And now, for some completely different things…
Thing the first: The Times ran, I kid you not, a delightful obituary yesterday.
Alan Abel, Hoaxer Extraordinaire, Is (on Good Authority) Dead at 94
Alan Abel, a professional hoaxer who for more than half a century gleefully hoodwinked the American public — not least of all by making himself the subject of an earnest news obituary in The New York Times in 1980 — apparently actually did die, on Friday, at his home in Southbury, Conn. He was 94.
I wonder how long they’d been working on that headline and lede?
Long before The Onion began printing farcical news articles[…] there was Alan Abel. A former jazz drummer and stand-up comic who was later a writer, campus lecturer and filmmaker, Mr. Abel was best known as a perennial public gadfly, a self-appointed calling that combined the verbal pyrotechnics of a 19th-century flimflam man with acute 20th-century media savvy.
He was, the news media conceded with a kind of irritated admiration, an American original in the mold of P. T. Barnum, a role model whom Mr. Abel reverently acknowledged.
Today, in the internet age, anyone can be a Nigerian prince. In Mr. Abel’s time, however, the hoaxer’s art — involving intricate planning, hiring actors, donning disguises, printing official-looking letterheads, staging news conferences and having the media swallow the story hook, line and sinker — entailed, for better or worse, a level of old-time craftsmanship whose like will almost certainly not be seen again.
I recommend reading the whole thing. It’s an engagingly-written look back on an interesting man’s life.
Thing the second, I made a sign-up form for the Minecraft whitelist, so, if that’s for you, yay.
What’s everybody doing to unwind tonight? I might watch teevee or keep working on that Vinge book.
NotMax
Oh shoot, was it my day to be wound? Missed it yet again.
Oh well, c’est la vie.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: har.
frosty
Why, I’m reading Balloon Juice to unwind, doesn’t everyone?
No more work for the week, so it’s kinda like Friday.. Heading to see my older spawn tomorrow who has a job with low seniority so his weekends are Wednesday and Thursday. We’ll catch up and then spend the weekend hoping for good weather and a ride on a rail trail
Bjacques
The ReSearch “Pranks” issue had an interview with him. As Private Eye would say, he has joined the 94 Club.
NotMax
Did pop into WoW for the first time in a couple of weeks. Primarily to catch up on getting the latest updates installed. While was there anyway, took my only guy who isn’t maxed on xp out to do the one and only quest of the most skimpy WoW holiday, the Harvest Festival. He does only holidays and the faire and is at 101 (and a half) from only those.
Steeplejack (phone)
Which Vinge book did you decide on?
Yutsano
Out of free FTFNYT views.
Not giving the Sulzbergers any more money.
Yes I’m bitter.
Major Major Major Major
@Steeplejack (phone): Just finished it. A Deepness in the Sky, chosen on account of my friend loaned it to me.
NotMax
@Yutsano
Here ya go.
R-Jud
“Read this obituary to feel better” is a very 2018 thing.
Major Major Major Major
@R-Jud: We are all goths now
NotMax
Good opportunity to mention again an engaging documentary about that NYT department, Obit. Just now checked and still available on Amazon Prime. Well worth the time spent watching.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: second.
I’m off to bed!
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
I suggest the Epic Browser. Seems to defeat every newspaper limit I’ve come across (and I try not to abuse it, but there are cases where newspapers just don’t deserve any money from me):
https://www.epicbrowser.com/
The Dangerman
Damn it. No edit. No Nym save. I’m going to bed to dream of Yeti’s (in a good way, hopefully).
Mel
I’m working on the planning stages of a squirrel costume for Halloween.
It’s a long story, but my sibling has had a nightmare year trying to deal with the most adorably perky but diabolically clever and destructive horde of squirrels to ever set clawed feet inside a roof…and a garret… and then a garage… and then a gazebo roof… and then destroy five bird feeders, have babies in a brand new grill, and gleefully mock all efforts to trap them with Hav-A-Hart relocation traps baited with delicious nut assortments and other goodies.
Multiple hundreds of dollars later, for three separate humane trap and release critter service efforts, and then a pricey clean out and repair of the attic, the outbuildings and the edge of the roof, he is squirrel free.
The squirrel mafia had literally pried off fish scale style cedar siding pieces and made little rodent “luv tunnels” in the rafters and attics, filled with candy wrappers, nutshells, potato chip bags, various bits of decaying produce purloined from neighborhood compost bins, and weirdly, astonishing amounts of squirrel shit, multiple nests, and weirdly, a Barbie doll sized plastic blow-up mattress and a doll’s sequined bikini top, likely stolen from a dollhouse during a neighborhood garage sale- those squirrels damn sure knew how to party, I will grant them that.
Anyway, my sib is going to get a well-timed, ominous note tacked to his door the week before Halloween from the “Squirrel Liberation Front”, and then a doorbell ring at the end of beggar’s night, from a giant squirrel with glowing red eyes and fangs.
Jay
@Mel:
LMFAO,
Thank you
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mel:
You sick bastard! Why don’t you go all the way and make it a clown squirrel?!
Mart
Today, in the internet age, anyone can be a Nigerian prince. In Mr. Abel’s time, however, the hoaxer’s art — involving intricate planning, hiring actors, donning disguises, printing official-looking letterheads, staging news conferences and having the media swallow the story hook, line and sinker — entailed, for better or worse, a level of old-time craftsmanship whose like will almost certainly not be seen again.
Mel
No edit button!
Squirrel feces = not weird in squirrel invasion zones.
Tiny blowup mattresses and wee sequined tops that look like they came straight out of a bad 80s hair metal video – very unsettling!!
Mart
Need to work on my block quotes.
Steve in the ATL
@Major Major Major Major: I know it’s the style of the day, but I still refuse to accept “loan” as a verb. It’s “lend”, people.
Onion on belt, off my lawn, etc.
Mel
@Steeplejack (phone): Hell, no! Clowns are my phobia! When my brither and I were tiny kids, my mother bought me a hideous one piece that had a distinctly Pennywise-ish clown emblazoned on the front. It reduced me to a sobbing ball of hysteria.
My brother has a picture of us in the Florida Keys, on a beautiful shoreline, me, age 3, wailing in the throes of clown terror while he’s trying to cheer me up and distract me from the nightmare bathing suit with, of all things, a huge plastic alligator toy.
I have a feeling that I might get a Pennywise visit next Halloween after this year’s squirrel themed All Hallow’s Eve week.
frosty
@Mel: Squirrel Liberation Front! LOL!
My squirrel tale (tail?): We had our camping trailer parked next to the alley behind our house and noticed that the wheel chocks had been chewed. Then later on that the plastic propane tank cover had chewing marks. Then when I went to fill up the water tank on our last vacation, it leaked out of the discharge hose. Squirrel teeth. Finally, as we got ready to trade it in. teeth marks on the propane hose.
Our new trailer is in a U-Store-It place with fences. Hopefully squirrel proof.
frosty
@Mel:
Oh yeah, you’re doomed as doomed can be!
Mel
@frosty: No doubt about it. The year that I was scheduled to have my jawbone grafted / rebuilt along with some other pretty hideous oral surgery after Halloween, he chose a medieval barber-surgeon costume.
This has been a long-running holiday tradition with the two of us. It beats tacky Christmas sweaters by a longshot.
NotMax
Great googly moogly, I want to marry the sauce made along with the brisket in the Instant Pot.
opiejeanne
@The Dangerman: But no mushroom-headed Toad, I hope.
opiejeanne
@Mel: Heh heh. I wish I could be there. Pictures of your costume, please.
And the stuff in the attic sounds more like rats than squirrels, or maybe ours are just not that into sparkly Barbie clothes and candy wrappers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack (phone):
No need to get profane.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mel:
You’re OK in my book.
Mel
@opiejeanne: Definitely squirrels, and in amazing numbers. It’s as if they put out a squirrel Facebook blast, advertising a year long house party. A couple of my sib’s neighbors were gaving similar squirrel invasion woes for the first time as well last year, so something must have either been drawing them to the area ir disturbing a not-too-distant habitat area, we figure.
Two of the critter guys said that they had seen a few shiny baubles in squirrels’ nest areas over the past couple of years, but that they hadn’t seen ithat phenomenon until recent years. One of the critter service owners said that he wondered if squirrels were getting conditioned to associate shiny things with food wrappers (like the silvery lining of cereal barcwrappers and chip bags, and aluminum take-out containers) which might contain tasty morsels.
opiejeanne
@Mel: We have an oddball local squirrel in our yard, possibly a sub-species of Western Gray Squirrels, as well as Western Gray Squirrels. They aren’t as big and their tails are a bit scraggly. I can’t remember what the local name for them is but it was noted in a leaflet when we moved here 8 years ago.
They seem to be very upset when they notice us in the garden and scold us a lot. I have put out peanuts for them but I’m not sure one of the rats isn’t getting them.
katep
My favorite NYT obit – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/obituaries/elizabeth-hawley-who-chronicled-everest-treks-dies-at-94.html.
Ms. Hawley’s indomitable spirit persisted until the very end. When she was admitted to the hospital last week, she brought four books and joked with doctors that she “didn’t die last night.”
I have a great fear of dying before I read everything I need or want to read, which is bound to happen I guess.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Steve in the ATL:
Get your comma inside your quotation mark, you heathen.
Major Major Major Major
@Steeplejack (phone): Dead thread, I know, but I just wanted to say that that is actually a matter of regional variation. Now, he isn’t Steve in the LHR, so he’s regionally incorrect, but…