Monthly Archives: May 2006

Outa here

By Site Admin | Published: May 26, 2006 | Comments closed
I will be on vacation from Memorial Day through Monday, June 5. I plan to blog at least one item from Manhattan, but this blog will resume in earnest –well, fairly earnest — when I return.
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Paradise Point: We Gouge You Less

By Site Admin | Published: May 26, 2006 | Comments closed
Just in time for Memorial Day, the start of boating season, gas prices for boaters have leaped above $4 a gallon. But not at Paradise Point Marina at Terminous. There, staffers discovered the numbers on the pumps go only as high as $3.99! So they’re stuck dispensing gas at that price throughout the biggest weekend [...]
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The perfect name for Stockton

By Site Admin | Published: May 26, 2006 | Comments closed
As I’ve written before, Stockton can’t realize its full potential with the name Stockton. That name’s just weird. I took a stab once and proposed several new names, but I never found the perfect moniker for this burg That changed today. Driving up Hwy. 99, I found myself behind a truck on which appeared the words, “Oak Harbor [...]
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The Clueless Neighbor Syndrome

By Site Admin | Published: May 25, 2006 | Comments closed
A curious side effect of the sort of godawful crime Stockton saw yesterday (May 24) is the Clueless Neighbor Syndrome. People with this syndrome, usually neighbors of the culprit, profess utter shock and disbelief when their neighbor commits insanely criminal acts. Many of these folks have been neighbors with the headline-making arrestee for years and [...]
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Exciting new feature: Ask Mike

By Site Admin | Published: May 25, 2006 | Comments closed
Readers are always calling with questions. Because customer service is my life, I often undertake to answer, even if this work does not make its way into the column. But now this blog provides a perfect spot to publish answers. So today we institute a new feature, “Ask Mike.” The first customer appears below.
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Ask Mike: the totem pole

By Site Admin | Published: May 25, 2006 | Comments closed
Christina Aasen writes, “I was over on Eighth Street the other day, at the old fire house. … I happened to look in, and on the south wall on the ground was our totem pole, the one that was in Victory Park. It was not covered, it was not encased and it was not in [...]
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Why the chicken crossed the eggheads

By Site Admin | Published: May 24, 2006 | Comments closed
If there’s one trait that distinguishes members of the Stockton Astronomical Society besides their love of stars, it’s intelligence. Which makes it all the funnier that the May issue of the club’s newsletter, “Valley Skies,” swallows an urban legend. The newsletter reprinted the widely circulated “chicken cannon” story. It’s about a test device used by NASA [...]
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Pombo and Abramoff

By Site Admin | Published: May 23, 2006 | Comments closed
And Speaking of Richard Pombo, blogger Daily Kos discusses the Congressman’s ties to Jack Abramoff here.
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A margarita with McCloskey

By Site Admin | Published: May 23, 2006 | Comments closed
Monday evening I drifed over to the Bob Hope Theatre, inside of which Vice President Dick Cheney was stumping for Congressman Richard Pombo. A protester surprised me by saying that Pombo’s Republican rival, Pete McCloskey, was thereabouts, too. Sure enough, in an RV down the block, McCloskey and his PR people had set up shop. “McCloskey is [...]
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The Holy Grail of pastrami

By Site Admin | Published: May 23, 2006 | Comments closed
Roger Thomas, longime owner of Bigfellow’s Sandwich Parlor on Wilson Way, has sold his business, which just happens to make the best pastrami sandwich in town. I know. Last year I embarked on a pastrami quest to find pastrami approximating the Holy Grail of pastrami, which is served by the Carnegie Deli across from Carnegie [...]
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