Trout’s en route

He’s on the road, in Arkansas currently. He says: never go to Arkansas, they have more mosquitos than the Great Dismal Swamp.

He’s looking for a place to crash when he gets here, at least temporarily. As he says, he doesn’t need a restroom or a kitchen, more of a dry spot. I guess his real problem is the dog. If anyone knows of a dog-friendly motel around here that’d be great to know. He said he has enough cash to float for awhile until he finds a real place, anyway. But if you hear of any weird night watchman/sleeping bag living situations, drop ’em my way.

His own cellphone is dying but I have the phone of the guy who’s driving him.

Nas CAR

The headline NASCAR looking to expand into the hip-hop lifestyle should be enough, but the press release itself takes it all the way. Pullquotes of note below:

  • As for the messages and products in development specifically, Earnhardt said they will be dope because adidas “always keeps it clean.”
  • During the recent race weekend in Chicago, rapper and Chi-Town native Twista rolled to the club in a Red Bull painted NASCAR street ride to promote his new album Adrenaline Rush Oh-Seven which touts a NASCAR tie-in.
  • Over the years, the sport’s crossover into the urban demographic has been hit and miss, but today one could say it’s “On and Poppin’.”
  • Team Red Bull driver Brian Vickers, who has made appearances on MTV’s TRL, tried to do his thang with Bow Wow and throw up a paint scheme to promote the rapper’s music, however, nothing panned out but the two are said to be buds and Bow Wow has since been to a few NASCAR races.

It’s fresh and dope that they’ve discovered the 1985-era Run DMC Adidas phenomenon.

I hope they work their way forward to NWA soon!

Don’t use your debit card at the gas station.

pinzWell you can, but don’t put in your PIN; insist on doing it as a credit transaction. Why? Because people love to steal the PIN. It’s way easier to empty your bank account that way than it is with regular credit card fraud.

Retailers will do just about anything to force you into using the PIN instead of a credit card type transaction, because credit cards cost them money and PIN/Debit transactions don’t. So you have to say it’s credit, punch the credit button, decline to use your pin, and then tell the checker again that’s credit. Or they just automatically present you with the PIN entry screen with no other options.

So, what happens when you use your PIN? Usually nothing, because supermarkets and other big retailers are secure environments. But if you use one of those rollaway ATM droids, or the ATM at some nightclub, not so good. And if you go to a gas station that only takes PIN transactions, like the ARCO here, you might just get royally and electronically screwed.

local politics: white supremacists, soccer, and newspapers

The publisher of our local rag, Tom Johnson, is a sensible guy, and he wrote a thoughtful editorial on Friday. He
rightly points out that one of the city’s parks has been designated a “passive park,” which is an entirely new concept, exactly to keep Mexican-Americans and other soccer fans from playing in the park.

This is of course the work of Costa Mesa’s racist-majority city council, which includes now internationally known Mexican-baiter Mayor Allan Mansour. But Johnson moves past Mansour to the real force behind the local spiral into race war.

The editorial called out our local white supremacist bile factory, Mr. Martin H. Millard. Millard straddles the border between mainstream politics and skinhead neo-Nazism adroitly. He delivered support and votes for Mansour while keeping his scarier buddies out of the picture. He’s slime. And Johnson points him out very accurately as one of Costa Mesa’s biggest problems.

The response from Millard at CMPress would be funny if he wasn’t so powerful.

Tip of the hat to Geoff West at A Bubbling Cauldron for this story.