I was going to go to bed right after the Wings lost, but I got sucked into the Discovery Channel’s special on North America. So visually stunning, and Magnum P.I. has a really great voice and is a natural narrator.
*** Update ***
This show is like the Muppets in that kids will love it but there is some adult humor thrown in, too. They just had a scene of a chipmunk in PA who was storing his winter wares, and his neighbor, rather than go find his own, was stealing them. Chipmunk #1 caught the thief in the act, and a big rumpus occurred with chipmunk #1 bringing the hurt, and then they went to commercial break with Tom Selleck stating, and I quote, “Never mess with a chipmunk’s nuts.”
I’m still snickering.
gmann
Unable to sleep because of an impending invasion of the Blackhawks ? ? ?
Giovanna
SOME of us prefer to think of it as the Hawks beating the Red Wings, John.
Hmmmmph.
Hill Dweller
I just watched Command Decision on TCM, which was pretty good.
TheMightyTrowel
Ok, coincidence time…. I have a new colleague who happens to be American. I met him at a conf a few years ago (in the states, when I was still in the UK) and we figured out that we knew a few of the same people – one of his buddies was one of my friend’s roommates and his gf at the time had been a student of a close friend of mine. Then he got a job here and I thought that was funny but archaeology is a small world. We got to talking last night and it turns out he grew up and went to school with two of my cousins in small town Maryland. I swear the world is the size of a thumb tack.
MikeJ
I discovered that somebody finally made a movie worse than 1984’s Red Dawn. I refer, of course, to 2012’s Red Dawn.
The original at least had some kitsch. The new one is just relentlessly dumb and gets dumber and dumber as it goes on.
Naq gur ovg jurer gurl ghea bhg gb or univat gur fubjqbja va gurve qnq’f bssvpr jvgu uvf tha fgvyy va gur qrfx? Puh-lease.
This would have been a better movie had a different Dan Schneider star responded to North Korea invading Seattle. iWolverines could have had potential.
Chris
@MikeJ:
As absurd as a movie about a North Korean invasion is on so many levels… it really isn’t any less absurd than the original concept that had Soviet troops in the same role.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@TheMightyTrowel:
So that explains your nym. I always wanted to be an archeologist but things didn’t break that way for me. So I read a lot of books and vicariously go on digs thanks to the internet.
TheMightyTrowel
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: You probably saved yourself a lot of heartbreak and back-ache. Archaeology is tough on the wallet, on the liver and on the joints. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but I frequently tell my students to go be civil servants or bankers and go on a dig or two in the holidays to scratch the itch.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@TheMightyTrowel:
Thanks, that makes me feel a bit better.
Politically Lost
Any late night BJers out there ever have a joint replacement ?
YellowJournalism
@Politically Lost: Read that at first without acknowledging the word “replacement.”
No to both, though. (Yes, really. I was a goody two-shoes in high school. And college. And adulthood.)
TheMightyTrowel
@Politically Lost: Give me 10 years.
MikeJ
@Chris:
Actually the original had Cuban paratroopers taking over Colorado. So yes, the premise was just as stupid. I still argue that the new one is overall dumber.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Right now, Discovery are showing some crap wondering if mermaids are “real” and that “authorities” are covering up the “evidence”.
TaMara (BHF)
@Politically Lost: My dad just did – he had both knees replaced. It was tough for the first month, he wasn’t quite normally mobile till about 6 mos, but I hear both knees are like that. Takes longer. Now he’s great. Golf’s everyday. He’s 75 btw.
Congrats on all your hard work up to this point. The weight loss and stuff. I think you’ll do fine. Cole can probably give you some tips on pain relief, his shoulder surgery sounded like a bear.
Steeplejack
@Politically Lost:
I seem to remember that maybe Efgoldman had a knee done. And she’s not a late-nighter, but Geg6’s significant other has had both knees done. And someone on here was talking about their hip replacement just a few days ago. Try asking on a prime-time thread.
Bill E Pilgrim
Being a child of the 60s I couldn’t help but hear that entire post in a certain voice with a southern accent. “The little muskrat didn’t lak that, so he went back in his hole..”
I actually don’t even know who or what it was, some show from that era that had the same voice all the time.
Also this, starting at 3:08.
I am not, by the way, making jokes doubting John’s heterosexuality. Let me be clear about that. Just reminded me of it, and I always thought it was funny. Hilarious actually.
PeakVT
and Magnum P.I. has a really great voice and is a natural narrator.
Is he back together with Higgins in this show?
Redshift
@TheMightyTrowel: Ms. Redshift is an archaeologist, and about the time she started having joint and other problems (mostly genetic, not work-related), she also discovered the world of the laboratory archaeologist, where she’s been quite happy. It still has the drawbacks for the wallet, but she gets to work in air conditioning.
Karmus
Thanks for sharing the whole nuts thing. I needed that.
(Not snark.)
Spaghetti Lee
Spurs-Heat (presumably) finals. ARGH. YUCK.
Odie Hugh Manatee
So the industrious worker was having his hard earnings pilfered by a lazy parasite? It was probably an Obama supporter.
YellowJournalism
@PeakVT: Higgins played the chipmunk.
Ruckus
@YellowJournalism:
I was supposed to get a knee 15 yrs ago but my doc said he didn’t want to do it because of my age(too young, hahahahaha) at the time. He said I should have it done if I could no longer live with the pain or walk. Which would be about now. What with the insurance/lack of health care system in the US I suspect that I will be using the OEM knee for a while longer, although the VA might be convinced that I need it. Which means I’d get it in about a year or two. Understand I’m not knocking the VA, it’s the best health care I’ve ever had.
TheMightyTrowel
@Redshift: Am I right in remembering you’re boston-area? Is Ms. Rs academic or professional? I grew up in the boston area and still know a few people around, but most are university affiliated these days. I do a lot of my work in museums, but I have two field projects kicking off in the next 18 months (one in Britain, one in South Australia) which is equal parts exciting and terrifying.
Suzanne
@Politically Lost: I have not. I am only 33, and I still have pain from time to time from a knee injury when I was 16 and attempted to rollerblade over some gravel. So ask me in twenty years.
Ruckus
Of course my post was supposed to be to Politically Lost.
? Martin
Not sure I can watch Discovery any longer after we stumbled into that mermaid shit.
Oh, and why couldn’t McCain have stayed in Syria and kept his war erection for more than 4 hours?
Redshift
@TheMightyTrowel: DC-area, actually. Her main work is at a local museum, and she’s also an adjunct at a couple of colleges. I think she’d be happy to be full-time academic, but partly because it’s a second career, it hasn’t happened yet.
The field projects do sound pretty exciting!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@? Martin: Discovery, the company, may have more channels of shit on the cable/satellite dial than any other single company.
Cacti
Whoever made that mermaid mockumentary seriously needs a punch in the junk.
The fact that it was the “educational channel’s” most watched program in 7 years makes me weep for our collective national IQ.
Villago Delenda Est
@MikeJ:
That was the problem with the first one…it made no strategic sense at all. Why would Cuban paratroopers drop in the middle of Colorado, hundreds of miles from any port that might resupply them? What the hell was there that made such an operation desirable? How is that force sustained in the middle of the Colorado high plains? The opening scene, were these kids are in class like everything’s normal and these paratroopers land outside? WTF?
Yet, despite all of this stupidity, one thing that the movie made abundantly clear was that the insurgency by the high schoolers is a logical response to an occupying force. Then why don’t “Conservatives” get what was going on in Iraq? Dumbshits, dumbshits, dumbshits.
Villago Delenda Est
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
How dare you call a CEO a lazy parasite!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Villago Delenda Est:
If the foo shits, wear it. :)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s easy. Only Amurrcans are entitled to do that. Them brown folk ought to be grateful us Amurrcans deigned to help them by invading them.
TheMightyTrowel
@TheMightyTrowel: Ah the academic life. I only have a fulltime academic job because (a) luck and (b) willingness to move to the underside of the arse-end of nowhere following jobs. Luck to you and to Ms. Redshift – I’m sure I’ll be posting here occasionally about my fieldwork as things take off.
Dead Ernest
@Politically Lost: ‘Morning P. L. I’m a Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PM&R) physician. Taken care of many folks who required in-patient rehab after joint replacements.
Been awhile since I was doing general PM&R, still… may I be of some service?
Randy P
I’ve seen Tom Selleck most recently as the Robert Parker character Jesse Stone in a couple of TV movies, and I thought he was just perfect for the role. Brooding divorced tough guy, totally different from Magnum.
I understand he had a recurring role on “Friends” that was pretty good, too.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@MikeJ: I actually enjoyed bits of that movie only because good old Spokane had a role in it. The giant North Korean banners all over downtown just cracked me up. The movie itself is garbage, but the setting gave me a few laughs.
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Hey what the hell happened to the History Channel and Discovery? I mean the History Channel used to mostly be the Hitler Channel, but sometimes you’d see something worth sitting through once. Now it’s just random crap reality shows and conspiracy shit. My dad loves that terribad “Ancient Aliens” show. He’s an old “Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell (or now George Noory)” guy because he worked nights for 30 plus years and enjoys crackpot archaeology with aliens in it. I watched a few minutes of one with him and I admit it gave me a chuckle. “Einstein’s theories of physics were so revolutionary, they HAD to have been inspired by aliens!” Not one attempt at a fact or piece of evidence or even anecdote to back that claim at all, and then cut to spliced interview with local Area 51 watchers.
But that’s a trainwreck, that’s not anything remotely enlightening. But maybe trainwrecks are all that audiences ever really wanted, and now, since everyone’s out of other ideas, that’s what they’re getting.
gnomedad
@Politically Lost:
A bong?
Just One More Canuck
@MikeJ: you mean the actual animals? I’d see that movie
gogol's wife
@Hill Dweller:
I meant to alert everyone that that was going to be on. My husband is still reciting Clark Gable’s big speech. “Then they knocked off Greece and Yugoslavia for practice . . .”
Redshirt
I was disappointed to find that Selleck is Grade A Wingnut. He’s on the NRA Board, which is like the Wingnut Hall of Fame.
sparrow
@Comrade Nimrod Humperdink: Another reason to lobby for your local cable company to carry Al-Jazeera, is that they buy the rights to some of the best documentaries being made around the world. One of the only things I regret about leaving DC is the documentaries on Al-Jazeera. I think they do some of their own stuff too (there was a recent one on Baltimore that was short, but to the point), but the best are foreign, small outfits.
jake the snake
I think our politics consists of arguing whether Chipmunk #1 is the liberal or the conservative.
Spike
@Spaghetti Lee: You’re probably right, but I’m still holding out hope for a Spurs-Pacers ABA final. If it happens, I hope they use a red-white-and-blue ball and have all the players wear giant Afro wigs (especially Tyler Hansbrough).
Pete
@Giovanna: THIS. I was about to drop in and leave the same comment, but I see the first two comments are on point….
Dirk
Archaeology, A career in ruins from the start.