At last, a real last call

Out here in the dusty Mexican borderlands, we’ve just been given the Grand Go-ahead, permission to keep on truckin’ so-to-speak as the liquor sales now extend to 2 a.m.
And to think the Mormon-dominated state Legislature passed the law on its first attempt, pushed by the unlikely argument that it’s a tourism bill. That’s right, Vegas and San Diego get all the conventions instead of Phoenix because their last call is 2 a.m. Right. Still, when just four of the 50 largest U.S. cities had a 1 a.m. last call and three of them - Phoenix, Tucson and Mesa - are in Arizona, things needed to change.
Personally, I’m thrilled, though I’ve made it ‘til 2 a.m. just once in the week it’s been in effect. It’s great for us Downtowners, in the middle of three distinct bar districts. National touring bands will be able to play full sets. Leaving work at 11 p.m., I’ll no longer have to rush to get in a decent amount of stool time.
So just what happened on the fateful night? Or the first weekend? Apparently not too much. Here’re some excerpts from newspapers around the state:

TUCSON - A voice broke into the music at Maloney's Tavern early this morning and delivered the message marking a change in Arizona nightlife:
“It's one o'clock in the morning. And we are not closed.”
At 12:01 a.m. today, a state law approved in May took effect and pushed “last call for alcohol back” back one hour to 2 a.m.
Tucson did not jump into the new era with both feet, a spirited hiccup and a proverbial lamp shade on the head - at least not if the scene on North Fourth Avenue was any indication.
Even on this often-rambunctious corridor of college bars, last night's scene could best be described as sporadic festiveness.

TUCSON - The night dragged on early Saturday as crowds faded and thinned at university-area bars during Tucson's first weekend of the state's new 2 a.m. last call.
“People aren't making it until 2,” Keith Caywood, 22, a supervisor at O'Malley's on Fourth, 247 N. Fourth Ave., said just after after 1 a.m.
There, the bar was emptier than it was around midnight under the old formula. Caywood added that crowds had been dying out between 1 and 1:30 a.m. since the new law took effect last Tuesday.
The scene was similar up and down North Fourth Avenue and Downtown, where other bars saw crowds dwindle after 1 a.m.
After three days of a 2 a.m. closing time, Congress had seen patrons clear out pretty quickly after last call, O'Brien said.
“Everyone lost their steam pretty early. They don't know how to pace themselves,” he said.

PHOENIX - Leave it to the 20-somethings to break in Arizona's extra hour of elbow bending.
While millions of Arizonans slept, thousands of young bar warriors strapped on their beer goggles until 2 a.m. Wednesday, shattering the old 1 a.m. last-call barrier like a champagne glass falling on marble.
“I love it,” said Roy McDowell, 23, out with friends at Anderson's Fifth Estate in Scottsdale. “It's an hour more of drinking, an hour more of fun.”
Bar owners and taxi companies were loving it, too, with various businesses up 20 to 60 percent over a typical night early in the week.
Still, law enforcement agencies statewide reported “nothing out of the ordinary” on the highways, said Michael Hegarty, deputy director of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety.
At bars and restaurants across the Valley, crowds enjoyed the extra hour with countdowns at 1 a.m., champagne toasts and shouts of “Happy New Law!”
Aside from the crowd at Amsterdam, Phoenix residents could have heard a pin drop early Wednesday. The sidewalks seemed to have rolled up, and many bars were nearly empty.
The scene was quiet in Ahwatukee Foothills, where seven dedicated holdouts clung to their barstools inside Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery.

TEMPE - Police: a quiet night for first 2 a.m. last call. Weekend will be true test of extra hour's effect on public.
Local authorities dealt with the same problems at a different hour Tuesday night as Tempe bars kept the taps flowing until 2 a.m. for the first time.
Police officials from ASU and Tempe said they did not expect that an extra hour of liquor sales would lure more bar-hoppers downtown.

PRESCOTT – The sidewalk along Whiskey Row appeared largely deserted early Sunday morning even though bars tested a new law allowing them to serve liquor until 2 a.m. and close at 2:30.
Whiskey Row and adjoining streets also seemed peaceful, except for a fight involving several people that broke out at 1:45 a.m. in the 200 block of West Gurley Street.

YUMA - Police spokeswoman Leanne Worthen said there would not be any extra officers on the streets, but a few officers would start their shifts later in the day and stay on duty until about 3 a.m.
“This provides us a little more overlap that takes us to 3 a.m.,” Worthen said. “This may or may not continue.”
The law took effect Wednesday, meaning bars could stay open until 2 a.m. starting that day. Worthen said there was no difference in the number of incidents reported to police.
The officers working later into the evening will still be doing normal patrols, rather than focusing on locations serving alcohol, Worthen said. She did not anticipate any extra problems because of the new hours.
“It's hard to say how people will respond to (the new hours),” Worthen said. “I don't know that there will be any difference.”
Rick Good, owner of Jimmie Dee's Bar, 38 West 2nd St., said his bar closed at 1 a.m. Wednesday, even though it could have stayed open later.

SIERRA VISTA - The tardy “last call for alcohol” this morning wasn't a lapse in judgment from your local barkeep.
Today marked the beginning of a one-hour extension for liquor sales statewide.
“It probably makes more sense in a big city where there are shift workers,” said Kevin Cole, owner of Bisbee's Hot Licks Barbecue and Blues Saloon.
Cole didn't anticipate a rise in bar-related problems because of the extra hour.
“If somebody is going to drink to excess, they're going to do it by 1 a.m., as easily as by 2 a.m.,” he suggested.
Sierra Vista Capt. Mike Cline said he isn't worried about any increased local problems from the bar crowd.
Since Sierra Vista has no singular night-life district, no changes in shift staffing will take place, Cline said.

For those of you out there who aren’t familiar with (or don’t remember) a 1 a.m. last call this must all sound ridiculous. I’ve been out in cities all over the country, sometimes calling it a night before midnight, sometimes stretching past 3 a.m.
It’s all about the options, baby.

Changes

Welcome to two new Time and Space Loungers... Mister Arnie and Anne Needs a Cool Name.
Freaktown will be joining soon...
Sit for a while. Enjoy.

Bear drinks beer...

Not only did a did a black bear in Washington state drink enough beer to pass out, he made sure it was the good beer:

BAKER LAKE, Wash. - When state Fish and Wildlife agents recently found a black bear passed out on the lawn of Baker Lake Resort, there were some clues scattered nearby - dozens of empty cans of Rainier Beer.
The bear apparently got into campers' coolers and used his claws and teeth to puncture the cans. And not just any cans.
"He drank the Rainier and wouldn't drink the Busch beer," said Lisa Broxson, bookkeeper at the campground and cabins resort east of Mount Baker.
Fish and Wildlife enforcement Sgt. Bill Heinck said the bear did try one can of Busch, but ignored the rest. The beast then consumed about 36 cans of Rainier.
A wildlife agent tried to chase the bear from the campground but the animal just climbed a tree to sleep it off for another four hours. Agents finally herded the bear away, but it returned the next morning.
Agents then used a large, humane trap to capture it for relocation, baiting the trap with the usual: doughnuts, honey and, in this case, two open cans of Rainier.
That did the trick.
"This is a new one on me," Heinck said. "I've known them to get into cans, but nothing like this. And it definitely had a preference."

Damn, that bear's cooler than I am. I've settled for Busch all too often.

off to a bad start

I'm here now. Stuff will be forthcoming.

Exciting Democrats?

Just now getting to some of the DNC highlights. No news on the mountain is surprisingly nice. But I wish I could have seen the "Audacity of Hope" speech. That could have come from FDR or Martin Luther King. Also, I think "help is on the way" is a particularly strong message.

Funny Books

Home for the weekend and have some thoughts about comic books.

I get one of just a few reactions whenever I mention anything related to comic books. There's smug laughter, tongue in cheek appreciation, and the one I hate the most. That's when people say, "Oh yeah, I used to read comic books when I was a kid." Most recently, a Crater Lake colleague laughed off the entire medium until I loaned her some choice contemporary books. It really got me worked up thinking about the way people could toss an entire form of expression aside. People do it sometimes with television, labeling it all crap and sporting bumper stickers like, "Kill your television." But comics get it a hell of a lot worse. Comics are like the Jew of popular media, a good analogy considering the first comic artists and writers were Jewish immigrants. Especially after reading "Understanding Comics," by Scott McCloud, which I understand Z just read as well, there's a lot to be said for the art form that in many ways is superior to any other. Legend Alan Moore put it well in an Onion interview a couple years ago:

Now, with comics, it's a much more user-friendly medium. The reader can focus
upon one panel for as long as it takes to absorb all of the information that is
there, and then move on to the next. If they want to see whether there's some
correlation between a bit of dialogue and something that happened a couple of
scenes ago, they can, in a matter of seconds, flip back. I know that we can
rerun videos, and rewind and pause and things like that, but that's not the way
you're meant to watch a film .... I feel much more in control of the finished
work. I feel like the statement that I'm making—even though it's in a medium by
no means as glamorous or as widely recognized as film—is at least the statement
that I wanted to make .... So that's basically it. I think that there are things
that comics can do which are stunning. There are things that can't be achieved
either by literature or by movies or by paintings. Just like any art form, it's
got things that it alone can do.

True and true, and so often I think of how silly people are to grow up reading X-Men and then just give up when they age beyond the acceptable funny book childhood days. Imagine someone adoring Mary Poppins as a child then scoffing at the thought of watching The Godfather because it's kid stuff. That's what these former comic book lovers are essentially doing. I'm too old for Superman, so I refuse to read Stray Bullets. Nonsense. So, here are a few currently running comics that people with any interest in the art form ought to check out:

• Sleeper, by Ed Brubaker This is an incredible book with as complex a protagonist as any I've read on glossy page. It is a superhero book, but unlike any you've read. Holden has the power to suck pain and then release it to others. This makes his sex life particularly interesting. He's a good guy pretending to be a bad guy, and hates himself for it. Look for human weakness and lots of it in a dark, noir-ish melodrama.
• Human Target, by Peter Milligan Christopher Chance has the ability to take on anyone's identity by contract. I think of Human Target as Quantum Leap, only instead of Chance going around the country doing good deeds, he shoots people with two pistols. Plotlines have included Chance impersonating a crooked banker who faked his own death after 9-11, and a 60s revolutionary-turned suburban family man.
• Stray Bullets, by David Lapham Nothing good really ever happens in Lapham's dark world of 80s urban crime and loss of innocence. But it's fun to watch tragedy after tragedy unfold.
• Queen and Country, by Greg Rucka A prescient political/spy story, about a branch of British international operatives and their assasinations, resuces and intelligence gathering. One plotline focused on the Taliban well before Sept. 11 brought Afghanistan to the forefront.
• Anything by Daniel Clowes Ghost World is best known, but David Boring and all other issues of Eight Ball are just as good if not better. Clowes' art is human emotion on paper, and his quirky stories of moral depravity and isolation rival Camus' The Stranger.

So there are some. See also: Craig Thompson's Blankets, Alan Moore's Watchmen, Frank Miller's Sin City, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets, Rob Schrab's Scud the Disposable Assassin and so on. Read comic books, watch tv and movies, read novels, poetry, short stories and epics. It's all art. Also check out this Portland account in the Wall Street Journal a while back.

Reeling through the years

My last few days have been a curious mix of “I haven’t heard this in ages” and “hey, listen to this.”
Moving to a new place, as usual, has found roommates swapping tunes back and forth and digging out of the vaults cds that have for whatever reason been swept under the mind’s rug. Funny how certain this phenomenon is, even with the General, as close a friend as I’ve ever had and a former roommate even.
Today before work was Buddy Holly and Cake... how long has it been for either of those? And Dick Dale? Since when have I done anything more than toss on a song here or there for novelty?
The General threw on some old Nine Inch Nails... then Chuck Berry.
With cd books strewn everywhere, it’s time once again to play the new/old music game...
No, I don’t have any Patsy Cline, but here’s Mr. Chair’s hip-hop mix. Hank Williams and Stan Getz back to back? Why not?
Getting home from work Wednesday I saw Talib Kwali and Bright Eyes had been put in rotation, then saw the General’s Hendrix BBC sessions peeking out of a booklet.
Haphazard and chaotic don’t even begin to describe it...