Foulard's Funky Friday

Enjoy your tickets, jerks!

State Patrol warns:
Tickets on cell phones begin June 10, no exceptions

By SCOTT SUNDE
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

The Washington State Patrol warned Friday that drivers who text or talk on a hand-held cell phone should expect a ticket on June 10.

No excuses accepted. Tickets will be handed out.

And if you are convicted, expect a $124 fine.

The State Patrol often has a grace period when a new law takes effect, but not with this one.

"Drivers have already had nearly two years to adjust their driving habits," said State Patrol Chief John R. Batiste said in a news release. "We will fully enforce this law from day one."

At 12:01 a.m. June 10, texting while driving or failure to use a hands-free device becomes a primary offense.

Driving while texting or using a hands-held phone took effect two years ago. But violations were a secondary offense.

Officers had to see another violation, such as speeding, to make a stop.

The law didn't do much to keep people from texting while driving or chatting on a hands-held phone at the wheel.

"They would look right at our troopers with phones held to their ears," Batiste said. "They knew that without another violation we couldn't do anything."

Since the law went into effect in 2008, the State Patrol has written 3,000 tickets for it and handed out 5,900 warnings.

The State Patrol says there are probably more accidents that occur when drivers are on the phone than they are willing to admit.

"Few drivers are going to admit they were on a cell phone, or texting, after a crash," Batiste said. "We are choosing to take action before a collision occurs in hopes of preventing these needless tragedies."

Obscure Milton Bradley games of the seventies

I had the Funky Phantom game, and (I think) the Apple's Way game, but I never saw this one when I was a kid. Milton Bradley was pretty indiscriminate about the tie-ins they'd pick, I guess--or did more adults play board games in the early seventies?

The Sophisticated World of Barbie and Ken

A song from Barbie in her pre-Malibu days. This Barbie sounds like she went to Bryn Mawr, got a job at Knopf, and then got engaged to Ken, a promising young lawyer at a respectable Manhattan firm. They lived in a charmingly ramshackle apartment in the village for the first year of their marriage. Then they moved to Greenwich and Barbie quit her job to raise their two children. Sadly, Barbie and Ken got divorced in the mid-seventies. Barbie explored EST for a while, and Ken grew a beard and moved to Los Angeles with his former secretary.

"Hurry up, Babs, or we'll miss Mulligan's first set!"

Tired of...

...catastrophic events being referred to as 'A Perfect Storm'. Here are my suggestions for a new term:

• A Perfect Chicken
• A Perfect Watch Fob
• A Perfect B.M.
  
• A Perfect Lateral File
• A Perfect Dukes of Hazzard, but with Coy and Vance

What do you think?

Portrait of Mexi-Cokes

Lately, I've grown very fond of the now-ubiquitous Mexi-Cokes. They remind me of having a Coke when I was a kid, which seemed like a treat, even though we drank a lot of them in my house. Once soft drinks (or sodas, depending on where you grew up) started being sold in larger and larger sizes, they lost a lot of their magic, as far as I'm concerned. Opening a heavy glass bottle with a bottle opener has a nice substantial feel, like opening a beer. The fact that they're more expensive makes them feel more special, too--I'm less likely to open one unless I really want it. Once I have one 12-ounce bottle, I'm done.

Also, they're made with cane sugar, rather than high fructose corn syrup. I've read that there really may not be that much difference in terms of causing obesity--the trick is just not to drink sweet drinks all the time--but it seems more real, like using butter instead of margarine.

Today's Obscure Unifying Concept

Product Description:

• "A Man's Teeth Are Not His Own" starring Dick Van Dyke
• "The Dentist" starring W.C. Fields
• "Dental Follies" starring Pinky Lee
• "Laffing Gas" starring Charlie Chaplin
• "Dentist The Menace" starring The Three Stooges
• "The Little Shop of Horrors" with Jack Nicholson
• "Oh! My Achin' Tooth" starring Abbott & Costello

Yep, I think that about covers all the famous dentist humor in movies and TV!

I should have waited until tooth-hurty to post this, I suppose...

It's a Mission: Impossible kind of day

Photos lifted from the DVD Beaver website.

Today I dressed for work in all black & gray, since I wasn't really in the mood to come in, but also because I was thinking about on of my favorite TV shows, the original Mission: Impossible. The third scene of the show (after the taped message and the picking of photos from the IMF dossier) was a gathering of all the agents in Jim Phelps' (Peter Graves) apartment. His place had a near-total black & white color scheme, and the Impossible Mission Force folks always dressed in black, white, and gray for this scene, which gives it a sort of pre-color Wizard of Oz feel, to indicate that the real action isn't happening yet.

When Beebo and I got married, we both wore black and white to the judges' chambers. I'm sure I was semi-consciously thinking of the M:I color scheme when we coordinated, though I'm not sure I told Beebo, since she hadn't seen the show yet.