Conventional wisdom about writing is conventionally wrong.
On the way up, a man and his family said, “You’re almost there. But don’t go on the ice. We slipped and it was nearly fatal.”
This would be why all the people on the ice field in this photo are roped up and wearing crampons. It’s the way to Camp Muir and the summit. You don’t walk out there in shorts and hiking boots.
Halfway up Mount Rainier.
Loved this. Our own Hound of the Baskervilles gets faked out every time I pretend to throw the ball and palm it. Where’s the ball? The ball? I CAN’T FIND THE BALL!
But what about cats?
So I try not to write about personal things, because a good blog is not a bad version of Dear Diary.
HOWEVER: It’s my birthday and I’ll blog if I want to. (Believe this is a song from the ’50s. Could be wrong. Not gonna check.)
Though I rarely drink now, my wife gave me two bottles of fine bourbon this morning: Knob Creek and Buffalo Trace.
A while bag, I toured the Buffalo Trace distillery while in Kentucky’s capitol, and they spent hours educating all about bourbon, which is rather complicated and interesting.
Also, the governor made us Kentucky Colonels.
I kid you not. Not really a military thing. Honorary advisory role from way back. Colonel Sanders wasn’t an officer who fought in World War II, then decided to open fried chicken restaurants. He was a Kentucky Colonel.
So yeah, those of us who went on this trip still joke around and call each other Colonel, though none of us have gone to the annual reunions.
The interesting part about the tour wasn’t just the ABC’s of bourbon and how each barrel was worth $25,000.
At lunch, they gave us pulled pork sandwiches and little taster cups. Columns were ingredients: rye whiskey, bourbon, vodka and so forth. Rows were age, with six months on the bottom row, a year, two years then the expensive stuff on the top row aged something like seven years or more.
Here’s the thing: didn’t matter if you loved whiskey and hated vodka. Every single thing in that bottom row, the six-months old, tasted like cheap moonshine. Rocket fuel. It was terrible, no matter what ingredients they used.
The next row was better. Third row was great.
Weirdly, the top row, the expensive stuff, wasn’t universally wonderful. Vodka doesn’t really taste like anything, so it was fine, but other cups weren’t smooth like the middle rows. Some of them tasted seriously off. Spicy, heavy, more concentrated. You’ve probably run into this if you’ve ever had an expensive bottle of wine. Uncorking it after thirty or sixty years is rolling the dice. Could be amazing. Could be sour and terrible. Either way, it’ll cost you as much as a used Honda Civic.
On the same line of thought, I’d always thought the Z3 was the best-looking car ever since Remington Steele drove one in GOLDENEYE: SEAN BEAN DIES AGAIN. (Love the Swedish subtitles on this video. Perfect.)
Last week, I spotted a Z3 at our friend’s house with a FOR SALE sign. Beautiful car, low miles.
She gave me keys to drive it. A dream, right?
Hated it. A fine car, just way too small, my head would poke out of the top of the soft-top. I felt cramped, like an astronaut shoved into a space capsule. I honestly feel far more comfortable in the Epic Black Car Part II: The Sequel, which sounds weird to say–I’d rather drive that instead of a Z3? But yeah, I would.
Sometimes, expensive is just expensive, and something one-third the price is twice as good.
This. So much this.
If you haven’t seen his other videos, they’re all worthwhile. He does a beautiful impression of Morgan Freeman narrating, and the writing for each video is spot-on.
I salute you, sir.
How much stuff is in your garage or basement, taking up space?
I feel your pain. Once you put something in a plastic bin and shove it in your garage, there’s a 95 percent change you’ll never open it. You could move across the country three times, loading and unloading those same plastic bins into U-Hauls, and never crack open the seal.
This is wrong. And it doesn’t have to be this way.
Though my first social media love remains Twitter, and my affair with WordPress lives on, the useful thing about Facebook is you can connect with local people who’ll pay you monies to TAKE JUNK YOU DON’T USE.
Here are three ads I put on Facebook today for my local group, East Grays Harbor Swap and Shop, or as I like to call it, EGHSS, which you pronounce kinda like “eggs” except slower and in a Danish accent.
Also: here’s a link to the craigslist ad that started me blogging in the first place: Epic Black Car deserves good owner; are you worthy?
There is no shortage of funny or strange videos on the Series of Tubes, and it takes no great talent to find them.
HOWEVER: It takes some talent to make something as long, and interesting, as TOO MANY COOKS.
Before you watch it, listen: this thing starts out slow, and if you’ve never watched bad TV shows from the ’80s and ’90s, because you weren’t born yet, or have a rule about never watching the Glowing Tube, some of these parodies will fly over your head like a B-2 bomber.
I don’t believe there are any bad words or anything other than cartoonish violence and creepiness, but be warned that it does get weird, though I think in an interesting way. This really is something for people who grew up watching reruns of The Brady Brunch, TJ Hooker, Airwolf, Battlestar Galactica, Wonder Woman and about seventeen other shows. Funny stuff. Watch, then we’ll dissect it.
So: there’s no way to name every single genre and show that video just parodied. The list is ginormous.
From a big picture, though, the secret seems to be how this is different from Saturday Night Live skits from the bad old days, where writers took one funny idea and beat that dead horse all the way to the glue factory.
TOO MANY COOKS is the opposite. Despite repeating the opening song again and again (though they twist it), they’re actually cramming five metric tons of funny ideas into one parody skit, constantly changing their target to different genres and specific Bad TV Shows We All Used to Love.
Love is a big part of this. You can’t film a video of this breadth and style without loving those shows, and knowing them incredibly well. I could write a pretty good fake Airwolf script, and completely skewer it, because as a pookie, I watched that show religiously and adored the thing. Jan Michael Vincent FTW! And yeah, that thing was terrible when you fire up an old episode on YouTube now. But we loved our TV trash, and part of us will always love it.
Here’s why: entertaining trash, however trashy, is still entertaining, while pretentious nonsense, however well done, is still pretentious.
Well done, crazy makers of this parody.
That’s when fighting stopped during the Great War, the War to End All Wars.
And it’s why we celebrate Veterans Day on Nov. 11, whatever day that falls on the calendar.
I grew up on Air Force bases in New York, Washington, Germany, the Netherlands, so I know a bit about the sacrifices vets and their families make. You don’t sign up for the military for the money, or the hours. You do it for unselfish reasons. To serve.
So for all the veterans out there, including my dad (Vietnam), grandfather (bomber pilot, World War II), uncles and friends who served with honor and distinction, we salute you, even though most of us would probably do it wrong.
And we thank you. Always.
Also: Kudos to the students at Issaquah High School who made this video. You clearly put a lot of time and energy into it, and that emotion comes through.
The Red Pen of Doom 