Blog Authors
Michael Fitzgerald
Mike Fitzgerald is The Record’s award-winning metro columnist. His column runs in the paper three times a week. Born in San Francisco, he was raised in Stockton. His column covers diverse beats including, sometimes, the offbeat. Read FullCategories
Archives
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
Latest Tweets
- Just passed a low-rider pickup on the Crosstown Freeway, custom painted and pinstriped. A rear-window decal read, "Praise the Lowered." 2009-11-11
- Moving to a new address on the blogosphere: http://bit.ly/1Sft50. See you there. 2009-10-22
- Recession Chronicles: Maxim's restaurant, which beat City Hall in court over dancing, closed today. More on my blog at recordnet.com/blogs. 2009-10-12
- Prison hospital scoop, inside info on the Stocktoberfest cross-up and giant tunnel-boring machines on my blog, recordnet.com/blogs. 2009-10-12
- A state assemblyman says the Peripheral Canal will be big enough for cruise ships. My light bulb moment in Friday's column at recordnet.com. 2009-10-01
- More updates...
Posting tweet...
Monthly Archives: August 2006
An unfortunate party address
St. Joseph’s Regional Cancer Center has sent out a festive flyer announcing its 17th Annual Gathering of Friends evening potluck picnic, which it bills as “a celebration honoring life.”
Sounds like a very good event. The location, though, sounds a bit, um, out of keeping with the party’s life-affirming theme.
The location is, “St. Joseph’s Medical [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
One carnivore’s comeback
Speaking of vegetarians (see below), reader Cindy Grafius forwards the following photo.
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Carnivore collectibles
I guess People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals liked the column I did recently on their Kentucky Fried Cruelty campaign. They sent me a gift.
A half-dozen of PETA’s animal rights activists protested outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet on June 22 as part of their campaign to embarrass KFC into demanding more humane treatment [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Turning off A/C: the payoff
Remember when I stoically turned off my air conditioner for three days at the height of July’s heat wave? There was one upside to the misery I experienced: for once in my life I actually looked forward to my PG&E bill.
Not that I assumed it would be low. But I had high hopes. Or would [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Withdraw from Washington?
Reader Harlan Pick sends along this thought, which is going around the Internet:
“If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq Theater of operations during the last 22 months, and a total of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.
“The rate in Washington D.C. [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
The heat wave in three stanzas
Stockton’s superb poet Bill Humphreys has written a poem about the recent miserable heat wave and summer yielding mercifully to Fall.
Here it is:
Threshold
August arrived like a blast furnace
pouring steel ingots into each long hot
day, scorching fire hydrant streets
blistering the cattle prod death toll,
chicken farms up and down the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Punishment for Perata
With only a week left in the state’s current legislative session, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has put the whole kaboodle of urgently needed flood-control measures on “pause” until next year.
How quickly he forgets. Katrina. New Orleans. Last winter’s extreme rains which all but buckled levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Perata should be forced [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Joe Rosenthal: A local angle
The man on the left of the photo below is Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who snapped the famous shot of U.S. servicemen raising the flag on Iwo Jima.
Rosenthal died Monday in Novato. He was 94.
The man on the right is Jack Gulshen of Stockton. Gulshen, 79, a retired newspaperman and ex-Marine, knew Rosenthal.
Both belonged to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Al Capone he’s not
The police scanner just blurted that an alleged shoplifter is being detained–at a dollar store.
My take: that crook isn’t setting very high career goals.
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed

The irony of levee reform