| Wild Card/Vacation Day 11 of 12
Only two more shopping days until I return to the final days of the City Council campaigns. Then, we'll have fun taking apart the campaigns. Any dirt yet? Any mudslinging. You know, the good stuff. Or is everyone behaving? My wife is now looking over my shoulder -- literally -- so I have to pretend that I'm just checking ball scores. See ya in two days. Here's Wild Card ... .
My Body, My Self
The screen displays, in plain black-and-white text, the focus of Newmark's daily life -- much of it, anyway. It's in an e-mail program called Pine, favored by geeks of all ages, partly because it renders the mouse nearly useless. Pine users are, like Newmark, the type who derive an almost perverse pleasure from deleting a message by simply pressing the "D" key, rather than undertaking the laborious task of clicking on a trash can icon. Newmark pores over his inbox, which receives about 300 messages daily. Clack. Clack. Clack. Click-ity-clack-ca-clack. Every so often, he turns to the left, and his own moving image, collected by a computer video camera, stares back at him from a small laptop screen. Newmark is a young-looking 52, despite his nearly bald pate and stout physique.
Atlanta Music Scene
Ever wanted to dress up as your favorite rock star for Halloween? Have you gone through with it? Well, Fallon Worley has. The three-year-old from Birmingham is headed to Atlanta tonight with his parents Crystal and Kevin for the Smashing Pumpkins show at the Fox (the band plays tomorrow night, too). Dad Kevin Worley is originally from Douglasville. "He lived there all his life until he met me," says Crystal Worley. "People think we're crazy, that we're pushing him," Fallon's mom says, but the kid is apparently a big fan. "He doesn't watch kids shows, he watches concerts. He just plays guitar in front of our TV. And when we asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween, he said 'Smashing Pumpkins!'." The costume, based on one of Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan's stage outfits from the current tour, was made by Fallon's grandmother from a pattern his mom cut out of newspaper.
Other Fug Fixes
Check out the archives of "New York Fugging City," our weekly column for New York magazine online. Periodically, we chime in on the "If These Clothes Could Talk" section in the print edition of In Touch weekly. New! We contributed a piece to New York Look -- New York magazine's new publication -- about the deep devotion of Anna Wintour to man-candy tennis ace Roger Federer. .
Scots do not want to end the Union, merely modify it
The world of politics is a continuously fascinating one. There is always something new. Political parties take power and always, in the end, lose it. Politicians' fortunes ebb and flow. Plots and conspiracies abound. Policies evolve and change.Over time, the decisions made by our elected representatives really do "make a difference", a phrase politicians use frequently, to the lives of the poor, long-suffering voters whose interests they are supposed to represent. Politics matters.And having spent many years at both Westminster and Holyrood as a reporter – and worked, albeit for only a year, on the "dark side" as a special adviser to former First Minister Henry McLeish – politics had become like a drug. It is addictive, hard to kick. It induces an urge to go back for another hit. And another.
Living your bucket list
You yearn to shake the damn truth out of Tom Cruise. These are life's ultimate to-do lists, lists that transcend the clutter on your office desk and give meaning to your existence. One popular Web site, 43Things.com, lets users post their own lists, with items both frank and fanciful, such as: Donate blood. Kiss in the rain. Go to Italy. Continuing with the recently opened film, "The Bucket List," in which two terminally ill old-timers (played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) set out to achieve their own, such lists have taken on added urgency, one that's all the rage. Witness the Travel Channel's new show "1,000 Places" (based on the best-seller "1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler's Life List") and a recent cover story in Smithsonian magazine, "28 Places To Visit Before You Die." (Ominous-sounding, yet fun!) "I think everyone has a list like that," says Seattle real-estate lawyer Greg Lawless, via e-mail.
UW wins easily, moves on to Pac-10 slate
The party was great to end the year, an 82-50 victory over Idaho State. Yet like a lot of revelers, the Washington basketball team will wake up Tuesday morning, wondering where it is and how the heck it got there. Too much alcohol isn't the problem. Too many ranked Pac-10 teams bunched tightly on the schedule in the month ahead -- five in the next eight outings -- represent a 31-day hangover waiting to happen. If the Huskies (9-4) ever had a New Year's resolution to make good on, it's this: Time to get rid of all those bad basketball habits once and for all, the sporadic defensive lapses, the occasional offensive tentativeness and the chronic poor free-throw shooting that made the preseason a challenge at times, and finally beat fourth-ranked and unbeaten Washington State, which shows its face again at Edmundson Pavilion on Saturday night.
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