CentreSquawker

At Arboria, change is a sad song

So I took off most of last week. No work. Vacation instead.

Stayed around State College. Kept a low profile. Wandered around downtown and found myself in Arboria, the East Beaver Avenue music store that, so sadly, is set to close on Tuesday.

The independent shop has been in business more than three decades.

Growing up in one town, you find places that get under your skin. For me, downtown State College held many.

The Diner taught me the value of green peppers in macaroni and cheese. Fetterolf's and Rinaldo's barber shops taught the value of sitting still.

Graham's introduced me to Rolling Stone, Billboard and girly magazines.

G.C. Murphy showed me bargain-basement squirt guns.

I bought my first leather wallet at Danks.

I fell in love with books largely at Schlow.

And Arboria -- well, Arboria has always been there.

As a kid, I spent grass-mowing and pet-sitting money there, on used Springsteen and Billy Joel cassettes. In high school, it was a great place to check out college women.

In college, a roommate and I dug through boxes of posters at Arboria, hoping to find some gems to enliven our apartment.

In later years, I've scouted Arboria's stock for mind-blowing material for my two young cousins. Success was finding a good Rolling Stones CD -- or anything else to stretch their brains a little.

Arboria never failed. It smells distinct, like a library. It always plays good music in the background. Often the soulful, gritty, thick tunes that make you feel something. It means something to be there. You walk away richer.

Back in there on Wednesday, I found the place busy with bargain hunters. It was 40-percent-off day, a chance for the owners to clear out merchandise. A steal. I hooked four CDs -- some Paul Simon, some Etheridge, some 10,000 Maniacs, some Indigo Girls -- for just less than $20.

It felt a tad morose, as though I were raiding the casket.

Talk at the cash register lamented the loss of the indepedent music stores. Young fans will miss not only the physical, sensory experience of being in the stores, the talkers said. The young ones will also miss the real record-listening experience, which exposes the ears to both familiar tracks and new ones in a deliberate and artistic order.

Truth be told, I felt a wave of guilt. My iTunes account on my laptop counts well more than 200 songs that I've downloaded -- at 99 cents apiece -- over the last couple years or so. That money could've helped Arboria, or one of the other local music shops.

Shame on me.

Only one independent one survives in downtown State College.

About 900 indepedent record stores have gone out of business since late 2003, The New York Times reported last weekend, citing national data from the Almighty Institute of Music Retail. Some 2,700 indy record stores remain.

As Arboria goes, so goes a piece of the town, a piece of its history, a piece of its charm.

As Arboria goes, so goes a chunk of State College character.

Sure, industries change; businesses change; streetscapes change. Capitalism works. I know.

But this week on East Beaver Avenue, change is a sad song.

Weekend escape leaves newsies soaked

In the split second before the canoe dumps you into the river rapids, the water looks really, really cold.

The good thing is, it isn't. Not on a June day, at least.

It's just fast, like a hot tub without the scalding heat. Plus some mud and stones.

So it went Saturday for a crew of river-soaked Penn State journalism grads and other fine folks.

Onetime CDT intern and former Collegian editor Mike Caggeso, now in charge of an Erie magazine, led the daylong canoeing adventure down the Clarion River in Elk County.

Among the day's lessons:

• Rain makes the river run high and fast -- and that makes it easier to tip an aluminum canoe. Especially, it seems, if you've had some refreshments. (Wear a life jacket.)
• Navigating under a bridge can be hard. (That's where my shipmate -- Citizens' Voice reporter Nichole Dobo -- and I flipped our boat. We lost some beverages. Another crew in our party recovered them downstream and sent cries of unadulterated joy across the water.)
• Beaching a canoe is hard, too. Especially when you're impaired by a crippling desire to relieve yourself. (Go behind some trees.)
• Pirates roam the Clarion. They fly the skull and crossbones, offer up cat calls and fire off explosives that sound like cannon shots. (Make nice with them.)
• It's all a hell of a lot of fun. Especially when you can detach yourself from the real world and not take yourself seriously for a couple days. (Ridgway is a lovely town.)

Alas, my sunburned self is returning today to the grindstone. Back to reality.

But my mind is on the water.

Back in blue, and loving it

I enjoy Blue-White Weekend, even if only for its entertainment value.

To wit:

• Late Friday night, a friend and I are relaxing at the Diner. We get the table beside the bathrooms. The guy at the next table -- he looks like an alum waiting for some friends -- is so drunk that he passes out. A staffer wakes him up. He stumbles to the bathrooms, wanders into the women's room and locks the door behind him. A short line of angry women forms. My friend and I laugh.

• Saturday afternoon, I'm walking home from the Blue-White scrimmage. In a cluster of trees near University Drive and East Foster Avenue, some guy is relieving himself -- within view of passing cars. He's wearing red. Car horns blare; motorists cheer.

• Sunday morning, I'm reading the Penn State police log from the last 24 hours. Seems that a student got a little out of control at a campus parking lot. Not only was he intoxicated -- he was buck naked. About 2 p.m. (To read the log, click on this Microsoft Word download: Download April23policelog.doc )

Happy Monday.

Spikes tied to flammable Fourth

Baseball, beer and fireworks will converge -- almost -- in State College this summer.

The new Medlar Field at Lubrano Park, still under construction, is slated to host a State College Spikes game on the Fourth of the July.

Thing is, that stadium is rising on the field that for years has hosted the annual 4thFest pyrotechnics show.

Plus, there'll be beer on tap for Spikes games.

4thFest organizers are working with Penn State and the Spikes to work out all the logistics.

Here's to a beer-soaked, baseball-rich, highly flammable Fourth.

Update on Friday: To clarify: Beer will be sold inside the stadium only when games are underway.

Look what the microfilm dragged in

Almost needless to say, it's a relatively quiet week 'round these parts.

Most the 40,000 Penn State students enrolled at University Park are gone for spring break, along with many of their professors and instructors.

So, finding myself with some extra time, I went poking through the Centre Daily Times' archives. You know -- the microfilm. The stuff that was written long before we began electronically archiving every last syllable.

Anyway, I started reading the Sept. 8, 1954, issue. Buried deep inside is this fabulous nugget:

Alpha firemen, State College, had their first call in more than a month yesterday afternoon. It was a brush fire at the corner of S. Buckout St. and W. Beaver Ave.

The last fire alarm answered by the Alphas was on July 31 when a home burned at the rear of W. Foster Ave.

On Aug. 29, they were called out to stand by when a tractor-trailer and car collided on N. Atherton St.

Imagine. No fire calls for an entire month.

By the way -- the CDT's price per copy then was five cents. A yearlong home-delivery subcription cost $10 or so. (There was no Sunday CDT back then.)

Timeless in downtown State College

Sometime in the last few weeks or so, South Allen Street went timeless.

The landmark clock on the 100 block -- the People's National Bank clock that stands near the intersection with Calder Way -- lost its hands. They disappeared.

A State College icon for decades, the clock has suffered some mechanical problems in recent years. It appears that its current owner, Omega Bank, has decided to give up the ghost -- to leave the clock in place but to remove its time-keeping function.

Or maybe the bank has ordered some new innards for the clock.

Squawker's checking it out -- and hopes to post some photos and an update here soon.

Happy weekend.

Take I-80; find the moon

So this guy named Hamburger flashed his buns Sunday afternoon on Interstate 80.

You think I'm making this up?

A 21-year-old whose surname is Hamburger stands accused of mooning another motorist about 2:45 p.m., state police at Lamar said in a news release today.

Police said it happened in Greene Township, Clinton County, in the westbound lanes of I-80.

"Accused (Hamburger) pulled down his pants and placed his bare buttocks against the passenger-side window so that the victim (one Tim Smith), who was in another vehicle in the next lane ..., was able to see the naked buttocks," police wrote in the release.

Some days, I just kneel down, kiss the sweet earth and thank God I'm a reporter.

And then I make sure that my pants are secure.

Update on May 24: I've removed the first name and hometown of the offending party -- at his request. We normally don't write about such minor infractions. And he was concerned about an unfair tarnishing of his name.

Beneath smoke plumes, an autopsy

It felt like an autopsy.

That's the only analogy that comes to mind.

Standing solo among hundreds of other Centre Countians in downtown Bellefonte late tonight, I watched -- we all watched -- a massive mechanical claw tear into the Bush House's charred shell. That's all that remained after this morning's inferno.

The construction-equipment operator, manning a huge excavator from Earthmovers in Blair County, toppled the remaining walls inward -- away from Spring Creek and High Street.

First, though, he started small. He used the claw to rip down a damaged tree along High Street. He tore out a U.S. Postal Service mailbox -- one of those metal, blue drop-off bins that are bolted to the ground -- and dropped it near Talleyrand Park. He also salvaged a hanging sign on the building front.

Only then did he begin sending the claw into the brick walls, gingerly tapping and grabbing at them to inspire more and more collapse. Bit by bit, the walls crumbled like thick crackers, their bricks cascading to the ground.

The claw kept rearranging the debris, pulling it into a towering pile that easily topped three stories in height.

Onlookers' reactions were telling. Some shook their heads silently. Others chatted vivaciously.

Firefighters and other emergency workers took occasional breaks in the warmth of their vehicles. The outside temperature was a few degrees below freezing, but it felt much colder.

It's hard to articulate how and why something like this touches people so deeply.

Maybe at this point, it's sufficient to say simply that it does.

Pennsylvania: mocking itself since 1787

I know, I know -- it's totally unlike Squawker to link to some cutesy squib that seems better suited for e-mail forwards.

Forgive me.

But for amusement, this "You know you're from Pennsylvania when ... " thing is worth a click.

More substance tomorrow soon. Honest.

I hear oranges

How You Know You're in Lion Country, Example No. 34:

When you walk through a State College neighborhood as the Orange Bowl appears on live TV, you overhear shouts of glee echoing from behind people's closed windows.

Happy Bowl Day.

Resolutions go public, then up in smoke

Catherine Hynes, 4, writes her New Year's resolution at Edison's Clothesline's Resolution Sculpture on Allen Street during First Night on Saturday. (CDT/Adam Bueb) More First Night photos

There's something a little voyeuristic about putting your own New Year's resolutions and regrets up for all the public to see.

Maybe that's the fun in it.

First Night State College's resolution sculptures are scattered around town this weekend. One of my faves, the Burning Man, is standing in the lobby of the municipal building. It'll remain there until 11 p.m. or so, when organizers will move it to Central Parklet and set it on fire.

In the meantime, it's a cool repository of dozens of resolutions and regrets, all written on slips of cloth and tacked to the wood-frame sculpture. Anyone can add something.

The idea is, when organizers set the thing on fire shortly before midnight, it's supposed to bring an end to regrets and a fiery beginning to new resolves. All those scraps of cloth go up in smoke in brilliant fashion.

Here's a sampling of what people have written:

• Stay the Course
• Lose More Weight; Quit Smoking
• Better Myself
• Go to Florida
• Lose Weight; Make More Money
• Finish Dissertation
• Burn Out My Cancer Cells
• Do Dishes
• Stop Procrastinating
• Be a Kinder Person

Saddle up and greet 2006

Local-news junkies will remember, no doubt, this report of horse sex. It's among the most-chattered-about stories here in recent years.

Turns out that the human obsession with horse sex may not be limited to central Pennsylvania.

To wit: A horse-sex report is the most-read article this year on The Seattle Times' Web site, the paper reports here.

Whinny.

And happy new year.

Downtowns no longer down-bound

Downtown State College is hardly alone in its resurgence over the past couple years.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, in profiling a "Center City Renaissance" on Tuesday, noted that city downtowns grew an average of 10 percent in the 1990s.

That's according to a Brookings Institution study, The Inquirer reported, and it signals "a marked resurgence following 20 years of overall decline."

Heady stuff for downtown advocates.

Meanwhile, a concept plan for the South Fraser Street cinema project will get its first official review Tuesday before State College's Design Review Board.

We'll have coverage the next day.

'Munich' conspicuously absent

Yeah, so the movie selections for the big screens are made according to what'll sell. I understand that.

What I don't understand is that "Munich" isn't here this weekend. It opened nationwide Friday.

But no theaters in Centre County are showing the Spielberg flick. So disappointing.

There hasn't been a particularly huge advertising campaign to promote it, but it has been the subject of much spirited discussion this week.

As far as I can tell, the closest place "Munich" is showing is in Harrisburg, a good 90-or-so minutes away.

Oh, but we do get "Cheaper by the Dozen 2." How reassuring.

Spring in December

Took a little walk early this morning through the old neighborhood. Could've been mid-March.

Wanted to put on my shorts and flip-flops and crack open a fire hydrant.

Who knew a 36-degree morning could be so energizing?

After the brutal cold of the past couple weeks, I guess, anything above the freezing mark feels like Maui.

All the ice that had been caked up in the neighbors' gutters -- gone.

The thick glazes of ice on sidewalks and driveways -- fading fast.

You know that springtime feeling, when even a hint of warmth seems to electrify people?

It's here. On Dec. 23.

Torture.

Miscellany

While Adam, your regular CentreSquawker scribe, takes a much-deserved break (the rumor is that he's finally graduating from Penn State), I'll try my best to fill his shoes.

Admittedly, they're big shoes to fill. "Scoop" Smeltz has worked for the Centre Daily Times since he was a young pup at State High. He's covered presidential campaigns and chased tornadoes in Kansas. We in the CDT newsroom appreciate his efforts and wish him the best of luck. (You can e-mail your congratulations directly to Adam or share your thoughts by adding a comment to this post.)

Storm alert
Carl Schaad's 38 Below blog at AccuWeather.com is warning that the State College area could be hit by a pair of storms Wednesday that will create the second major winter weather scenario in less than a week. Read about the predicted "double whammy" here.

Related: Why do media meteorologists scare the hell out of people in Pennsylvania? (Link from Daniel Rubin.)

And if, like many in Nittany Nation, you're daydreaming about that balmy weather in Florida, think again. Miami's in the midst of a "bitter cold wave." Temperatures sunk to SIXTY this morning.

Kermit T. should be so lucky

A decomposing, dehydrated frog corpse dangles from the ceiling in the Centre Daily Times newsroom.

He's known as Fred the Christmas Frog, and he's about 15 years old.

Eleven months out of the year, he lives in an oversized envelope that's stowed somewhere in the sports department.

That he's taken his position of honor -- in the airspace above Cecily Cairns' and Todd Ceisner's desks -- means the holiday season has arrived in our humble workspace.

I had the distinct honor of hoisting him up there Tuesday afternoon, standing on Cairns' desk with a plastic baseball bat in one hand and Fred's coat hanger in the other.

The bat helps lift the ceiling tile, making room for the coat hanger to be leveraged in. All but one of its curves are flattened out, so it's a nice, long hook for Fred to hang from. It's wrapped in red ribbon.

A well-placed hole in Fred's head slips over the hook.

And there he will remain at least through New Year's Day.

"It's amazing what you can do with some red ribbon and a coat hanger," Ron Bracken says.

He and Barbara Brueggebors, the CDT's county editor emeritus, deserve credit for the tradition. It stems from a CDT custom of earlier days, when reporters would put a dead mouse in the company Christmas tree. The mouse had been found adjacent to the newsroom.

But some people were not amused, and so the mouse tradition met an end.

Undaunted, Brueggebors later found Fred on a summer morning in the CDT parking lot. He'd been flattened in cold blood, his body perfectly sprawled out on the pavement and left for dead.

Brueggebors brought him inside, and he went into storage until the holidays.

That was some 15 years ago.

The years since then have been pretty good to Fred. All he's missing is a leg; it broke off a few years ago. But the rest of him's there.

Poor little guy. Bet he didn't know that buying the farm would mean an eternity at the CDT.

(CDT photos by Adam Bueb. Click on them to get bigger views.)

Councilman: ' ... get these people out ... '

I'm not a quote-of-the-week type of guy.

But if I were, this would take the cake:

"You've got to work up a program to get these people out of here."

So said Jim Meyer, a State College councilman, speaking in jest at a council work session on Wednesday afternoon.

His target: retirees living in the borough, including a couple council members and a councilman-elect.

Trouble is, the borough has watched its earned-income-tax revenue slip slightly this year, a trend blamed partially on a decline in income-earning residents.

Non-income-earners, of course, include folks who move to the borough to retire, not to mention permanent residents who linger in the borough upon retiring.

Meyer, a council jokester whose term will end in January, caught me on his way out Wednesday.

"You can quote me," he said.

Pedestrians leery of battle-scarred car

Looking for a good time?

If your car's front end gets all smashed up, try driving through downtown State College a few times. Just see how the pedestrians look at you.

There's no way they're going to dart in front of you. Look at you, man. Clearly, you stop for nothing.

It's been a couple weeks or so since I, regrettably, crashed into a deer at 65 mph on a highway north of Pittsburgh.

The car, still drivable after the wreck, fared better than the poor animal. The guys at a local body shop, booked up partially because of all the deer crashes lately, couldn't start working on it until this week.

So, for the last two weeks, I was driving around State College in my battle-scarred chariot -- a blinker missing, the hood buckled, the grille looking as though an angry CDT reader beat it with a baseball bat.

It should've been an experiment in sociology or psychology. Pedestrians, suddenly, appeared to think twice before walking in the car's path.

"Damn, man," their eyes said to me. "I don't know what you did, but I'm not taking my chances with you."

I'm going to miss having that effect.

Nineteen degrees and falling fast

It's about 19 degrees above zero in downtown State College tonight.

For a Saturday night, it's impossibly silent.

You can walk a couple blocks on East College Avenue and run into only a few people.

There are no lines at the bars. Traffic is at a minimum.

It's so cold, there's mist rising from the little waterway that runs along College Avenue beside the Clark Motor Co. Steam is pouring from the Penn State power plant at West College Avenue and Burrowes Road, flowing toward the sky in a nearly perfect column.

Such is the state of State College when school's out for Thanksgiving.

Feels more January than November.

Newspaper founder muses about Paterno

Al Neuharth must read CentreSquawker.

The USA Today founder writes his column this week about Joe Paterno and mentions -- in the first sentence! -- some anti-JoePa Web sites.

Oddly, though, Neuharth suggests that "Papa Joe" is a common nickname for JoePa.

Uhhh. Um.

Is that true?

"The Nation's Newspaper" wouldn't dare lead the public astray, would it?

In any event, we here at Squawker are just trying to stay warm today as we prepare tomorrow's paper. Meaty posts will return as soon as the post-Thanksgiving, too-cold-to-think shock wears off.

Despite wins, anti-JoePa sites still active

A winning football season hasn't stopped firejoepaterno.com, a virtual hotbed of skepticism targeted at Lion Country's king.

The site caught the eye of Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Downey, who appears to be a Joe Paterno backer. Downey penned a piece this week that rips into the person behind the acerbic Web site -- whoever he or she is -- and calls him a pinhead.

But firejoepaterno.com isn't alone in its dissent. A similar site, www.firejoepa.com, also is operating at full speed.

It links to an anti-JoePa blog.

Granted, one source of Paterno-bashing sentiment -- www.joepamustgo.com -- has been tamed, having been purchased by a Paterno fan in January and shut down.

But color us startled that anti-Paternoites continue to do cyberbusiness during this blue-ribbon season for the Nitts.

Related: JoePa and Penn State are on the cover of SI this week. See the cover image over at The Nittany Blog.

Note to readers: Squawker's taking Thanksgiving off. Will return Friday. Meanwhile, for some quality reading, surf over to Elliot Abrams' blog on AccuWeather.com. The legendary weatherman  writes today about the holiday forecast for your turkey.

Naming sport for wildlife

"Spikes" can mean so many things.

The term -- now the name of State College's new baseball team -- can evoke images of young deer, as it's intended to do here.

Or it can stir thoughts about railroad ties, sharp shoes and especially flammable cocktails.

Just look at the definition in Wikipedia. It's a noun; it's a verb.

"Spike" is also the name of a men's network on cable.

Then there's renowned filmmaker Spike Lee.

And there's "Spike," the 2001 release by P. Diddy.

Google "Spikes," and you'll get 9,480,000 results. This tops the list.

Plug "spikes" into Dictionary.com, and you get all these items.

Dude, this is more fun than Harry Potter movies.

(Photo taken from www.thearcherycompany.com.)

Post-chaos calm descends on campus

A whisper could echo today on the University Park campus.

Thanksgiving Holiday -- yes, that's capitalized, grammar fiends -- doesn't really begin until Wednesday. But it feels as though a majority of Penn State students have already begun their vacations.

Downtown State College this morning has all the traffic of an August afternoon. Attendance in many classes today seems to be well less than 50 percent.

It's like a ghost town.

And it's a far cry from Saturday night, which blogger Dan Victor illustrates so well.

Perhaps "the worst mob ever" is still recuperating.

Outed CIA agent has PSU link

On this day of high drama in the nation's capital, a reminder:

Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed by columnist Robert Novak, is a Penn State journalism graduate.

The Washington Post mentions this in its complete online report this evening. (To reach the Penn State part, click through to page 4.)

Somehow, we doubt that Ms. Plame will be making any appearances at the university's homecoming festivities this weekend.

Found at the State: vestiges of another time

Renovation work at State College's State Theatre has unearthed some quirky gems in the 1938 movie house.

Turns out that the old balcony -- once home to State High kids' make-out sessions, including several that involved this reporter -- actually sat atop two brick piers. They were hidden from view until now.

And the old walls between the theater and The Diner, next door, are too thin to meet modern codes, organizers have discovered. A vent from The Diner's kitchen is so close, it's just inches away.

But the complication is no show-stopper.

So says John Hook, the State Theatre's new CEO, who generously indulged me for an interview on uber-short notice Thursday.

Renovations right now are focusing in large part on digging. Workers are excavating an underground space beneath the stage -- an area to house technical stuff and a green room, Hook said.

Some of the work is visible from West Calder Way and West College Avenue, where a chain-link fence keeps would-be trespassers at bay.

When the stadium rocks, do your ears pay?

We reported Monday that the game-day noise in Beaver Stadium was more raucous than a rock concert, regularly spiking well above 100 decibels.

So, is there a significant risk of hearing loss under those conditions?

Ingrid Blood, a professor of communication sciences and disorders at Penn State, tells us that there's a bunch of variables.

The human threshold for pain is about 120 to 140 decibels, she wrote in an e-mail, "but sound can damage our hearing when it is above 85" decibels.

Whether that damage actually happens can depend on the length of noise exposure, the noise's maximum intensity and the frequencies involved, Blood wrote. Other factors include the listener's history of hearing loud sounds, current hearing-loss level and genetic make-up.

For more information, go here.

When neighborhood traffic tells a football story

Back in State College's East Highlands neighborhood, home to the family homestead, we have a simple measure for the significance of each Penn State game.

It's all about parking: how many people parallel-park on the neighborhood streets, wedging their cars between the driveways before they wander up to Beaver Stdium. The more people who jam up the neighborhood, the more important the game.

Today, to no one's surprise, is a blockbuster. Cars are parked bumper-to-bumper along East Prospect Avenue from University Drive to South Pugh Street -- about four blocks.

Don't read me wrong -- I'm not complaining. We haven't seen this amount of 'hood parking since ... cripes, I can't remember when.

It's nice.

Private views from a public parking garage

The views from atop the new Beaver Avenue parking garage are among the best in downtown State College, as we reported last month.

But what I didn't notice until late last night is another line of sight: straight into the apartments of the neighboring Beaver Plaza apartment building.

It must've been about 12:15 a.m., and I was wandering -- soberly -- back to my car, parked on the garage's third level. And while I wasn't looking for it, I couldn't help but notice the unobstructed, up-close view of the next-door apartments. Parking customers are close enough to see the buttons on the tenants' microwaves.

Plaza dwellers, drawing the shades may be advisable.

Granted, the Pugh Street parking garage has for years given gawkers some unintentional, cross-street views into the Glennland Building apartments. But those two structures aren't nearly as close as the new Beaver Avenue garage and Beaver Plaza.

It's all very urban-feeling. In little old State College. Whodathunkit.

Want Ohio State tickets? Sell a kidney

I absolutely didn't believe it.

When I overheard football fans grousing Saturday about the $500 asking price for some Ohio State-Penn State tickets, I figured they were too drunk to know what they were saying.

How wrong I was.

A search on eBay today for Penn State Ohio State tickets reveals that it's true: Four tickets on the 50 are going for as much as $750.

Single seats are going for as much as $200.

A free press pass never looked so good.

Public health, and a subculture in Chinese restaurants

Just about a month after we reported a spate of health violations at a local Chinese restaurant, here comes The Los Angeles Times with some perspective.

The LAT reports today on a subculture of Chinese eateries that often struggle to meet Western health codes. It's worth a look.

For extra bounce (and we're not talkin' hair)

Some new Penn State research could put more bounce in your car bumpers, jars and anything else that's plastic.

How can they do that?

By putting some rubber in the formula, this Web site reports this week.

Maligning the Pennsylvania press corps (thanks, Drudge!)

Tuned in to the radio version of the Drudge Report last night. Was looking for a distraction.

Ended up angry.

The evening's commentary included the regular, requisite bashing of "the liberal press." Then came a caller from eastern Pennsylvania -- Reading or Allentown, as I recall -- who had the audacity to claim that citizen outrage over the state's legislative pay increase is being fueled only by talk radio and bloggers, not the newspapers.

Implication being that the leftist press wouldn't dare question legislators' self-granted raises.

Drudge, of course, didn't challenge the caller's absurd claim, broadcast on stations nationwide and on the Internet worldwide.

Had he employed his handy Internet connection, he would have discovered -- easily -- that Google News finds 526 recent press reports in a search for Pennsylvania and legislative pay raise.

The reports come from Pennsylvania newspapers including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Sunbury Daily Item, the Harrisburg Patriot-News, the Carlisle Sentinel and the Centre Daily Times.

Yeah, caller, you're absolutely right: We're ignoring the story.

And thanks, Drudge, for your ever-wise journalistic pursuits.

Dental health, Midwest politics and commie conspiracies

Fluoride? We don't need your stinkin' fluoride! Isn't it part of some communist government conspiracy to turn us all into reds?

So rolled the joke back in The Wichita Eagle's downtown newsroom, where Dan Victor and I did time as reporter-interns.

The thing is, Wichita -- the biggest city in the great state of Kansas -- has repeatedly refused to have its public water supply fluoridated.  (To learn the whole, hairy past, take a cruise through the city water authority's official history.)

I point this out only because Bellefonte may be headed for a similar path, as Lara Brenckle reported this week.

Whatever their unconventional views on fluoride, Wichitans are good people. Warm and friendly, generous and outgoing, and often pretty talkative.

But they do seem to have a lot more, um, tooth decay than do the folks here in central Pennsylvania, where fluoridation of public water is pretty much the rule.

It begs the question: Could a dearth of fluoride in Bellefonte bear bigger BMWs for dentists?

Cross the street; say a prayer

Traffic news in State College has been moving at a steady clip these past few weeks, from East Highlands speed "humps" to Holmes-Foster speeding woes and downtown crosswalk signs.

Clearly, the balance here among cars, pedestrians and homes is a delicate one.

In Moscow, however, not so much.

A fantastic Los Angeles Times story on Wednesday profiles road rage in what may be one of the world's most pedestrian-unfriendly cities.

More than 14 cars a day ram into pedestrians there, and some 300 have been killed so far this year, the LAT reports.

Sorta puts an eye-popping perspective on State College's traffic issues, no?

East College awakens to new artwork

Folks on the east end of State College awoke to a dollop of uninvited creativity today.

A rare splash of graffiti has appeared on the University Drive overpass at East College Avenue, and on a nearby CATA bus-stop shelter beside the Meridian apartment complex.

It's all white and red, and doesn't seem particularly profane or vulgar. Makes me think of the old bridge over North Corl Street in Ferguson Township -- one of the region's few repositories of graffiti.

The old bridge, I mean -- not Ferguson Township.

Here's betting the new stuff near East College will be scrubbed away by the next home game.

What's on the agenda, sleeping beauty?

What do you call a Penn State professor who's spotted snoozing during a lengthy faculty meeting?

A master of sweet irony.

Squawker covered his first Penn State Faculty Senate meeting on Tuesday, filling in for the CDT's usual higher-education reporter.

At nearly three hours long, it was a beast of a meeting.

But imagine my surprise when, less than two hours in, I saw profs beginning to nap. Maybe three or four -- among the whole crowd of dozens -- dozed off.

No one reprimanded them, tried to have them thrown out, or even attempted to wake them. And they didn't appear to be disguising their slumber whatsoever -- not even with the well-worn, well-known techniques researched and developed by bored students. (Full disclosure: I am among the student researchers who has, on occasion, helped develop these techniques.)

Oh, the naked irony.