I love posts like this. I worked in industry (aerospace systems engineering, broadly speaking) for 45 years. I was often unable to use all my vacation due to deadlines and whatnot, and like everyone else worked myself to a frazzle.
Yes, this times 1000. Batteries leak and corrode, even good ones. For a while I used the Costco house brand “Kirkland” batteries, the brown ones. I found that they corrode and leak all the time. I once bought some new ones that had corroded batteries in the unopened pack. I now use Duracells exclusively, but they’re…
When I was a young man in the early ‘70s I, like every human male of the time, wanted a Corvette. It was sleek, dangerous, and as we said back then, a chick magnet. However, a ‘71 ‘vette cost $6K, or nearly $40K today, and I couldn’t swing it.
Angel Has Fallen is no dumber than any other shoot-’em-up. Here’s the synopsis: Gerard Butler, and then everything blows up.
“...wouldn’t you have skipped school in a second?”
“Back in the 1980s, when the nuclear threat was at its most acute...”
No. The “Left Turn” gag originated in Herr Meets Hare, 1945. “This means war” is a Groucho Marx gag from Duck Soup 1933, first used by Bugs in Hare Hunt, 1938. It troubles me that my brain is full of this kind of thing.
I live in Northern Virginia near DC, an hour or so from the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park. Every fall we take a leisurely drive down it in our convertible. Very nice.
I’m fortunate to live quite near the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park. A leisurely fall cruise down it is an annual treat. When we were younger my wife and I did it on our motorcycles, but we’re pretty old now, and have traded in the bikes for a convertible. Still very nice though.
“...vitamin C deficiency that was pretty tough to get in my home in the 1990s, a place where oranges basically fell into your mouth...”
Growing up in the ‘50s, I was around for part of the golden age of Looney Tunes. From about 1944 until 1956 they produced some of the best cartoons ever made. Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Sylvester, Elmer, Sam and a few others formed a sort of repertory company that made simply brilliant cartoons. The high water mark was under…
Remember that people of my generation (old Boomers) were around for the very first video games. We were in our early 20s when they hit, and we were just barely old enough to afford them. I paid $100* for a Pong game, and was the wonder of the neighborhood; people came from all over to see it. Then a friend got an…
Like most people my age* I grew up in the home of a WWII vet. My dad served in the Pacific, and was in Japan during the occupation just after the war. I grew up hearing his stories of valor and fear, victory and defeat, and I played with a rifle, pistol and a samurai sword** he brought back with him; it’s a wonder I…
The lead photo puts me in mind of the car I grew up with, my dad’s ‘54 DeSoto. It was about two tons of Detroit iron, half of it chromed, with a 276 hemi that got 9 miles to the gallon and we didn’t care. It had an automatic transmission, but also had a clutch pedal, labeled “Safety Clutch”. You had to press it to put…
Just so we’re all on the same page here, the tv in the lead photo is a pre-2007 analog tv with only one input, a type F antenna jack. To make a modern device display on it, after you deal with connector conversion issues, you’ll need an RF modulator to put the video on a defined pre-digital VHF or UHF tv channel,…
I agree. My wife and I have seen it three times in the theater, and have also ordered the Blu Ray. It’s a terrific, feel-good movie.
Indeed. I wanted Patel to ask that version of John if he had ever been a musician, had ever written any songs. If the answer was No, it would have put a whole new spin on the movie’s premise. In that case, where did the songs come from?
