Spitball Army

The weather forecast this weekend called for violent thunderstorms followed by snow, a healthy swipe through the list of extremes that nature has to offer.  The thunderstorms were so successful on Friday and Saturday, in fact, that cable service was wiped out in most of the city by Saturday afternoon.  No Weather Channel updates.  My most precise memory of the snow forecast was that it was presumed to be coming to Birmingham pre-dawn on Sunday.  I awoke around 5:00 a.m. on Sunday and peeked out the blinds.  The only sign of snow that I saw was a slight dusting on the back lawn.  I crawled back into bed for another hour or two of sleep.

When I got up, slightly past 6, I went directly to the kitchen and put the coffee on.  One look out the window and I could see that the landscape had changed in just 60 minutes.  I grabbed my camera and walked out onto the front porch.

There hasn’t been this much snow in Birmingham since the “blizzard” of 1993 (right year?), and I wasn’t living in this house then.  Here is the first photograph of my bungalow in snowy regalia.  Notice that I still haven’t picked up the Sunday New York Times from the front yard.

My 1920s neighborhood street was q u i e t . . .

The crape myrtles that line the sidewalks had just begun showing their buds during the past week, while temperatures had reached into the 70s.  Now, instead of pollen dust, they were covered with some other fine stuff.

The ancient and diminutive dogwood tree near my front porch looked as if it was in full bloom.  When it actually is in full bloom, in the warmth of early Spring, it looks like it is covered with snow.  I found some harmonious consistency in this.

I walked down the street and back up, stepping on the asphalt rather than the sidewalk or the lawns, careful not to disturb the blanketing of snow.  Approaching my house from the west, the bank of creeping rosemary caught my eye.  Covered with snow, it looked like it was crawling to life, with its woody branches reaching out, as if trying to break from their cover, like tentacles groping in the dark. Creeping rosemary or creepy rosemary, or just my overactive imagination? You decide.

It was getting cold, my hands were getting numb, and the camera was getting wet.  I made one last stop in the backyard before heading inside to grab that first cup of coffee.  I spied my garden gnome pinwheel, spinning with joy in the cold wind.  He once inhabited a Peace Plant given to me by my mother on one of my business’s early anniversaries, easily fifteen years ago.  Now he resides alongside the garage among the monkey grasses.

Time for coffee!

George Harrison
Born: 25 February 1943
Moved On: 29 November 2001

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7qpfGVUd8c
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” from The Concert for Bangladesh (1971), with Eric Clapton.

[audio:George_Harrison___Marwa_Blues.mp3]
“Marwa Blues” (2002)

A 12-month old girl performs a political speech on behalf of the Toddler Party.

I enjoy watching the Academy Awards telecast each year.  Sue me.  Apparently, a lot of other people do, as well.  The odds game is fun and, since I don’t often gamble, a bit of a thrill.  I entered several Oscar voting contests this year, with my best total score being 15 correct out of 24 nomination categories.  The Oscars: it’s like a three-hour live version of Entertainment Weekly magazine.

• The set looked like a more intimate, old-Hollywood event.  I nearly expected to see dinner being served at round tables peppered around the lip of the stage, with the winners grabbing napkins from their laps and blotting their faces before dashing to the front of the room.  The crystal curtains added to this ambience.
• It was a rare thing to experience watching Hugh Jackman singing the word “excrement” into Kate Winslet’s face.  He was on his knee before her, about two inches from her face.  That was quite a surreal moment.
• I fumbled and lost both of the screenplay categories by voting thoughtfully.  Benjamin Button seemed the most adept adaptation by turning a short contemplative piece of fiction into what amounted to a cinematic epic.  Though not the best cinematic epic I’ve ever seen, the transformative process seemed to me to be the most artful.  [Note to self: remember that “Oscars” does not necessarily translate into “artful.”]  In the original screenplay category, Milk won the award, but was the furthest thing from original, as it was basically a creative nonfiction version of the 1984 film The Times of Harvey Milk.  The end credits of the film even acknowledge the filmmakers’ debt to this Academy Award-winning documentary.  The most original screenplay in my opinion was In Bruges, a completely unexpected blend of wit and terror with sympathetically-drawn characters and some of the best dialogue of any film I saw last year.
• This year’s twist of having the acting award nominees presented by five past winners in that category was a great creative touch.  Even if some of the presenters seemed to be struggling with their simple duties (Alan Arkin and Sophia Loren, for example), most of the actors stepped up to the plate admirably, and their brief speeches were little tributes to the talents of the nominees, delivered directly to them, instead of to the cameras.  I did miss seeing clips of the acting scenes, however.  Could we have both next year, please?
• Why are there only three Best Song nominees this year?  Where is Bruce Springsteen’s song for The Wrestler?  Out of the three nominees, only one (“Down to Earth,” from Wall-E) seemed a song in the traditional sense.  The other two nominees, from Slumdog Millionaire, sounded like pieces of the overall score of the film, strong on rhythm and beat and weak on melody.
• Thank God that Kate Winslet prepared a speech!

Lots of Irish heads have been banging against police station walls and muttering “Doh!” since this news was released yesterday.  Seems that a speedy driver from Poland had been pulled over at least fifty times throughout Ireland, but had evaded capture by feeding policemen a string of different addresses.  You must read this story:

He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines.

However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address.

But then his cover was blown.

It was discovered that the man every member of the Irish police’s rank and file had been looking for – a Mr Prawo Jazdy – wasn’t exactly the sort of prized villain whose apprehension leads to an officer winning an award.

In fact he wasn’t even human.

“Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence,” read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda’s traffic division.

“Having noticed this, I decided to check and see how many times officers have made this mistake.

“It is quite embarrassing to see that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities.”

The officer added that the “mistake” needed to be rectified immediately and asked that a memo be circulated throughout the force.

In a bid to avoid similar mistakes being made in future relevant guidelines were also amended.

And if nothing else is learnt from this driving-related debacle, Irish police officers should now know at least two words of Polish.

As for the seemingly elusive Mr Prawo Jazdy, he has presumably become a cult hero among Ireland’s second largest immigrant population.

Read the full story from the BBC News, with pictures, here.