A Salty Salute

I'm doing my best not to sweat on the keyboard. We've made the full-on jump from wet, chilly spring into triple H (hazy, hot and humid for you non-TV weathercast watchers). All week, it's been in the 80s and 90s and sticky. Hey, beats the crappy stuff we had all through May.

As I while away the hours before a softball doubleheader...

• It's nice to see our homeland security measures have been so impressively beefed up since 9/11. Apparently, when a guy shows up at the border with a chainsaw and a sword, that in and of itself doesn't mean he's forbidden from entering the country. I guess it was his gentle demeanor that convinced the customs agents to let him through. Yeesh.
• Ah, the InterWeb. Every so often, you come along something inexplicably hilarious like this (audio required). That was my favorite catchphrase a few years back.
• The charges against Alex Lifeson of Rush stemming from an altercation on New Year's Eve a few years back have been reduced after a plea bargain, but he's not letting it rest, filing a lawsuit against the hotel, its security director, and some sheriff's deputies. Give 'em hell, Alex.
• Speaking of Canadian good rock, the power popsters of Sloan are touring behind their excellent greatest-hits package, A-Sides Win. They're coming to TT the Bear's in Cambridge next week and I'll be there. TT's is a tiny club so it should be pretty entertaining. Not to mention hotter than balls.
• Thanks to VH1, the station with an incessant need to compile lists, here is the most useless list of all time: Top 100 Child Stars, with Gary Coleman coming in the top spot. Hell, I used to watch me plenty of the Diff'rent Strokes as a kid. And its truly awful spinoff, Hello Larry, although that show wasn't on for too long. Just long enough to become a Johnny Carson punchline for years to come. The other, much more successful spinoff of Diff'rent Strokes was, of course, The Facts of Life. But then, you knew that already. Did you know that Gary Coleman had his own Saturday morning cartoon for a couple of years? I didn't, or least I've blocked it out of my memory.

Okay, gotta run. More later.