A Run Down Nostalgia Drive

I have directed folks to James Lileks' site before. And after today, i will probably do it again. If you can't find something on his site to interest you, go ahead and shut off your internet.

He has a whole section on old motels, illustrated with postcards from the '50s to the early '70s. You know back in the day when an independent roadside motel could still make a living with a couple of dozen rooms. And a pool. Had to have the pool.

What amazes me about these postcards are the cars parked around the motels. Cadillacs, Lincolns, Thunderbirds, Oldsmobiles and Buicks. All clean and shiny.

So, here is my question:

Did the folks who owned the motel wait until they had a collection of good-looking, expensive cars in the lot, and then tell 'that photographer feller' to come quick, or did they arrange with every friend they had with an expensive car to show up on photo day?

Or, did the photographer arrange for the fancy cars, knowing that in a couple of years the picture would be dated, and they would need to have it retaken?

Either way, I just find it interesting that in none of these shots is anybody traveling in a 10 year old Chevrolet station wagon.

The picture above is from the site, and I swear this place looks familiar. we drove to Disneyland when I was a kid- that entire trip is the subject of a series of future posts- and we spent the night in Colorado.

I could be wrong, but you never know.

A Flock Up

Just what is the world coming to?

Cheating at the Olympics! And worst yet, in badminton!

How do you wind up in a position where badminton is important enough to cheat at?

Maybe I'm just not up to date on the world of competitive badminton (did you EVER think you would see that phrase? Ccompetitive Badminton!). To me badminton is a game played at a family gathering when to many people got hurt playing volleyball, but we didn't feel like taking down the net. 

And now we have international teams conspiring to cheat.

To Hell in a handbasket; that's where were going.

So Many Options

I had an email exchange with a friend today about the upcoming election, and Obama's chances of re-election.

An interesting fly in the ointment we discussed was Bill Clinton; the keynote speaker at the Democratic Convention.

First; nobody will watch the convention. Hell, even the elected officials with that capital "D" after their names are finding ways to avoid getting photographed with President Death Knell. So all we will get from the speech are the highlights.

So the first question: Whose side is Bill Clinton on? The obvious answer is of course, Bill Clinton's What does he care more about; Bill Clinton or the Democrats keeping the White House?

Before you answer that, think about this.

The next four years will be interesting in a lot of respects. Economically, politically, foreign affairs, the Middle East, domestically- I can't think of a single area that will not require massive effort just to control, much less put right.

Assume Obama wins. Also assume he will continue through the next four years doing what he has done for the last four. Unless the Sunshine Fairy rains her good blessing down on us because a unicorn smiled at her, I don't see us being in any better position in 2016 than I do now. I also think that even the last few Obama sycophants will be tired of the condition of the country.

If we don't go Republican in 2012, we will definitely in 2016. Which means the earliest Hillary can expect to win is 2020. How will that work out for Bill?

Assume Romney wins, and again assume that the Unicorn doesn't smile for the Sunshine Fairy. Romney is no Reagan, and the world economy is just as bad off- or worse- than ours. I have heard that a recession is usually caused by over production, while a depression is caused by excessive cash flow. It is easier to clear the excess cars and appliances from the system than it is to clear a hundred trillion dollars.

Chances are we will still be working our way out of the slump, even if Romney does everything 100% right. And I have no faith that he will do everything 100% right.

Which means we may be ready to switch back to a Democrat in 2016. How will that work out for Bill?

Also, Bill Clinton is the Only Democratic President to win re-election since FDR in 1944; a status he will lose if Obama wins four more years.

You see why a lot of pundits don't think Bill Clinton actually has Obama's back this year.

And still Obama chose him for the keynote address.

There is another possibility.

Obama knows what the next four years will be like, and wants to lose; knowing he cannot do anything that will make the slightest change, or he is bored with the idea of being president. Hell, four years is the longest he has ever held a "job" in his life.

Either way, we only have a few more weeks until we know for sure.

Is anybody really ready for the "Hillary in '16" bumper stickers?

Friday Night at ther Movies II

I was surfing Netflixs early Friday evening and ran into a movie I hadn't seen in years. Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. It was a little different. Okay, saying this film was a little different is like calling PEEPS a health food.

The camera work looks like it was shot with an iPhone, and the acting could be considered wooden at best. But the reason to watch the film is the car chases. They are very real, and not cinematic in the least. Cars do what cars physically do. They get damaged when they collide with both movable and immovable objects, and require repair after said collisions. They also overheat and burn up when pressed to hard. And helicopters need fuel to run.

I like this so much better that the car chases that seem to go on for a thousand miles with nobody ever stopping for gas, and multiple collisions with no damage to the car. If the goal is realism.

Face it; I love Smokey and the Bandit, from the opening credits when the big rig fires up in the early morning light, to final scene with Sheriff Justice ready for another chase with less that half the car he left Texas with. I have to take an afternoon one weekend about every 6 months of so to sit down and watch The Bandit run that Trams Am all over Georgia. But in a lot of respects, Smokey and the Bandit is a live-action cartoon. That is part of what makes it FUN.

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is, in some respects, not fun. You know my criteria for a movie, a good story, convincingly told. DM,CL fills that requirement. Parts are interesting, parts drag out way to long, and some parts you just think to your self; WHAT?

I also have to disagree with Wikipedia on at least one point; they call Peter Fonda's character 'likeable'. I never found him likeable. Had I played almost any other character in the movie I would have hit him hard in almost any scene. He was about as likeable a bad case of shingles. The opening seen he and his buddy steal $150,000 form a grocery store by kidnapping the manager's wife and daughter. Oh yeah; that's a likeable bunch.

But the cars... In my opinion the most likeable star was the 1969 Charger R/T. Maybe that was why I disliked Fonda's character so much. He was behind the wheel of this machine less than a minute when he used it to take the door off of a police cruiser. And then tore half of the front end off off later in the film when he t-boned a pickup truck at an intersection.

The movie ends rather abruptly. The helicopter runs out of gas; they escape from the cops and are home free.

Until they t-bone a train and die in a fiery crash. Ahhhh; the final comeuppance.

But it made money; over $28 million. it was released in 1974, and laid the blueprint for movies like Smokey, and TV shows like The Dukes of Hazzard.

All of the elements are there; the hot car; the hot girl, the inept police, the likeable outlaw who isn't really a crook, even though he has broken the law, maybe, depending on your point of view. And the chase.

Chase scenes are as old as the movies. Name a Western without a chase scene. Name a Comedy without one. Name a Romantic Comedy without one. The difference is, this movie started The Chase Movie. So at some point, if that is your genre of preference, you need to watch Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry at least once. Preferably at the Drive-In, in the front seat of a 1966 Oldsmobile, with a tinny speaker hung on your door and a large popcorn in your lap.

If none of these items are available, a beer, Netflixs and your recliner are okay. and the surround sound will improve your viewing experience. When they uncork that 440 Charger for the first time, you might just turn the image off and listen to nothing but the noise, like I almost did.

Mrs. Buffy Jones-Smith-Hudson-Dayton

So, once again I was ahead of the curve.

I was reading Instapundit the other day and ran into this article. I was fascinated that NPR would do a story that is so critical of their base. I mean, isn't almost everyone who listens to NPR a pretentious ass?

Now let me tell you my story.

10 years ago I was in college, and taking an English course that basically consisted of writing for review. Lots of writing style, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. One week, instead of instruction, we were required to write a piece extemporaneously. We were not given any notice that we were having this assignment.

Classes were 4 hours long. we had the first two hours to read our choice of several articles and do online research. Then the last two hours we were to hand write the assignment. You may not know this, but my handwriting sucks. always has, and probably always will. But, I can make it legible if I write very slowly.

So I took ten minutes to select and read an article, and then started writing. The article I choose was about the trend toward hyphenated names. And on how unwieldy they were, both in the first generation, and even more so in the 2nd, and we don't even want to think about a third.

Once again it is the liberal, pretentious asses, thinking only of themselves, causing unintended harm to others.

Missy and Poindexter didn't think about how this hyphenated monstrosity would affect their children and grandchildren. All they thought about was how it 'Felt Good' to them in the present.

The hyphenated name debacle is a short course in liberal thought. We did it because it made us feel good; now you go live with the consequences.

More evdence of how liberal 'thought' isn't really:

They did this to THEIR OWN CHILDREN.

'Nuff said.

Again- Guns Don't Kill People

I was reading Instapundit this morning and ran across this piece. I have been saying for a long time that movies have gotten too violent. Its nice to see Peter Bogdanovich agree with me.  

Personally, I haven't seen any of the Batman movies. They seemed, from their advertising, dark and violent, and I don't go to movies to see dark and violent. Hell, I still haven't seen Cars 2 for that reason.

So Batman would not be on my viewing list.

But, at any rate, back to the article. Peter talks about how he has been worried about violence in the movies for a long time:

Back in the '70s, I asked Orson Welles what he thought was happening to pictures, and he said, "We're brutalizing the audience. We're going to end up like the Roman circus, live at the Coliseum." The respect for human life seems to be eroding.

'Back in the 70's' he says. 30-40 years ago. And yet the violence has gotten worse. To the point where it has spilled from the screen to the theater itself.

They make a big point in the article about how he lost a girlfriend to murder back in 1980- 30 years ago.

And this was the point where Peter went off the rails.


Dorothy was murdered by a guy who was not even legally in the United States, and he bought a gun here. It's out of control. Anytime there's a massacre, which is almost yearly now, we say, "Well, it's not the guns. Guns don't kill people. People kill people" and all that bullshit from the NRA. Politicians are afraid to touch it because of the right wing. And nothing ever changes. We're living in the Wild West.

So, his only experience was with a gun sale 30 years ago, but believes things have not changed since then.

And, he doesn't realize that the fringe element when it comes to firearms is himself and his little echo chamber. The vast majority of people in this country are gun owners and very pro-gun.

Take for example the current administration. They forced through, by every barely legal trick in the book, the most unpopular and sweeping change in an industry in the history of the country. Because Obama felt it was the right thing to do.

But no one, not even when the Dems had both houses of Congress, did the touch a single gun law.

They read the polls; they know what would happen if they tried.

Toasted Marshmallows

I think I am burnt out on the Presidential race already.

And I don't even watch TV. Being in the Cincinnati market area, the rumor is we will get bombarded with political ads. Something to do with Ohio being a battleground swing state.

But I do listen to talk radio. Which is almost 100% politics anymore. But I don't think that’s the reason I am burnt out. Like I have said before, I became interested in government when government became interested in me. Until I can get the government to leave me the hell alone, I don't intend to leave the government alone.

Which means I need to be informed on what the government is doing, will be doing, and wants to do to me. So I listen to talk radio. I ain't gonna find out any of these things watching the TV news or reading the newspaper.

I might be burnt out on the Presidential race because I know who I am voting for, and am ready for the race to be over.

But I have known who I would be voting for in every Presidential election since 1980 well before Election Day.

I think in this case it isn’t the election, but the Obama presidency I want to be over. I am burnt out on Obama.

During the Bush presidency I would listen to Democrats talk about how they could not stand to see a picture of Bush, or hear his voice. I thought they were partisan idiots. He's the President; get over it.

But you know what? The night Obama got elected I was listening to election results on the clock-radio while lying in bed. I was able to listen to about 5 words of his victory speech, and I had to turn the radio off. I couldn't stand to hear his voice. I felt like such a partisan hack.

But I think I know what it was that evening, with my 20-20 hindsight.

I was already burnt out on Obama. And that was just about a hundred days short of 4 years ago.

With luck, this will end in November of this year.

With luck my friends; with luck.

Some Memories Just Won't Die

You know I let an anniversary slip by yesterday. It was July 22, 1982 that I became a civilian, after 4 years and 4 days of military service.

It's hard to believe I have been a Civilian that long. Hell, at the time I got out I would have sworn I had already spent 30 years IN the Air Force.

Today; 30 years later, I still don't get through a week with remembering something about that 4 years. I of course have mementos around, but usually it is someone, something or some event that triggers an old memory.

Just tonight I was driving down a suburban street and ran across a sign that said 'SPEED BUMP", and a couple of home-built speed bumps. It put in mind of the Trailer park that once (maybe still is? Yep. Still is) outside Grand Forks Air Force Base. The one gravel street down the middle of that park was nothing more than a series of ruts and potholes. A friend of mine lived over there, and I can tell you it was terrible. Everybody complained about the condition of the road. The guy who owned the place had a solution though. He just put a Speed Bump sign and went about his business.

Every time I had to do some small repetitive task at work I recall some of the things I had to do as part of my job. Paperwork. My God, Napoleon believed that an Army moved on its stomach; The Air Force believed it was pushed by its mountain of paperwork. From after form after form. And all of them had numbers. And effective dates. Heaven help you if you used and outdated form. Or used a 1356b, when the 1357a was actually required.

I still recall the first form I was introduced to in Basic Training (3743 BMTS- Basic Military Training Squadron. MOTTO: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way {amazing what the minds remembers, ain't it? But don't ask for my cell phone number}); the 341. And no, I don't remember the suffix letter. I don't believe there was one. A 341 was a disciplinary record. the form itself had to folded just so; I think in half length-wise, and then in half again, then the top half inch was folded over and that tab was used hold the form under the flap of your left breast pocket, left side of the pocket. This way when an infraction was committed, the 341 was 'pulled', filled in by your MTI- Military Training Instructor- and then became part of your 'PERMANENT RECORD'.

I had the dubious pleasure of having a 341 pulled one Sunday morning while I was on Dorm Guard. Which reminds me of another funny story. Each training squadron was filled with Flights of 50 men or 50 women. Some thing I don't recall- so maybe I never knew- was how many flights were in each Squadron. But any rate, each flight had what was called a sister flight, so you had a group of 100 that went through Basic together. Did I mention that the 3743 BMTS was a training Squadron for women? Yep; 900 women, or there abouts, and 100 men. And the US Air Force did their level best to keep us separated.

But I told you that story to tell you this one.

Because we were in a female squadron, our flight had one male MTI, and one female MTI, as did our sister flight. Our female MTI was Airman First Class (A1C) Budd. I am fairly sure that she was not issued a first name.

Any rate, there I am on Sunday morning doing my stint as Dorm Guard. There is a knock at the door. I look out the window in the door to see who is beating the door down on a Sunday morning. It's A1C Budd. I knew who it was. I had seen her everyday for the last 4 weeks. But regulations required I ask for an ID. So I did. As usual, she began some tirade about 'Don't you know who I am; how can you not recognize your own MTI and so on. But I knew the drill, and stood my ground. She produced her ID, which I examined through the door, and then let her in.

As I stood back and opened the door A1C Budd entered the dorm. As she came abreast of me, she looked at me with an inquiring look. "Aren't you supposed to say something?", she asked. Basking in the glow of my recent success with the ID procedure, my mind went temporarily on vacation. So my mouth took over control. I said, "UH.... Good Morning Ma'am?"

And I had a 341 pulled. The one that I had folded Day One of Basic, 4 weeks ago. And had been in my pocket through 4 weeks of July and August Texas heat. It had lost some of its shape. Hell, it had lost MOST of its resemblance to a solid object. I'm not sure I could have even been unfolded. She accepted the 341 and marched to the MTI office. I don't know if she ever filled it out or not.

What was my infraction? As a warning to men in my Flight I was required to shout "Lady Entering the Dorm" when ever we had females in the dorm. But Hell; she wasn't a Lady.

She was my damn Drill Instructor.

Is You Is, Or Is You Ain't...

I watched O Brother Where Art Thou? last weekend for probably the fiftieth time. Yeah, I know it's a George Clooney movie; I like it in spite of him. The music is just flat great; the other actors are superb and it fulfills my basic requirements for a movie; a good story, convincingly told.

But that's not what I'm writing about today. Today our focus is a little tighter.

In case you aren't aware of the movie, and its various plots, one of the plots concerns the gubernatorial election in the state of Mississippi, where Governor 'Pappy' O'Daniel is being challenged by a fellow by the name of Homer Stokes. Toward the end of the movie Stokes is having a campaign event where George Clooney and his fellow escapees show up and barge the stage and sing a couple of songs.

Just prior to this scene Clooney  and company had busted up a KKK lynching that was being led by Stokes.

When he sees Clooney and his crew up on the stage he grabs a microphone and proceeds to denounce the crew in some rather vague but specific racial terms. He finishes his speech with the line:

"Is you is, or is you ain't my constituency?" (video at the link)

What the Hell is the meaning of this post? If you watched the video- and remember this movie is from 2000- I can't help but see Obama as Homer Stokes.

He is out on the campaign trail almost daily, and although they have not physically pulled the plug on his microphone or run him out of town on a rail, it is happening metaphorically.

Look at Nancy Pelosi, recommending nobody go to the Democratic Convention for crying out loud.

I can just see Homer Obama standing in the middle of an empty hall, shouting "Is you is, or is you ain't my constituency?", while Pelosi bends down to unplug his mike.

Sometimes Life does imitate Art.

Stopping Another Aurora

The news for the last two days has been full of the Aurora, Colorado shootings. Every newscast has been full of the shootings, even to the point where it has knocked the mud-slinging between Romney and Obama off of the news.

There are so many facets to this story that it will be years before we know everything, if we ever do.

The worst part is not the shooting, horrific as it was, but the reaction of the left to the shootings.

The first thing they did was look to see if the shooter belonged to the Tea Party. While the EMTs were still treating victims at the theater, and the police were trying to figure out how to enter the shooter's booby-trapped apartment,  the Lame-Stream Media were already trying to make a political win out of the deaths of these innocent victims.

The shooter was insane; that is a given. How anyone can argue otherwise is beyond me. There is no way any sane individual could have walked into that room armed as he was and illegally use those weapons to kill and maim innocent people in cold blood.

This was a scene out of a movie. The difference is that although sane minds will create these scenes for movies, they don't act them out in real life. This shooter did. That is, to me, a hallmark of insanity. Sane people can imagine these events, only the insane carry them out.

That he was able to hide that insanity and legally purchase the firearms he used does not lessen the depth of that insanity.

This is what makes the almost immediate call for more gun control all the more egregious.

These gun control groups were figuratively standing on the broken bodies of the victims to spout their ideology. They would have done it literally, but they couldn't make it to the scene in time.

Maybe that is why the liberals always win the propaganda wars. They have no shame. The victims of this shooter are not fellow human beings to be mourned, and their families comforted; they are a crisis not to be wasted.

Hopefully one day soon people will wake up to the fact that the liberal faction of this country is not concerned about anything but their agenda. If they need to stand on the bodies of the dead and wounded from this tragedy, or any other, to advance their cause, they will. The innocent victims; their families, the shooter- all pawns to be used to advance the cause.

They use the raw emotions of tragedy to move The Cause forward. To gain a new restriction while the memory of the deaths is still fresh.

Because they know that logical thought will turn them down; they require emotion, the roughed up revival fever that requires we DO SOMETHING NOW; STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN!

But gun laws don't stop tragedies like this.

No new law can stop a tragedy like this.

The only defense we have from the lone, insane gunman is the ability of a roomful of people legally able to shoot back.

Yeah About That Idea I Had...

Coming home from work I had a great post all worked up. The title; the setup; the final joke.

And then I with the storm of the century and lost it all.

For me writing is a mental activity. I usually am performing some physical task while my mind wanders off and occupies itself.

When it comes back it has a story to tell. All I have to do is write it down, while I remember it.

And, as Shakespeare said it, 'therein lies the rub.'

Mentally, I am done with the post. And then I sit down in front of the keyboard and  I go blank. And wind up doing a sports post like this one.

Why do I call this a sports post? Its a fishin' and huntin' post.

I start off fishin' and huntin' for an idea, and then wind spending all my time talkin' about the one that got away.

Rim shot, please? A little help here? What does it take to get a rim shot in this joint?

Ya Wanna Rethink That Choice?

Yesterday I put up this post, and this morning I heard somethng on the radio I just had to add.

Apparently Obama stopped at Skyline Chili for lunch before he left town.

For lunch he had two cheese coneys and a Bean 4-way.

He declined the onions because of meetings he had later in the day.

Considering the orifice he mostly comminicates from, I would have thought skipping the Beans would have been more appropriate.

I also heard that only 1200 folks showed up; for a hall that holds 3500. And the one they interviewed on the radio was from North Carolina.

Toast.