The Slice: Some may waffle on Spokane’s sins

Many of us are familiar with the list that includes pride, anger, lust, et cetera.

But today The Slice presents Spokane’s seven deadly sins. (Feel free to come up with your own.)

1. Not waving to a driver who lets you into traffic. 2. Failure to remember that breakfast meals (the kind you seldom have time for on weekday mornings) can make excellent dinners. 3. Not using common sense. 4. Generalization/ serial assuming. 5. Worshipping false bargains. 6. Wearing clothes that do not fit. 7. Gum-snapping at work.

“Reader challenge: This will be easier for members of certain generations. But I see it as part of my job to help create commonality of cultural references. So if you are a callow youth or never watched much television, just do your best.

Twelve of the following TV Westerns were real shows. Thirteen were not. Find the fakes. (The answers appear just above today’s Slice question.)

1. “The Big Valley.” 2. “Gunsmoke.” 3. “Sodbuster With a Scythe.” 4. “Here Come the Prostitutes.” 5. “The Rifleman.” 6. “Darn That Dead Man.” 7. “The Idahoan.” 8. “Have Gun/Will Travel.” 9. “Rawhide.” 10. “Gutshot on the Prairie.” 11. “Death Valley Days.” 12. “Wagon Train.”

13. “Cheyenne.” 14. “Stumpy Pete’s Medicine Show.” 15. “Branded.” 16. “The Life and Legend of Okanagon O’Shea.” 17. “Davenport Reardan, M.D.” 18. “Bonnets ‘n’ Buckskins.” 19. “Aubrey White: Frontier Lawyer.” 20. “Alias Smith and Jones.” 21. “Tales of Wells Fargo.” 22. “So I Married a Walla Walla Mule Skinner.” 23. “Suddenly a Lot of White People.” 24. “Sugarfoot.” 25. “Saddled With Spokane.”

“”Chewelah Girls”: Several readers took issue with my assertion Sunday that this was the perfect, localized substitute for the state name in “California Girls.”

The problem is the syllable count in “California.” Webster’s New World College Dictionary says one thing, but I’ll admit the Beach Boys seem to say another.

So I’m forced to acknowledge that the readers suggesting “Cocolalla Girls,” “Coulee City Girls,” and “Spokane Valley Girls” might be on to something.

“Ghost in the machine: Fran Menzel lives below an approach path for planes headed to the airport. One time, while she was watching television, vibration from aircraft noise overruled her viewing selection.

“Suddenly the picture on the TV changed,” she wrote. “It took me a minute to realize that I was now watching the DVD that had been left in the machine.”

“Reader challenge answers: The real shows are 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, and 24.

“Today’s Slice question: Are there still important life lessons farm kids learn that city kids don’t?