What Would Herb Say?

Item: The San Francisco Chronicle is seriously on the ropes. May close within weeks.

Yeah, we all knew that Dead Tree was going the way of the dinosaur. But I don’t know if I’m ready for this . . .

155 Comments

Yeah, what a shame. I remember the Chronicle of the 70’s and early eighties, when babyfags like myself could find an identity in Tales of the City and in the elegant word stylings of Mr. Cain. Even the Chronicle of the early 2000’s, when I was hot and single in San Francisco and needed a good source for date ideas will be missed.

This time thing. Can’t we keep the good parts and send the bad ones the way of the Imperial Presidency?

Stop mind-melding with me! Stop it! Stop it now!

You were posting about mind-melding just as I was posting about AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

[Head ‘splodes.]

@chicago bureau: Who kicks whom out of bed in the morning?

nojo: Yes.

[nojo awkwardly pauses, looks at CB]

N: All I want to know is who is on second base?
CB: No, Who is on first!
N: I’m asking you, here! What’s the guy’s name on first base?
CB: No, What is on second!
N: Who’s on second?
CB: Who’s on first!
N: I don’t know.
CB & N (in unison): Third base!

[Nojo engages in quick, annoyed eye-rolling routine.]

@chicago bureau: And wash yer hands next time before you lay those grimy fingers on my cheeks.

Are we allowed to make suggestions regarding who gets fired?

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (a Hearst-owned paper that’s been publishing since 1863) is shutting down next month. Very sad, though it may go to an online-only format.

Our other daily is the right-wing Seattle Times, written and published almost exclusively by and for people who live in the ‘burbs that enjoy telling us Seatown libtards that we’re ruining the state/country/species with our death taxes and demands for socialized medicine and rights for humuhsekshals. FSM help me, I hope they go under soon. Barring that, I’d be fine if they just fired the insufferable editorial staff.

The way that newspapers–I’m thinking of the NYT and the Washington Post specifically–have created this bitter, adversarial relationship with their liberal readers has been truly bizarre to say the least.

I loved the Chronicle when I was in college in the Bay Area back in the ’80s. But of course, that was a completely different Chronicle, pre-Hearst.

I hated the Examiner which became the Chron. It always had right wing editorials by one of the Hearsts, WR Jr, I think.

So I don’t know if I should be sad about the Chronicles demise or not.

It’s all so… Ayn Rand, isn’t it?

In other news, UGH I MISS YOU GUYS. I want to get back here so bad, and even have a post idea that’s been eating away at me. As Jack Bauer says, THERE’S NO TIME.

(Dork alert: Do you mean Herb…Tarlek? From WKRP? I know you don’t. Like, at all. Why would you? But it’s the only name in my head.)

This notion of a nonpartisan, “objective” newspaper is only a century old, and was itself a market-driven phenomenon in the wake of high-speed printing presses. The First Amendment was conceived as protection for political pamphleteers, not publishers as we know them.

Always, always follow the money in these stories. Mass-market newspapers were distribution mechanisms for mass-market advertising — journalists were always along for the ride, although some owners were more conscientious than others.

Radio, television, packaged inserts and weekly mailed “flyers” have been eating at newspaper revenues for decades — the big money was in display ads (gone) and classified ads (going fast). At the same time, newsprint costs keep going up. There’s just no business there anymore, and we’ll have to see what emerges from the rubble.

@Original Andrew: Strangely, I just now had a salesdrone from the Times/PI (they have a joint operating agreement that covers stuff like delivery) knock on my door, hoping I’d allow him to deliver the Sunday edition for, say, 8 weeks.

Um, no. But incredibly timely!

And yet, a former colleague left academic PR a few weeks ago to go back to newspapers. I still want to know why he hasn’t been sent to a mental institution at this point.

Then again, with the way state budgets are going, I may wind up being tied to the St. Andrews’ Cross and lashed by the state, saying “please sir, thank you sir, can I have another” furloughed or worse, guillotined laid off.

Who gets the castle? And “Rosebud”?

@rptrcub: Each day I go out of my way to see if anyone avoids talking to me. Of course that may be self-defeating, as I become known as “that guy who keeps showing up everywhere“. My guvner is covering at least 40% of his proposed budget with stim funds, and there is still going to be blood on the floor.

@RomeGirl: Herb Caen. The man who coined the phrase “beatnik”. The heart and soul of the San Francisco that disappeared around 1968. No, that’s not fair. He loved The City and wrote as if the party would never end, even into the 1990s. The best of the three-dot journalists, ever…
Lookhimup…

@Ewalda: Didn’t Herb also have something to do with the naming of Irish coffee? Or some other drink?

@Ewalda:
Okay, I thought you guys were resurrecting Herb, the Burger King guy.

@nabisco:
I thought Rosebud was part of Marion Davies… Hooha.

@IanJ:

I stopped reading the Times permanently after their 2006 election endorsements, which were a total insult to the intelligence of any sane, rational person. I wasn’t the only one. I remember reading on the blogs that people who’d subscribed for decades cancelled cause they were so pissed.

Really, I have no prob with the reporters and staff there; it’s the asshole editorial board that has to go, but since that includes owner/publisher Frank Blethen, it’ll n-e-v-e-r happen. He’s not gonna fire himself, right?

nojo: The Vodka Martini, d/b/a, in his words, “Vitamin V.”

I used to really enjoy the Los Angeles Times. Their Homes section can’t be beat; it’s like crack for a house-aholic such as myself. But then awhile back they added Jonah Goldberg and then the wingnut-douchebag-gates flooded open. Was that when Sam Zell bought them? (Or is it Zell Miller? Are they the same person?) Here’s hoping he has to file for Super-Mega Bankruptcy.

@Original Andrew: I took the Times for a while back around 2000 or 2001, but I just wasn’t reading it, so I cancelled. Didn’t have a problem with it at the time, but obviously that was before the 2006 problems.

I moved to the Bay Area in 1976.
Herb functioned as an historical reference point and a major salesman of San Francisco. He knew everyone who was “anyone” and dropped their names like mad in his daily column.
Herb was the guy who perpetuated the image of SF as being the land of the ghosts of both Philip Marlowe and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, long after it was far from that.
Herb was the guy who perpetuated the myth, and provided the cohesion, for all those newcomers who ultimately wrecked his beloved City.

@chicago bureau: Well, I was close. Irish Coffee was introduced to America by Stanton Delaplane — another Chron columnist.

@nojo: I loved his column. Damn, everyone is dead, huh? Well, then, Mark Morford notwithstanding, I say the hell with the Chron.

@nabisco: At least yours will accept stim funds in the first place.

@ManchuCandidate: Was the theater critic unkind? Let me at em, let me at em, I’ll teach him a lesson.

@nmmagyar: Not that button! Oh god, oh no! You’ve launched the Stinque ICBM! Everybody, under your desks!

Hey, are we still famous? Oh, if only the mad Monk were back and holding forth on that post, we would have been like that Turkish “I love you” guy.

Speaking of diamond juice, great Achewood today; in truth, I am more like Roast Beef (the depressed cat) than Ray (my avatar):
http://achewood.com/

@ManchuCandidate: Awwww.

@Ewalda: See?! You guys are so smart like that.

@Promnight: That was a good one (for a change).
I read about a dozen webcomics religiously. The list changes with time, but it always seems to come out to a dozen, with an additional bunch I read every few weeks to catch up with previous episodes at those times.
Achewood is one that I check out every few months, because so many people like it. I’ve never been particularly impressed with it. It’s a very oldfashioned strip. I guess that’s its appeal, but not for me.

@Ewalda: What others do you recommend? Achewood is all I read.

Hope you are doing OK.

@Promnight: Not at all. Almost a flat-out rave with a somewhat perplexing undercurrent of provincial hostility. I’m just happy to see any parasite out of a job.

@Benedick: Ahh, I see, this is the cause of your response to the mention of Dorothy Parker. Understandable, completely.

@rptrcub:

Honey, come to civilization! The Mr. and I will put you up. I can’t guarantee work in Los Angeles but do I know some hot daddies for you! Plus, WeHo!

@Benedick: Don’t be greedy. You got a “clapping man.” He probably sold some tickets for you. Sure, he didn’t have a fucking clue what he was watching on stage. Consider – if he did, he might not have liked it.

Here is a completely out of left field question that just struck me. What about PG Wodehouse? Is it good or bad to be completely, absolutely childishly infatuated with everything he ever wrote? I need someday to meet another Wodehouse fanatic, that I never have, that I have never found a friend with whom to exchange Blandings Castle references, may be why I have always felt so alone in the world.

@Hose Manikin: But was he standing on his seat? Grade inflation, y’know.

@Benedick: HM is correct. An earnest clapping from the Little Man in the Chronicle is all you need in little old SF. If he is standing on his seat and clapping wildly, everyone will think tickets are already sold out and boxoffice might suffer.

@Ewalda: I moved to SF in ’83, which I think still makes me a newcomer in this province. I always thought Caen was the only reason to subscribe to the Chron, and wanted to drop it after he died. Mrs. Manikin wouldn’t let me. It still arrives every morning.

Newspapers can still be run profitably, as long as the owners are willing to accept a low margin, no growth business. It has to be a labor of love for the owners. They can’t survive if they are servicing debt or being managed to meet the expectations of a media conglomerate’s stockholders.

I expect the Chron will disappear for a while and then be back with new owners, broken unions, screwed lenders, fewer employees, and a simpler business model.

@Promnight: Crap, I had a nice list of webcomics for you and accidentally closed my browser window and lost it. I’ll put one together sometime soon and interject it into a totally unrelated discussion, as is my wont.
Re: Wodehouse: Very enjoyable. Worthy of fanatical devotion? Well, to each his own.

@Ewalda: @Hose Manikin: There was a history with a prior notice and complaints and replacements. It was fine and I think they’re doing business.

@Promnight: But my God, Wodehouse admirers are everywhere! Maybe they talk to me because I’m a Brit but srsly I meet them all the time. Unfortunately I don’t really get him but many many do. And I am told on reliable authority that I am wrong not to get him. I suspect it has to do with my innate puritanism and loathing of anything to do with the Brit class system. Interesting that he lived on Long Island and didn’t go home much. And he wrote the lyric to Bill in Showboat, a more thoroughgoing Broadway baby there never was.

I like how the Amazon ad is now full of everything and anything that has “Nojo” associated with it. Heh.

The Chron was OK so long as you didn’t care about anything that happened outside of San Francisco.

@Dodgerblue: Yup. One of the biggest “homer” papers around. At least when it came to actual news and sports.
It wasn’t really ever to be read for news. The Examiner (afternoon) always touted itself as the “news” paper. The Chron (morning) was always where you read about each day’s weird news stories from around the world. I’m serious. It was News Of The Weird every day. It was always about the laughs. Then, after the Examiner went away as a living entity, the Chron eventually just became another crappy local newspaper. Except for the Violet Blue and Mark Morford columns.

@Benedick: And he left all his money to the Bide-A-Wee home for pets, an animal shelter on Long Island. Seems to have been a sweet character, and yes, partnered with, what was it, Kern? and is credited with a hand in the creation of the american musical.

There is at least one character, often the protagonist, in each of his novels and short stories, who is gaga for the theater, and the class conflicts this consorting with the lower element was a source of much of the comedy of manners element, the better part of all his work is always the farce, though. And I never took his comedy of manners, class-based observations and situations as anything but very subtle ridicule.

Bertie Wooster himself, how can he be anything but a send-up of the upper-class twit, the Python “Upper Class Twit of the Year” competition was nothing but a gaggle of Berties.

And at the same time it was fascinating to see even a parodied view of the manners of that class, even, and especially, from the viewpoint of one who was but a poor relation of the people whose country houses he visited.

@Promnight: And Lord Emsworth, and Aunt Connie, and Galahad Threepwood. And Mammoth Publishing, of course. And The Empress.

@blogenfreude: And the evil Aunt Agatha. Ahhh, its not just me.

On a desert island, I just might choose the collected works of Wodehouse and of Evelyn Waugh.

I am a big hot tranny anglophile mess. Always have been. Thats why I went Episcopalian, just to be known as Warden and Senior Warden, hanging out with a guy with one of those cool Anglican collars on, as we watched Dogma together. So british.

@Ewalda: “NoJo Jungle Babies” sounds like the punchline to a joke that would get me into a lot of trouble.

Hi guys, checking in from an Internet cafe in a small town of the west coast of the South Island of NZ. What’s new? What’s this I hear that RagingMonk has returned? What’s with the pissing match with Wonkette? I only have a few minutes left on this machine, and must find some change to buy more time. xoxo, SFL

@Jamie Sommers:

Don’t think I didn’t notice that you dropped by, my lovely. Hope all is well.

@Promnight:

Did you just call yourself a hot tranny mess? You’ve been brushing up on your gayolaliaia.

@This is your brain on Tommmcatt, any questions?: Why the changing name, Tommy?

Where’s Jamie been?

Mr. SFL has taken a gazillion photos. I will go through them and send the best in for the jam. We took a helicopter ride over the Southern Alps yesterday. That was cool.

Oh, and Nojo – congrats on the shout-out from Ana Marie.

Looks like the lines have been drawn because of Barry’s speech. Want to defend various “pwecious” industrials based on, um, “Free Market” Principles.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123561083268377547.html

Okay, I guess it’s late at night where y’all are. I’ll check in this weekend when I’m back stateside. Running out of money to run the pay-to-use computer.

@SanFranLefty: Damn, I just got online. Missed you at the oscars and non_SOTU.

@SanFranLefty:

I think I am going to change it daily, just shake my brain up a bit, force me to be pointlessly creative every day, first thing.

@SanFranLefty: NZ? You must be exhausted. It takes what … 21 hours to get there?

@Mistress Cynica:
badum dum. and while were on henny youngman:
take my husband……please.

LEFTY!!!

don’t freak out. in my opinion the news that will make your head asplode is north dakota PASSED a BILL giving FULL RIGHTS to zygote americans.
miss you!!!!! safe trip home!!

@SanFranLefty:
Damn. Poorly managed alcohol consumption and premature pass-out caused me to miss the SFL drive by. From the photo production, sounds like a great trip. I am requesting pictures of the Shire.

@Original Andrew: @This is your brain on Tommmcatt, any questions?: @SanFranLefty: Hey, y’all. I’ve been lurking but mostly working (hey, that rhymes!) so not much interesting on the real world front.

But on the tubes, it seems I’ve managed to get myself kicked off the Jez based on a one word comment. That’s gotta be some sort of record, right??!!

@Hose Manikin: @Tommmcatt A Go-Go:

“yep.”

My crime was to agree with someone who pointed out the obvious: Posting ridiculously politically correct feminazi bullshit is what makes the site the butt of jokes all over Gawker Media, LLC.

Srsly. Read Dodai’s post. It’s beyond ridiculous.

@Jamie Sommers: You also have to Twirl Down thirtyseven’s comment to find it.

Honestly, I’m amazed you’re even able to work with that shitbag of a commenting system. I really have given up on all Gawker sites since they introduced it.

@Jamie Sommers:

I see what she means. You’ve always been unfairly harsh, what with your ideas and independent thinking and and having an opinion and daring to agree with people and stuff. How could you!

Unfairly harsh. If I were you, I would print that on a tee-shirt and wear it with pride, my dear.

Oh, and if we ever find the need to execute commenters, I’m calling it the Stinque Extinguisher.

Department Of More Dead People Department:
Wendy Richard, 65, after her long fight with the Big C.
Always liked her comedic characters (especially Miss Brahms) and her Pauline Fowler character was the only one of the cast of “East Enders” I could stomach.
RIP.

Phillip Jose Farmer, Riverworld, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, has also died.

A Bucket of Air? I am trying to do this from memory.

@Prommie: He was one of those authors who always seemed to shoot wild sparks from his pen.

@ManchuCandidate: And thus HF’s warning about the Scourge of Earnestness. Perhaps they should just rename the site “Dateline: Gawker”.

@Jamie Sommers: Holy fuck, thats retarded. You were banned for that? Thats retarded squared, also known as fucktarded. Thin skin much over there on Jez? It seems almost every comment on that particular page thought dodai was ridiculous, I guess what really offended was noting that others make fun. Hmph, wonder whats so offensive about that? Truth hurts?

@Jamie Sommers:
It’s not what you said. It’s the way you said it.

@ManchuCandidate: The threads, even when they were in chronological format, were always way too long and full of spit, blood, and hunks of hair. It was a relief when I decided to stop going there to support Megan.

@nojo: half the time it didn’t work so i took that as a sign to roam elsewhere on the tubes or get some actual work done.

@Tommmcatt A Go-Go: I go back and forth on this. As a noted instigator, I consider it a badge of honor to be banned. However, I had hoped that my inevitable ban would occur after I’d gone down in a blaze of rhetorical glory in the original FCS style.

@Ewalda:
I know, but there were enough folks who made the trip entertaining. Now? Nope.

@Prommie:

Noooooo! I loved his stuff. What a bummer!

ADD: Wasn’t Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Fritz Lieber, tho?

@Ewalda: I got him mixed up with Fritz Leiber, whom I also loved. But I did adore the Riverworld books, in my infancy.

@nojo:

Do you really have a ban hammer in your bag of tricks? Now I’m scared!

@Prommie:

I’m gonna have to dust them off for a read…it was a great series.

@Prommie: I have a paperback (with lurid cover) of Venus on the Half Shell around here somewhere.

@Prommie: It’s retarded cubed. I agreed with someone else’s observation that others make fun. And it’s not like that’s a new observation. It’s long been a recurring meme on Gawker and Deadspin (and Brand W).

@Hose Manikin: That must be it!

@Ewalda: Speaking of Megan, and her reciprocal support for us, “KANKLES KANKLES KANKLES.”

SWAMPSOW, also.

@Tommmcatt A Go-Go: The Sword of Nojocles awaits indiscretion.

@Jamie Sommers: That would be an interesting experiment, I can comment on Jez, I just never do, because I would be instantly banned, but if I were to go there now and reply to dodai and within that reply, say something about her must having to be bitter because no decent man would ever marry her on account of her being a swampsow with kankles, we could bet on how long it would take before I am banned, would that be fun?

@nojo:

It’s hanging over my head! And the feelin’ that I’m feelin’ is a feelin’ of unnameable dread!

(We’ll see who picks THAT reference up…)

@Tommmcatt A Go-Go: Somewhere, a midnight sing-along screening is still the place to be.
BTW, why would anyone think that a remake would be a good idea?

@Prommie: That would be hilarious! You would probably hit the trifecta: disemvoweling, banning and “worst comment of the day” in less than five minutes.

@Jamie Sommers: Well done you. I got banned at AmericaBlog for referring to John A as a huffy fairy.

@Prommie: Wodehouse wrote a lot with Kern. The Princess Theatre musicals. Very influential in his day. And I think he wrote movies. Also, am I imagining this or wasn’t he accused of making propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis? There is considerable debate as to his culpability. I don’t know the truth of it. I do love Waugh. Particularly the earlier, nastier stuff. But as a hot tranny anglophile mess I’m assuming that you know the Mapp and Lucia novels which more or less define hot tranny anglophilia.

Jamie Sommers: Unfairly Harsh

‘Atta girl! I say you take Prom up on his offer to highjack his Jez log-in and get in one last, great FCSesque rant!

@nojo: Although come to think of it, I recall a Sword of Damocles being a feature of the children’s game show “Shenanigans”, so that takes precedence.

@Prommie:

Please Prom, I’m begging you to. Seriously.

@Tommmcatt A Go-Go:
Do I have to throw toast at you?

Yes, yes, they are. MTV is attempting a remake.

@ManchuCandidate: Starring Zac Efron? Hell, it just might work.

@Tommmcatt A Go-Go: Talk last year was that they wanted Marilyn Manson to star. I lost track of whatever has happened to the project. Hope it was abandoned.

@flippin eck: It wasn’t a great, FCSesque rant, just a quick and dirty insult, but it amuses me nonetheless.

Now I am regretting not suggesting she try dusting the cobwebs out of her cunt and getting laid, there’s lotsa crackheads that would oblige her, no matter how heinous she might be, for some rock. Yeah, that woulda been good.

@Prommie: I see you used she-who-was-not-to-be-mentioned-on-the-W as your avatar. Doubt anyone there would still remember.

@Ewalda: Its been my avatar there since I first signed up, never changed it. My snorg girl. Memories . . .

@Prommie: You’ve already got a response: “Wow. Totally uncalled-for. ”

You, sir, are teh awesome! And you’ve gone almost 15 minutes without being banned.

@Jamie Sommers: I am really hoping for a good-old-fashioned righteously indignant feminist dressing-down.

@nojo:

Deoderization?

Ventilation?

Oh, and if we ever find the need to execute commenters, I’m calling it the Stinque Extinguisher.

@Prommie: I’ll go nominate you for a “worstie.” That oughta do the trick.

@Prommie: This link might be more effective. But with that damn commenting system, you never know.

@Jamie Sommers:

I absolutely loved Moe. When she got served, I was outta there.

@Prommie: Damn. I wish I’d known before you posted. Dodai did the Good, Bad, and Ugly posts for the Oscar fashions. Only she thought everything–even the most heinous shit–was good. No taste or fashion sense whatsoever. And perhaps also color-blind. My cat could write better fashion commentary: “that frock deserves to be shredded then peed on by a gang of feral cats.”

@nojo: OMG it took me a good 10 minutes to find the effing post. MASSIVE FAIL.

@Prommie: “Comment disemvoweled.”

I feel like Rachel after Bobby Jindal. Words fail, emvoweled or not.

@Jamie Sommers: I can’t believe you got banned for that. Jesus.

Worth saying again “Earnestness is the enemy. Never forget”.

I just don’t know how anyone can read that site.

I want to know how nojo became a “star commentator” over there and if the Jez (which scares me as much as clowns scared Kramer) will take away your star when you get drawn and quartered.

@Dave H:

1) No clue, but I’ve had a star since they were introduced. I immediately invoked Sneetches that day.

2) Apparently not. I’ve brought down the Ban on myself, but the Star remains.

Oh, and Prommie’s now banned, too. Victory!!!

@nojo: Took almost two hours. Yup, my mistake was not accusing her of being frigid.

@nojo: @Prommie: You both are hilarious. Although I have a feeling you would have picked on me in middle school just to watch me get riled up.

@nojo: @Prommie: “disemvoweled”–my new favorite word. What’s the friggin point? Anyone who’s sent more than one text message can still read it if they try. Morans.

Also, a big bravo to one of our beloved Stinquers who commented on that thread (nearish Prom’s rant) and stuck it to them without getting disemvoweled!

@homofascist: No, no, I was the friendless butt of jokes and favorite victim of every bully. My nickname was “faggot.” I was stuffed in garbage cans and treated to the dreaded “swirly.” Recess and gym, I dreaded them, for the torture in the locker room, for always being picked last. Life was torture, from about 12 to 17, except when I was out in the world, alone, in the woods, in the swamp, exploring.

@Prommie: You scored the trifecta! Huzzah!

http://jezebel.com/5161086/reader-roundup

Unfortunately, I had to go meet with a client and missed the rest of your conversation with nojo after he corrected your cankles. What did you say? My powers of reemvowelment fail me this afternoon.

@Jamie Sommers: Unless something more pressing intervenes, screencap recap at 6 p.m. ET.

@Jamie Sommers: LOVE the juxtaposition of Prom’s hilarious screed as the day’s worst comment alongside their “best” comment: someone quoting lyrics from a Disney movie.

@Jamie Sommers & nojo: AWSM!

Holy God — it took me forever to get to the comments. Gawker is totes user-friendly now. But it was worth the effort. Well done!

Jamie Sommers: Our dear friend Prommie will take pleasure in this:

But what do you expect from a commenter called “promnightdumpsterbaby”?

Nothing more, and nothing less. Outfuckingstanding, sir.

(P.S.: swmpsw? Brilliant.)

@Jamie Sommers: Stinque has officially been on a roll this week.

@Prommie:
oh the glee the GLEE! welcome welcome my dear friend to my world:
banned by the jezz! and it only took me one long comment too!
a badge of honor, indeed. i only wish i could go over one more time to continue your thoughts. they have my old avatar somewhere with a skull and cross bones. be proud as i am!
why do i now feel like i’m in 4th grade. i want everyone to go over there and get banned. join us! prommie, i tip my hat, sir.
karma in action….they need a spanking so bad…and not in a good way

@chicago bureau: A lot of my former colleagues from Editor John Temple on down are getting the axe at the Rocky. Mrs RML and I worked with a ton of their reporters, photographers, editors and designers in Albuquerque and with her in Santa Fe. The late great Albuquerque Tribune was a feeder paper for the Rocky Mountain News. It’s where I would have ended up had I stayed in the field. I got sick of it instead and quit to to to law school.

tj/ I’m in the waiting room of the pediatric ICU at the UNM Hospital in Albuquerque. My nephew was airlifted here yesterday from the Pueblo after he suffered second and third degree burns on his torso, side and right arm when he fell into a bed of hot coals during some of our traditional religious activities. The burns are serious, but not life threatening. They’re looking at a 21-28 day stay here, then therapy.

@redmanlaw: Oh dios mio…keep us posted on his prognosis, RML. Those are serious burns, is there a good burn unit at UNM? My thoughts etc.

@redmanlaw: Oh my. That’s terrible. I hear UNM is a really good hospital, though. You do whatever you need to. We’ll keep the light on here for you RML.

@redmanlaw: Oh dear god. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Poor child, how horribly painful. Tons of stinque love.

@redmanlaw: That’s some painful stuff to go through. How old is he? It’s the kind of experience that can turn a carefree kid into an experienced adult very fast. Best wishes to him.

@Jamie Sommers: Oh, Jamie, I must admit I felt a thrill when I saw your true avatar again.

@nabisco, jamie, cyn, manchu, et al: My nephew, 7, received skin grafts this morning for the third degree burns on his chest and side. Other burns were not covered with grafts to permit them to heal on their own. UNM Hospital is brand new, and the staff is compassionate and dedicated. The boy is all tranked up and resting with concerned parents, grandparents and other family members there for him

Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes.

UPDATE on the Rocky Mtn News: Some of our friens such as columnists Lynn Bartels and Tina Griego were picked up by the Denver Post. Another friend is bailing for a paper in Texas. Others are in the same boat as the guy who told the delegation from Scripps that if they were so sorry they could pay his mortgage.

@redmanlaw: Tell the kid he’s got folks who don’t even know him pulling for him, and we are convinced he will get better.

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