Alex Jones has always been entertaining, but most people don’t buy into his shrill warnings of an emerging police state. But sometimes you have to wonder if he’s on to something. This video footage of a Utah rave bust is pretty terrifying. What may be more surprising than the commando raid is the fact that raves still exist.
Most evenings I go on a “skate.” Since I can’t really shred-it-up with the kids anymore, and it’s no fun to session a bench or manual pad alone, I skate the same line each evening. I ollie the exact same manhole covers, always do manuals down a certain stretch of road, and bomb the hill in front of Chapel Hill’s Glen Lennox cottages. OK, ‘bomb’ isn’t really accurate. Cruise, maybe? It’s a pretty sad spectacle. Regardless, it’s still fun as hell. Each evening I pass a small tennis court. The surrounding chain-link fence bows out and weeds grow in the middle of the court. It’s not totally run-down and occasionally I even see people playing casual games. I imagine neighborhood kids use the court for various activities, none involving racquets. But like so many other neighborhood courts, it’s reached its twilight years. Many courts like these were built in the ’70s and ’80s, when tennis was poised to explode in popularity. But it never did. Golf and tennis, once two sides of the same WASPY coin, don’t have much in common anymore. This Slate article contends that tennis never shed it’s country-club elite image, while golf–though far more expensive with greens fees– is now thoroughly All-American. According to the article, our president was an avid tennis player until he presumably realized that he needed to be seen playing golf, not tennis:
So, while George H. W. Bush is a dedicated tennis fan and player and his eldest son was an avid player well into his 30s?part of W. and Laura’s courtship was spent at a Texas tennis ranch?the president now seems to make a point of never being seen with a racquet. Tennis has become a political liability: effete, preppy, what high-schoolers call a “wussy sport.” Whereas golf, no matter how fey the links attire or how pricey the greens fees, has become so solidly red-blooded and all-American that even our folksy president can embrace it.
To hold a sick child in your arms, give her the medicine she needs and then ride into the desert on a beautiful horse under a starry sky to have a fabulous dinner in a fairytale fort is an extraordinary experience. 
- Caroline Duncan, an actress who went on a Relief Riders International tour
Because of the “high probability of confusion” over his t-shirt design that reads, “A Prarie Ho Companion” Garrison Keillor is threatening to sue a Minnesota blogger.
A sign in front of Woodland Hills Baptist Church that read “The big easy is the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah” offended Penny Crotty, of Tyler, Texas, so she actually confronted the pastor himself. After all, Woodland Hills is just down the road. My Sep. 8 posting, “Predictable,” also angered Penny. She wrote, “I take GREAT offense that you would so carelessly “lump” together - “East Texas” and this message. That is just weak and it’s crap…………….. it’s exactly the sort of dogmatic beliefs that pastor Bennett spews!” My purpose wasn’t to take a shot at East Texas. What was predictable to me was that some out there would use this tragedy as a way to scold New Orleans in its darkest hour. At any rate, I can see her point so I thought I would set contribute to her mission of preventing unfair generalizations about an entire region: Tyler residents repond to the sign.
