Fun fact: the background illustration in that video is a riff on a famous Margaret Bourke-White photo from 1937. It shows african americans lined up in front of a billboard proclaiming that America has the world’s highest standard of living.

In the mid-’70s I was once at my girlfriend’s apartment until about 2 in the morning. Driving home to my place about 5 miles away, my car started to sputter and then died, out of gas. I coasted down a hill, up another, and halfway down the next a gas station loomed out of the darkness, the only station open all night…

“... static fantasy world...”

Never mind coats and things... what we need is Ross’ Holiday Armadillo costume.

Re. music to get fired to

The farmer sent his son off to college. When he came back he said “Ok boy, say somethin’ smart”. The son answered “Pi R-Squared”. The farmer said “Bah... college done ruined the boy; everybody knows pies are round!”

Closer to home, you can spend the night in the A Christmas Story house. Used in the movie only for exterior shots, the house in Cleveland OH has been remodeled to resemble the interior sets from the movie. For a mere $250 you can spend the night where Ralphie dreamed of a Red Ryder BB gun. However, for Christmas Eve…

Hair dryers loom large in our legend. In an interview Natalie Portman said that Padmé felt poorly armed in the big arena battle in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

The 1959 Cadillac Eldorado had a 390 cu. in. V8 that got 9 miles to the gallon, and back then we didn’t care a fig; I know... I was there.

This puts me in mind of edge-notched information cards. You used a special hand punch to notch them, representing different information categories. You then used a metal rod to sort and select. It’s what we used before we had computers.

My wife and I had Moviepass back in the glory days, and it was a lot of fun. Now we have Regal Unlimited, and it works great; we can see all the movies we want, as often as we want. It makes a lot more sense too. Moviepass had to shell out cash for every movie we watched, but Regal is screening the movies anyway; it…

Yeah, I’ll just leave this right here.

Fun fact: America was still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor. Military planners know another attack was coming, but didn’t know where. US cryptanalysts had broken some Japanese codes, and knew that the attack was coming at a location coded as “AF”. They thought it was Midway but didn’t know for sure.

Speaking as a former child as well as a father and grandfather... this is why god gave us television.

This puts me in mind of the Radium Girls of the early 20th century. Thousands of young women were hired to paint the hands and faces of watches and clocks with luminous paint, containing highly radioactive Radium. No one warned them of the danger; they were instructed to “point” the brush with their lips and often…

I saw Andie in Michael, a kind of fantasy in which John Travolta plays an angel. It’s partly a road movie, and in one scene they go to a karaoke bar in the evening. As one reviewer said at the time: If you think Andie McDowell can’t act, just wait until you hear her can’t sing.”

I like Millie as much as anyone, but... Speaking as the father of two daughters and now a grand daughter, I’d like to point out that Millie is 15 years old. Children of that age can almost glow with health. I think her flawless skin is due not so much to her regimen as to her very young age. Check back after a while…

“There’s no such thing,” he said, “as cold, hard reality.”

Immortality occurs in nature. Several species of fish and reptiles exhibit negligible senescence; they don’t age. Some plants and bacteria are similarly immortal; there’s a stand of aspen in Utah upwards of 100,000 years old.

“...whale songs have been getting deeper...”