrounds of the different evacuees.

DROUGHT NEWS - Our illustrious Guv'ner Sonny was on NPR, making an impassioned plea to the Army Corps of Engineers to reduce the amount of water being released from Lake Lanier (needed to support endangered species and a power plant in the lower river). "I don't think anyone signing the Endangered Species legislation intended to take drinking water out of the mouths of Georgia babies..." Well rah-rah, Sonny, way to get inflammatory and point the finger away from you. It's not like this water issue snuck up on us and your developer/golfing buddies.

Of course, no one wants babies in Georgia to die of thirst, but I don't want to destroy an entire ecosystem, either, until we've tried shutting down a carwash or two...

...and grow some balls, by the way. You couldn't make an executive decision and set a mandate for reduced outdoor water use by businesses - you passed that buck on to the utilities themselves, forcing them to decide how they were going to lower water usage by 10%.

Why did we elect you?

LOCAL NEWS - 14th Street Construction. I don't know if anyone else got a letter about the October 18th meeting concerning gas and water main construction on 14th Street from Piedmont to Peachtree, but I emailed the contact person on the mailing and got a very quick response about the effects of the project. In a nutshell, during the month of November, 14th Street is one-way eastbound from Peachtree to Juniper and one-way westbound from Piedmont to Juniper.

You WON'T be able to travel all the way from Piedmont to Peachtree on 14th in either direction! NIGHTMARE!

NEIGHBORHOOD NEWS - Once upon a time, there was a beautiful house on Piedmont Avenue, next to the parking lot for Blake's and Outwrite Books (insert fairy joke here).

A well-intending man bought the house, wanting to - "poof" - magically turn the house into a restaurant.

But the mean ole stepsisters, the neighborhood association, didn't want the well-intending man to - "poof" - magically turn the house into a restaurant. "No off-street parking", they said.

So one day, since the house was NOT just right for a restaurant, the house disappeared completely. You see, while the well-intentioned man wasn't allowed to - "poof" - magically turn the house into a restaurant, he was allowed to - "poof" - turn the beautiful, old, historic house into an ugly, new, empty lot.

And there the lot sat, vacant, for many years.

Then one day, there appeared a another man who wanted to - "poof" - magically turn the ugly, empty lot into 6 townhomes. How can 6 town homes fit on a lot where there was once only 1 beautiful house?

Very carefully...and lots of rezoning...

What's going to happen to the beautiful house that became an ugly lot that wants to be six townhomes? We'll have to want and see what the ugly stepsisters say...

WEB NEWS - Just in case you still needed a Halloween costume... how about Larry Craig?