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.