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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / KULCHA! / Open Thread: I Am He As You Are He As You Are Me…

Open Thread: I Am He As You Are He As You Are Me…

by Anne Laurie|  December 2, 201310:12 pm| 86 Comments

This post is in: KULCHA!, Open Threads, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing

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And now for something completely different (which I actually kind of admire, in an anthropological sense), here’s Carl Wilson explaining on Slate “What you can learn about music—and humanity—from the YouTube comments on Bob Seger’s “Night Moves”:

… Everyone knows that unmoderated comments sections are generally toxic dumps that you’d best not wade into unless you want your belief in humanity irradiated into dust. But YouTube comment sections are especially vile, crackling with pent-up rage and degenerating almost instantly into volleys of racist, sexist, and homophobic invective no matter how milquetoast the original video may be. It’s the one of the most anti-social of social media sites.

This is largely because YouTube commenting—unlike the kind of ideologically driven misanthropy that news sites attract—is a pastime of adolescence. YouTube belongs to all of us (and is yet another way we all belong to Google) but it is a greater fixation for teenagers: It was over a year ago that a Nielsen study confirmed that American teens were doing most of their music listening there, a fact that made radio tremble and motivated Billboard to recalibrate the way it draws up charts…

Recently, however, a couple of hardy salvage artists have entered those forbidden zones to unearth what can be reclaimed… Baltimore artist and writer Stephanie Barber goes out of her way to preserve all that in her book Night Moves, published earlier this year: It’s a 75-page transcription of the YouTube comments on a single video, the one for the Bob Seger 1976 FM classic “Night Moves.”…

The old saw is that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but writing about music on YouTube is like clambering up on the architecture, hanging banners and family photos on the window ledges, or tossing garbage from the gables. Its anonymity makes it all the more like a group portrait, hauling us into visibility in all our bedraggled need. It’s not that you can’t or shouldn’t formally analyze or evaluate a song, but YouTube’s intimate entanglements make it plainer that doing so is no more the end of the process than gossiping about your family, even to your therapist, is a resolution to the relationship…

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Previous Post: « Obamacare just won’t die, but US Bishops’ ethical failings keep going like zombies.
Next Post: Late Night Open Thread »

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    yam

    December 2, 2013 at 10:16 pm

    If I never hear that song again, that would be just fine.

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 10:20 pm

    You know who else made multiple and repeated disparaging and insulting comments about music…

  3. 3.

    MikeJ

    December 2, 2013 at 10:22 pm

    @NotMax: Lester Bangs, America’s greatest music critic?

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 10:25 pm

    @MikeJ

    So very, very thankful that comma was not accidentally omitted.

  5. 5.

    Carlos Danger

    December 2, 2013 at 10:26 pm

    I blame Obama.

  6. 6.

    mclaren

    December 2, 2013 at 10:28 pm

    And what’s even more amazing?

    The YouTube comments looks like the School of Athens by comparison with the Balloon Juice commentariat.

  7. 7.

    Carlos Danger

    December 2, 2013 at 10:28 pm

    I blame Obama – and Greenwald.

  8. 8.

    Suffern ACE

    December 2, 2013 at 10:29 pm

    It’s out of stock at amazon and it has no reviews. It probably sucks donkey butts, much like my ex best friend Suffern Jack, who was a total loser like people who listen to old music.

  9. 9.

    MikeJ

    December 2, 2013 at 10:29 pm

    @NotMax: Given enough Robitussin you have no idea what people will do.

  10. 10.

    Carlos Danger

    December 2, 2013 at 10:30 pm

    @mclaren:

    Um. Hi.

    You’re a regular contributor to comments here.

    So you got that going for you.

  11. 11.

    Suzanne

    December 2, 2013 at 10:32 pm

    That book sounds like a riot. I heard about it last week, and then I heard “Night Moves” in the car today. And then I laughed, because I remembered the simple brilliance of one of the comments:

    “Got me knocked up in ’84.”

    Bam. That is tragedy as farce right there.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 10:33 pm

    @mclaren

    Yeah, people gushing over pets and gardens are the most despicable forms of life.

    /response to way too obvious trolling

  13. 13.

    Yatsuno

    December 2, 2013 at 10:38 pm

    @mclaren: You remain among us unwashed proles. What does that say about your purity?

  14. 14.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 2, 2013 at 10:41 pm

    @NotMax:

    I think mclaren’s greater concern is the failure of the BJ commentariat to fully appreciate his/her contribution here.

    As a starter of conversation, of discourse, of the lighting and use of flamethrowers.

  15. 15.

    Eric U.

    December 2, 2013 at 10:46 pm

    Just today, I was reading the comments on a youtube video about finishing drywall. Amazing how crude they were considering the subject. Even got a flame war going about the relative impermanence of houses in the U.S. vs. Houses in Europe. And the funny thing was, the U.S. commenters had been flaming away about the video since it was too much work to do things that way.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 10:48 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est

    Long wait. Godot will have arrived, conversed, prepared and eaten a meal and departed for parts unknown beforehand.

    @Yatsuno

    What does that say about your purity?

    Purity Of EAssance?

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 2, 2013 at 10:50 pm

    @Eric U.:

    since it was too much work to do things that way.

    Future CEOs, the lot of them.

  18. 18.

    Violet

    December 2, 2013 at 10:50 pm

    Who reads YouTube comments?

  19. 19.

    Lurking Buffoon

    December 2, 2013 at 10:54 pm

    @Violet: Me at times, I’m ashamed to say. I feel dirty doing it, but the Interwebs make me a glutton for punishment, apparently. But compulsively reading comments also got me being a smartass here, so at least there’s that.

  20. 20.

    Jebediah, RBG

    December 2, 2013 at 10:55 pm

    @NotMax:
    speaking of which, here is Juno right now, being pretty damn cute.

  21. 21.

    trollhattan

    December 2, 2013 at 11:00 pm

    Seattle headed for the NFC championships, at the very least. Boo-ya.

    Our dead tree paper suspended comments for a couple months while planning a different system. Was that ever nice.

  22. 22.

    Tommy

    December 2, 2013 at 11:05 pm

    I got some Dr Dre Beats headphones this weekend. I never, I mean NEVER use my phone to listen to music. But I thought what the heck. I am a huge walker. Hiker. Moutain biker. I used them just now on my first few mile walk.

    Pretty sure a few households might have looked outside and wonder why there was a 40 year old plus dude outside their house playing the air guitar :). Wow….

    I am a tech nerd but it still never stuns me how amazing technology is today. Pandora (my jam band channel) and Beats = pure joy!

  23. 23.

    chopper

    December 2, 2013 at 11:05 pm

    The bob seger ad at the top of the page is a nice touch.

  24. 24.

    srv

    December 2, 2013 at 11:05 pm

    Youtube has comments?

    Actually, I don’t know if it’s AdBlock or what, but youtube always tells me “Comments currently unavailable”

    Maybe it’s a trap to get a G+ account.

  25. 25.

    ? Martin

    December 2, 2013 at 11:06 pm

    Google is equally incapable of launching a website, apparently.

    Has the GOP voted to repeal them yet?

  26. 26.

    Tommy

    December 2, 2013 at 11:07 pm

    @Violet: I do and they are both the meanest and funniest things I’ve ever read.

  27. 27.

    Eric U.

    December 2, 2013 at 11:09 pm

    @trollhattan: our local paper makes people use their real names. Not quite as good as publishing in the paper, they would actually call you to see if it was you. But people are still really nasty. Maybe not quite as bad as they used to be before that policy went into effect

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 11:09 pm

    Early pathetic kitsch alert.

    TCM, 5:45 a.m. Eastern, Sunday, Dec. 8: “A Visit To Santa”

    Twelve minute short which is an object lesson as to why the price of the film stock should never exceed the rest of the production budget.

  29. 29.

    danielx

    December 2, 2013 at 11:17 pm

    Another palate cleanser, so to speak: an action shot of Eric the Magnificent in his personal beanbag chair. Beside the fireplace and the end of the couch where it’s convenient for his minions to administer to his addiction to pets, natch…

    He’s seventeen now, so he spends about ninety percent of his time right there in that chair.

  30. 30.

    Tommy

    December 2, 2013 at 11:18 pm

    @Eric U.: My local paper, not a small paper, did away with comments. A few years ago a person I cared about died. He was my golf coach. Went to college on a Divison I golf scholarship.

    He also ran the athletic department. I should just note in my four years of high school my golf team was 189 and 3. I get golf isn’t a popular sport, but at the end of each year at graduation when honors were given out, well we had pretty much all of them. Oh and we were not a “country club school.

    His daughter went into the comment section to note a few things.

    Like to thank folks for their thoughts and to say the wake was at the local high school. Gave details.

    Folks, and I’d call most of them tea bagger, flocked there to ask why it was in a pubic building. Why should they pay for it. And then it got so ugly I tend to try not to recall all that was said.

    Local paper doesn’t take comments anymore ….

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 11:19 pm

    Vaguely on the topic of music, have to admit to getting a hearty chuckle out of a player who passed by on WoW the other day, named Shammyhagar.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 11:24 pm

    @Tommy

    Par for the course, sad to say.

  33. 33.

    Linda Featheringill

    December 2, 2013 at 11:26 pm

    @danielx:

    Nice bean bag, Eric. Cool.

  34. 34.

    Jebediah, RBG

    December 2, 2013 at 11:26 pm

    @danielx:
    He is magnificent!

  35. 35.

    trollhattan

    December 2, 2013 at 11:27 pm

    @Eric U.:

    IIUC ours will go to some sort of registration scheme, with names. We’ll see. In the meantime, a tree died–DIED–to place this insight on my front porch this morning.

    Re “Francis forces the world to reckon with serious economic inequality” (Viewpoints, Nov. 29): Eugene Robinson’s column shows us a church leader, Pope Francis, who has the courage, the audacity, to state a truth no politician would dare: Our basically unfettered capitalism and rampant materialism are not the best systems for humanity and are a serious threat to the natural world we inhabit. “The culture of prosperity deadens us…,” Pope Francis states in a recent treatise. I can already hear the angry responses of “Un-American” and “Unpatriotic.” Meanwhile, we will gladly accept intolerable amounts of information blasted our way without pausing to consider its usefulness or potential harm. We have been taught, rich and poor alike, by the money merchants and the ad merchants, that our status is related to our wealth and possessions. Isn’t genuine wealth simply developing your best qualities and enjoying the many rich experiences that life offers? — Michael R. Ferrick, Sacramento

    Rih Santorum has a nom de plume. Who knew?

  36. 36.

    PurpleGirl

    December 2, 2013 at 11:32 pm

    Since I usually only watch YouTubes that are recommended here I sometimes look for comments. Usually there aren’t many and they’re pretty bland.

    The nastiest stuff I’ve read has been on Yahoo stories. I don’t open their comments much at all because the nasty really makes me feel sorry and sad for the writers, who must live horrible lives to think of such nasty stuff.

  37. 37.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 2, 2013 at 11:34 pm

    @? Martin:

    Has the GOP voted to repeal them yet?

    I’m waiting for the GOP to throw conniptions over the slightest glitch in the next IOS rollout, or when Blizzard launches a less than pristine expansion for World of Warcraft.

  38. 38.

    Tommy

    December 2, 2013 at 11:35 pm

    @trollhattan: Eugene Robinson told a story. Before my time. That when his family, as a kid, went to Mississippi they factored in a lot of things cause they couldn’t get housing or gas after dark. I rant about this as a white dude all the time. Racism isn’t something like 100 years ago. Folks alive lived it. We can go up and talk to them. Telling them to get it over it doesn’t work.

  39. 39.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 2, 2013 at 11:36 pm

    Noisemax reports:

    Rush: Pope Speaks ‘Pure Marxism’

    Meanwhile, L’Osservatore Romano reports:

    Holy Father: Limbaugh Speaks ‘Pure Nazism’

  40. 40.

    different-church-lady

    December 2, 2013 at 11:40 pm

    @Suffern ACE:

    …and it has no reviews.

    eye-run-eee!

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 11:42 pm

    @Tommy

    One doesn’t even have to be close to Medicare age to vividly recall the ubiquity of ‘Whites Only’ placards encountered while traveling through certain states.

  42. 42.

    different-church-lady

    December 2, 2013 at 11:42 pm

    @mclaren: Yeah, I know, and such small portions!

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    December 2, 2013 at 11:44 pm

    @different-church-lady

    FTW

  44. 44.

    mclaren

    December 2, 2013 at 11:51 pm

    @Carlos Danger:

    “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

    “Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."

    “How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.

    “You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

    ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland: Or, Through the Looking-Glass

  45. 45.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    December 3, 2013 at 12:00 am

    ew. no.

  46. 46.

    Mike in NC

    December 3, 2013 at 12:02 am

    @Tommy: Local crackpot oriented newspaper dropped posting reader comments a while back and went to Facebook only comments. Probably due to the large number of computer illiterate teabaggers who were merely reposting Glenn Beck’s rants.

    I stopped reading as a general waste of time.

  47. 47.

    danielx

    December 3, 2013 at 12:03 am

    @Linda Featheringill:
    @Jebediah, RBG:

    He is looking good for his age, though not in his prime, and that’s most assuredly his chair. He is unfortunately not cut out to be an alpha cat and had to wait for two previous owners to pass on before he got it, but it’s been his for four years or so. He does spend about twenty hours a day there, gets up to eat, hit his box, hang out a bit, beg for scraps, etc. He’s a little gimpy from arthritis, doesn’t jump up the way he used to, but he enjoys life, talks to us all the time when we come in, all that. Honorably retired from a long life catching critters and bringing them inside, being bopped by other cats…etc.

  48. 48.

    CaseyL

    December 3, 2013 at 12:13 am

    @danielx: That is a very youthful looking 17 year old. Handsome!

    ETA: And even handsomer as a youngster. Looks like the very tippy-tip of his tongue is stuck out in the older photo: a very cute habit some kitties have.

  49. 49.

    Violet

    December 3, 2013 at 12:13 am

    @Lurking Buffoon: @Tommy: Yeah, I guess I’ve read them on occasion. But no more than a glance at the first few comments. Inevitably someone calls someone else gay or uses a racist slur or slams on Obama, no matter what the subject matter of the video. It”s so predictable I don’t see the point in even reading them anymore.

  50. 50.

    TooManyJens

    December 3, 2013 at 12:16 am

    I use AdBlock to hide the YouTube comment section. It’s not even to avoid the comments, really; it’s to quit seeing that annoying reminder that “YouTube comments are now tied in with Google+, and that’s wonderful. WONDERFUL, WE TELL YOU.” Fuck that. Google keeps making its other properties worse in the desperate attempt to make fetch Google+ happen.

  51. 51.

    Violet

    December 3, 2013 at 12:25 am

    @TooManyJens: The constant push to tie anything you do online with everything else you do online and elsewhere is annoying as hell. Google+ is Google Minus, imho.

  52. 52.

    StringOnAStick

    December 3, 2013 at 12:35 am

    The sickos commenting on a few Garfunckle and Oates videos are what stopped me from ever reading another Youtube comment section. What a sewer; no wonder musicians/actors/actresses feel the need to be protected from their “fans”.

    Other music topics: just had a series of texts from a friend telling us she’s promised her friend the learning-to-play-the-lute guy that he could play with my husband and I and we’d be happy to teach him. Uh, we don’t play lute or any other medieval instrument; we’re into gypsy jazz and jazz. Amazing that she felt it was OK to offer our time and efforts to someone we’ve never met for a style of music we’ve never played. I directed her (and him) to the local folk music instruction group; maybe they can get him hooked up with some fellow lute or recorder types.

  53. 53.

    Sophist

    December 3, 2013 at 12:36 am

    @Violet:

    Who reads YouTube comments?

    Mostly spambots, “edgy” 12-year-olds and your racist uncle, if my forays there are representative.

  54. 54.

    Carlos Danger

    December 3, 2013 at 12:41 am

    @mclaren:

    U mad.

  55. 55.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 12:42 am

    My daughter was very impressed that I drove myownself 155 miles to my son’s place for Thanksgiving. I’m only a local driver. I told her I only got lost once and had to call him for instructions.
    Her reply now intrigues me: “Wow, nobody I know drives without GPS.” (She’s moved from OK to the East Coast.) They apparently can drive through three states in an afternoon on the east coast.
    I wonder if GPS usage makes traffic safer? Do people who can get off and on highways with GPS get in fewer accidents than drivers who are relying on paper maps, memory, and road signs?

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    December 3, 2013 at 12:52 am

    @fleeting expletive

    Last year, met with some visitors to treat them to my favorite eatery for dinner. Two cars, as they were doing touristy stuff, plus their hotel was in the opposite direction from where I’d be headed after the meal.

    I knew the restaurant had relocated some time back to somewhere in the area of where it had been forever, but drove by a couple of times without seeing it.

    They then insisted that as their rental car had GPS, they would take the lead and drive straight to it.

    The GPS led us unerringly and directly to – –

    – – the location the restaurant had vacated.

  57. 57.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 12:57 am

    @Tommy: There has been a series on PBS about black history. one of the more recent ones was about after automobiles became readily ownable and black families could travel in their own cars, there was a guidebook for where to eat, buy gas, and motels. I think it was called the “Green Book”. It’s outstanding, that one.

  58. 58.

    ? Martin

    December 3, 2013 at 12:59 am

    @fleeting expletive:

    They apparently can drive through three states in an afternoon on the east coast.

    More than 3. Johns Hopkins to Princeton is about 150 miles and with a minor detour for cheesesteak will take you through 4 states. NYC to the Cape is about 200 miles and also 4 states. Lots of ways to cover 10% of the states in our country in a leisurely afternoon.

    The challenge with driving there is that there’s no way to go around the cities, and the road network is largely pre-interstate, so it’s a bit of a disaster in terms of navigation. GPS helps quite a lot.

    I’m not sure if GPS is any safer, but my instinct suggests it would be. Driving + map is hazardous (not unlike driving and texting), and I know that’s a common cause of accidents.

  59. 59.

    Violet

    December 3, 2013 at 1:00 am

    @fleeting expletive: GPS would really mess up a driver unfamiliar with the area where I live. There’s so much road construction and exits are shut down or open without much warning all the time. Anyone relying solely on GPS could end up going well out of their way trying to figure out how to turn around and head back to their destination.

    I always give people my local construction update if I know they’re coming my way, but even so, if I haven’t been on that freeway for a few days, could be a new exit is closed.

  60. 60.

    YellowJournalism

    December 3, 2013 at 1:02 am

    @Suzanne:

    “Got me knocked up in ’84.”

    Brilliant as a music video comment. Seriously fucked up as one on a cat video or one of John’s BJ rants.

  61. 61.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 1:02 am

    @NotMax: But of course.

  62. 62.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 1:09 am

    @? Martin: Dayum. As the old saying goes “The sun is riz, the sun is set, and here we is, in Texas yet.”

    My pappy taught me that. You can drive 200 miles across Oklahoma, and if you tried probably 800 miles across Texas. Not that I’d want to.

  63. 63.

    Violet

    December 3, 2013 at 1:11 am

    Speaking of GPS, rented a car in Scotland a few years ago. It came with GPS and with no manual in the car, we couldn’t figure out how to turn the damn thing off. Fortunately there were two of us, so one of us drove while the other spent a half an hour pressing every button on the console in hopes of turning off the GPS system.

    The GPS was programmed to go TO the car rental location at the airport, even though we had just picked it up there and were heading away from the airport. At every opportunity the GPS lady told us to exit and turn around. We of course didn’t follow her instructions, and then our car would be shown flying over buildings and roads on the GPS screen as the GPS system caught up with where we were. It was fascinating and kind of hilarious to watch. And very annoying because the GPS lady was insistent we turn around and go to the airport.

    Eventually we figured out how to shut down the GPS system. Completely non-intuitive. I can’t imagine how annoying it would have been for a single driver navigating an unfamiliar area to have the GPS constantly insisting the car be turned around.

  64. 64.

    ruemara

    December 3, 2013 at 1:14 am

    @danielx: Truly, he is magnificent.

  65. 65.

    NotMax

    December 3, 2013 at 1:18 am

    @Violet

    True story. Mother wanted to pay a visit to the bereaved family after a burial ceremony.

    Picked a car to follow as people were leaving the cemetery, as she didn’t know the way.

    Carefully and assiduously followed the car until it turned into a driveway and the occupants got out and went into the house.

    She parked on the street, walked up, rang the bell, and was face to face with people she didn’t know, who didn’t know her nor anything about the occasion, as she had chosen a car which had no connection to the funeral.

  66. 66.

    trollhattan

    December 3, 2013 at 1:19 am

    @Tommy:

    Whoops, copy-pasted the wrong letter. Meant to share this:

    Re “Francis forces the world to reckon with serious economic inequality” (Viewpoints, Nov. 29): Many Catholics, myself included, see Pope Francis as a punishment, as when the world goes astray, God sends us bad priests and popes. His unintelligible ramblings need constant damage control by the Vatican.

    Now he is advocating redistributionist Marxism with regard to the poor. No other system ever devised robbed more people of wealth and their lives than Marxism. In the U.S., the rich pay more than 50 percent of their earnings in taxes, primarily welfare programs. The last election saw the poor manipulated to vote as “useful idiots” with promises of health care.

    Redistribution keeps people lazy, dependent and robbed of the dignity of work. Capitalism has put people to work and raised them to middle-class status all over the world. This is true human dignity and love. Francis forgets that Jesus also said that “The poor shall always be among us.”

    — John Costello, Sacramento

    Attaboy, Costello. That’s the kind of letter that works better than the second espresso. And this note about the wisdom of random crowds:

    Comments Test: The ability to comment on stories is currently available to a randomly selected group of our most engaged subscribers. Anyone may read comments. To learn more, please see the Comments FAQ.

  67. 67.

    ? Martin

    December 3, 2013 at 1:20 am

    @fleeting expletive: Yeah, when I drive to my dad’s place in Oregon, it’s 13 hours before I leave California. I’ve driven across Texas and Montana as well. My least favorite drive is across the 90 in South Dakota. I’ve done that 5 times, I think. There’s nothing in the eastern ¾ of the state but Long Drug signs. Ok, there’s the Corn Palace, but that’s seriously the high point.

    One of my favorite drives was going up the east coast with my dad after I graduated college. We drove up to Nova Scotia and ate lobster 3 meals a day. Played golf at Highland Links about a week after the snow melted (in May) and were the only people on the course. Just a really nice relaxing trip, lots of beautiful country and people to see and hang out with.

  68. 68.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 1:25 am

    @? Martin: The population density of the East Coast is just baffling to a flatlander like me. I’ve been in Philly, Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Honolulu, Caracas, Rio. Whatever. I just don’t understand it.

    Driving from memory is also surprisingly unreliable, to me. I used to do this I35 route maybe monthly, and hadn’t for about 4 years. Forgot the exit numbers and forgot the on-ramp protocol. But it was good for me to do it, by my ownself, and probably good for my old dear car.

  69. 69.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 1:30 am

    @trollhattan: To quote Molly Ivins “What an asshole,”

  70. 70.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 1:36 am

    @? Martin: In 1976, I drove from OKC to Salt Lake City with a friend for a feminist convention. Had to do it. We had read about it in Ms magazine. Gloria Steinem would be speaking. We drove that route hard in my Corolla. Stayed on people’s floors. I got the flu up there and spent several sessions and lectures on the floor embracing the folding metal chair. Glad I did it.

    But yeah, I remember driving through Kansas and CO and all of that.

  71. 71.

    ? Martin

    December 3, 2013 at 1:36 am

    @fleeting expletive: Yeah, you’ll want to let someone else do the driving if you come to L.A. The local freeway exchange to me is 26 lanes wide. We don’t use exit numbers – too many of them. You need to memorize all of the street names. After a while it all becomes routine – even in places like NYC where the driving etiquette is unique in the nation.

    I’ve run the spread on population density. Lived in NYC. Now in the very epitome of planned suburb in OC. Lived in the weeds – town of 1,000 with the nearest movie theater 40 miles away. I like them all in different ways, dislike them all in different ways. That’s why I’ve done so much driving. When I live in the city, I drive to the mountains. When I live in the weeds, I drive to the city. I love a good road trip.

  72. 72.

    Yatsuno

    December 3, 2013 at 1:49 am

    @? Martin:

    We drove up to Nova Scotia and ate lobster 3 meals a day

    And you didn’t say hi to RedKitteh? You jackass! :P

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    December 3, 2013 at 1:51 am

    @Tommy:

    Which model did you get?

  74. 74.

    ? Martin

    December 3, 2013 at 1:55 am

    @Yatsuno: Well, this was 25 years ago…

  75. 75.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 1:59 am

    I’ve driven in San Diego. In fact I was driving to meet my stepson at Camp Pendleton and I couldn’t find the right entrance. I went up and down that freeway, messed up and got lost. As it were. Drove up as far as San Luis Obispo, I think, maybe further. Finally, finally found the right entrance.I cannot imagine 26 lanes. For real?

    What is the driving etiquette unique to NYC? Are you saying they are rude? Can’t be any crazier than the drivers in Buenos Aires or Rome, right? Those guys will peel the paint off your eyeballs. I made that up.

  76. 76.

    fleeting expletive

    December 3, 2013 at 2:12 am

    *messed around and got lost. I hate when I misremember lyrics I know completely well.

  77. 77.

    Steeplejack

    December 3, 2013 at 2:14 am

    @fleeting expletive:

    They apparently can drive through three states in an afternoon on the east coast.

    A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to drive to New York City: Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York—240 miles in about four hours.

    I think GPS-aided driving is probably safer than the old way. One example (I use Google Navigation on my Android phone): almost always the GPS display includes the exit number on the next route change, not just the road name. It’s much easier to focus on, e.g., “Exit 6B,” which all road signs have, versus “Brentwood Road” or “Highway 23,” either or both of which may be used on the signs.

    Before starting on a trip I do like to take a look at the map or even the list of directions on Google Navigation, just to get a sense of what’s what. That helped when I was leaving New York on this last trip, because the GPS was screwy in midtown Manhattan because of all the tall buildings. It kept “rerouting” and telling me to do weird things. But I knew to get on Ninth Avenue and head south to the Lincoln Tunnel, and once I got out of Midtown things settled down.

  78. 78.

    ? Martin

    December 3, 2013 at 2:20 am

    @fleeting expletive: I think you man San Clemente. San Louis Obispo is another 200 miles north. That’s a whole ‘nother universe of lost. But yeah, missing the exit along Pendleton is a bit of a crisis – no turnoffs for quite a long way. That was a surreal stretch the week after 9/11 – between the base and the reactor across the freeway, there was a lot of firepower on display including at least a few military jets tooling around overhead. I think I was driving down for a conference in SD, but it was no more than a few days after.

    But yeah, 26 lanes. There’s 4 lanes of carpool that splits to each of the two freeways, there’s a truck bypass along with access to offramps, and then the main lanes serving the freeway split. You wouldn’t think it would get backed up, but it does. Half a million cars per day go through there.

    I think NYC etiquette is similar to places like Rome. Lanes are suggestions, at best. Sidewalks and shoulders aren’t necessarily off limits to moving traffic. I imagine they’ve gotten a bit more civilized in the last decade. I learned to drive there in the 80s. The city was a bit less confident of its future back then.

  79. 79.

    Yatsuno

    December 3, 2013 at 2:39 am

    @? Martin: Feh. Excuses. :P

  80. 80.

    ? Martin

    December 3, 2013 at 2:45 am

    Oh, and to pimp my state…

    Covered California opened up our small business exchange today. Obama may have pushed the fed one back, but we’re up and running. They’ve also opened up a call center to exclusively handle people that have been dropped from their plans.

    They’re also starting to open up retail storefronts for the exchange so that people can go into a mall and get personal help.

  81. 81.

    Origuy

    December 3, 2013 at 2:54 am

    @? Martin:

    There’s nothing in the eastern ¾ of the state but Long Drug signs.

    ITYM Wall Drug.
    The Badlands are pretty cool, but when I went there it was getting dark, so I didn’t see much.

  82. 82.

    ? Martin

    December 3, 2013 at 3:09 am

    @Origuy: Yes, Wall Drug. I’m not holding up as well in the evenings as I used to… gettin’ old.

  83. 83.

    Frankensteinbeck

    December 3, 2013 at 6:37 am

    @trollhattan:
    I’m glad this person supports Francis’s statements, but I don’t think the point ‘Ol Poor Boy Francey is trying to make is that the rich spend too much.

    @trollhattan:
    Good gravy. Wildly factually wrong, assholishly contemptuous of other people’s suffering, and uses one of Jesus’s entreaties to charity as an argument to deny charity.

    @? Martin:
    Don’t drive the freeway in Los Angeles! As much time as you gain in speed, you lose in roundabout pathways and traffic congestion. Take the surface streets. They’re laid out in a very organized way (except over the hills) and all the traffic jams are on the freeways. I know, I know, it’s supposed to work the other way, but that and a dime still won’t get you a cup of coffee.

  84. 84.

    Matt McIrvin

    December 3, 2013 at 7:46 am

    @NotMax: A classic case is Lake Compounce, an amusement park in Connecticut. The park is clearly visible on maps, and there’s only one road that goes past it… but you can’t get into the park that way. You have to take some nearby back roads to find the parking lot, which is unpaved and not at all conspicuous.

    There are directions to there on the website, but if you go by either GPS, Google Maps or a traditional paper map, you will very likely have trouble finding the way in.

    Lots of websites for attractions such as this have some kind of “don’t use GPS, we are not on GPS” admonition, but they often have a crying-wolf problem in that they don’t explain exactly what the problem with GPS is, and it can be hard to believe them (it’s not as if there is some central database of things that are “on GPS”).

  85. 85.

    Matt McIrvin

    December 3, 2013 at 8:44 am

    @fleeting expletive:

    They apparently can drive through three states in an afternoon on the east coast.

    In New England it’s not even hard. The other thing to keep in mind about New Englanders, though, is that they’re probably used to mistrusting road signs. In Massachusetts there is a common practice of not labeling major streets at intersections, and only labeling the side streets; it’s always struck me as an expression of parochial hostility to outsiders. And the signs that are there are often tiny, faded and/or hidden by trees. A dashboard GPS unit is a big help just by telling you what the streets are called.

    There’s also the Massachusetts detour, in which some street is blocked off by road work, so there’s a big DETOUR sign directing you away onto some other route… and then the detour signs just peter out midway, without actually telling you how to get back in the direction you wanted to go. (They’ll also typically forget to take them down once the work is over.)

    I wonder if GPS usage makes traffic safer? Do people who can get off and on highways with GPS get in fewer accidents than drivers who are relying on paper maps, memory, and road signs?

    A dashboard GPS unit, or a phone running Google Maps, can distract the driver from looking at the road and cause accidents. But getting completely lost, and trying to fiddle with a paper map or a sheet of directions, can have the same effect.

    The best thing is, whichever method you’re using, to try to get a feel for the route in your head before you set out (if that’s possible… Google Maps on the desktop and Street View help a lot).

  86. 86.

    Booger

    December 3, 2013 at 10:28 am

    @fleeting expletive: For the record, you can drive 325 miles in Virginia.

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