We’ve achieved peak Austin! Horribly Hot with Weird on course

Posted on July 11, 2022 by Steve

Mucca Sacra! Nothing could be more Austin Weird than this stupid person on a scooter exposing their skin to third-degree burns in 10 minutes (or stage one skin cancer in 20). One friend thinks they’re from Venice Beach, CA where this is acceptable. I’m not concerned about the “acceptable” angle, it’s outright dangerous, especially when riding one of those damned electric scooters. One good bump, the rider goes flying, lands on the asphalt or concrete…serious, serious raspberries! It’s what we Midwestern kids called abrasions in the Seventies and Eighties. Now I also realized there’s a thong involved and I’m getting a wedgie just looking at it! I have serious doubts any level of SPF sunscreen was applied given the pale complexion and no sheen of oiliness.

The only hope I can imagine could be the time when the photo was taken. If the rider wasn’t going about their shopping (there’s a purse) or errands between 2 PM and 6 PM, the peak times for the grid to be stressed and the worst time to be outside while we have a record-breaking Summer of temperatures exceeding 100° F/40° C; they’d have lesser sunburned skin.

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Now the animals are just taunting us

Posted on July 10, 2022 by Steve

After two years or so of the Pandemic, the animals are getting a little too close for comfort and I think they’re rubbing it in…hey, look at us, we’re not afraid of you dumb humans! This doe just hanging out by an office building I was walking by last week makes my point. The bigger question I have is, why here? There’s nothing worthwhile to eat except grass, if deer eat that, I don’t recall. I figured they were more particular. One good thing I know for sure after 28 years in Austin, the presence or abundance of deer will not attract any mountain lions or large feline to sweat.

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RIP Larry Storch

Posted on July 9, 2022 by Steve

What a run for him! He made it to 99! I’m so glad he was a part of my childhood and then some too. Larry was invisible to me in my early childhood as Mr. Whoopee in Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons, the guy who explained how machines worked with his magic chalkboard. Whenever I had the chance to watch Seventies-style cable TV at my Grandma’s house, Channel 44 constantly plugged how they had reruns of F-Troop via the clip with Larry doing his Palamino joke. Years later I would re-enact this with Playmobil toys in front of my girlfriend and cynical roommate.

While reading his official obit, I had forgotten how he started out as a comedian and impressionist, likely competing with Frank Gorshin and Rich Little back in the Sixties. He is also the guy responsible for the “Judy, Judy, Judy” bit everyone did whenever they tried their hand at being Cary Grant. By the time I was alive, Larry was making a good living as a voice actor for stuff I watched all the time: The Groovie Ghoulies, Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1969) and The Pink Panther. He was the Joker with Hanna Barbera until the Seventies when the Superfriends came around.

The biggest show I loved him for was on Saturday mornings in the mid Seventies and it reunited him with his F-Troop partner Forest Tucker…The Ghost Busters. Long before the unfunny movie in 1984 with Bill Murray telling weak jokes, these two vets along with a guy in a gorilla costume, hunted down ghosts of historical figures played by other comedy pros: Howard Morris, Jim Backus, Ted Knight and Nora Denney. At the end of every episode, they would send the wise-cracking ghosts back to some kind of Phantom Zone with a special camera. A perfect follow-up show to The Far Out Space Nuts starring Bob Denver and Chuck McCaan! Never missed either.

Lastly, Larry was definitely a lovable working actor! Throughout his prime, if he wasn’t a cast member on a weekly show, you could count on him being the guest of the week somewhere when this stuff was the norm. The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Grizzly Adams, Love American Style, etc. It’s a world of show biz which has been slowly dying and taking away what used to be Hollywood’s beloved working middle class via TV as the production companies, networks and streaming services’ greed has destroyed this.

Thanks for everything Larry! You made my childhood awesome. You went on to be a go-to for the inner circle of those who love comedy. I’m sure the joke Dennis Miller made about your acting was without malice yet we all know and adore the “What is balloon” explanation to the neighboring Hikawa Tribe. Your legacy lives on in another generation of great impressionists: Maria Bamford and James Adomian readily come to mind. I will also make sure others will remember you.

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Rare incident of gun violence in Japan

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Steve

Former Prime Minister Abe being murdered by a firearm was pretty shocking since guns, ammunition and all the means are very difficult to acquire in Japan. Sure, the Japanese people have strong passions but I think they’re incredibly civil with their politics given how nasty matters were in their recent past. I don’t even think Abe was very controversial, well, in the US he wasn’t, unlike say Boorish Johnson (good riddance) or France’s latest right-wing con artist Macron. He seems rather vanilla, dull and stable. I figure the killer is a crazy person. The initial news reports claimed he had to build the gun he used which makes sense. My friend Ayako told me, the Japanese government makes applicants go through a gauntlet of questions before they can apply for training and a license, namely, “Why do you need this?” Of course, the Ammosexuals will make bullshit weak sauce on how the Japanese aren’t “free” and they’re oppressed and then comes their favorite cliché nugget…only the criminals have them. If they’re talking about the Yakuza, absolutely. Organized Crime in every state is well armed and they don’t screw around. What the Ammosexuals often forget (intentionally) is that these gangsters in the Western Countries (and Japan is in this club) also don’t pursue petty crimes with such firepower; aka waste their time threatening the fat-ass Couch Commandoes of their freedumb nor do they want to draw attention. I would like to see an Ammosexual who loves to brandish their AR-15 in a Chipotle try to get tough with a Yakuza or Mafia soldier. They’d probably fold faster than Nathan Silver at a poker table full of pros and male prostitutes.

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RIP James Caan

Posted on July 7, 2022 by Steve

Most of the obits focused on his roles as the hot-headed brother Sonny in The Godfather flicks but to a Sci-Fi nerd like myself he was more memorable as the greatest athlete ever in Rollerball, a dystopian story with corporations running the world. The weird part was how humanity’s long-standing problems were gone: hunger, poverty, environmental decline, etc.; when Kapitalism loves to exacerbates them so Soylent Green got it right. Despite the nitpicking, Rollerball is more a story about how the powers that be need bread and circuses to distract the masses and the made-up sport is the story in the same vein the car stunts are in the Fast and Furious franchise. Years later, James returned to the genre with Alien Nation, a very weird and silly buddy-cop movie involving an alien race, a new angle to Affirmative Action and drugs. He had a funny cameo in The Simpsons and to younger audiences, his last big opportunity was the relatively new Holiday fave Elf as Buddy’s biological dad.

Thanks for everything James. Drama and Action were more your thing, one day I’ll get around to seeing Thief since any film with Tangerine Dream doing the soundtrack is always worth investigating.

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Beijing achieved!

Posted on July 6, 2022 by Steve

Rather bummed that Beijing doesn’t have a city flag like all the other places I’m arriving at but I’ll take this little victory on my virtual trip around the world.

I owe the more recent destination’s success to stepping up my exercise routine, aka, getting off my ass and going to the gym. The one at work being more accessible helps becauseI like it more. I already had a secure locker, the indoor bike has a tally of past miles, hours and calories; and here’s the biggest thing I missed, getting hot water in the shower isn’t a minor ordeal.

Onward to the next place I’ve selected, Bangui which is a city in the Central African Republic. It’s a short distance compared to the others since I needed something to cut down how drastic the gap was between Beijing and New Delhi.

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What a bunch of Incel Losers

Posted on July 5, 2022 by Steve

I love the vandalism done to the photo yet these assholes remain an important warning sign of what may be going wrong in Amerika. Many people don’t know the whole story on how Germany went from being a nice, open, welcoming society and pretty democratic country after WWI and then the center of the Nazi Shit Show by the Thirties. (I know a bit more than average and I readily admit, I don’t know the whole story or its super gritty details.) It’s thanks to the Weimar Republic being complacent and writing off Hitler to be just a crank while ignoring all his Right-Wing/Conservative enablers in power and in the Media. Many of those Conservatives lived (and died) to regret helping those thugs come to power but their arrogance matched the Country Club/Corporate Republicans who thought they could manipulate the Teabaggers-cum-MAGAts.

They never learn. Girth Vader was the warning they’re ignoring since Senator Jowls of Kentucky, Senator Magic Underpants of Utah and Senator Oh-the-Vapors of South Carolina think they can still rein in this crazy mob. Little do they know, there’s a more competent Fascist dictator biding his time Florida, aka Redneck Dagobah. He’ll climb out from under his rock in 2024.

Anyway, these Patriot Front, Proud Boys, Y’all Qeda, etc. marches are another symptom of things taking a bad turn. Especially when the Fuzz does a better job protecting them while they beat the crap out of peaceful protestors. The ugly truth is that these goons aren’t out for a calm march, they’re looking for a fight as per their matching clothes, weapons and how they’re hiding their faces. It’s our job as good citizens to expose them. Find out who they really are and shame them. Many of those creeps from Charlottesville rightfully lost their livelihoods. Hitting them in the pocketbook might be the best weapon we have.

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Greetings from Austin this Fourth

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Steve

Click on it for a larger card to play and sorry, no backsies on the horrible free space.

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Seventeen years as a ‘blog

Posted on July 3, 2022 by Steve

Dang! Where did all the years go! Oh, that’s right, I squandered them staying alive. Nah! I would say squander is a bit too strong and overly negative. I just have mixed feelings while looking back and realizing, mucca sacra! If this incarnation of my newspaper were a human being, it would be a teenager telling me how much I suck since I’m embarrassing it.

I’ve always disliked the term blog too. As I’ve said many times before, blog just feels annoying and whiney, it’s on par with someone’s diary entries. Given how technology is rapidly changing in the Stupid Ages, TikTok and other means via a cell phone are more hip…and the new way to be annoying. At best, my site has moved has been “promoted” to irrelvant or ancient which I consider a compliment. I don’t agree with those who say our attention spans are dwindling. People continue to read books/long magazine articles and sit through blockbuster movies running over two hours (binge watching?). They might be devouring either via their phones or tablets yet I have a feeling most of the time, the reader/viewer enjoys the experience in one sweep. OK, books are incremental but my point stands. Technology doesn’t always sweep away the old methods of enjoying or doing something. So I will continue to write and hope for comments, keep the original goal of getting this site to be more of a conversation…eventually.

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Brick Fiesta 2022 is on!

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Steve

It feels pretty sweet to be amongst my fellow LEGO master builders and fans. Well, I’m exaggerating on the former, I’m in no way close to being even LEGO apprentice, especially when you see all these incredible builds brought from all over Texas. There will be a ton of photos as long as the battery on my iPhone holds out. I’m just not even half the shutterbug Somara is. Not sure if there’s a theme this year. I know the usual subgroups are present: trains, portraits and Star Wars, as with the latter, LEGO has been tied to the movies since day one! My creations were cooler and cheaper than what Kenner could crank out in the Seventies!

The YouTube channel Beyond the Brick is here again and the big guests are these two dudes who were on the Fox show LEGO Masters. Not sure if they won or whatever, not a fan of reality shows. I guess I will watch the show just to fast forward through all the crap the producers do to generate drama. Now I have to resist going over budget on all the cool accessories I find that LEGO doesn’t make directly.

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Welcome to July 2022

Posted on July 1, 2022 by Steve

Phew! We just got through the hottest June on record and now we’re headed full speed into the broiler with July. Note how the Climate Deniers/Right have changed their position from “it’s not happening,” to, “we’ll have to live with it.” Despite the horrible politics of the Stupid Ages we’re living through, July is often a good month in my life. Sure, it wraps up with my birthday but a lot of cool people share this month with me, many good movies hit their stride around this time and back in the Midwest, we’ve been acclimated to the warmer weather.

In Austin this Summer, my favorite month will be action packed! Tomorrow will be Brick Rodeo (formerly Brick Fiesta) and I will be nerding out over all the incredible designs the LEGO Master Builders of Texas. I wanted to see it all last year in Houston yet the money and time wasn’t available.

The following weekend is the long delayed Austin Comic Book Convention which has been on hiatus for two years so my ticket from 2020 will be honored. The biggest guests will be Billy Dee Williams obviously Lando Calrissian), Vanessa Angel (Lisa from Weird Science the TV show and Kingpin) and Kevin Conroy (the best-known animated voice of Batman, namely the Nineties through Aughts run). I’m also stoked about the two people who provided favorites from Avatar the Last Air Bender, Jessie Flower – Toph! and Jennie Kwan – Suki of the Kyoshi Warriors! Side note, Nick and Paramount are going to do a movie about Kyoshi’s time as the Avatar; for us fans, we know she held the role before Roku of the Fire Nation.

Then comes a weekend off! I hope to finally get an interview or two done for Gifts of the Maggi as I want to put in the can. My designs are bigger than reality due to the guests, the setting or juggling the schedule with my producer. At least we have a third microphone for interviewing two guests at once.

One event I’m cutting back to just attending for one day is the Classic Game Fest. Jennifer will be out of town with her friend Shannon and truthfully, it’s something you can take all in with one trip. It will be cool to meet the guy who developed Q-Bert, one of the few video games my parents would play during the Arcade Boom of the Early Eighties. Not sure what I’m hoping to find beyond it. I do enjoy all the nostalgia and I hope to let the people who sold us the Cyndi Lauper trading cards, how well our Xmas cards went.

For my birthday weekend, the biggest and best fun will be delayed a weekend as Jennifer has to work. This is alright with me. When she had to tell me the bad news, Jen worried I would be upset. No. Getting settled into the new job is more important and Kalahari isn’t moving away. If the Spring tornado didn’t destroy it, we’re good! I am so excited about going to an indoor waterpark! No need for sunscreen. No worries about sunburn. No worries about a cold front suddenly happening. We’ll have a room to crash in for the night to get up and hit the slides before we leave the following day!

Now to close out with this month’s header. Washington jumping over the Delaware River dressed as Evel Knievel. You may have recognized it from Stephen Colbert’s office during the Covid period. I’m sure it was in the background. It might have been a souvenir from his time at Comedy Central CBS let him keep and/or post. The parody also reminds me of what a sad joke Amerika’s culture and government are. We’re ruled by rich assholes manipulating a backward-thinking, hateful minority who fear anything that isn’t them and they’re enabled by a too easily cajoled Center. They prefer to be called “Moderates” yet all they care about is cheap gas for their guzzling SUVs, crap products from Wal-Mart and are the noisiest NIMBYs; they fear “the poors” are contagious. Ergo, Washington acting like a Hillbilly Redneck is probably how MAGAts see him. Might as well. There are those darkly hilarious paintings showing Girth Vader with Jebus by his side. What I really fear is how we’ll be required to have a portrait of Herr DeSantis in every home or be arrested by the “Don’t Say Gay,” Police. It’s going to be a long, long century.

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1972: First Leap Second added to UTC system

Posted on June 30, 2022 by Steve

We must be getting better at this because I haven’t seen warnings at work about this happening in a some years. All our computers, phones, tablets, GPS systems and whatever need to know the exact time down to probably millionths of a second or else there can be problems. The majority of us wouldn’t notice anything serious yet the astronauts living on ISS, satellites in the GPS system and sadly, weapons do. I once heard on Stuff You Should Know mention how those living on ISS pull ahead of us by a thousandth of a second every year and they’re only 400 km above the earth. Imagine how far ahead the hardware providing TV, the weather and other vital data get? Meanwhile, one of Phyllis Schlafly’s dipshit offspring (Andrew) runs a moron conservative wikipedia claiming relativity is a Liberal lie amongst other willfully ignore myths. Gotta’ love it. Right on the moron scale with the MAGAts claiming the vaccine puts in a tracking chip while they bloviate their doings on TikTok, FeceBook and Instagram.

Back to the point. UTC was developed over the decades to get everything precise since we know the Earth isn’t consistent with its rotation nor our revolution around the Sun is changing microscopically as our star loses mass. The earthquake that caused the horrible tsunami in 2004 knocked the planet’s axis off by 0.1°! By the Fifties and Sixties, Scientists gained agreement on the Caesium-133 (we Yankees spell it Cesium) atom’s radiation periods or wavelengths; somebody who’s more knowledgable on this jump in please! Either way, this has been pretty solid but remember, Earth doesn’t always to follow the rules and on this day 50 years ago, the atomic clocks as they’re called, had to add a second to keep synchronization; ergo it wasn’t midnight July 1, 1972 until 23:59:60 of June 30, 1972 came and went. After then, we’ve had 26 more seconds added (all in my lifetime!) on either June 30 or December 31. I barely remember the last two added in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Next year, the process is up for review to see if there’s a better plan.

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Yes, while you…sit

Posted on June 29, 2022 by Steve

Definitely puts new meaning in term garbage goal. On the other hand, it could be a more constructive use of potty time since we all know everyone is on their phone or tablet. I bet humans were reading on the john as soon as got a decent light source, they were already accustomed to the smell. Lastly, the expression on this dude’s face is worrisome. He seems a little too excited to have someone walk in on him. A Bizarro Louis CK.

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Seven thousand miles!

Posted on June 28, 2022 by Steve

Last week I got past six weeks in time for exercise but the duration covers all kinds of exercise: indoor bike, outdoor bike, stair master and running on a treadmill. Today I have gone over 28% the circumference of the Earth via an indoor bike! Some people find this impressive. I don’t. Seriously, it’s a fake bike, indoors without worries from the environment (namely Austin drivers who don’t signal) and I’m in no danger of getting lost.

The last ten days have been fantastic too because I haven’t missed a morning, the best time to exercise. I get super obnoxious headaches if I put this off to the afternoon/early evening. Anyway, by really, really pushing my average to 17 miles/day has been effective at closing the gap on where I theoretically am on my way to Beijing and how far behind I am with averaging 10 miles/day as I had planned way back in January. Should I beat my longest known streak, 73 days, maybe I’ll be on par to beat out the 2019 records. Not quite the ideal, 3652.4 miles or more. I think the loftier goal is to get the cycling down enough that I can scrape up some additional time to climb a few stairs so I can get my lifetime cume to be over 11,000 storeys. Wish me luck and I won’t be blathering on about this until I reach Beijing which should be within another 10 days.

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Pabst Blue Ribbon, now in obnoxious Hipster cases!

Posted on June 27, 2022 by Steve

How to transport that is beyond the imagination. Given how icky PBR has always been, that’s not a family pack, it’s a lifetime supply for a few generations.

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