Friday nite...

Another hour and it will be midnight, and I still haven't read the morning papers. That is the damndest thing. Take them with me to breakfast on the hotel patio every morning, Mon-Fri, without fail. Sit down, waiter or waitress brings that pot of coffee, I light a smoke, prop the front section of the LA Times on the table against the coffee pot...and if I'm lucky, may get to see what the main headlines say. Then another writer or six shows up--if one isn't already there before me, and eventually, time to leave. Gather the papers back up, bring them home, put them on the footstool in front of my reading chair in here, and there they sit. I always read that front section before calling it a day though. By then, I've read the NY Times and the Wash Post online. But always, the LA Times has something more to offer, so I don't hit the sack until I've read it.

There are times when there are just B, J, and me...and we're all looking at something in one or other of the papers. J will check Fry's full page ads for various computer or other electronic gear and B grabs USA Today on his way in. Hell, I'd rather have their conversation than read anyway. Writers know the damndest things...a result, I think, that comes from always researching some one thing or the other, so when they get talking, it gets interesting real fast.

The large front page picture on the San Diego Union-Tribune (and everyother major paper in the nation it seems) got us going yesterday. From left to right, there were Bush 43, Laura, Bush 41, Clinton, Condi, and Card in front of the Pope's body. Behind Bush 43 sits a guy that J is convinced is Rudy Guiliani. B and I don't think that's who it is. The guys to the left and right of him in that row are all wearing red beanies, so B and I think he's one of the clergy or a Vatican person. I think he has a white brushy mustache. J thinks it's Guiliani and no mustache but a trick of the light. So I dug out a small magnifying glass (I carry strange things) and we took turns examining the guy. Didn't help. Now we all want that individual's identity, but doubt if there's a way to get it. At least not a simple fast way. And, was surprised to see Card (Bush's Chief of Staff) there. Huh.
Wrap...