My father in law had a Grand National. When he bought it he let his daughter take the 84 Z-28 (with T-Tops!) back to college, giving me access to the Z-28 anytime I needed it. Which was nice. I never got to drive the Grand National but I was in the passenger seat once when he punched it and whoo boy did that thing have some power. It would take any production car you could buy at the time to the first turn, then you were pretty much screwed though, as it handled like a brick on wheels.
My youth foundered upon the old Cutlass my father gave me in which to have all my callow teenage accidents. It was a brute. For my 18th birthday I was given a bright red 1969 Mustang in honor of a year of clean, wreck free driving. On my very last day of using the Cutlass, I parallel parked it next to Dad's Fleetwood and scraped it against his car.
Ah well. Fortunately, he owned the insurance company so it didn't cost me twenty points.
In the late 80s my friend had an ‘84 Monte Carlo SS and wished he had the GN. The Monte Carlo produced about 175hp, seemed much more than that when flooring it. My parents had a ‘84 4 door Regal with a V6, that moved pretty well even though it only had 110HP
Speaking of classic cars, they're not making songs about cars anymore. I surmise that it's because car names these days suck. If they aren't just a mix of numbers and letters, they are something dumb and uninspiring. Write a song about a Civic or an Altima - I dare you.
I guess it depends on your tolerance for oddball art school synth pop, but I love “Toyota Corolla Superstar” by TC Superstar (they like the car so much, they named the band after it).
As I told Craig on the tweets machine, I am only down with the Mad Men extension if a significant portion of the series deals with Sally and her inevitable punk band that packs 'em in at CBGBs but doesn't ever break out nationally. How many mopey 80s new wave ballads did she inspire with her one night stands and casual digestion of men (and women, most likely) as she tries to exorcise the sins of her father?
That arc tracks for sally (who would of course be dealing with the trauma of Glen getting killed in Vietnam.)
I, sadly, don’t think Don makes it to 1985 without his alcoholism really catching up to him.
Peggy and Stan, disturbed by then rising crime rates near their brownstone and their rocky marriage, would become Reagan Republicans.
Harry Crane would be the most successful of the original crew. That dude would kill it in the amoral 80s.
Pete would become a crunchy Midwest NPR type and gain some notoriety for inventing GORP.
As much as I’d love more Mad Men, I don’t think Weiner would have his fastball. The show was about boomers exploring how their parents’ generation’s unaddressed traumas resonated in culture and their children’s lives as america was in ascendancy.
A reboot would require that same rubric to be applied to boomers themselves as america was on a decline and that generation is not terribly self-reflective.
Pete moved to Wichita, remember. He and Trudy would be full-on country club Republicans. His whole arc was giving up the idea he would ever be cool and embracing his true Trudy destiny.
I see Don as alive but losing his memory and whatever impulse control he had and becoming senile. What's Don like if he doesn't look like Jon Hamm? If he's old and alone and his kids don't really have a relationship with and even if he can still attract younger women (fewer every year) they have nothing in common? The show explored that with Megan.
Of course everyone's left New York and moved to the suburbs. So on top of everything else the show has to sell the modern world without the cool 60s aesthetics. Instead the ugly 80s sprawl aesthetics. The show would be so much darker.
As an amateur connoisseur of punk and new wave bands and songs in late 70s/80s movies (eg The Fabulous Stains, Ellen and the Attackers, "Damn Dog", etc), I am 110% into this idea.
Maybe my favorite 80s movie punk/new wave story of them all derives from the making of Star Trek IV. Remember the scene where Spock does the Vulcan neck pinch on the boombox punk rocker guy who won't turn down his music on the bus? That song was written by the ironically-named Kirk Thatcher, who was one of the producers or assistants on the film, to replace some wimpy new wave that was the original boombox annoyance tune, which Kirk rejected. Kirk Thatcher - who again has almost the most ironic name possible for an 80s punk in a Star Trek movie - got some musicians together who understood what was required and created a band from whole cloth to record his song which he titled "I Hate You". He even gave the band a name - Edge of Etiquette. It's a KILLER punk rock song of its own accord, but everything about the story around it is so fantastic that it ends up on another level for me. Anyway, anyway. More late 70s/early 80s punk/new wave content, please!
Kirk Thatcher went on to do a TON of work with The Muppets and whatever Jim Henson's production company was/is called. He's a fascinating character. For any Marvel Marks out there, I guess he reprised his role from Star Trek IV in Spider Man: Homecoming, a movie which I have not seen, and thus I cannot verify this (but maybe one of you can?).
Mad Men was a deeply weird show about how amazing the greatest generation was and how boomers were useless tools. It was a reaction to boomer nostalgia that somehow managed to be even MORE reactionary. The creator said he wanted avoid the usual TV thing where the likeable characters have anachronistic social views.
That's why the characters with modern beliefs (Pete, Harry, Paul, every hippie) are horrible and the actual good characters are right-wing sexist pricks.
Which is all a long way of saying having Don and Peggy judge boomers and Gen X would be even funnier. Their social views would be even more outdated. The whole show either curdles into a bitter rant about kids these days and its political correctness, or it's chaos. I also want to see the close attention to detail and loving cinematography on the ugliest clothes ever made.
Not sure how anyone can watch Mad Men and think that Weiner was trying to portray Don, Roger, and the other older characters as good in any way whatsoever. Just because someone is the protagonist does not mean they are idealized or even good. Don's a philandering drunk who basically loses his family while simultaneously getting rich by selling America on feel good family happiness. The show is pretty hard on him in my view.
You think? He's clever and sexy and always has the right comeback. Compare that to Pete, Harry and Paul: desperate, sweaty, try-hards, balding, no one respects them even when they're right.
He wasn't trying to portray Don and Roger as good in a moral sense, but sexy and fun and exciting and better than the wet napkin moderns. A big part of the show was everything pre-60s, the aesthetics and characters, was better than the 60s versions. The show made a big point that even though Don and Roger used outdated words, deep down they were actually better to the black and female characters than the younger so-called progressive characters.
I didn't think the show was hard on Don at all. The wise genius who always knows what to do and has deep inner pain from his messed up childhood. Everyone who went against him was always wrong. He was smarter than everyone else, which is what you need to be a hero. The prestige drama anti-hero can be a murderer but never stupid.
Every time I see the name Nick Martini I imagine he's descended from the Bedford Falls Martinis, and is named in honor of the bartender who, in an alternate universe, served hard drinks to men who wanted to get drunk fast and didn't need any characters to give the joint atmosphere.
Like a lot of people from her generation, my Grandmother loved "It's a Wonderful Life". But there was something that I just never put together until recently, even though it was RIGHT THERE.
My grandfather fought in WWII and Korea. In between he got married and started a family. There were eventually eight kids and, whether a result of DNA or just trauma, my grandfather developed a pretty bad drinking problem. At some point, he left. Whether he was thrown out or just split on his own is hard to say. But the end result was my Mom and her seven brothers and sisters growing up very poor in Philly in the 1950s and 1960s.
The thing about the movie that I'd never noticed was the names. My grandmother's name was Mary and her husband's name was George. And so recently, when I watched the movie all the way through for the first time in a long time, I realized that the ending, when George comes home to Mary and the kids and realizes that the only real currency in life is the love that you share with the people around you, it hit me. This is the happy ending that my mother's family never had.
Just what we need: a brewery where a bunch of dude-bros sit at the bar plotting shorts and futures and trying to profit off the regular Joes just trying to grab a chocolate stout
Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs from Calvin and Hobbes. It's an old joke. It's funny. I'm almost 40 (yikes) and growing up, sweet cereals were a rare treat my mom bought once a year on holidays. There was no illusion they were remotely healthy, even though by the late 80s they'd already removed the word sugar. So that idea always makes me laugh. I can assure everyone that the cereals with cartoon mascots advertised on Saturday mornings in neon colours have not ever been considered healthy no matter how many times the ads say "part of a complete breakfast".
And every kid learns pretty fast they actually taste terrible and cereals with "bran" or "fibre" in the name actually taste better.
I suspect dropping "Sugar" from cereal has less to do with heath conscious customers and more to do with every manufacturer changing from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup.
I have pandemic thoughts but they are depressing so I'll just wish everyone a happy holiday and keep my fingers crossed that 2022 is a less sucky year for everyone who doesn't suck themselves.
Hope you all have a long weekend, or if you're working you at least get holiday pay. :)
Remember that COVID is killing something like eight Republicans for every three Democrats. It's a good ratio so let's not usher our new normal onto the scrapheap of history and long for the good old days of HeLa cell lab contamination any sooner than we have to. Those of us who are left standing can build back better
At first I thought y'all were talking about a certain temperamental death deitrix. So I used the internet. I didn't know that lab contamination part of the Henrietta Lacks story. It's sort of a revenge story, seen from one angle. Me, I'm just amazed at immortal human cell cultures, period. Where do they get brunch?
"I’m struggling to think of a restaurant concept that is less appealing than this but I’m coming up empty: "
There's a trend of bars usually in college towns with the theme of like hyde park speaker's corner where you get a drink if you stand up and deliver like a 5 minute lecture on a topic in the middle of the bar and it sounds like the worst place on earth.
Well, in old Tenochtitlan there used to be a chain of human meat fast food walk-through joints called Quetzal King. They we're canted towards the Aztec petit bourgeoisie who couldn't afford a leg for Montezuma. Unfortunately, the Spaniards were not amused and burned all the menus and the priests burned all their memoirs because they were suspected of Teilhardian sympathies.
Ah, with some touches from Prometheus and Giger's tragically unrealized Jodorowski's Dune storyboards. Would've worked better if the waitresses all dressed like Ripley in her underwear.
Yeah, I think the more likely angle is Don hasn't used cocaine since the late 70s, but in 1985 is convinced to have some at a party at which he's 15+ years older than everybody else and struggling to keep up.
I remember one of the last episodes had Joan's boyfriend giving her cocaine. So the show knew it was around. It was funny how they had her be so underwhelmed. No drug can ever be more fun than brown liquor.
In the early 90’s my sibling owned 2 Buick Grand Nationals (first a ‘96, then a ‘97). Both were beautiful vehicles, fantastic shape in and out, low miles. He owned both for less than 6 months. Both were stolen right out of our driveway.
I was assuming he actually did mean '96 and '97, but the real reason the cars disappeared is that they were stolen back by the time travelers that had originally provided them.
I really don't know from Mad Men - sorry, but it just doesn't appeal to me - but any TV show about advertising in the 80s needs Kip and Henry, the main characters on Bosom Buddies. Ignoring the stupid drag premise, those characters worked in advertising and when the show's second season also decided to ignore the stupid drag premise, it was about them running a boutique ad agency. So let's rev up the CGI deager and bring back young Tom Hanks!
On the one hand, we should continue to take any data about COVID with a grain of salt. How a variant acts in one place doesn't mean it acts that way in another. Delta was a lot worse in the US last summer than in the UK, and no one knows why. So good to be cautious. OTOH, I wonder if people trying to throw cold water on data from South Africa is just because it's from South Africa and people are treating it like a medical and scientific backwater. Even though the Omicron variant was discovered there by scientists with the know-how and a vigorous system looking for variants (which the US is barely doing).
And to bring some baseball content, I looked up "this day in baseball history." On December 23, 1975, an arbitrator ruled that Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were free agents, a landmark decision on the road to free agency.
PS - thank you for sparing us your backandforthandbackandforthandbackandforthball report this morning. Usually, when this newsletter thuds into my mailbox in the early AM I'm about trying to wake up and don't need any soporifics.
Ah, but in “On a Foggy Night,” he sings (well, speaks, more like it) “you climb into the helm of a 1958 monkey shit brown Buick Super and you’re on your way home. A luxury automobile, bought at Dollar Bill’s Easy Autos for next to nothing.”
...McDonald's in Orlando (sand lake at international) used to have an audio animatronic MacTonight in their dining room; also had a McDonaldLand band, as well.
Saw other good Covid news yesterday. The DOD though the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research is developing a vaccine to vaccinate against all variants of Covid, including future ones. It in early trials but looks promising. Of course it’s has “nanoparticle” in the name so that will need to change. Can imagine all the conspiracy theories if they go with that in the name, especially since it’s fully owned by the government.
Fascinating that the army really does this sort of thing, and that Will Smith's character in I Am Legend wasn't just fictional liberty. (Just hoping that everything else in that movie remains fiction.)
And this would also pave the way for the universal flu vaccine, to replace a vaccine developed in the 50s.
The DOD does some good things, heck they do a lot of climate change research and have said that will be a major issue in the future, mainly because many of the bases are located along coasts. They also believe that climate change will be the cause of future conflict in strategic to the US areas.
There's a bar here in Des Moines, IA called the exchange with fluctuating prices based on demand, and it's a neat experience. Every hour or two, one of the bartenders will 'crash' the market, and every drink (beer, wine, shots, bombs, etc.) drops to $1 or so. It's fun every now and again and was very fun in college.
Imagine growing up in Edmonton and emerging as a baseball fan. Well, sorry for your loss. I hope at least you had some beaver handy for solace.
Those Cutlass 442s were damn beautiful machines. That's a minor tragedy right there.
Yes. It and the same-era Monte's were stunning.
The 442 was such a great looking car.
My father in law had a Grand National. When he bought it he let his daughter take the 84 Z-28 (with T-Tops!) back to college, giving me access to the Z-28 anytime I needed it. Which was nice. I never got to drive the Grand National but I was in the passenger seat once when he punched it and whoo boy did that thing have some power. It would take any production car you could buy at the time to the first turn, then you were pretty much screwed though, as it handled like a brick on wheels.
My youth foundered upon the old Cutlass my father gave me in which to have all my callow teenage accidents. It was a brute. For my 18th birthday I was given a bright red 1969 Mustang in honor of a year of clean, wreck free driving. On my very last day of using the Cutlass, I parallel parked it next to Dad's Fleetwood and scraped it against his car.
Ah well. Fortunately, he owned the insurance company so it didn't cost me twenty points.
In the late 80s my friend had an ‘84 Monte Carlo SS and wished he had the GN. The Monte Carlo produced about 175hp, seemed much more than that when flooring it. My parents had a ‘84 4 door Regal with a V6, that moved pretty well even though it only had 110HP
The highlight of HBO's Watchmen was the Grand National that Sister Night drives.
Also the one Killer Mike owns and is in the Ooh La La video is bad ass as well. Edit to add, lyrics in the song are NSFW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sff7Kc77QAY
Ha, yeah. Should have added a NSFW warning. I forget not everyone leads a childfree, large adult son lifestyle like I do.
Speaking of classic cars, they're not making songs about cars anymore. I surmise that it's because car names these days suck. If they aren't just a mix of numbers and letters, they are something dumb and uninspiring. Write a song about a Civic or an Altima - I dare you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcFIj8OuIEI
I guess it depends on your tolerance for oddball art school synth pop, but I love “Toyota Corolla Superstar” by TC Superstar (they like the car so much, they named the band after it).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wCsPHm0UbIQ
It seems those Turbo T's command Grand National money, so they must not be a secret:
https://classics.autotrader.com/classic-cars/1987/buick/regal/101673797
As I told Craig on the tweets machine, I am only down with the Mad Men extension if a significant portion of the series deals with Sally and her inevitable punk band that packs 'em in at CBGBs but doesn't ever break out nationally. How many mopey 80s new wave ballads did she inspire with her one night stands and casual digestion of men (and women, most likely) as she tries to exorcise the sins of her father?
I would watch the hell out of that show
Sorry guys, this ain't no disco or CBGB. I ain't got time for that now.
That arc tracks for sally (who would of course be dealing with the trauma of Glen getting killed in Vietnam.)
I, sadly, don’t think Don makes it to 1985 without his alcoholism really catching up to him.
Peggy and Stan, disturbed by then rising crime rates near their brownstone and their rocky marriage, would become Reagan Republicans.
Harry Crane would be the most successful of the original crew. That dude would kill it in the amoral 80s.
Pete would become a crunchy Midwest NPR type and gain some notoriety for inventing GORP.
As much as I’d love more Mad Men, I don’t think Weiner would have his fastball. The show was about boomers exploring how their parents’ generation’s unaddressed traumas resonated in culture and their children’s lives as america was in ascendancy.
A reboot would require that same rubric to be applied to boomers themselves as america was on a decline and that generation is not terribly self-reflective.
Pete moved to Wichita, remember. He and Trudy would be full-on country club Republicans. His whole arc was giving up the idea he would ever be cool and embracing his true Trudy destiny.
I see Don as alive but losing his memory and whatever impulse control he had and becoming senile. What's Don like if he doesn't look like Jon Hamm? If he's old and alone and his kids don't really have a relationship with and even if he can still attract younger women (fewer every year) they have nothing in common? The show explored that with Megan.
Of course everyone's left New York and moved to the suburbs. So on top of everything else the show has to sell the modern world without the cool 60s aesthetics. Instead the ugly 80s sprawl aesthetics. The show would be so much darker.
As an amateur connoisseur of punk and new wave bands and songs in late 70s/80s movies (eg The Fabulous Stains, Ellen and the Attackers, "Damn Dog", etc), I am 110% into this idea.
Maybe my favorite 80s movie punk/new wave story of them all derives from the making of Star Trek IV. Remember the scene where Spock does the Vulcan neck pinch on the boombox punk rocker guy who won't turn down his music on the bus? That song was written by the ironically-named Kirk Thatcher, who was one of the producers or assistants on the film, to replace some wimpy new wave that was the original boombox annoyance tune, which Kirk rejected. Kirk Thatcher - who again has almost the most ironic name possible for an 80s punk in a Star Trek movie - got some musicians together who understood what was required and created a band from whole cloth to record his song which he titled "I Hate You". He even gave the band a name - Edge of Etiquette. It's a KILLER punk rock song of its own accord, but everything about the story around it is so fantastic that it ends up on another level for me. Anyway, anyway. More late 70s/early 80s punk/new wave content, please!
Kirk Thatcher went on to do a TON of work with The Muppets and whatever Jim Henson's production company was/is called. He's a fascinating character. For any Marvel Marks out there, I guess he reprised his role from Star Trek IV in Spider Man: Homecoming, a movie which I have not seen, and thus I cannot verify this (but maybe one of you can?).
(Good material on Thatcher here) https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/the-crawling-ear-the-edge-of-etiquette/
Mad Men was a deeply weird show about how amazing the greatest generation was and how boomers were useless tools. It was a reaction to boomer nostalgia that somehow managed to be even MORE reactionary. The creator said he wanted avoid the usual TV thing where the likeable characters have anachronistic social views.
That's why the characters with modern beliefs (Pete, Harry, Paul, every hippie) are horrible and the actual good characters are right-wing sexist pricks.
Which is all a long way of saying having Don and Peggy judge boomers and Gen X would be even funnier. Their social views would be even more outdated. The whole show either curdles into a bitter rant about kids these days and its political correctness, or it's chaos. I also want to see the close attention to detail and loving cinematography on the ugliest clothes ever made.
Not sure how anyone can watch Mad Men and think that Weiner was trying to portray Don, Roger, and the other older characters as good in any way whatsoever. Just because someone is the protagonist does not mean they are idealized or even good. Don's a philandering drunk who basically loses his family while simultaneously getting rich by selling America on feel good family happiness. The show is pretty hard on him in my view.
You think? He's clever and sexy and always has the right comeback. Compare that to Pete, Harry and Paul: desperate, sweaty, try-hards, balding, no one respects them even when they're right.
He wasn't trying to portray Don and Roger as good in a moral sense, but sexy and fun and exciting and better than the wet napkin moderns. A big part of the show was everything pre-60s, the aesthetics and characters, was better than the 60s versions. The show made a big point that even though Don and Roger used outdated words, deep down they were actually better to the black and female characters than the younger so-called progressive characters.
I didn't think the show was hard on Don at all. The wise genius who always knows what to do and has deep inner pain from his messed up childhood. Everyone who went against him was always wrong. He was smarter than everyone else, which is what you need to be a hero. The prestige drama anti-hero can be a murderer but never stupid.
Every time I see the name Nick Martini I imagine he's descended from the Bedford Falls Martinis, and is named in honor of the bartender who, in an alternate universe, served hard drinks to men who wanted to get drunk fast and didn't need any characters to give the joint atmosphere.
Just rewatched that flick for the firsts time in years Tuesday night.
Like a lot of people from her generation, my Grandmother loved "It's a Wonderful Life". But there was something that I just never put together until recently, even though it was RIGHT THERE.
My grandfather fought in WWII and Korea. In between he got married and started a family. There were eventually eight kids and, whether a result of DNA or just trauma, my grandfather developed a pretty bad drinking problem. At some point, he left. Whether he was thrown out or just split on his own is hard to say. But the end result was my Mom and her seven brothers and sisters growing up very poor in Philly in the 1950s and 1960s.
The thing about the movie that I'd never noticed was the names. My grandmother's name was Mary and her husband's name was George. And so recently, when I watched the movie all the way through for the first time in a long time, I realized that the ending, when George comes home to Mary and the kids and realizes that the only real currency in life is the love that you share with the people around you, it hit me. This is the happy ending that my mother's family never had.
And then I cried. Quite a bit, actually.
Ok that's actually heartbreaking.
Just what we need: a brewery where a bunch of dude-bros sit at the bar plotting shorts and futures and trying to profit off the regular Joes just trying to grab a chocolate stout
I assumed that was a casino bar.?...
Sadly it’s not. And also (sadly) it’s not a one-place thing…seem to be multiple bars with this theme in major cities around the world.
The cereal ad from The Simpsons: "Only Sugar Has More Sugar".
It's a funny line, so I guess it was John Swartzwelder.
Per a quick search, Chocolate Frosted Krusty Flakes first appeared in the episode "Bart the Murderer" which is in fact a Swartzwelder episode.
It also has one of my favorite moments, when Lionel Hutz has Homer on the witness stand.
Lionel Hutz: You've been his father for ten years. Do you really think he could be the leader of a murderous criminal syndicate?
Homer: Well, not the leader... I mean... Oh, it's true, it's true! All the pieces fit!
Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs from Calvin and Hobbes. It's an old joke. It's funny. I'm almost 40 (yikes) and growing up, sweet cereals were a rare treat my mom bought once a year on holidays. There was no illusion they were remotely healthy, even though by the late 80s they'd already removed the word sugar. So that idea always makes me laugh. I can assure everyone that the cereals with cartoon mascots advertised on Saturday mornings in neon colours have not ever been considered healthy no matter how many times the ads say "part of a complete breakfast".
And every kid learns pretty fast they actually taste terrible and cereals with "bran" or "fibre" in the name actually taste better.
I suspect dropping "Sugar" from cereal has less to do with heath conscious customers and more to do with every manufacturer changing from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup.
I have pandemic thoughts but they are depressing so I'll just wish everyone a happy holiday and keep my fingers crossed that 2022 is a less sucky year for everyone who doesn't suck themselves.
Hope you all have a long weekend, or if you're working you at least get holiday pay. :)
Remember that COVID is killing something like eight Republicans for every three Democrats. It's a good ratio so let's not usher our new normal onto the scrapheap of history and long for the good old days of HeLa cell lab contamination any sooner than we have to. Those of us who are left standing can build back better
Points for the HeLa cells reference.
At first I thought y'all were talking about a certain temperamental death deitrix. So I used the internet. I didn't know that lab contamination part of the Henrietta Lacks story. It's sort of a revenge story, seen from one angle. Me, I'm just amazed at immortal human cell cultures, period. Where do they get brunch?
Happy Solstice (today is three minutes longer!) and Christmas, Cath. I hope the same for 2022!
Mc D.L.T. in the Mac Tonight commercial...The hot stays hot and the cold stays cold
"I’m struggling to think of a restaurant concept that is less appealing than this but I’m coming up empty: "
There's a trend of bars usually in college towns with the theme of like hyde park speaker's corner where you get a drink if you stand up and deliver like a 5 minute lecture on a topic in the middle of the bar and it sounds like the worst place on earth.
Well, in old Tenochtitlan there used to be a chain of human meat fast food walk-through joints called Quetzal King. They we're canted towards the Aztec petit bourgeoisie who couldn't afford a leg for Montezuma. Unfortunately, the Spaniards were not amused and burned all the menus and the priests burned all their memoirs because they were suspected of Teilhardian sympathies.
That escalated quickly.
I did see a restaurant or bar that was decorated in the style of H.R. Giger. Looked like you were eating inside of an alien.
ETA: It's in Switzerland and opened in 2003 and the pictures are even more disturbing than I remembered. Website is hrgiger.com/barmuseum.htm
And the big burger was called the Face Hugger.
'check please'
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
I... would go there.
I'm not saying I'd go there routinely, but I'd definitely go there once. Not sure if I'd be able to eat but I'd sit there and take a ton of pictures.
Would you panic if you got gas pains afterward?
Ah, with some touches from Prometheus and Giger's tragically unrealized Jodorowski's Dune storyboards. Would've worked better if the waitresses all dressed like Ripley in her underwear.
I'm a lawyer. That place would be PERFECT for me and my ilk. Which proves your point, I guess.
For some reason, the scene in Cocktail where Tom Cruise recites poetry in the bar popped into my head. So thanks for that.
No way that Don has not used cocaine before 1985. Roger likely gets turned on after one of his acid trips.
Yeah, I think the more likely angle is Don hasn't used cocaine since the late 70s, but in 1985 is convinced to have some at a party at which he's 15+ years older than everybody else and struggling to keep up.
I remember one of the last episodes had Joan's boyfriend giving her cocaine. So the show knew it was around. It was funny how they had her be so underwhelmed. No drug can ever be more fun than brown liquor.
In the early 90’s my sibling owned 2 Buick Grand Nationals (first a ‘96, then a ‘97). Both were beautiful vehicles, fantastic shape in and out, low miles. He owned both for less than 6 months. Both were stolen right out of our driveway.
'86 and '87, I assume you meant.
I was assuming he actually did mean '96 and '97, but the real reason the cars disappeared is that they were stolen back by the time travelers that had originally provided them.
Yes, 86 and 87
I really don't know from Mad Men - sorry, but it just doesn't appeal to me - but any TV show about advertising in the 80s needs Kip and Henry, the main characters on Bosom Buddies. Ignoring the stupid drag premise, those characters worked in advertising and when the show's second season also decided to ignore the stupid drag premise, it was about them running a boutique ad agency. So let's rev up the CGI deager and bring back young Tom Hanks!
On the one hand, we should continue to take any data about COVID with a grain of salt. How a variant acts in one place doesn't mean it acts that way in another. Delta was a lot worse in the US last summer than in the UK, and no one knows why. So good to be cautious. OTOH, I wonder if people trying to throw cold water on data from South Africa is just because it's from South Africa and people are treating it like a medical and scientific backwater. Even though the Omicron variant was discovered there by scientists with the know-how and a vigorous system looking for variants (which the US is barely doing).
And to bring some baseball content, I looked up "this day in baseball history." On December 23, 1975, an arbitrator ruled that Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were free agents, a landmark decision on the road to free agency.
Good for Messersmith. It was more maneuverable than the spitfire anyway
Wby that makes me hum Snoopy and the Red Baron is illogical A Sopwith Camel is a different beast, yes?
Durn Christmas song theme...
A fun fact is a lot of TV shows have characters who work in advertising, in part because you can have seamless product placement.
FWIW, Craig, Tom Waits is driving an Oldsmobile, not a Buick, in "Heart of Saturday Night." Clearly, he knows something you don't.
PS - thank you for sparing us your backandforthandbackandforthandbackandforthball report this morning. Usually, when this newsletter thuds into my mailbox in the early AM I'm about trying to wake up and don't need any soporifics.
Ah, but in “On a Foggy Night,” he sings (well, speaks, more like it) “you climb into the helm of a 1958 monkey shit brown Buick Super and you’re on your way home. A luxury automobile, bought at Dollar Bill’s Easy Autos for next to nothing.”
And, of course, “Ol’ 55” is a song about a Buick.
Oh yeah. On the other hand, the Olds Is likely current and iconic of more than poverty and decrepitude. Did hadn't struck again, as it were.
...McDonald's in Orlando (sand lake at international) used to have an audio animatronic MacTonight in their dining room; also had a McDonaldLand band, as well.
Saw other good Covid news yesterday. The DOD though the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research is developing a vaccine to vaccinate against all variants of Covid, including future ones. It in early trials but looks promising. Of course it’s has “nanoparticle” in the name so that will need to change. Can imagine all the conspiracy theories if they go with that in the name, especially since it’s fully owned by the government.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/
Fascinating that the army really does this sort of thing, and that Will Smith's character in I Am Legend wasn't just fictional liberty. (Just hoping that everything else in that movie remains fiction.)
And this would also pave the way for the universal flu vaccine, to replace a vaccine developed in the 50s.
The DOD does some good things, heck they do a lot of climate change research and have said that will be a major issue in the future, mainly because many of the bases are located along coasts. They also believe that climate change will be the cause of future conflict in strategic to the US areas.
Glad we have at least some realists in the government.
There's a bar here in Des Moines, IA called the exchange with fluctuating prices based on demand, and it's a neat experience. Every hour or two, one of the bartenders will 'crash' the market, and every drink (beer, wine, shots, bombs, etc.) drops to $1 or so. It's fun every now and again and was very fun in college.