Dukes of Worcester
Anyone out there know who these guys are? My new local heros.
City pools to get the deep six
I have such fond memories of summers spent in the Bennett Field pool, wallowing in the urine of my fellow Worcesterites; summers to which I credit my incredible immune system. Now, sadly, for today’s youth the ol’ swimming toilets may be running dry. Details are slim, but today’s T&G has the story of the cities plan to shutter the city pools and replace them with “spray parks”. I can’t be the only one trudging through their first cup of coffee, working with an image of Gary Rosen, in his swimming trunks and a big floppy hat, spraying down crying kids with a 100 foot hose in the parking lot of the new Wal-Mart while their parents shop for mini-blinds.
Now I know everyone is going to be up in arms over pool closings; THINK OF THE CHILDREN! But lets be honest, they really are not fun. Public baths in an urban area are an epidemiological disaster in the making. They should have been closed and leased out as skate parks 15 years ago. In the meantime, instead of building what are described in the article as “vertical fire hydrants”, why not just go back to the good old days and open the damn hydrants? It’ll be like a water park on every street corner, we’ll just cap them with a Mr. Wiggles sprinkler head and call it a day.
As for the absurd, yet obligatory, money quotes which by local ordinance must accompany any T&G story involving children; we have this one from Councilor At-Large Dennis L. Irish:
“If we cut those summer youth and recreational activities, we’ll see an accompanying increase in crime and violence whose cost is far greater,”
Right, because when children wake up on a sweltering August day, their only options in life are doing the breast stroke in a public toilet, or grabbing a gun and murdering some bitch. Amazing how otherwise wonderful folks can simplify the world with such foolish thought processes. Following this logic, all Iraq needs now is a Ministry of Aquatic Recreation and our soldiers can come home leaving a few Naval Officers behind to act as lifeguards. Must be an election year.
Money quote number two comes courtesy of the Commander from the 1st Worcester Batshitinsaine Brigade, our booze hating buddy, parks commissioner Gary J. Vecchio:
“Not opening the pools and beaches cannot be allowed to happen,”
Hmmmm, I wonder what we could do to fund the pools and beaches, Gary. Let me think. What goes perfectly with water and sun, in the summer? Is there maybe a product we could sell? Something that could maybe make the pools and beaches profitable and more inviting at the same time?
I wonder…
ADULT SWIM!
Kids, outta the pool!
That other redevelopment project
While it seems everyone in Worcester is talking about what isn’t happening with the City Square project, not much has been said about the redevelopment project now under way just down the street. Today’s T&G has a great piece on the parcel of downtown land most recognizable as home of the former David Burwick Furniture Co and its current owner David Rodriguez-Pinzon.
The development, slated for completion in fall 2008, will have 185 mixed-income condominium and apartment units in four buildings and at least 5,000 square feet of commercial space, he said.
Charlie Wilson’s War
I don’t normally get excited about movies still in production, which is probably why I had no idea this was being made. In my opinion, the book goes down as one of the most incredible, well told accounts of U.S. involvement in the former Soviet Unions war in Afghanistan. Try as I might to convince people to read it, I usually just get a funny look as if to say ‘what war?’.
Anyway, I hate Tom Hanks with a passion. Every movie he’s made since Joe Versus the Volcano has been an abysmal exercise in gratuitous time wasting. Hopefully he can redeem himself with this one; the story deserves nothing but the best.
From Publishers Weekly
Put the Tom Clancy clones back on the shelf; this covert-ops chronicle is practically impossible to put down. No thriller writer would dare invent Wilson, a six-feet-four-inch Texas congressman,liberal on social issues but rabidly anti-Communist, a boozer, engaged in serial affairs and wheeler-dealer of consummate skill. Only slightly less improbable is Gust Avrakotos, a blue-collar Greek immigrant who joined the CIA when it was an Ivy League preserve and fought his elitist colleagues almost as ruthlessly as he fought the Soviet Union in the Cold War’s waning years. In conjunction with President Zia of Pakistan in the 1980s, Wilson and Arvakotos circumvented most of the barriers to arming the Afghan mujahideen-distance, money, law and internal CIA politics, to name a few. Their coups included getting Israeli-modified Chinese weapons smuggled into Afghanistan, with the Pakistanis turning a blind eye,and the cultivation of a genius-level weapons designer and strategist named Michael Vickers, a key architect of the guerrilla campaign that left the Soviet army stymied. The ultimate weapon in Afghanistan was the portable Stinger anti-aircraft missile, which eliminated the Soviet’s Mi-24 helicopter gunships and began the train of events leading to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and its satellites. A triumph of ruthless ability over scruples, this story has dominated recent history in the form of blowback: many of the men armed by the CIA became the Taliban’s murderous enforcers and Osama bin Laden’s protectors. Yet superb writing from Crile, a 60 Minutes producer, will keep even the most vigorous critics of this Contra-like affair reading to the end.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
