Friday Ephemera
Locker room scenes. (h/t, Julia) || Missile orientation. || Make your own sand kittens. || Salad jelly. || High-status leisure activity. || Pet repair. || Tiny frilled trumpets with mucous houses. || Dumpster fire toy, $50. || Differing approaches to package delivery. || I did not know this. (h/t, sk60) || New space-travel-related unit of measurement. A discussion ensues. || Bond villain death quiz. (h/t, Runcie) || Bluegrass abroad. || Our betters discussed. One, a former head of the BBC, now CEO of the New York Times. || “The bowl wasn’t actually connected to plumbing.” || What bird song looks like. || Tilted tornado. || Get a load of me. || Nostrils. || And finally, for devotees of the cinematic arts, “Hey, check this out.”
I looked at everything.
I waited.
Am I still going to have to say “First” ?
I hate that.
Salad jelly.
Salad jello, actually.
Yes, definitely one of those ‘murrican things . . . .
You’re saying “That soi-distant emperor should get off his duff”
But actually I’m resting my back after a stint of packing for two weeks in the Canadian Rockies.
With my 93 year old mother in law.
Whom I love dearly.
The missile thing is sometimes called
“Roboteching”.
It’s well described at
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Roboteching
(And silence descends as the pub patrons vanish into that awful void…)
Salad jello?
Does James Lileks still have “Gallery of Regrettable Food” on his site?
Back to looking for the missing hiking pole…
Bluegrass abroad.
Indians abroad.
Dumpster fire toy
Okay, you got me. Totally expected some complete fail toy. I guess with the over-use of “literally” I shouldn’t have been surprised.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/science/women-astronauts-nasa.html
Mary Robinette Kowal is a professional…. puppeteer. Which certainly qualifies her to offer informed opinion on personed space flight.
Bluegrass abroad.
A year or so back I found myself in a Japanese club in Sydney; they were having a rhythm and blues night. Not only were all the bands superbly excellent – there was even a Japanese Muddy Waters – but the audience were all singing along and busting perfect dance moves in unison.
I have a feeling that if we enter into another Dark Age the Japanese might save civilisation.
I know this was quite the hit on Broadway, but I find this strange and kind of creepy.
Does James Lileks still have “Gallery of Regrettable Food” on his site?
It is a great book. Though, I have to confess growing up in the 1960’s the Thanksgiving dinner always included a shimmering square of lime jello with pineapple chunks and mandarin orange segments.
And I loved it.
I hear you, Darleen.
Darleen: “…but I find this strange and kind of creepy.”
Here, have a palate cleanser.
Here, have a palate cleanser.
!!!!
So, Julia, when do we get our tickets? Popcorn’s on me.
Locker room scenes.
It’s vile *and* funny. The best kind.
Morning, all.
Here, have a palate cleanser.
I’ve never actually seen Top Gun. I’ve seen jokes and parody sketches, but not the actual film.
It’s vile *and* funny. The best kind.
It’s remarkably detailed.
Darleen: “So, Julia, when do we get our tickets? Popcorn’s on me.”
There’d better be beach volleyball!
David: “I’ve never actually seen Top Gun.”
*sharp intake of breath*
Damian has the right idea:
*sharp intake of breath*
Heh. I know. What are the odds?
Top Gun. That new trailer looks a bit too much like a Mission Impossible trailer. But I have hopes.
Regarding the original Top Gun, my pilot father and his colleagues all hurried to see it when it came out. Most of them were Navy or Marines (Dad was C.O. of a reserve squadron of Marine A-4s at NAS Alameda back then). He told me later they all had the same reaction to the locker-room scenes and volleyball scene. “I don’t remember any of us looking like THAT.”
But a few months later he was down at Miramar for some technical thing about G-suits, and he attended several briefings with current pilots. After returning he told me the movie was totally realistic about the, uhmmm, PHYSICAL QUALITY of the flight crews. Probably tighter requirements now compared to back in 1944.
Here’s a couple pics taken probably 1965-ish.
https://jetpilotoverseas.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/ames-bell-x-14-test-pilots-fred-drinkwater-neil-armstrong-february-1964/
Damn, I just noticed that several of the NASA pics of Dad are now Alamy Stock Photo image. Wonder how that happened?
(BTW, I found the missing hiking pole. It was, of course, in the big box along with the missing boots.)
At my house we have a saying that the most common missing item is the “ohthereitis”.
As in, “Hey, where’s the Oh There It Is….”
I’ve drunk a lot more coffee than was strictly necessary tonight…
Nostrils
I feel his pain. 🙂
“I am not a wedding photographer.”
I feel his pain. 🙂
It’s quite, um, vivid. As I said last time I had a cold, you have to marvel at how much mucous the average human head can produce.
“I am not a wedding photographer.”
The new scold-o-mat?
The new scold-o-mat?
Portable version. Prototype. For scolding on the go.
Does James Lileks still have “Gallery of Regrettable Food” on his site?
Yes indeed he does, also Interior Desecrations, an examination of 1970’s interior design. One could spend days poking around his site.
Top Gun: Maverick ! In Technicolor and THX Surround Sound ! See Tom Cruise play Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise has never played Tom Cruise before !
Anyone who thinks professional wrestling isn’t real and is just staged is just not woke.
Well, it is one solution, I guess.
So does the sign behind the Japanese country singers really say GLAND OLE OPRY?
Anyone who thinks professional wrestling isn’t real and is just staged is just not woke.
I love how insistent she is that people don’t believe she can wrestle because she “is Muslim and wears the hijab”.
Yep, that’s definitely it. No other reasons at all…
The ‘Guardian’ has no less than 4 articles on the Cats-astrophe. Best comment so far is ‘it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau’..’
‘it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau’..’
Heh. I think it’s safe to say it’s not quite achieving whatever non-creepy, non-car-crash aesthetic it was actually going for.
I’m guessing that Conservatives public transportation advert is as real as the muslim rasslin’ woman.
At my house we have a saying that the most common missing item is the “ohthereitis”.
As in, “Hey, where’s the Oh There It Is….”
Yeah. At our house it’s similar but the ohtheritis item is the thing we were looking for last time, not the thing we’re looking for at the moment. It’s kinda like this old John Cleese skit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Ta4XbRRj4
Um…:
https://people.com/health/grimes-part-eyeball-removed-seasonal-depression/
[Pop Singer] Grimes Says She Had Part of Her Eyeball Removed in an ‘Experimental Surgery’ to ‘Cure Seasonal Depression’
“I first maintain a healthy cellular routine where I maximize the function of my mitochondria with supplements such as NAD+, Acetyl L-Carnitine, Magnesium, etc…This helps promote ATP and it’s incredibly visceral…From that point I spend 2 to 4 hours in my deprivation tank, this allows me to ‘astro-glide’ to other dimensions — past, present and future….”
And yet, it is Lindsey Shepard that is banned from Twitter.
[Pop Singer] Grimes Says She Had Part of Her Eyeball Removed in an ‘Experimental Surgery’ to ‘Cure Seasonal Depression’
Heh.
…this allows me to ‘astro-glide’ to other dimensions…
I see. Astro-gliding to other dimensions is a slippery slope that I think her mental health can ill afford to risk.
[Pop Singer] Grimes Says She Had Part of Her Eyeball Removed in an ‘Experimental Surgery’ to ‘Cure Seasonal Depression’
In other news, “Rex Stardust, lead electric triangle with Toad the Wet Sprocket has had to have an elbow removed following their recent successful worldwide tour of Finland.”
White supremacist stripped of beauty title for “islamophobia”.
Tilted tornado
Love that video (although I’ve definitely seen bigger tornadoes). Living where tornadoes frequently occur, I’ve always been fascinated by them.
There are storm chasers that will sell package deals to folks who want to go supercell hunting in hopes to chase down tornadoes. I’ve long wanted to do that, but the cost and the “no refund” policies have held me back.
Nostrils
That’s brilliant.
Fear me.
Via Damian.
Boatswain’s Mate: Is that “no refund” in case you don’t get an up-close-and-personal encounter with a supercell & tornado, or in case you DO?
There’s a site that shows lightning strikes in the US, which is not a terrible proxy for tornado risk areas.
https://saratoga-weather.org/NA-lightning.php
Kind of terrifying, in the right season.
I find this strange and kind of creepy.
It’s the uncanny valley. The stage show is clearly people in makeup, and you can marvel at the technical competence of the production and the expressiveness of the dancers because they are still obviously people in makeup.
This is just realistic enough to be incredibly disturbing.
Anyone who thinks professional wrestling isn’t real and is just staged is just not woke.
I live near the hometown of the Hart family, where there are (inexplicably) still large numbers of pro wrestling schools. Pro wrestling is a demanding form of stunt work and making it look good is not trivial. That said, I’ve been to those schools and watched scrawny fourteen-year-old boys throwing around ripped and bulked wrestlers twice their size and made it look convincing. “Phoenix” is just…not a good wrestler.
I’m reminded of the WWE Diva ‘Eva’ who was picked and pushed by the franchise despite being a mediocre wrestler at best – to the point she was getting booed at her own autograph sessions. You have to at least make it look good.
Kind of terrifying, in the right season.
The right season. Or as we in Central Florida say, months without an ‘r’ in them…and a few with.
Regard the Cats trailer, I wasn’t bothered too much, but then I realized that I knew that there was a musical called “Cats” on Broadway,* and that there might be a generation of people who have never heard of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and they’re seeing this for the first time and saying, “Is … is this a video game movie?”
* The record-breaking first run closed in 2000.
Bluegrass abroad.
A relative was travelling in Japan and heard a group playing Tejano music, which is basically Tex-Mex folk polka that’s still very popular with young and old rural hispanics. He said they were playing it so well that he thought it was a native Texas band until he saw them.
It’s amazing how well the Japanese can adopt other cultural items, especially given how strong their own culture is (was?).
Fred —
Is that “no refund” in case you don’t get an up-close-and-personal encounter with a supercell & tornado, or in case you DO?
It’s my understanding that one pays a fee to go hang with storm chasers for a set period during prime tornado season. Like a package holiday. They’re always watching radars, and heading out to wherever they think a supercell thunderstorm is likely to develop. But if no storms pop up to chase, or if they do but they fail to spawn tornadoes, no refunds.
That is my understanding, at least.
I see. Astro-gliding to other dimensions is a slippery slope that I think her mental health can ill afford to risk.
Maybe it allows her boyfriend to astroglide into other dimensions. :-0
Maybe it allows her boyfriend to astroglide into other dimensions. :-0
You know the drill.
😀
I’m guessing that Conservatives public transportation advert is as real as the muslim rasslin’ woman.
It’s clearly taped over the regular advertising poster frame.
Heh. I think it’s safe to say it’s not quite achieving whatever non-creepy, non-car-crash aesthetic it was actually going for.
I thought the whole thing was a public service to help keep kids from turning to Furry culture. I have to assume that the coming protests will be even more disturbing than the film itself.
“So does the sign behind the Japanese country singers really say GLAND OLE OPRY?”
Plobabry. The Japanese take quite a self-deprecating attitude to their idiosyncratic grasp of English pronunciation, and happily use the L/R gag in ways that Our Betters would have fits over.
“*sharp intake of breath*”
Breathe out first… neither have I.
Logan. James Bond. Rambo: Last Blood. Top Gun: Maverick. Terminator: Dark Fate. Ghost Busters.
Sensing a trend here.
Engrish.com
@Pogonip
Baby is in absolutely no rush and is now 9 days late. I think she’s waiting for the book.
85% on the James Bond quiz. I’d be ashamed apart from the fact that the stuff I missed was all from the reboot series.
jabrwok
…Avatar 2, Coming To America 2 (yes, really), Big Lebowski 2, It 2, Godzilla 40, Toy Story 4…
When do we unironically see Sequel: The Movie!?
Sam duncan,
In my experience ( working with Japanese engineers) they were pretty sloppy with their japanese pronunciation too.
E.g.one guy I knew quite well passed me in the hall one afternoon and barked something like “ko-cha” as we passed.
Figured out later this was Konichiwa, but in the male idiom.
I got giggled at in Tokyo by receptionists, probably because my pronunciation was too feminine. Also, I was way too polite to young women.
Hi Prm,
Tell her to come ahead, I lost the notebook w/all the stuff in it so it’ll be a while!
Also, I was way too polite to young women.
? /explication of Japanese cultural difference desired
When do we unironically see Sequel: The Movie!?
That was part of it, but all the movies I listed showed old, white men enjoying a last hurrah before fading away, usually to be replaced by an uber-comptent ActionGrrrrl. That sub-text bothers me. But then I’m not woke.
No h/t for Bond Villian Quiz?
Locker Room Scene…
Short version Swalls and Swass
…this allows me to ‘astro-glide’ to other dimensions…
I own a book called “Practical Time Travel”. I bought it largely for the title. It was eye-opening to read that people actually believe the astrobullshit.
I despise Elon Musk — in the same way I despise all snake oil salesmen of his ilk — but he deserves her.
Pst314,
This was in the mid 1990’s, at the Tokyo branch of a big us tech firm, and at some of the Tokyo offices of Japanese companies we were doing joint developments with. Almost all of the local female employees were young-ish, say 20-30, working support roles like receptionist, “assistant”, or clerical. (And a female assistant was very different from an AA in the US, who often had a lot of power.)
Protocol was basically for the men to ignore them unless they needed some task done, or maybe just more coffee. You may know the term “Office Lady”. To an American ear, those tasks were requested with curt orders. Male lingo was gruff, truncated, almost staccato. Female lingo was artificially high pitched, correct grammar, and a bit flowery vocabulary.
Things have changed in the decades since then.
Hi Fred,
What changed? Did feminists come to Japan to explain to the OL’s that they were oppressed?
Shocking headline!!!
Biggest Business in Texas City Forces Law Impacting All Other Businesses and Citizens / Gets Itself Exempted
https://pjmedia.com/trending/youre-our-only-hope-liberal-austin-cries-out-for-republicans-to-save-it-from-democrat-homeless-policy/
Pogonip,
Don’t know. After that era I worked mostly with Finns, Poles, Indians, French, Brits, and Aussies. All of whom had their own … features. Sorry. But to make you feel better, here’s a key to the hottub. (No, not the grubby ground floor pool. The Restricted Spa upstairs. Password is “Swordfish”.)
No h/t for Bond Villian Quiz?
I couldn’t recall how I found it. Bugger. Did I screw up? Apologies. Fixed.
Heh.
Shocking headline!!!
Make rats welcome, get more rats.
Our betters discussed…
The other a former head of the Civil Service. It’s very notable that the Civil Service Code only cautions against party political bias. Senior Civil Servants appear to be allowed to lobby quite openly for their preferred political outcomes, particularly where their fellow partisans can be found in all three traditional parties. Sod the people they’re meant to be serving though.
Biggest Business in Texas City Forces Law Impacting All Other Businesses and Citizens / Gets Itself Exempted
Related…
We wants our $15/hour !
Meanwhile…at
Communist Party CentralSanders HQ…All the tovariches will have the equivalent of a new pair of shoes every five years. Hurrah for the GWONT !
*(Seeing as how this is Ephemera, fun fact that has little actual relevance to the above, the author of the second bit, Pfannenstiel, shares a name with the Pfannenstiel incision, the most common incision used for Caesarian sections, sometimes called the “bikini incision” because it would be covered by one – at least some of the older versions.)
In sports news, Iran picks up where East Germany left off, note the operative word “awaiting”.
If anyone’s interested, the UK’s Channel 4 is streaming Apollo 11 as if live. It’s not all Cathy Newman and Jon Snow; sometimes it can be the best channel we have.
Fred, thanks. Now that you write that, I have vague memories of reading something long ago about marked differences in speech by Japanese men and women.
What changed? Did feminists come to Japan to explain to the OL’s that they were oppressed?
Could have simply been the slow effects of “constant” exposure Western culture as communications and cultural interchange steadily increased after WWII? Just wondering, not implying any direct knowledge.
This man’s balloon animals are better than yours.™
This man’s balloon animals are better than yours.™
I see you’re getting the hang of it.
Heh.
Ugh. Jennifer Hudson has a great voice but no breath control. She’s slaughtering that song. Reminds me of Christina Aguilera, who is really good at runs but also only really good at runs.
Part of what made Webber’s musicals so popular is that he composed the music for the lead singers’ voices (and talents/limitations) specifically. It’s why the original London productions are the best.
It’s why the original London productions are the best.
I know almost nothing about musical theatre.
[ Cue sharp intake of breath. ]
Me either. 😳
Moon landing Google doodle. Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins reflects on one of humanity’s greatest achievements:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzbquKCqEQY
Seems a good time to revisit this.
Maybe I’m feeling unusually well-disposed, or a little drunk, but this doesn’t look as awful as I was expecting.
This doesn’t look as awful as I was expecting.
Agreed. Although, of course, a trailer can be very deceptive. I’d been growing very tired of the Star Trek franchise but maybe the next film will be okay.
I’ve been growing very tired of how Hollywood recycles stories over and over, and want to see more stories that have never before been done on film.
This item about for-profit organ harvesting of prisoners in China reminded me of Larry Niven’s Organlegger stories (Gil the ARM). Why not make one of them into a movie thriller? A movie based on The Defenseless Dead would be timely and could be a very entertaining thriller. Will Smith did very well in I, Robot and could make a very good ARM detective.
Maybe I’m feeling unusually well-disposed, or a little drunk, but this doesn’t look as awful as I was expecting.
I know that guy…whatsisname….dammit….ah, that’s Alan Arkin isn’t it! I knew it!
As for the moon landing anniversary thing…watched the 4+ hour original coverage of the Apollo 11 launch from july 16, 1969 by CBS with Walter Cronkite. Broke it up into 3 sittings. Highly recommend it for more than just the moon thing. Was an interesting time capsule of what TV and the news were like 50 years ago. Relative to today, Cronkite seems rather unpolished yet more easy to identify with. The commercials are amusing and I had forgotten how bad location shots could be. And I had forgotten how often TV broadcasts would just go black for a few seconds when switching from commercials to regular programming and such. There’s also a 30 minute segment of the morning news, local to New York City with all that was going on there at the time. At one point Cronkite mentions that Teddy Kennedy was there for the launch. Wonder how the world would be different if he had stayed in Florida through the weekend. Also interesting to see Cocoa Beach area and Cape Canaveral/Port Canaveral back before it got so built up. I used to live in Cape Canaveral when I worked on the Shuttle program but when I pass through that area today, I hardly recognize anything.
Wonder how the world would be different if he had stayed in Florida through the weekend.
“Some people drove somewhere”
“Some people drove somewhere”
Well, exactly. So help me out here. When I was in high school I read newspapers regularly, especially the editorial and op-ed sections, and it influenced, in a way that I was not conscious of at the time, much of how I wrote. Granted I’ve never been much of a writer but I did have a partiality to getting the facts of the matter communicated and aside from what I’m about to relate, my teachers were OK with my writing. Yet through my reading I adopted into my writing a use of the passive voice. I’m fairly certain I was getting this from the weasel writing styles of opinion writers, most of them being leftists, though some right guys as well. My history teachers however, drove that habit out of me by constantly dinging me for use of “the passive voice”. I didn’t understand what that meant at first but once I grasped it and how weaselish it was, I became very annoyed when I encountered it from adults in the media and elsewhere. It seems very bizarre to me that such a thing persist among professional writers and especially academics. Does anyone else notice this absurdity or am I missing something here?
Pzt314
I’ve always thought Nivens short stories would make good movies.
Wtp
As a sprog i was taught that if you could not express your ideas in short active declarative sentences, you probably did not know what you were actually trying to say.
(Was that sentence too long? Oh, well… I’m older now.)
Does anyone else notice this absurdity or am I missing something here?
Nothing says plausible deniability like the passive voice.