Vegas Sunday Sillies

My screen-shot and photo folder runneth over, so time to share the smiles.

Miles' sister sent this card, which gave me a chuckle...


...as did this Bizarro cartoon from a few weeks ago.


See, the balloon dog pooped balloon turds and that's funny, get it?

Those wacky folks at The View section of the R-J are back with more weird, dissonant art to go with their articles. See, it's a piece on how real bones are dangerous for dogs and the suggestion is do give them smaller treats so, naturally...


...the photo they select shows a dog chewing a plastic bone. Nowhere in the piece is that alternative suggested -- perhaps because chewing a plastic bone really doesn't do anything to improve dental health -- and the caption under the photo is irrelevant to the photo shown. Click on the image above to see it better.

Meanwhile, over in the sports pages, imagine my thrilling surprise when I saw that the New York Mets are on a 524-game winning streak!


OK, OK. I get that it's a five-game winning streak, but someone over there in the Review-Journal sports section needs to realign this grid. Pittsburgh Pirates fans are suffering enough without momentarily thinking their team has lost 914 games in a row, y'know?

I was in Boise last week, as I Tweeted, getting my state capital fix. The Idaho Capitol was closed for construction and renovation last time I was there, so I got a new money shot of me with the building since this was a more proper visit:


Oh, wait. That's the most obscure, weird artifact I've seen in a state exhibit anywhere. Look! It's the ex-first lady's fake diamond belt! Woo hoo!

Here's the real shot:


Meanwhile, even in Boise I couldn't quite shake the Vegas media. I mean, Jane Ann Morrison even has a road named for her!


I needed to book a room in Boise for my first night, and this one hotel site wanted me to "sumbit." Dunno what that means, but it sounds slightly naughty or crude.


As for the next image, I've asked this before, but it's worth repeating: WHY in this day and age do we have to wade through these state-name menus AND the ZIP code?


Why is the ZIP code good enough for Google but not for these archaic web forms?

And finally, Strip guest host Amy Turner wanted to know if...


...Wayne Brady's fly is open in this Leila Navidi photo from a June 14 report by John Katsilometes in the Las Vegas Sun. Click on it to enlarge and take a good look. It sure is dicey.

What I Did In Boise

The piece I went to Boise for, a profile of a deaf man whose life has been made into a biopic starring Ron Livingston and Michael Sheen, appears in USA Today tomorrow. It's already online.

Disabled war veteran's activism forges onto film

By Steve Friess
Special for USA TODAY

BOISE — His story was about to be told up on the big screen, but as Richard Pimentel stood to thank his friends and fellow activists for coming to this preview screening in his hometown, he realized his legacy was all around him.

There were people in wheelchairs who, a scant 15 years ago, wouldn't have had ramps to enter the theater. There were also people with hearing disabilities who wouldn't have had devices providing special amplification, and blind people wouldn't have been able to listen to an audio description of the Pimentel biopic Music Within.

Here's the rest.

The film also stars Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair in "The Queen," as a man with cerebral palsy. It is an amazing performance. I may put out the audio of that chat and the one with Ron Livingston (Sex and the City's Berger), none of which made it into the USAT story, on the podcast feed.

Other Stuff About Boise

Other than the disappointment of not seeing the capitol, Boise was cute and pleasant, very chilly and cloudy my first day but sunny enough today for a walk along the Boise River greenbelt amid the golden foliage. Unfortunately, my camera's battery was exhausted by then.

A few fun observations. Along West Idaho Street, one of the main cafe and dining districts downtown, it was refreshing to see that the Starbucks seemed constantly empty and two locally owned coffee shops, the Flying M and Java Downtown, were both packed at all times.

It was nice that the Boisans (Boiseganders?) are such pet-loving people (see above left) who are so excited by their libraries (see right). I especially enjoyed the graphic and wording on the pet sign. It notes that you should pick up and leash your dog (I think they mean pick up poop and leash the dog, not pick up dog and leash the poop, huh?) "unless otherwise posted," but I didn't see any place where it said, "Dog poop welcome! Drop and leave!" Also, if you look carefully at this sign you can see that this dog is clearly leashing its owner and not the other way around.

You wonder what's in Boise for me. Well, I was up there working on three stories, at least one of which I'll definitely get published and the other two are in a bit of flux at the moment. No, none have to do with a certain toe-tapping senator. I'm not really at liberty to say what's what, but one of the more timely and newsworthy things that's in Boise is the National Interagency Fire Center, which is essentially the spinal cord of the massive firefighting efforts going on at the moment in Southern California. This is where the nation's supplies of hoses, weather gauges, radio equipment and other fire gear is dispatched from, where the folks are who coordinate getting, say, firefighters from Las Vegas to go to San Diego. It's the home of the Smoke Jumpers, essentially a federally funded daredevil program in which firefighters are trained to parachute into the middle of hard-to-access wildfires. To your right are several pieces of equipment and clothing returned from the California front for cleaning and repair.

I sat in on a live video conference briefing between personnel there and folks from Washington D.C., including the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, formerly an Idaho governor, as Friday's strategy for battling the devastating conflagrations was devised and revised.

Anyhow, that's that except one last little thing. This has to be the messiest desk I've seen, and I'm a journalist...

First Larry Craig, Now THIS?

As many of you know, I've got this thing for state capitals and their capitols. I had been to 23 of them -- capitols, that is, not capitals -- and so I essentially manufacture reasons for work or fun to get out to the ones I'm missing and check them out. That is how, in the past year or so, I've made it to Salem, St. Paul, Juneau and now Boise.

But, Idaho, you disappoint me so. The capitol was closed for massive renovation which involves adding a pair of wings UNDERGROUND. They needed more space, it seems, but they didn't want to attach something modern and unsightly to the classic old structure. So now I must return to Boise again in about three years to see the INSIDE of what looked like a beautiful 208-foot-tall Greco-Roman building based obviously on the U.S. Capitol.

So here's my Boise Trip Money Shot, taken with my cam on auto-click propped on a stick on a picnic bench because a straight couple was too busy mauling one another in public to help me:


But I can't really count it because I didn't get to go inside. I do, however, get to mark off another state I'd never been to, leaving now only Hawaii, Montana and Wyoming untouched by the Friesster.

Boise Bound Later Today

Yes, continuing with my effort to hit every state capital, I'm off to Boise today for two nights to work on at least two and maybe three stories. So my apologies if I can't post as much, although traveling does tend to present opportunities.