SfanGoch

That looks like an interesting kit. I'll have to pick one up.

Hey, if Led Zeppelin can steal other people's material, why should the common man be held to a different standard?

That's the ticket, Carl. Sometimes, it's the personal satisfaction and enjoyment that collecting anything brings you; and, that, in itself, is invaluable. You can always pass it on to your kids, grandkids and so on. By the time your grandkids have grandkids, they might have something which will, indeed, be worth oodles of do-re-mi.

Here's the rub. Just about everybody today buys stuff (comics, figures, etc.) hoping to get a leg up on the collectibles market. They bag the comics, keep diecasts, figures and other things in hermetically sealed containers in order to maintain that "brand new" look in the hope that they'll be able to retire on what these tchotchkes will sell for in the future. The problem is that these items are massed produced today in large numbers and there are at least 100,000 people doing this. What made items like the old Red Lines so valuable is that most were bought by kids and were played with until they fell apart or their mothers decided to throw them out, along with all those now priceless comics and baseball cards, when they cleaned up their kids' bedrooms. You might want to think this over.

Sorry. I was looking at some Stones photos and they sort of looked like they were dead.

Don't forget Charlie Watts and Keith Richards.

How was he able to perform in Atlanta, where it was noted he was fine, allegedly develop "flu-like" symptoms ninety minutes into his flight back to Minnesota that same day which required emergency medical treatment in Illinois, then appear in good health at a party at Paisley Park on Saturday? One's physical condition doesn't fluctuate from feeling well to feeling bad and back to feeling well in such a short period of time when one has the flu. Out of the two theories as to the cause of death, you can safely scratch "flu" as the cause.

Aw, go on. You know perfectly well that the really entertaining topics (religion and politics) are off the table.

They offer a Chicago Bearodynamics course during the fall semester.

Are you wearing a wristwatch? Can I have it?

Fox referenced a TMZ report that he was treated for an opiate overdose six days ago. That's why he was taken off his private jet and hospitalized.

Some sentimental developer will buy the property and construct high end apartment towers resembling Prince's platform boots with national chain flagship stores in the five level shopping atrium to be built in the heels..

Probably as much as "Hogan's Heroes" does with a real POW camp.

That wasn't the cause of the breakdown in education. "Welcome Back, Kotter" was based on Gabe Kaplan's high school experiences as a remedial class student in the late '50s and early '60s. The character types in the show have been around in NYC schools since the early days of this city. "Blackboard Jungle", from 1955, was one of the first films to highlight the growing problem of juvenile delinquency and gangs. Irving Shulman's "The Amboy Dukes", which I mentioned in another thread, was novel written about street gangs in 1947. Shulman also wrote a novelization of "West Side Story", which was about gangs and was published in 1961. Place proper credit where it belongs, in the laps of teachers. The problem started when teachers unionized and were more concerned with their own self-interests at the expense of their obligations and duties as educators. Political activism to further a self-serving agenda is literally far more rewarding.

With the exception of first and second grades, my son has attended parochial school since Pre-K. Why? Because the curriculum in NYC public schools is substandard. Through eighth grade, public school students are two years behind academically students who attend private/parochial schools. When he was in first grade in public school, his teacher thought it was more important to write their thoughts explaining why Obama was a great president instead of teaching them arithmetic and vocabulary. BTW, that assignment was given to the class the day after Election Day in 2008. I went to the school and told the teacher, parent coordinator and principal that my kid is going to school to get an education, not to be politically indoctrinated. I also informed these stooges that under no circumstance will he complete that nonsense. As a student, one can only work with what you are given. The school didn't have money in its budget to purchase textbooks for the students; yet, had $21,740 to pay for pilates instructors so the teachers could unwind after an arduous 5 hour 30 minute day in the trenches. Also, no amount of parental participation can overcome the ineptitude of the teacher(s) and sub-standard curricula. If a teacher doesn't teach, students can't learn. You are generalizing. Not all school systems are equal. That analogy isn't apropos regarding NYC public schools. The Dept. of Education is virtually run by the United Federation of Teachers. The UFT has more control than one would expect from a union. The union is in the bag with Mayor Bill de Blasio. The union contributed $4.7 million in 2014 to political activities, most of which was to support de Blasio's agenda against charter schools and to block a plan to provide tax benefits to aid parochial schools. The only things that public school teachers are concerned with are protecting their turf, getting tenured and collecting that pension cheese. If a teacher is charged with misconduct, he/she isn't fired. It's impossible to fire a tenured teacher in NYC. They are placed into reassignment centers, aka "rubber rooms", where they spend 6 hours 20 minutes a day sleeping, listening to music, doing crossword puzzles and collect full salary, sometimes for years. All this goof off time is counted toward their pensions. So, save that sob story about the overworked and underpaid teachers. The bums in my city aren't earning a thin dime of what they get paid.

Neither did Prince.

I would say that NYC public school teachers are overpaid for what the students get out of the classroom. Check out their salary schedule. The joker in the deck is that a rookie cop makes less than a first year teacher. NYC teachers' pensions aren't based on what one pays in. They're based on years on the job. Check out the pensions here. From that list, I'd say your math is definitely wrong. Maybe you associate with the wrong teachers because that list contains a whole lot of teachers who collected MILLIONS after retiring, including a good number working on their THIRD million only fifteen years after retiring. A regular patrol officer or firefighter won't even come close to those numbers. By experience, I am a vet. My knowledge of civil service comes from the fact that my brother-in-law is a retired cop, my nephew is a bus driver and my niece is a public school teacher. Additionally, I can read.

Aside from noir and old pulp crime novels, I'm not into fiction. I do like reading the works of Theodore Dressler and Stephen Crane, though. Two books you'd probably enjoy reading are "The Pale Blonde of Sands Street" by William Chapman White and "The Amboy Dukes" by Irving Shulman. "The Amboy Dukes" was considered required reading (not by H.S. English departments, though ) by every teenaged boy in NYC for years. Richard "Ramfins59" could attest to that. FYI, Ted Nugent named his band after the title of this book.

Yup. Think Cornell Woolrich written in Swedish.

We live in an amazing country. People in Europe can speak one or more languages in addition to their native tongues. Here, we can barely manage with just Engrish. "Teutonic French"........got a nice ring to it. In my neighborhood, there is Quay Street. Ask any ten people what "quay" means and you'll get ten wrong answers. A quay is a reinforced wharf, usually constructed with masonry, for the loading and unloading of ships. Those same people will pronounce it as "kway". Wrong again. It's pronounced "key". Everybody is familiar with Baron Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben . Why, there's Steuben Glass, a Steuben County, NY and a Steuben Street in Brooklyn. Yet, nobody pronounces it correctly. Everybody and his brother pronounces it "Stoo-BENN". Everybody except Germans and German speakers who pronounce it "SHTOY-bin". Then, there is the case of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Revolutionary War hero, designer of the fortifications at West Point and who, in addition to having a street in the Borough of Churches bearing his name, has both a mustard and bridge named in his honor. NOBODY can pronounce his name. Every traffic copter reporter says "Kos-KEE-os-ko". It's actually "Kos-Choos-ko". Don't get me started on the streets named after the original Dutch and French Huguenot settlers around here.

Bara á fimmtudögum.

Betra en í ósköpunum út úr mér. Ég tók ekki eftir nein hreim í skrifa þinna.

Wanna hear some great accents? Listen to Jackie Mason, born in Sheboygan; Lawrence Welk, born in Strasburg, N.D. and Stanley Myron Handelman, born in Brooklyn and sounded like Bernie Sanders doing a Jackie Mason imitation.

Actually, growing up in Jamaica, NY, Donald does have a perceptible "Queens" accent, as does his brother, Robert, and his father, Fred. I worked for Trump and interacted with him daily. You can hear the accent whenever he uses a word with a short "a" in it. It's nasally and a somewhat drawn out. That particular accent was found all over Queens and all the way to western Nassau County, where a lot of Queens residents moved. It's not as widespread as it was thirty to forty years ago; but, you can still hear it in some neighborhoods. Bernie's is influenced by a combination of good old Brooklynese, Yiddish and Eastern European (Polish, Russian, etc.) He grew up in the midwood section which has had a very large population of Eastern European Jews since the early 20th Century. Most of my teachers in Brooklyn Tech H.S. who were from Midwood talked and sounded like Bernie. They always dropped the "r", pronouncing words like "car" as "cah". This was in imitation of the pseudo-aristocratic "London" accent that was in vogue in the early 20th Century. It was supposed to impart a contrived, supposed sense of sophistication. You can hear it listening to FDR, certain actors and actresses from the 30s through the mid "50s. That's why Bernie pronounces "millionaires and billionaires" as "millionahs and billionahs". This accent pretty much died out almost everywhere after WWII, coinciding with the decline of the British Empire, and folks started to roll their "r" again.. Everywhah, except in Midwood.

I have a good ear for accents and dialects and can do it intentionally to annoy or confuse that particular individual if it suits me at the moment. I've mimicked accents since I was a kid. There was plenty of material to practice with growing up in Brooklyn. I mimic everything from Newyorican Spanglish to Yiddish-accented Brooklynese. I attended my son's Confirmation practice Wednesday and was imitating one of the Polish priests. The other parent I was sitting with was cracking up in the pew. So was one of the other Polish priests, who looks is a dead ringer for Kurt Jurgens, standing behind me! Yesterday afternoon after the actual Confirmation Mass, as we were waiting around to get a photo with the bishop, somebody behind me said, "So, you are de fanyi boy, eh? Mebye you can provide for me de voiceover for homily eef I have de laryngitis, yes? Kurt Jurgens ratted me out. Journalist Robert MacNeil wrote an excellent book and hosted a fantastic nine part documentary called "The Story of English" which go into great detail explaining the history and evolution of the language and how the numerous English accents heard around the world developed.