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You are here: Home / Open Threads / A NEW New Year’s Tale (Open Thread)

A NEW New Year’s Tale (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  January 1, 201912:33 pm| 256 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, General Stupidity

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I almost re-ran an old post about a New Year’s Day fiasco since it looks like we could use an open thread, and I’m not really up to producing fresh content at the moment. But real life (in Wisconsin) provided a better alternative. From Channel 58 in Milwaukee (via @sammitchh101):

WAUKESHA (CBS 58) — One Waukesha homeowner was in for a surprise when she woke up and found a stranger sleeping on her dog’s bed next to her 150-pound Mastiff.

According to the Waukesha Police reports, an unknown man entered an unlocked home on Cardinal Drive around 5:20 a.m. Tuesday.

The owner of the home called 911 to report that the stranger was sleeping on the dog’s bed in the living room and may have entered through an unlocked side door.

Police made contact with the man who was heavily intoxicated after celebrating New Year’s Eve. According to police reports, he accidentally entered the wrong residence and fell asleep next to the dog.

The man was returned to his home where he lives with his mom.

No complaint was filed.

Glad no complaint was filed, but I hope the cops provided a full report to the mom. Open thread!

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Reader Interactions

256Comments

  1. 1.

    Luthe

    January 1, 2019 at 12:36 pm

    Well, at least neither he nor the mastiff were feeling particularly amorous…

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    January 1, 2019 at 12:37 pm

    I assume he got up because the dog was hogging the blanket.

  3. 3.

    Kelly

    January 1, 2019 at 12:37 pm

    I’m gonna CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE

  4. 4.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 12:38 pm

    “Theirs was a forbidden love…”

  5. 5.

    Greg Ferguson

    January 1, 2019 at 12:39 pm

    I would also congratulate that mastiff for recognizing the poor guy was tanked and needed a bit of body warmth. Cold up there this time of year. Wisdom of pooches.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    January 1, 2019 at 12:40 pm

    @Kelly: He’s still pissed that ‘pretend to do your job’ took priority over ‘enjoy NYE party with sycophants ‘, isn’t he?

    Good.

  7. 7.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    January 1, 2019 at 12:40 pm

    So I assume the gentleman was visiting his mom and is from Floriduh.

  8. 8.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 12:41 pm

    The man was returned to his home where he lives with his mom.
    No complaint was filed.

    that’s a very forgiving homeowner. I’m betting his friends and family are gonna remind him of this for years….

    a stranger sleeping on her dog’s bed next to her 150-pound Mastiff.

    One of those large dogs who thinks he fits in your lap, I’d bet.

    Once, on a booze-soaked ski weekend, I spent about five minutes pounding on the door of the wrong, and thankfully empty, condo, on my way back from the hot tub, but we had only been there about thirty-six hours and the condos were all identical. Coldest I’ve ever been in my life.

  9. 9.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    January 1, 2019 at 12:42 pm

    Speaking of dogs; mine are sleeping, one on the couch and the other in the doggie bed. I tried to interest them in breakfast, but they seem disinclined to get up, so I had breakfast and may return to bed.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 12:43 pm

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Too much partying?

  11. 11.

    satby

    January 1, 2019 at 12:44 pm

    I discovered that the Instant Pot slow cooker setting set to low is the perfect temperature to make ricotta cheese, so that’s what I’ve been doing. Homemade lasagna to follow. Yum!

  12. 12.

    MattF

    January 1, 2019 at 12:46 pm

    “Where did the bed go? Oh, there it is.”

    Happy New Year. On Kevin Drum’s recommendation, I’m reading Bad Blood, a recounting of the Theranos fiasco. Elizabeth Holmes sounds like a doozy, and I’ve only just started the book.

  13. 13.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    January 1, 2019 at 12:46 pm

    @Baud: Heh, party animals. I only got about a hour and a half of sleep since I set the alarm to wake at 6 to get ready to take pics of the flyover. The only one who had any booze here was Madame.

  14. 14.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    January 1, 2019 at 12:47 pm

    @satby: Oh you’re a cultist too?

  15. 15.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 12:48 pm

    @satby:

    I need to progress beyond rice and beans with mine.

  16. 16.

    JPL

    January 1, 2019 at 12:51 pm

    @Kelly: Said the abuser to the victim.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    January 1, 2019 at 12:53 pm

    @MattF: That’s a very good book. And yes, Holmes gets worse and worse as the tale unfolds.

  18. 18.

    satby

    January 1, 2019 at 12:54 pm

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I am, especially since it’s so good for curries and soups!

    Easy ricotta recipe here for the Instant Pot, but I used the slow cooker function on low instead of the yogurt function. Ends up being the same temperatures.

  19. 19.

    Elizabelle

    January 1, 2019 at 12:56 pm

    KTLA livestream for watching the Rose Bowl Parade.

    Makes me think of Raven going out there. On the bucket list for me. Looks cold today (the anchors’ attire).

  20. 20.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 12:56 pm

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Is it wrong that my first thought was, “wait, are we sure this story came from Wisconsin, not Florida”?

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 12:57 pm

    @Baud: Hey, don’t sell yourself short. Think about the millions of people who are still thinking about buying one, but haven’t done it yet. Not only that, you have actually used yours. Think of all those cookers that are still in their boxes, or are sitting on counters but have yet to take their maiden voyage.

    You are way ahead of the game, Baud! But we already knew that.

  22. 22.

    kindness

    January 1, 2019 at 1:02 pm

    He lives with his Mom. I smell a basement here somewhere. I bet Cheetos are next.

  23. 23.

    scav

    January 1, 2019 at 1:04 pm

    i’m elbow deep in my new toy, a grain mill, so have a double batch of whole wheat bread going. Golly the fresh-ground stuff smells good! (yes, lucky neighbors, ain’t no way a single household could keep up with the burst of enthusiasm. I just finished the rye loaves yesterday.)

  24. 24.

    Frankensteinbeck

    January 1, 2019 at 1:08 pm

    @dmsilev:
    He won’t refund the money. Watch.

  25. 25.

    JMG

    January 1, 2019 at 1:12 pm

    @WaterGirl: The Instant Pot is IMO the most transforming home kitchen invention since the microwave oven. Things we never used to try to make, like risotto or pilled pork, are a cinch.

  26. 26.

    Drunkenhausfrau

    January 1, 2019 at 1:14 pm

    That mastiff isn’t much of a watch dog, huh?

  27. 27.

    Mary G

    January 1, 2019 at 1:15 pm

    That is one good guard dog.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    January 1, 2019 at 1:16 pm

    I couldn’t quite get through the 300+ comments of the early morning thread, but the commenter who’s getting ready to visit his granddaughter in the hospital might be interested in hearing about the Giant Evil Corporation’s 5-year, $100 million children’s hospital initiative, though it probably hasn’t made it to that particular hospital yet:

    https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2018/03/walt-disney-company-announces-100m-plan-to-reinvent-patient-family-experiences-at-childrens-hospitals-across-globe/

    (Full disclosure: I know one of the people on the design team, but it’s obviously a HUGE team working on this.)

  29. 29.

    Gelfling 545

    January 1, 2019 at 1:17 pm

    My daughter gave me a StoryWorth subscription for Christmas and my first question arrived yesterday. I will write my response today. A new question arrives every Monday.

  30. 30.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 1:19 pm

    @Kelly: Oh, puke, I just saw the text of that tweet.

    Yeah, Donnie, I am going to ENJOY THE RIDE that ends with your fat orange ass indicted, buh-LIEVE me!

  31. 31.

    trollhattan

    January 1, 2019 at 1:21 pm

    Paul Ryan’s starting his post-congress era with a bang. What will mom say?

  32. 32.

    Punchy

    January 1, 2019 at 1:21 pm

    The man was returned to his home where he lives with his mom.

    No complaint was filed.

    So he was a white guy, clearly. Wauky PD does not let a black man walk home to his mom without taser marks and/or bullet holes.

  33. 33.

    Ruviana

    January 1, 2019 at 1:24 pm

    @Elizabelle: Rose Parade NEVER Rose Bowl Parade./California Native

  34. 34.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 1:24 pm

    @MattF: My favorite sister gave me Jane Meyer’s “Dark Money” for Christmas. Does she know the Jackal in her life, or what? And then, when I wrote her to thank her, she not only said that she was sending me chocolate she’d made with my niece and great-niece, but also a short note to this effect: “You were right about Nancy Pelosi.”

    This in reference to a rant to which I had subjected her and our mutual friends the last time we all got together, when she made the mistake of saying that Nancy was too old and we needed new leadership.

    Made my evening last night!

  35. 35.

    Elizabelle

    January 1, 2019 at 1:27 pm

    @Ruviana: Thank you. Stand corrected. Rose Parade!

    Where do you hail from? I love California.

  36. 36.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 1:28 pm

    @Miss Bianca:

    That’s great — I had the same conversation about NP a while ago, but nobody has thanked me yet.

  37. 37.

    FlyingToaster

    January 1, 2019 at 1:33 pm

    No instant pot here (nowhere to put one, honestly), but I’ve got the potatoes in the regular pot on the stove.

    By the time I’m done, we’ll have at least 6 loaves of potato bread (one batch with KAF white whole wheat) and they’ll be out of the fridge. Some in the freezer, I suspect.

    At some point we’re going to head out for Bubble Tea, which is the only part of our old preschool First Night ritual that WarriorGirl misses. On NYE, we used to T in from Newton to the Common to see the ducks & trees, walk to the Hynes and go to all the kids stuff, head out to Copley Square and see the ice sculptures, catch the parade if it was running, and then back up the hill to catch the B line out to Packards Corner and go to the 88’s Food Court for Bubble Tea until HerrDoktor came and fetched us. The 88 is now the Hong Kong; First Night is now a puppet show at the BPL and ice sculptures and bands on Copley, Fireworks on the Common at 7, Copley and Harbor at midnight. So we stayed home and watched the Doctor Who marathon (ongoing). The Hong Kong has KungFuTea in the Food Court, so at some point we’ll battle traffic and head over.

  38. 38.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 1:33 pm

    Barack Obama @ BarackObama
    2h2 hours ago
    In 2018 people stepped up and showed up like never before. Keep it up in 2019. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and I’ll be right there with you. Happy New Year, everybody!

    Donald J. Trump @ realDonaldTrump
    HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, INCLUDING THE HATERS AND THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA! 2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE, GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING FOR OUR COUNTRY!

  39. 39.

    donnah

    January 1, 2019 at 1:33 pm

    Okay, so this just happened to us two days ago. I woke up and went downstairs to get the newspaper from our front porch. I was shocked to see someone curled up asleep on one of our porch swings, sandwiched between two of the swing’s cushions.

    I was so surprised that I just shut the door and relocked it. It was only 25 degrees out, but I was afraid to wake the guy because I didn’t know what state of mind he would be in. My husband came down shortly after, opened the door and got the paper I had been too shocked to pick up.

    There was a huge puddle close by and since it had been too cold to rain and nothing else was wet, he had apparently relieved himself on the porch, too. My husband and I didn’t know what to do, but as it turned out, our porchguest left before we had to decide.

    Later that day, my husband decided to put both swings into the garage to discourage further sleepovers. He found a hypodermic needle and an empty pack of cigarettes in the swing, so I’m glad we didn’t confront the guy.

    I hope this was a once only event!

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    January 1, 2019 at 1:33 pm

    Too cute for words ??

    https://youtu.be/Cg8zV5JMNck

  41. 41.

    sheila in nc

    January 1, 2019 at 1:34 pm

    @MattF: Great book. An eye-opening case in how easy it is to cover up wrongdoing when 1) you’ve snowed some usually credible people and got them on your side, and 2) you are totally vicious about going after people with NDA’s (sound familiar?) Also how the love of money is the root of all evil (sound familiar too?)

  42. 42.

    rikyrah

    January 1, 2019 at 1:35 pm

    Happy New Year from Maru ??

    https://youtu.be/6_yj-BOJp5I

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 1:35 pm

    @JMG: I have to confess I am afraid to try one. My mom used to have this big metal pressure cooker and the steam coming to the top scared the shit out of me.

    And sometimes the little metal thing that held the steam in would fly off.

    pressure cookers = danger

    That’s a tough one for me to shake.

  44. 44.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 1:36 pm

    @donnah: Later that day, my husband decided to put both swings into the garage to discourage further sleepovers. He found a hypodermic needle and an empty pack of cigarettes in the swing, so I’m glad we didn’t confront the guy.

    Yikes! I’d be pouring buckets of hot bleach water all over the porch the first time the temp goes above freezing

  45. 45.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 1:36 pm

    @zhena gogolia: I told her that I couldn’t take the credit for being right about Nancy SMASH! – that I was dependent on the wisdom of a lot of folks much smarter than I am. So, consider yourself thanked as part of the Jackaltariat Collective. : )

  46. 46.

    oatler.

    January 1, 2019 at 1:36 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course Trump just congratulated Bolsonaro’s inauguration.

  47. 47.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 1:38 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Both sides.

  48. 48.

    Burnspbesq

    January 1, 2019 at 1:38 pm

    @MattF:

    She’s the scam artist Trump wishes he was.

  49. 49.

    JaySinWA

    January 1, 2019 at 1:40 pm

    @Burnspbesq: I’m guessing he prefers scam artists that don’t get caught.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 1:40 pm

    @Miss Bianca: There was much baiting at Christmastime — multiple references to Nancy Pelosi and “Nancy Pelosi and the democrats are gonna cave and give him the wall”. I said “you’re wrong” only once, and ignored the rest.

    But I’m gonna write Ed and say I told you so as soon as the shutdown is over and we haven’t given him the wall. This from someone who has NEVER said I told you so before, because I was taught that it was wrong. Screw it, this time I’m gonna say it.

  51. 51.

    raven

    January 1, 2019 at 1:44 pm

    @Elizabelle: Yea, the Sugar Bowl parade was fin but nothing like the Rose! We walked all over the Quarter again this morning and now I’m trying to chill since the game is at 8:00 cst.

  52. 52.

    donnah

    January 1, 2019 at 1:44 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Believe me, I did!

  53. 53.

    Mandalay

    January 1, 2019 at 1:45 pm

    @JPL:

    Said the abuser to the victim.

    [*** WARNING: While the links below are to serious articles, they do directly quote parts of Louis CK’s show, and some of those quotes go way beyond being vile. ***]

    There’s an article in the Guardian today about how celebrities like Louis CK and Kevin Spacey are now framing themselves as the victim. Slate also has a piece dissecting Louis CK’s new found brand of “humor”. Presumably skits about jerking off in front of women are now off limits, so he goes for tamer material, such as attacking the students of the Parkland massacre who survived:

    You’re not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot. Why does that mean I have to listen to you? Why does that make you interesting? You didn’t get shot, you pushed some fat kid in the way, and now I gotta listen to you talking?

    If I had to predict the person most likely to be found dead in hotel room from an overdose in 2019 it’s Louis CK.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 1:45 pm

    @WaterGirl: My mom had one of those so I know what you mean, but the new design is completely different.

  55. 55.

    West of the Rockies

    January 1, 2019 at 1:46 pm

    @kindness:

    Apparently, the guy may also be an Incel, foisting himself on a hapless mastiff.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 1:46 pm

    In other Christmas with family news:

    A little story about my low information voter sister — who voted for Obama when I worked my butt off for him in 2007/2008 and who voted for Trump in 2016, along with her husband. She pays attention for about 45 minutes right before the election and then makes up her mind.

    When she saw my “pus-sies against Trump” magnet on my fridge, she said “how cute”. She elaborated – she thought “Pus-sies Against Trump” meant “Women Against Trump” and thought it was cute. She never even heard the grab em by the pus-sy story!

    But I have buried the lede!!!

    At Christmas, she brought up the government shutdown because Trump wants his wall AND that she had heard abut this nazi guy driving his car into a crowd and killing someone.

    All I can say is that if those things made it through to my sister, then something has shifted.

  57. 57.

    MattF

    January 1, 2019 at 1:46 pm

    @Burnspbesq: I’ve known people who lie, but people who lie about everything all the time are a different breed. Live and learn.

  58. 58.

    oatler.

    January 1, 2019 at 1:47 pm

    @Mandalay: Yes, I heard some of his “act” and he really sounds like Lenny Bruce on his last mile.

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 1:48 pm

    @Baud: Slightly giving you the side-eye of disbelief, but curious… What model did you buy?

  60. 60.

    Burnspbesq

    January 1, 2019 at 1:48 pm

    Bad Blood is the best book of its genre that I’ve read since The Smartest Guys in the Room.

  61. 61.

    debbie

    January 1, 2019 at 1:49 pm

    Does it make me a paranoid if I say anyone sleeping with unlocked doors is insane?

  62. 62.

    Ruviana

    January 1, 2019 at 1:49 pm

    @Elizabelle: I’m a valley girl, exiled to upstate NY where I got my deam job, and now home is too expensive to move back to. But my heart will always be there.

  63. 63.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 1:49 pm

    @Mandalay: My God, that’s even more vile than I had dared to imagine. And to think I used to think Louis CK was among the better of the white male comics out there. How the Pretend Mighty have fallen…

  64. 64.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 1:50 pm

    @WaterGirl: It’s the 6 qt instant pot but I’m not sure what specific model it is.

  65. 65.

    JPL

    January 1, 2019 at 1:50 pm

    @donnah: That’s scary.

  66. 66.

    mapaghimagsik

    January 1, 2019 at 1:51 pm

    Happy New Year from the murderverse! I’m hoping my company is planning on substantial safety and reliability improvements from 2018, but reality is they simply going to purge employees, and lawyer up for their right to remain in the fourth quartile of affordability, safety, and sanity.

    @debbie: no, I don’t think it does, if only to remind the harmless and inebriated they don’t live there.

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 1:53 pm

    @donnah: Holy shit! That would be beyond unsettling. Good idea to move the swing. Sorry about the man and the pee, but the hypodermic needle? Double yikes.

  68. 68.

    A Ghost To Most

    January 1, 2019 at 1:54 pm

    Dogs and drunks, living together. Complete hysteria.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    January 1, 2019 at 1:55 pm

    I’m off today so I’m listening to this while I put away Christmas decorations. I love putting away Christmas decorations- all that… clutter :)

    The Dream is “sort of about pyramid schemes,” as host Jane Marie says at the beginning of the new podcast series, but it takes a moment to figure out just what that means. In the beginning of the first episode, which you can listen to exclusively here, Marie dives into a classic pyramid scheme of the 70s and 80s, the “airplane game,” a trend that became so prevalent among a certain subset in New York and South Florida that The New York Times caught on, calling it “a high-stakes chain letter.”

    It’s really good although you must like a Michigan way of speaking if you’re in until the end because the host has one.

    Donald Trump even makes a cameo appearance. Douchebag made 100k selling some crap pyramid scheme 20 years ago- least shocking thing you found out today, I know.

  70. 70.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 1:58 pm

    @debbie: I have slept with my doors unlocked ever since I moved to Colorado.

    Of course, anyone is welcome to try to make it to my unlocked door…and if said intruder is hardy enough to make it all the way up my mile-long, incredibly steep driveway, and wishes to face both my dogs and my pal D, who sleeps with the shotgun propped up by the bed…well, all I can say is, good luck/bad cess to him.

    That said, the one time I really felt vulnerable with an unlocked door here was when Luna woke me up one fine summer morning barking her head off at a PERFECTLY ENORMOUS bear that was perched on a large rock no more than 20 feet away from the sliding glass door to the bedroom. Opening the door to scream in a whisper, “Luna, get in here, NOW!” took some intestinal fortitude I hadn’t been sure I possessed.

  71. 71.

    A Ghost To Most

    January 1, 2019 at 2:03 pm

    @Miss Bianca:
    That driveway sounds interesting when it snows.

  72. 72.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    January 1, 2019 at 2:03 pm

    @WaterGirl: The pressure cooker was an important item in my mom’s kitchen. There was a permanent spot on the ceiling that, according to lore, happened early in their marriage when the little metal pressure-control thingy blew off and hit the ceiling.

    Our cooker would have dated from around 1959, so the technology has probably improved.

  73. 73.

    debbie

    January 1, 2019 at 2:05 pm

    @Miss Bianca:

    I was thinking of both human and animal intruders. Bears have conquered car doors; I now assume they can get into anything they want to.

  74. 74.

    Sister Golden Bear

    January 1, 2019 at 2:06 pm

    @Mandalay: Plus there’s his charming mocking non-binary people and using anti-gay slurs in new standup routine.

    https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/12/disgraced-comedian-louis-c-k-mocks-non-binary-people-uses-anti-gay-slurs-new-standup-routine/

    And this: “During the set, he also mocked people with mental disabilities (repeatedly calling them “f*cking retarded”) and also riffed on the penis sizes of different ethnicities.”

    Seems he’s gone full Dennis Miller/Dennis O’leary.

  75. 75.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 2:07 pm

    @A Ghost To Most: Brother, you don’t know the half of it! Looking at it right now as the sun comes out up here, debating whether to try to plow today or wait till things have warmed up fractionally tomorrow. We don’t call it the Driveway of Doom for nothing…

  76. 76.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 2:07 pm

    @rikyrah: That was adorable!

    I sent it to Henry’s groomer.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    January 1, 2019 at 2:08 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    We’re doing a Disney education program for the juniors and seniors- music. I feel like they can’t be making money on it because it’s a lot and it’s really affordable- it’s less than 90 dollars a kid. They’ve been wonderful- really professional and uniformly responsive and well-informed on all our “concerns” (of which we have many! the money is donated and it’s a big expenditure for us) – this is a big deal for some of these kids. They don’t go anywhere or do anything outside of school events- they either get enrichment experiences in school or they don’t get them. I’m impressed. The whole thing feels like people who know what they’re doing and care about it.

  78. 78.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 2:10 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE

    That is really creepy.

    That’s what I was told to do as a teenager if I was being raped. Lay back and enjoy it.

    Ugh ugh ugh we cannot be rid of this creepy sociopath soon enough.

  79. 79.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 2:11 pm

    @Kay: Are there Disney programs for promoting arts education for kids, then? Ooh, do tell!

  80. 80.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    January 1, 2019 at 2:11 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Our version of the drunk-intruder story: Though all of Philly considers the Jersey Shore to be the one official beach, we haven’t really gotten into the habit as we’re not natives. Our beach habits were set when we lived in MD.

    Anyway one weekend we did decide to go “down the shore”. And around midnight were awakened by a furious pounding on our door. Which went on and on. I assumed it was a lost drunk at the wrong room, but really didn’t feel like trying to explain anything to him, even through a locked door.

    It eventually stopped. But we found in the morning he had left us a disgusting little gift outside the door. Welcome to Jersey.

    We also found a wallet nearby, which we turned in to the office. I hope it resulted in a little instant karma.

  81. 81.

    WaterGirl

    January 1, 2019 at 2:13 pm

    @debbie: Once upon a time, I had a 6’5″ casual boyfriend who thought less of me because I automatically lock the door as soon as I step into the house.

    He could not get that the world is different for a big, 6’5″ male and a 5’3″ female.

    We didn’t date for long.

  82. 82.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 2:14 pm

    President Deals deals again

    Donald J. Trump @ realDonaldTrump
    Border Security and the Wall “thing” and Shutdown is not where Nancy Pelosi wanted to start her tenure as Speaker! Let’s make a deal?
    11:02 AM – 1 Jan 2019

    No, you painted yourself into this corner I’m standing in!

  83. 83.

    narya

    January 1, 2019 at 2:15 pm

    @scav: Two questions: what model/brand? and where do you get your grain? I’ve thought about doing this but can’t quite bring myself to take the leap.

  84. 84.

    Mandalay

    January 1, 2019 at 2:15 pm

    @Miss Bianca:

    I used to think Louis CK was among the better of the white male comics out there.

    I did as well, and perhaps I should revisit what he was saying 10 years ago to see whether I still find it funny.

    Of all the rich, powerful and famous men who have fallen because of their behavior towards women, I have yet to come across a single one of them who openly acknowledges that they deserved their downfall, and there are plenty who have issued non-apology apologies, such as Rose and Halperin.

    Billy Bush (who was the underling with Trump in the “grab them by p**** ” video) did some interviews where he acknowledged that he had been immature, and claimed he had learned from the incident, but now he says:

    I have an idea. Let’s stop tolerating this escalating war on flaws and the obliteration of people for things we all do. It’s fueled by an activist media and (anti) social media and it’s barbaric.

    So we shouldn’t criticize men who are abusive and demeaning towards women, because those are “things we all do“?

    Bush learned absolutely nothing from what happened to him.

  85. 85.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 2:17 pm

    @Mandalay: I never did understand what was so great about Louis C K even when he was famous among bros. I found out about his existence from Balloon Juice actually, IIRC JGC had shared a link of some show of CK’s that he had enjoyed.

  86. 86.

    Bill Arnold

    January 1, 2019 at 2:18 pm

    @MattF: @dmsilev:

    On Kevin Drum’s recommendation, I’m reading Bad Blood, a recounting of the Theranos fiasco. Elizabeth Holmes sounds like a doozy, and I’ve only just started the book.

    Was thinking about doing the same based on the same recommendation; thanks for the prods.
    Rapid improvements in our median collective ability to detect bullshit, and detect general manipulation, (and enhanced such awareness among journalists,) will be one of the most critical defenses for improving our odds for successful navigation into a not-dystopian future, for at least the next few decades. I’m concerned about targeting on the individual level abetted by cheap ubiquitous machine learning[0], but … easier problems first.

    [0] When Tech Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself (4 Oct 2018) – Harari is good at making such concerns clear.

  87. 87.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 2:19 pm

    @WaterGirl: Me too. I lock the car too, as soon as I get in, especially if I am alone and in a unfamiliar place.

  88. 88.

    geg6

    January 1, 2019 at 2:20 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    If it makes you feel any better, I feel the same way. Too dangerous for me. No thanks. Plus, I don’t need any more appliances. Except a rice cooker. I really want a rice cooker. A small one.

  89. 89.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 2:21 pm

    @Bill Arnold: I am not that sold on either Harari or Mounk, the thinkers currently touted by our prestige media.

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    January 1, 2019 at 2:22 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    One of those large dogs who thinks he fits in your lap, I’d bet.

    E.g., teacup greyhound. My brother’s got one.

  91. 91.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 2:24 pm

    @geg6: I actually have an old school pressure cooker (its a couple of years old, has a safety valve), that I use for beans and potatoes mostly but no Instant Pot. I am not into gadget-of-the-moment school of cooking. Two years ago everyone and their mother was buying the sous vide apparatus.

  92. 92.

    SWMBO

    January 1, 2019 at 2:25 pm

    @Steeplejack: Teacup greyhound? Is that an Italian greyhound?

  93. 93.

    Kay

    January 1, 2019 at 2:27 pm

    @Miss Bianca:

    There are. Are Disney California and Disney Florida the same company? I don’t know. But anyway.

    IMO, the best thing you can give kids is an experience they wouldn’t get otherwise. We took the chorus to Canada and the kids who don’t get more than 60 miles from home, ever, were wildly excited. The better-off kids who travel with their families were sophisticated and yawning – “it’s Canada– calm down”

    A lot of kid’s programs are junk- like their time isn’t worth anything. Like it doesn’t have to be good quality because, you know, they’re just taking attendance and checking a box anyway. I think because their time is “free”- they aren’t paid- it’s designated as worthless.

  94. 94.

    A Ghost To Most

    January 1, 2019 at 2:28 pm

    @Miss Bianca:
    As much as we want to (and probably will) move deep into the mtns, living in the flats sure is easier on a snowy day. Be careful out there, and observe Rule #1: stay on the road.

  95. 95.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 2:29 pm

    @Mandalay: It’s amazing to me (i.e., not amazing at all, but incredibly depressing) how many men seem to think that acting in ways that belittle, threaten, or actively endanger women are “things we all do.”

  96. 96.

    satby

    January 1, 2019 at 2:30 pm

    @geg6: this is a great rice cooker. The late great Roger Ebert used to publish recipes of all the stuff besides rice he made in a little cooker like this. Honestly, I have an older version and I used to use it pretty often before I got the Instant Pot.

  97. 97.

    Mandalay

    January 1, 2019 at 2:31 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: O/T: did you see this?…

    The government of India has cancelled the Mahatma Gandhi Scholarship, a scholarship scheme instituted for nearly 2,000 Ghanaian students studying in India. The cancellation of the scholarship comes after a group of students and faculty members pulled down the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at the University of Ghana campus, claiming that Gandhi was “racist”.

  98. 98.

    satby

    January 1, 2019 at 2:32 pm

    @satby: actually, you can still get Ebert’s book of recipes. So I just bought it.

  99. 99.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 2:34 pm

    @Mandalay: I had heard about the statue but not of the cancellation of the scholarship. Gandhi had some pretty paternalistic thoughts about women and lower castes as well. The man was great political leader but not quite the saint portrayed in Attenborough ‘s movie.

    ETA: He was born in the late 19th century, and fairly liberal of man of his era.

  100. 100.

    debbie

    January 1, 2019 at 2:36 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    I’m no giant myself, but it was living in NYC that taught me to keep my door locked. A couple of times, I’ve come downstairs in the morning to see I forgot to lock the door, and I kick myself all day not to do that again.

  101. 101.

    Bill Arnold

    January 1, 2019 at 2:37 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:
    My main reason for appreciating Harari (haven’t read Mounk) is that he makes his reasoning clear, and with references. Clear enough that it is easy to argue with it, which I do a lot.
    There are lots worse out there at drawing the space of possible futures.
    Anyway, if you have some recommendations, please share. :-)

  102. 102.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 2:40 pm

    YOU COME RIGHT OVER HERE
    AND EXPLAIN WHY THEY
    ARE HAVING ANOTHER YEAR

    – telegram from Dorothy Parker to Robert Benchley, Dec 31.

    — Rick Burin (@rickburin) December 31, 2018

  103. 103.

    debbie

    January 1, 2019 at 2:42 pm

    @germy:

    Love it!

  104. 104.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 2:45 pm

    @A Ghost To Most: Did I happen to share the story here at BJ of how I took an unscheduled plunge down the Driveway of Doom in D’s old Jeep (the vehicle we used to use for plowing)?

    It was Easter Sunday this year, and we had just got back from the closing on my house in Paonia, with a U-Haul trailer we had used to bring some stuff back from my storage space. D asked me to get into the Jeep to move it *literally one inch* so that we could hook the trailer back up to take it back to the rental place. Allegedly the Jeep was in 4-low at the time…so, thinking nothing of it, I put it into neutral to shift it that one inch.

    Well, son of a gun, the thing popped out of 4-low and took off down the driveway faster than it ever had in gear. And, since I was in neutral, no brakes, no power steering…got to the first sharp turn in the driveway, plunged over the rock barriers, and overturned, missing a big pine by inches. I ended up upside down with one hand pinned under the rollbar (how? How do these things happen? Can’t remember, happened too fast), screaming my head off.

    Did I mention that we had all the glass recycling in the back of the car, also, too?

    Two miracles – no, three: first being, that D didn’t have his hands still under the hitch when I took off; second, that I emerged with nothing worse than scrapes and glass cuts on my hands; third, that I hadn’t been alone when it happened – and that D made it down the driveway on foot faster than I ever could have believed possible.

    I remember saying to D, “*Now* do you believe me when I say your driveway is trying to kill me?”! : )

  105. 105.

    sukabi

    January 1, 2019 at 2:46 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: that translates to “Hey Nancy, help me unfuck myself.”

    Her reply should be along the lines of “Here’s the deal: rescind last year’s $1.5 trillion tax give away, add $1 billion of that to the border security money from last year you’ve been sitting on, guarantee that ALL furloughed employees are made whole and reinstate the federal pay increase that you just killed.”

  106. 106.

    Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot

    January 1, 2019 at 2:52 pm

    @debbie:

    Does it make me a paranoid if I say anyone sleeping with unlocked doors is insane?

    I’ve spent most of my 60+ years of life sleeping in houses/homes with unlocked doors, from when I was a toddler living in the country (Medina County) south of Cleveland, through the years after that growing up on a tree-lined street in that rusty old city, to the past several decades living in the Phoenix area. Almost always had dogs (except when I was away at college or drifting around for a while as a late-stage hippie in the 70s) so built-in alarm systems, I suppose. Normal for me, I get that it’s not for most.

    My wife of lo, these 40+ years has always slept with the doors locked, however, whenever I’ve been away (lotta business trips in my career, with locked hotel/motel doors; I’m not entirely insane). Definite difference being a woman alone at night (or alone with small kids), of course.

  107. 107.

    sukabi

    January 1, 2019 at 2:59 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: CK always rubbed me the wrong way, never found him funny…might be a gender thing? . iirc his brand of humor was never about looking inward but focused on punching out and down. Offensive as possible without a smidge empathy.

  108. 108.

    satby

    January 1, 2019 at 3:04 pm

    @debbie: @Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot: I seldom lock my doors during the day and usually lock them at night but don’t worry about it when I don’t. I have big loud dogs acting as deterrents to mischief.
    And I honestly felt less safe out in the country where I was isolated than I ever feel in an urban area. Guess it’s all in how you grew up and what is familiar to you.

  109. 109.

    moonbat

    January 1, 2019 at 3:05 pm

    @debbie: Nope. Vagaries of life have taught me that not locking your door is a big assumption to make on the part of the rest of humanity and Mother Nature. Whether it be thieves, bears or other ne’er-do-wells I just go on the simple observation that no one is good at defending themselves while asleep and just lock the damn door.

  110. 110.

    James E Powell

    January 1, 2019 at 3:09 pm

    @MattF:

    Elizabeth Holmes sounds like a doozy, and I’ve only just started the book.

    For your viewing pleasure, check out all the old interviews and her TED talk on youtube. People who should have known better, who should have checked, who have staff who could have checked for them, just fawning and slobbering all over Elizabeth Holmes.

  111. 111.

    Steeplejack

    January 1, 2019 at 3:12 pm

    @SWMBO:

    No, it’s a full-sized greyhound who thinks she’s a lap­dog and takes every oppor­tunity to prove it. “Tea­cup grey­hound” is the family’s joke term, similar to “tea­cup poodle.”

  112. 112.

    BruceFromOhio

    January 1, 2019 at 3:13 pm

    @trollhattan: This is hilarious.

  113. 113.

    Gex

    January 1, 2019 at 3:14 pm

    We’re it not for Florida, I think the Wisconsin Man tag would be a thing.

    Live closer to Wisconsin, you get to see more of the stories.

  114. 114.

    jeffreyw

    January 1, 2019 at 3:23 pm

    Traditional New Year’s Dinner for Those That Can’t Eat Beans

  115. 115.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 3:30 pm

    @Mandalay:

    Bush learned absolutely nothing from what happened to him.

    Not exactly the brightest family of drunks.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 3:33 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Louis CK had a show for a short while which was about a newly divorced dad that was good for about 15 minutes. Then his personality started to show and that was that. Also it was before we found out what a delightful ass he really is. He’s gone downhill since finding that out.

  117. 117.

    MoCA Ace

    January 1, 2019 at 3:34 pm

    JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE

    So obviously this is a new rotating tag line right??

  118. 118.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 3:34 pm

    Here’s something rare. A radio broadcast of Robert Benchley as James Thurber’s “Walter Mitty”

    (Benchley told friends it was his favorite performance; apparently he hated most of his movie and radio work)

    http://benchley.blogspot.com/2014/12/listen-to-benchley-perform-secret-life.html

  119. 119.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 3:35 pm

    Apropos of nothing in particular, I clicked on the link for Betty C’s “old New Years story” and it was the classic tale of her aunt passing out on New Year’s Eve while house-sitting and having to search for their little dog Scotch on New Year’s Day – complete with illustrations! I remember that post! Laughing my ass off all over again!

  120. 120.

    Suzanne

    January 1, 2019 at 3:35 pm

    @WaterGirl: I think less of people who do not do things like lock their doors, but then brag about how they will shoot intruders.

    When my cousin was in the USAF, there was a sign on the base that read something like “An superior pilot uses his superior judgment so he doesn’t have to use his superior skills”. I think that is an excellent lesson for us all, in many arenas of life.

  121. 121.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 3:37 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:
    A lot of recent cars lock themselves as soon as you put them in gear and move. And don’t unlock till you open the drivers door or unlock them.

  122. 122.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 3:38 pm

    @Ruckus: I always wondered what I wasn’t getting about a show that was more odd for odd’s sake than good, much less funny. It had some good/interesting/funny moments, but mostly I found it kind meh. His stand-up always struck me as pretty run-of-the-mill, but I’ve only ever seen him on TV, and I find stand up is something that works much better live. I watched Ellen Degeneres’ new special that got so many rave reviews and dozed off.

  123. 123.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 3:40 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:
    @Ruckus:

    Speaking of asshole comedians, I never understood why people thought Bob Hope was funny. I caught him on an episode of the Danny Thomas Show on Amazon Prime, and he was very humorless to me. And apparently, he was a dick in real life, who never made actual bonds with his four children. An interviewer also remarked that he had “no intellectual curiosity whatsoever”. He also made a relative accept a 4 dollar long distance call charge, he was such a spend-thrift.

    He apparently entertained troops in Vietnam and I can’t see a bunch of 18-19-20 year olds thinking Hope very funny in the late 60s.

  124. 124.

    scav

    January 1, 2019 at 3:43 pm

    @narya: Ok, this was a gift and I was wildy indulged, so my toy is the Komo Classic Grain Mill which is absolutely gorgeous, but there are alternatives. I’m also lucky enough to have local sources for organic grains, both as flour and berries — Nash’s in my case. Again, I’m sure there are alternatives wherever you are.

  125. 125.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 3:43 pm

    @Ruckus:
    My car is exactly like that. I think the doors unlock when shifted into park. I think it’s a safety feature.

  126. 126.

    glaukopis

    January 1, 2019 at 3:43 pm

    @Mnemosyne: Thanks. I haven’t seen any evidence of it here yet, but could be interesting. I’ve been pretty impressed with this place as it is so far.

  127. 127.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 3:44 pm

    @Kay:
    When I moved my first business one of my young employees was helping me move and we were driving in the truck with a load up to the new place and he asked me where we were. I explained we were on Interstate 5, one of the busiest freeways. He told me he’d never been more than about a mile from his house in East LA until coming to work, which was about 3 miles from his house. He was 21 yrs old. He was smart and articulate, but knew little of the surroundings of LA, like that they even existed.

  128. 128.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 3:45 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: In Harpo Marx’s autobiography he talks about how many comedians got addicted to entertaining the troops, because the troops were so lonely and desperate for any sort of entertainment or distraction. And so these comedians would get big laughs. And then they’d return home to nightclub work, and the audiences weren’t as appreciative.

    He was talking about WWII, but I believe it applies to Hope. Bob was a ham who loved getting the big laughs.

  129. 129.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 3:49 pm

    @germy: Would that be “Harpo Speaks”? I’ve been meaning to read that one since forever – I wonder if our library system has it anywhere!

    ETA: And apparently Harpo really was a wonderful person, unlike so many other comedians and comic actors (and certainly unlike some of his brothers!). I remember hearing a story about how he and his wife adopted a bunch of kids, and how happy it made him when he came home from working at the studio to see them all waving at him from the windows of his house! Don’t know where I heard it or if it’s even true, but I always hoped it was, because it was just so sweet.

  130. 130.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 3:49 pm

    @Miss Bianca: Yes, with illustrations by his wife. It’s a long book that focuses mostly on the vaudeville days and then speeds through the movie years.

  131. 131.

    MattF

    January 1, 2019 at 3:51 pm

    @Ruckus: My 2016 Accord does something like that. The doors lock as I pull away from a parking space, which suggests a threshhold at some low speed.

  132. 132.

    JPL

    January 1, 2019 at 3:52 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Wall thing? hmmm How long before he tweets that if Obama built the wall, trump wouldn’t be all alone in the corner. Someone needs to tell him to calm down.

  133. 133.

    Kathleen

    January 1, 2019 at 3:53 pm

    @WaterGirl: It sounds like something the unsub in Criminal Minds would say.

  134. 134.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 3:54 pm

    @sukabi:

    CK always rubbed me the wrong way,

    Phrasing!

  135. 135.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 3:55 pm

    @Miss Bianca: George Burns asked Harpo why he adopted so many children. Harpo said he wanted enough children “So when I leave for work, I want a kid in every window, waving goodbye.”.

  136. 136.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 3:56 pm

    @germy: I remember reading an interview with Hope and his wife, who were both past 90 at the time, IIRC. Hope kept talking about Bing Crosby, he wasn’t afraid of death because he couldn’t wait to see Bing again, etc. There was a bio of Hope that came out not long ago, and one of the reviewers mentioned that in real life, Hope always resented that Crosby had no interest in socializing off the set. I guess Hope was playing a part right up to the end.

    But he did set up maybe my favorite joke on Frazier, when Niles was trying to act young and hip and Frazier said, “Dear God, Niles, give it up, it’s like watching Bob Hope dressed up as the Fonz.” Typing that, it occurs to me you have to be several kinds of old to get it, even ten years ago when it aired. And I am.

  137. 137.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 3:56 pm

    @germy:
    I’m pretty sure Hope entertained soldiers in WW2. WW2 was remarkable in that a lot of celebrities of the time actually served in combat roles, usually in the air force. James Stewart actually flew a bombing mission. John Wayne (who was an actual white supremacist, as revealed in an interview before he died) never served and he regretted it for the rest of his life.

    It’s a common theme that comedians especially are often very lonely and dysfunctional people for whatever reason. Robin Williams battled depression off and on for several years.

    I’ll have to check that autobiography out some time. My father back in the 1970s actually got to visit Groucho Marx’s mansion in LA and stole his trashcan lid.

  138. 138.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 3:57 pm

    @zhena gogolia: Phrasing!

    Ha! best awareness of an internet tradition of 2019!

  139. 139.

    Frankensteinbeck

    January 1, 2019 at 3:58 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    Especially sad: That is one of Trump’s most classy and Obama’s least classy* tweets. Obama’s worst is miles better than Trump’s best. To add still more twistedness, Trump was elected to prove** the worst white man was better than the best black man.

    *I mean, it at least is a directly political exhortation.
    **So. Much. Winning.

    @Bill Arnold:

    Rapid improvements in our median collective ability to detect bullshit, and detect general manipulation, (and enhanced such awareness among journalists,) will be one of the most critical defenses for improving our odds for successful navigation into a not-dystopian future

    I wish I remember where I read this, but apparently each generation picks up different skills from their environment. The latest are extremely good at detecting bullshit and scams.

  140. 140.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 3:59 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:
    Bob Hope was not all that funny towards the end of his career, he used the same jokes and vaudeville routines that got him a career in the first place, decades prior. When that was all the comedy that you knew, he could be funny. It got old rapidly but by then he was a name. He did USO tours for 50 yrs and when you are 18-20 yrs old, away from home, in lands where you don’t speak the language, possibly people are shooting at you, most anything from back home that is remotely familiar or sexy will be applauded.

  141. 141.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 4:00 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bob Hope was in some very funny movies in the 1940s. The legendary Al Boasberg was his writer and script doctor. Performers always get the credit when some talented writer feeds them lines. It’s like laughing at the dummy instead of the ventriloquist.

    By the time he did his Fonzi impression, he was definitely coasting. I remember SCTV spoofed him during this phase of his career; one of the cast members imitated Hope reading cue cards, his eyes fixed to one side.

  142. 142.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 4:00 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: You wrote, “James Stewart actually flew a bombing mission” — Wikipedia:

    On March 22, 1944, Stewart flew his 12th combat mission, leading the 2nd Bomb Wing in an attack on Berlin. On March 30, 1944, he was sent to RAF Old Buckenham to become group operations officer of the 453rd Bombardment Group, a new B-24 unit that had just lost both its commander and operations officer on missions.[50] To inspire the unit, Stewart flew as command pilot in the lead B-24 on several missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. As a staff officer, Stewart was assigned to the 453rd “for the duration” and thus not subject to a quota of missions of a combat tour. He nevertheless assigned himself as a combat crewman on the group’s missions until his promotion to lieutenant colonel on June 3[43] and reassignment on July 1, 1944, to the 2nd Bomb Wing, assigned as executive officer to Brigadier General Edward J. Timberlake. His official tally of mission credits while assigned to the 445th and 453rd Bomb Groups was 20 sorties.

    Stewart continued to go on missions uncredited, flying with the pathfinder squadron of the 389th Bombardment Group, with his two former groups and with groups of the 20th Combat Bomb Wing.[51] He received a second award of the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions in combat and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. He also was awarded the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters.

  143. 143.

    Frankensteinbeck

    January 1, 2019 at 4:02 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    not where Nancy Pelosi wanted to start her tenure as Speaker!

    To be fair, this is probably true. She would rather not have started her tenure having to clean up when a toddler shit on the floor of our nation, but she brought a mop and a paddle.

  144. 144.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 4:02 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Hope always resented that Crosby had no interest in socializing off the set. I guess Hope was playing a part right up to the end.

    I can’t blame Hope for feeling that way. It would suck working with someone for so many years only for them to apparently not like you, to spurn your attempts to be friendly. That’s actually very relatable and humanizing.

    But he did set up maybe my favorite joke on Frazier, when Niles was trying to act young and hip and Frazier said, “Dear God, Niles, give it up, it’s like watching Bob Hope dressed up as the Fonz.” Typing that, it occurs to me you have to be several kinds of old to get it, even ten years ago when it aired. And I am.

    LOL. I totally get that, even if by cultural osmosis. Was the Fonz ever intended to be cool or was the joke all along that he’s a corny dork?

  145. 145.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 4:03 pm

    @germy: aw, ok, I almost remembered it correctly!

    Just ordered “Harpo Speaks!” from the library. Harpo was my favorite when I first discovered the Marx Brothers. I think I was 10, and the first movie I saw of theirs on TV was “Love Happy” – a real dog, as it turns out, and the only redeeming facet was Harpo playing for a very young Marilyn Monroe, but I didn’t know any better and I found it a revelation. I never really liked the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy or hell, even Lucille Ball very much when I was a little kid – I was sensitive and serious to the point of humorlessness and found violent or broad slapstick more off-putting than funny – but man, I fell in love with the Marx Brothers immediately. From there it was just a short step to Monty Python and then good night, Irene!

  146. 146.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 4:03 pm

    @zhena gogolia: As opposed to Reagan, who merely played a brave man in the movies.

  147. 147.

    hueyplong

    January 1, 2019 at 4:04 pm

    There is a greater than decent chance that we’ll all enjoy the ride in 2019 a lot more than Trump will.

    If so, the Germans are going to have to come up with a better word, because the one they have won’t be freude-y enough.

  148. 148.

    KithKanan

    January 1, 2019 at 4:04 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Typing that, it occurs to me you have to be several kinds of old to get it, even ten years ago when it aired. And I am.

    I hate to break it to you, but that episode of Frasier first aired over 25 years ago – 28th October 1993.

  149. 149.

    mapaghimagsik

    January 1, 2019 at 4:05 pm

    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/storage-will-replace-3-california-gas-plants-as-pge-nabs-approval-for-worl/541870/

    what could go wrong?

  150. 150.

    debbie

    January 1, 2019 at 4:07 pm

    @moonbat:

    Vagaries of life have taught me that not locking your door is a big assumption to make on the part of the rest of humanity and Mother Nature.

    Yes, and I don’t want my last thought to be, “I knew I should have locked that door.”

  151. 151.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 4:08 pm

    @Miss Bianca: I remember as a kid just feeling uncomfortable watching Abbott and Costello. It just seemed abusive to me (I wasn’t surprised when I learned later they despised each other in real life) and triggered emotions in me growing up in an abusive environment.

    You couldn’t have been THAT humorless if you got Monty Python. Humorless people usually just stare in disbelief at those guys.

  152. 152.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 4:12 pm

    @Miss Bianca: Speaking of “Love Happy” there’s a very young Raymond Burr playing a sadistic henchman who tries to give Harpo the works.

  153. 153.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 4:13 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Was the Fonz ever intended to be cool or was the joke all along that he’s a corny dork?

    Fonzie was supposed to be cool. The really funny part about “Happy Days”, tho’ – to the extent that there was one – was that *no way* would clean-cut Richie and his friends have palled around with a greaser like Fonzie – much less have him wandering in and out of the house with no more than a “Hi, Fonzie”. A guy like Fonzie would have been seen as dangerous and a bad influence, and he wouldn’t have been part of the WASP-y Cunninghams’ social circle at all. Partly because he was Italian – hell, by the standards of the day, he wouldn’t even have been considered white!

  154. 154.

    debbie

    January 1, 2019 at 4:14 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Hope had a long association with USO, covering both WWII and Vietnam.

  155. 155.

    SenyorDave

    January 1, 2019 at 4:14 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: Was the Fonz ever intended to be cool or was the joke all along that he’s a corny dork?
    I always thought the joke was that the Fonz was a caricature of cool – he was what the nerds thought a cool person to be. Kind of like how Trump is what a poor person thinks a rich person should be like. And he was in on it.

    James Dean seems to me what a cool person should be like. Richard Branson seems like what a rich person should be like.

  156. 156.

    germy

    January 1, 2019 at 4:15 pm

    Will New York or New Jersey be the first to legalize recreational cannabis?

  157. 157.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 4:16 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:
    What the youngs are now seeing is scams from every direction. But they have the advantage of a lot of their friends seeing the same thing at a time. The hive mind takes advantage of the ones that recognize a scam up front. And learn from it. Us olds we had to develop that skill mostly on our own and a lot didn’t. There have always been scams and always will be but scam detection and exposure to them has changed. Social media is the pathway for that, and even as many still will never learn, many more will. And are. Such as the scams by politicians. They get called out on them much faster and with far more exposure than they used to. How many older people still read the NYT because it and it’s newspaper friends and TV news are the only exposure to the bigger world around us and don’t have a clue that they are biased against most of their customer’s interests? How many of us here have traveled a lot, see the outside world for ourselves, and know that things are not always as simple as Main St and Second Ave, or have moved a fair bit in just the US and know the same thing?

  158. 158.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 4:16 pm

    @zhena gogolia:
    I was doing a quick google search of him and that’s what I thought I read I guess what I said was an understatement, huh?

  159. 159.

    Ohio Mom

    January 1, 2019 at 4:17 pm

    @debbie: I always lock every door immediately, it’s the legacy of having grown up in NYC.

    The repairman came a couple of weeks ago to do the annual heat pump check, and I had to stop myself from locking him out after he left the basement to look at the outdoor unit. It’s a reflex: front door has been opened, someone walked through it, now lock it.

  160. 160.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 4:18 pm

    @germy:

    You couldn’t have been THAT humorless if you got Monty Python. Humorless people usually just stare in disbelief at those guys.

    I blame Groucho for honing my taste for the absurd. Well, and my dad. *grin*

    And I do remember staring in disbelief at my BIL back in the day when he declared that he didn’t see why the Pythons were considered funny. He couldn’t have declared himself A Square in my eyes any more forcefully if he had put a cardboard box on his head.

  161. 161.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 4:18 pm

    @Miss Bianca:

    The very first episodes* where Richie and Joanie and another brother were much more “realistic,” but then the show became sit-com-y.

    ” The theme song was Rock Around the Clock rather than Happy Days.

  162. 162.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 4:22 pm

    @Ruckus: Yes my Prius does that too. But I instinctively lock the doors as soon as get in, even before starting the ignition.

  163. 163.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 4:24 pm

    @Ruckus:
    That’s makes a lot of sense. Plus, by Vietnam, Hope was reaching the end of a normal human lifespan anyway. Most people don’t live to be 100, after all.

  164. 164.

    oatler.

    January 1, 2019 at 4:25 pm

    @Baud: Until Chuck Cunningham “took his basketball upstairs and never came down”.

  165. 165.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 4:27 pm

    @mapaghimagsik:
    Ship I was on used twenty 6 volt batteries in series for backup power for both of our ships gyrocompasses. That’s 40 lead acid batteries, like used to be in your car, with water rather than todays gel. They were very reliable and required very little maintenance, other than remembering to never, ever touch the negative and positive terminals at the same time. That’s 120 volts at about 4000 amps. That will set you back a bit, likely forever.

  166. 166.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 4:27 pm

    @oatler.: It was weird how the show just ignored his existence after they wrote him off.

  167. 167.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 4:29 pm

    @Baud: Oh, I vaguely remember that…the original theme song being “Rock Around the Clock”, I mean. I never watched “Happy Days” regularly – I always thought it was stupid, and the whole whitewashed 50s nostalgia it spawned just struck me as even stupider.

  168. 168.

    Baud

    January 1, 2019 at 4:31 pm

    @Miss Bianca: I watched way too much TV when I was younger.

  169. 169.

    trollhattan

    January 1, 2019 at 4:33 pm

    @Ruckus:
    Mine does that. Programmable feature that can be disengaged in case you frequently carry a passenger who wishes to jump out while the car is rolling.

    When the top is down I get a kick out of having a convertible that locks itself. “Do you feel safe now, driver person?”

  170. 170.

    Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot

    January 1, 2019 at 4:33 pm

    Not a NYE situation, but one time (and one time only, I swear) I attempted to return unsuccessfully to my domicile in the wee hours while “under the influence”. I was with some family and friends (including my wife, son, and my lovely Peruvian DIL) at an eco-lodge along a tributary river in Amazonia Peru a few years ago. I (alone, of our group) did an ayahuasca experience one night during our week-long stay, with a shaman and about 20 others in a large circular hut (called a maloka) purpose-built for ayahuasca retreats that was off by itself a few hundred yards deeper into the jungle from the set of casita huts (like, Gilligan’s Island-style) we were all staying in.

    I was among the last few to head back (maybe 3am) after the “experience” was concluded, and I went back alone cuz the shaman and couple others “in charge” were busy with a German girl who had gotten pretty ill (not uncommon with ayahuasca) while I was one of only a couple participants who hadn’t got sick at all. I was still tripping pretty hard, though (like most hallucinogens, ayahuasca lasts for many hours) and, try as I might, I could not find my own hut in the deep darkness and twisty paths with my little flashlight (electricity only a couple hours each day at the lodge, just a handful of solar path-lights by the huts).

    Eventually tired of wandering around essentially aimlessly, ended up sleeping in a hammock on someone else’s hut veranda till after dawn. They were German tourists a bit younger than me, spoke good English, had a good laugh at the white-haired old American dude crashed on their porch due to his DMT-altered consciousness. Called me over to their table (with their group, including the poor sick young woman who was much recovered by then) at breakfast later in the communal dining room, continued our shared laughter while shaking our heads at the silliness of it all. BTW, no locks on any of the hut doors, which were just fairly-flimsy screens with simple latches. Love to go back some day.

  171. 171.

    Mandalay

    January 1, 2019 at 4:34 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Hope always resented that Crosby had no interest in socializing off the set.

    That’s certainly dovetails nicely with a brilliant thumbnail sketch of Crosby by Alistair Cooke, who socialized with him:

    A description of his physical appearance sets the scene and makes us feel at home: Crosby, with “big ears, looking like a taxicab with both doors open,” is kidding around on the set, manic really, with Bob Hope and others in a film production crew. Then the lights dim and the forever-recognizable Crosby suddenly droops. He’s someone who “looked you in the eye, but with the gray, tired eyes of a man who’d seen everything. A lot of fun, but also a lot of grief and was never going to be surprised by anything said or done…His butler couldn’t recall that he’d had any close friends.”

    “I can’t think of another man with anything like his fame,” continues Cooke, who has cast his perceptive eye on an army of famous people, “who was so unrattled by it.”

    To demonstrate this modesty, Cooke describes the singer’s interview with Barbara Walters in which she finally says, “Are you telling me that’s all there is? A nice, agreeable shell of a man?” To which Crosby, “unfloored,” responds, “Sure, that’s about it. I have no deep thoughts, no profound philosophy. That’s right. I guess that’s what I am.”

    “It was so startling,” muses Cooke, “so honest and probably true, that it explained why, through hard times he’s been able to stay on an even keel. Perhaps he was one of those people who, though not at all selfish, are deeply self-centered — what they call ‘a very private person.’ Because he couldn’t identify deeply with other people’s troubles, he was able to appear, and to be, everybody’s buddy.

    “He was the least exhibitionist celebrity I’ve ever known, and because death is so dramatic, so showy, some of us cannot believe he won’t show up in the locker room tomorrow and say, ‘Well, skipper, how’s tricks?’”

    You can listen to Cooke’s profile of Crosby (and also Groucho Mark) here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0089kv4

  172. 172.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 4:35 pm

    @Miss Bianca:

    I always thought it was stupid, and the whole whitewashed 50s nostalgia it spawned just struck me as even stupider.

    Yeah, but then we might not have gotten Back to the Future.

  173. 173.

    trollhattan

    January 1, 2019 at 4:36 pm

    @Ruckus:
    20 6V batteries? Did it think it was a sub?

    MGBs used two 6V batteries in series for reasons British. Three wipers and two fuel pumps. Brits.

  174. 174.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 4:38 pm

    @Ruckus: I watched him for about 5 min describing his son’s bodily functions, and it was gross. Not my cup of tea.

  175. 175.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 4:38 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Yes, he was seriously involved in the war effort.

  176. 176.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 4:39 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: Don’t you mean a skin flint or a penny pincher because a spend thrift is a person who spends money indiscriminately.

    ETA: I don’t think I have watched any of Bob Hope’s comedy.

  177. 177.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 4:40 pm

    @mapaghimagsik:
    The other side of the battery storage is that you have to have supplies 24 hrs a day and solar obviously doesn’t cut it there. So that leaves wind and hydroelectric. And while hydroelectric in CA makes up 21% of power generation now, that isn’t enough. So you have natural gas generators that can take over for when the sun don’t shine or the wind don’t blow or even when the water don’t flow. The question is, Is it better to have batteries to fill in the gaps or natural gas generation? How can anyone provide constant power without constant use of hydrocarbon fuels? This is one way. Is it better or worse than current generation?

  178. 178.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 4:43 pm

    @Miss Bianca:
    I never thought of that; there really was a lot of whitewashing on Happy Days. Had society changed that much by the 70s that Fonzie would be considered “white”? I guess after the Civil Rights Movement, maybe. Perhaps that was part of the disconnect; the people of the 1970s were projecting their own values and sensibilities onto the 1950s.

  179. 179.

    Schlemazel

    January 1, 2019 at 4:45 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:
    My friend who served in Vietnam wsa ordered to attend the Hope Christmas show. At the time Hope was seen as very much a part of the establishment & I guess a lot of the guys didn’t want to go. Fearing empty seets on the show they were ordered to go. He was not a fan after that

  180. 180.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 4:45 pm

    Greatest Maru video ever:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_yj-BOJp5I

  181. 181.

    VeniceRiley

    January 1, 2019 at 4:48 pm

    The thing about CK is that he wasn’t just a perv. He’s also one of the ones that would ruin your career if you didn’t comply.

    Happy New Year, Jackals!
    One of my friends bought a house in Pasadena a 2 minute walk from the parade route. If it wasn’t a weekday I would have invited myself over. I’m, alas, watching the parade from the comfort of my bed. My friend, she isn’t a TV person and had never seen the parade before, and knew nothing of the traditions and lore. So she went … and is having much fun.

  182. 182.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 4:49 pm

    @Baud: Oh, I watched a huge amount of TV as a little one, then had slacked off by the time I hit high school…I was a PBS snob by then. ; )

    But mention of “Happy Days” sent me down the Wikipedia wormhole, and I had forgotten just how hugely influential a show it was…spawned “Laverne and Shirley” (which I watched) and “Mork and Mindy” (which I didn’t)… as well as “Joanie Loves Chachi,” of course, but then I guess they can’t all be winners! And also how long-running it was – 11 seasons, Christ on a crumpet!

  183. 183.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 4:51 pm

    @debbie:
    Didn’t he also do Korea?

  184. 184.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 4:54 pm

    @trollhattan:
    No it didn’t think it was a sub. In very heavy seas I was able to see green water over the bridge as the bow – pointy end to you sailors – took another dive. Ship was 450 ft long, half of it under water at a time was fun. That storm lasted 7 days like that. Broke off a few things welded to the ship. Maybe 10 of us didn’t get seasick. Always a table at meals, but looking at the cooks would sort of keep hunger at bay for fear of what may have happened during the cooking.
    How else do you provide power if the main generators fail? Wait for the tiny backup diesel generators to start and go on line? The gyros would have tumbled long before.

  185. 185.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 4:54 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Really? When I think of “thrift” that’s not what comes to my mind. But I basically meant the guy was a cheapskate. I read that he only drove the cars that were provided to him by such manufacturers as Buick and Cadillac. He was making at least a million a year at the height of his career.

  186. 186.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 4:56 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I was giving him his 15 minutes, he just used it up in the first 5.

  187. 187.

    Mike in NC

    January 1, 2019 at 4:56 pm

    Had Bob Hope lived long enough, he’d have endorsed and campaigned with Trump.

  188. 188.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 4:58 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    You meant “skinflint.” As SC says, a spendthrift wastes money.

  189. 189.

    Schlemazel

    January 1, 2019 at 5:00 pm

    @germy:
    I never liked Laurel and Hardy because I thought it was abusive. Seeing as I was older it didn’t seem AS bad. I still hate the 3 Stooges because it was straight up abuse

  190. 190.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 5:02 pm

    @zhena gogolia:
    I think that’s so cool of Stewart. Celebrities serving in the military (while they’re famous) just doesn’t happen anymore and hasn’t in a very long-time. A big part of that is the advent of the All-Volunteer Force in the late 70s. I couldn’t imagine somebody like Kanye West doing anything like James Stewart did.

  191. 191.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 5:03 pm

    @Schlemazel: Speaking of comedians of yore, most of Chaplin’s stuff still holds up pretty well. Never watched 3 Stooges. Laurel and Hardy was too slapstick for my taste as an adult and pretty unfunny as a child too.

  192. 192.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 5:04 pm

    @VeniceRiley:
    It’s less fun living in the staging zone. You have to have a permit – they issue them to all residents about a week before – to enter after 6pm on the 31st and that goes till 5 am, between then and about 10am you can’t drive in or out. The plus side is that if you want to see the parade it’s a 20-30 second walk to the blvd. And it isn’t a lot different on a lot of streets within a block of the blvd along the route. No parking, streets closed. But with all the people there it has to be done.

  193. 193.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 5:05 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    Probably. I thought a spend-thrift was somebody who doesn’t spend much. That’s what happens when I use words without looking them up first.

  194. 194.

    Bess

    January 1, 2019 at 5:06 pm

    @Ruckus:

    The question is, Is it better to have batteries to fill in the gaps or natural gas generation?

    The obvious answer is that batteries are better than natural gas. But batteries are not yet inexpensive enough to totally replace NG, they are just starting to take over a bit of NG’s role. Batteries are now being used for grid smoothing (maintaining voltage/frequency) which has been largely NG’s job. And we’ve now seen a couple of power purchase agreements for wind/solar that include about four hours of storage.

    Gradually the role of batteries will increase as their cost falls. Batteries will first do the single-day shifting of solar/wind generation around to match demand. Next batteries will start moving power from one day to the next.

    There’s a issue that has yet to be solved, deep backup. A few times a year we experience multiple days in a row with weak wind/solar input. Batteries would have to become very inexpensive to serve as deep backup. Some batteries would cycle only a few times a year which would mean very little revenue.

    Deep storage may come from one or a number of technologies. Biomethane (sewage, waste stream, animal manure) running in combined cycle gas plants. Upgrading (adding more pumps/turbines) to existing hydro and pump-up hydro facilities, hydrogen from electrolysis, or flow batteries. Another possibility is used EV batteries pulled from cars that with worn out or crashed bodies. On their way to recycling they could be racked up and serve as cheap backup for a few years.

    The bad news is it looks like NG will serve a diminishing role for as many as 20 years before we can install enough RE and low carbon alternatives.

  195. 195.

    MoxieM

    January 1, 2019 at 5:09 pm

    @germy: Dunno, but lots of both kinds of plates around here (western MA), along with PA and CT. We get the plates anyway because of the colleges, but I think there has been and increase since the legal pot shop opened.

    I live somewhat near the Bermuda Triangle of addictions: a humongous, gigantic yarn store; a legal pot store; and, a beer can museum.

  196. 196.

    eemom

    January 1, 2019 at 5:09 pm

    Fun fact: Henry Winkler (Fonzie) played a lawyer in Breaking Bad. About as far from cool as you can get.

    Frasier was a great show, even if Kelsey Grammer is a right wing asshole pal of Rudy Ghouliani IRL. #ew

  197. 197.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 5:11 pm

    @Schlemazel:

    That doesn’t seem right that they were ordered to go. Were they also ordered to clap and laugh too? If it were me I’d refuse to laugh at somebody I didn’t like or respect.

  198. 198.

    J R in WV

    January 1, 2019 at 5:12 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    Jimmy Stewart was a real life hero who commanded whole squadrons of bombers on dangerous missions, and it hurt him to lose multiple aircraft and crews on many of those missions.

    When he returned to civilian life after the war, he had serious PTSD and had a really hard time returning to his great career as an actor because of the PTSD, which of course they had not really identified at the time.

    Stewart retired from the Air Force reserve as a general, and received many medals for his bravery.

  199. 199.

    eemom

    January 1, 2019 at 5:13 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Elvis served in Korea, also after he was famous.

  200. 200.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 5:15 pm

    Is anyone watching Homecoming on Amazon Prime? I am up to episode 5. I like the half hour episodes.

  201. 201.

    mapaghimagsik

    January 1, 2019 at 5:15 pm

    @Ruckus: I think my basic question was what could go wrong. Generation has been the safer side of things for a while — with most of the damage in electric being through transmission and distribution. I hope they bring that safety to their battery reserve, but recent history has shown there are lapses. I think that’s why I asked what could go wrong. Its not that it can’t, but it will. The question will be whether we are prepared to handle what happens when something goes wrong.

  202. 202.

    Schlemazel

    January 1, 2019 at 5:19 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:
    He said they were put in the back so nobody would see them. But these guys had been out in the bush for days on end so it is hard to imagine they could be forced to do something they didn’t want to do. He was complaining about getting crap at work for refusing to do something that was not his job. He told them “Whats the worst you can do to me? Send me back to Vietnam? Hell, I’ve done that twice, I can do it again”

  203. 203.

    Leto

    January 1, 2019 at 5:20 pm

    @zhena gogolia: @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: Stewart retired at the rank of Brigider General. My own speculation- they don’t serve anymore for a multitude of reasons:

    – Military service is seen as a dead-end career choice. If you didn’t get into college, and had no other options, you went into the military. It’s also low paying. We’re still recovering from “greed is good”.

    – Post Watergate/Vietnam, people were highly suspicious of their government, so refused to participate in any form. It’s from these scandals that we have the political axiom of: they’re all crooks! It’s the erosion of faith in government/democratic ideals and institutions.

    – Military people are seen/portrayed as brainless zombies, who all participate in mass atrocities. If not mass atrocities, then secret government projects.

    – People are way too focused on “me”. America as a whole is a very self- entered culture. The idea of self-sacrifice is a foreign concept to most Americans, and asking them to do that is like asking them to sacrifice their cell phones. It’s why you’d never see West in a military uniform. He’s too focused on himself and his “thing”/brand. If it doesn’t serve to promote HIM, he won’t do it.

    There are also plenty of people who served who later achieved high levels of celebrity success. The one I always like to talk about is Bob Ross. Did 20 years in the Air Force, spent a lot of time in Europe learning to paint, then went on to be everyone’s happy fluffy guru. Honestly, I love Bob Ross. We’d be better off as a species if we had more Bobs.

  204. 204.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    January 1, 2019 at 5:21 pm

    @J R in WV:
    I think they had identified PTSD by WW1. They called it “shell shock”, but our understanding of it was still limited and many still thought of such sufferers as cowards. Soldiers before the mechanization of war (WW1) experienced PTSD too. I read a magazine article where Roman legionaries experienced symptoms of PTSD.

  205. 205.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 5:21 pm

    @Bess:
    Thank you.
    I was sort of trying to make the same point, we like electricity and have to make it to use it. We aren’t getting away from this any time soon. So we will add solar and wind and other forms of generation, some not in use yet I’m sure. But it’s not as much the amount of power as it is the demand for a completely constant source of virtually unlimited power. Homes used to have a 100 amp service, now the norm is 200 amp. We use more, there are more of us. At some point how does that work?

  206. 206.

    VeniceRiley

    January 1, 2019 at 5:21 pm

    I bought AAA batteries for all my remotes … but the one that is dying takes AA. UGH! it’s the little things that get me.

  207. 207.

    James E Powell

    January 1, 2019 at 5:22 pm

    @eemom:

    Germany, then known as West Germany.

  208. 208.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 5:23 pm

    @eemom:

    I didn’t realize he ever left Germany?

  209. 209.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 5:27 pm

    @Leto:

    Clark Gable also served, and David Niven. But Stewart was pretty exceptional, I believe.

    Wayne, Reagan, and Gregory Peck had bone spurs. (I’m being snarky, since I’ve never been in the military myself.)

  210. 210.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 5:27 pm

    And Marlene Dietrich did shows on the front lines. She was passionately anti-Nazi.

  211. 211.

    BruceFromOhio

    January 1, 2019 at 5:28 pm

    @mapaghimagsik: I’m interested to see what kind of performance the thing yields, and if anyone else orders more.

    Just don’t spill your beer on one.

  212. 212.

    trollhattan

    January 1, 2019 at 5:29 pm

    @Bess:
    We’re headed to time-of-use billing come summer and I’m considering a second look at solar, but with a battery this time so as to concentrate on the 2x premium between 5 and 8. It’s almost as though they know that’s when the A/C is on.

  213. 213.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 5:31 pm

    @mapaghimagsik:
    OK I get it.
    That’s sort of like living on a ship at sea. Whatever can go wrong will at some time go wrong. Whatever can’t go wrong will go wrong at the worst time and in the worst way. And someone has to fix whatever when it does or people will die. Once described as years of boredom punctured by moments of shear terror.

  214. 214.

    Leto

    January 1, 2019 at 5:33 pm

    @zhena gogolia: Yup. You had some people who did exceptional things and simply didn’t care about the accolades, actively turned the spotlight away from themselves. Then you have shitbags who don’t do fucking squat, who amp up their paper shuffling job and run on that courageous sacrifice. Somehow our society has actively propped up the later over the former. I’m sure P.T. Barnum would have something to say about that.

  215. 215.

    BC in Illinois

    January 1, 2019 at 5:38 pm

    @eemom:

    Elvis served in Korea

    Germany.

    ETA: I see I am third in line to note this.

  216. 216.

    eclare

    January 1, 2019 at 5:39 pm

    @Miss Bianca: Tuesday night was the bomb when I was in middle school: Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Three’s Company back to back.

  217. 217.

    eclare

    January 1, 2019 at 5:40 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: So does Buster Keaton’s

  218. 218.

    eclare

    January 1, 2019 at 5:42 pm

    @eemom: I was glad to see him finally win an Emmy for Barry, which is an understated, but very good show. Kind of sneaks up on you (or it did me).

  219. 219.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 5:43 pm

    @eclare:

    He was honored at the same time as my ex-husband for something, and my ex-husband said he was incredibly nice.

  220. 220.

    eclare

    January 1, 2019 at 5:43 pm

    @Leto: Glad to see you back!

  221. 221.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 5:44 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I don’t think you’re a good candidate for the Stooges. I loved them when I was a kid, but it’s not very sophisticated humor, to say the least!

  222. 222.

    eclare

    January 1, 2019 at 5:46 pm

    @zhena gogolia: He comes across as very sincere and just glad to be here on talk shows I have seen. Kind of “I can’t believe how lucky I am!”

  223. 223.

    debbie

    January 1, 2019 at 5:48 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Yes. I should have included Korea.

  224. 224.

    debbie

    January 1, 2019 at 5:50 pm

    @J R in WV:

    Stewart had PTSD issues during filming of the darker moments of It’s a Wonderful Life.

  225. 225.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    January 1, 2019 at 5:52 pm

    @glaukopis: I’m thinking good thoughts for your brave granddaughter and your entire family. CCHMC is a actual world class medical facility, with great staffing from docs to housekeeping. If I can do anything to assist your family while she’s there, please get my contact info from Adam (I specify him only because I’m not sure any other FP type has an email I look at; I need to change the one attached to my nym to one I use).

    I can send her cards if she wouldn’t find it creepy to get them from an internet friend of grandma whom she hasn’t ever met. She is in a really terrific hospital.

  226. 226.

    eemom

    January 1, 2019 at 5:54 pm

    @James E Powell: @zhena gogolia: @BC in Illinois:

    Germany

    I sit corrected. That’ll learn me to state a fact without checking it first, which I usually do. Gotten lazy in the new year.

  227. 227.

    Bess

    January 1, 2019 at 5:58 pm

    @Ruckus: Let’s see if I can give a short answer.

    Our coal and nuclear plants are old and aging out. Over the next 20 or so years we will have to replace them with something. Hydro can be expanded (mostly run of river) as can geothermal but not nearly enough to replace coal/nuclear. Plus hydro and geothermal are significantly more expensive than wind and solar. Wind and solar are now the two least expensive ways to generate electricity – global average and unsubsidized. We should actually spend less by moving to wind and solar than if we rebuilt coal and nuclear.

    Almost certainly we will be installing a lot of wind and solar. We probably won’t install a lot more NG generation as we have close to what we need for wind/solar fill in.

    We are seeing electricity savings in California and Texas (ERCOT) as wind and solar grow.

    What few realize is that we need to replace only about a third of the primary energy we now use. Out of 98 quads of energy used we waste 68 quads mostly as waste heat from steam (coal/nuclear) plants and internal combustion engines.

    Can we build a 100% renewable energy grid? There’s no doubt. And it’s fairly clear that the cost of electricity will be lower than what we pay today. The real issue is how fast we’ll dump fossil fuels and how much unnecessary hurt we’ll give ourselves via extreme weather by not moving faster.

    Can we use more electricity than we now do? Sure. There’s certainly no shortage of sunshine and wind. There’s no constraint on materials for wind turbines and solar panels.

    No, I couldn’t give a short answer….

  228. 228.

    eemom

    January 1, 2019 at 5:58 pm

    @eclare:
    @zhena gogolia:

    Then how in God’s name can he be a republican and a pal of Ghoul, of all things? It does not compute.

  229. 229.

    Bess

    January 1, 2019 at 6:02 pm

    @trollhattan:

    A limited amount of storage might well pay for itself. Just enough to cover the higher cost hours from when the Sun goes down until people slow down for the night. Battery prices are coming down rapidly.

    Look for mid-day TOU rates to possibly drop as more solar comes online, cutting the cost of generation. That may well cause an increase in the cost of electricity from fossil fuel electricity producers as they will have to spread their fixed costs over fewer MWh of sales.

  230. 230.

    Miss Bianca

    January 1, 2019 at 6:06 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Fell in love with Chaplin during my college days, when I finally got to see things like “City Lights” on the big screen.

    Also, even tho’ I didn’t like them when I was a kid, I have grown to appreciate the Three Stooges, if only because I realize that they inspired so many really funny actor friends of mine.

    Same with Lucille Ball. Didn’t understand the appeal of “I Love Lucy” till much later in life.

  231. 231.

    rikyrah

    January 1, 2019 at 6:07 pm

    @WaterGirl:
    I bought the Insta -Pot. Still haven’t used it. Will report back when I get the courage.

  232. 232.

    e.a. foster

    January 1, 2019 at 6:10 pm

    Happy New Year! sure made me laugh, thanks for sharing. May all our days be like this in 2019

  233. 233.

    Ruckus

    January 1, 2019 at 6:17 pm

    @Bess:
    Thanks you for that.
    Yes I understand this as well, we are timing out on our infrastructure in many ways because we don’t spend enough. Quite a bit of the solar is private homes/businesses, which leaves the dark for the power companies to supply. And in many parts of the country they don’t get enough solar consistently. Even in parts of the bay area there almost isn’t enough consistent sunlight to bother with solar. But then we should consider Germany, where solar was made a national issue a number of years ago and a lot of buildings have solar now because of that. And in Europe many countries are building wind farms, even in the ocean where there is a rather study supply of wind. Even in some of the reddest parts of the country renewable electric generation has been quietly gathering momentum for a few years now.
    But it’s that inconsistency that is the real issue, it takes time to bring fossil powered generation on line. Now we know the time of sunrise to sunset for solar but clouds and wind we can only predict generally.

  234. 234.

    eclare

    January 1, 2019 at 6:24 pm

    @eemom: Just now googling, had not heard that. Very disappointing.

  235. 235.

    eclare

    January 1, 2019 at 6:29 pm

    @eemom: Saw a comment of his on Andy Cohen’s show where he said he completely disagreed with Scott Baio’s politics, but he wouldn’t criticize him because he’s like a son to him. So maybe (hopefully) not as bad as you think.

  236. 236.

    OldDave

    January 1, 2019 at 6:31 pm

    @eclare: Are we conflating Henry Winkler and Kelsey Grammer? As I recall, it’s Grammer in the role of RWNJ.

  237. 237.

    PaulWartenberg

    January 1, 2019 at 6:34 pm

    Just saying I’m making some changes to my self-marketing as a writer of little renown, so I am busy there.

    I *did* submit my ghost hitchhiker story and I hope the rejection letter comes later in the week rather than right now.

    Happy New Year to ye, Juicers!

  238. 238.

    eclare

    January 1, 2019 at 6:36 pm

    @OldDave: Ah, maybe that is it. I was referring to Henry Winkler finally winning an Emmy for Barry.

  239. 239.

    Robert Sneddon

    January 1, 2019 at 6:39 pm

    @Ruckus: Combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plants can go from cold to generating their rated output power in a couple of minutes. In the UK we’ve built out over 20GW dataplate[1] capacity of wind turbines, land-based and offshore at the cost of tens of billions. As each project has been completed there have been effusive articles and pictures in the press and media about them, usually overselling their capabilities (able to power up to 200,000 homes! Yes, if the wind blows continuously at near-storm force levels otherwise not). Over a similar period of time about 35GW of CCGT plants have also been built, often providing more than 50% of our electricity needs but no press articles, no pictures of the anonymous-looking industrial buildings with funny-shaped chimneys near a grid interconnector that actually keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow hard enough.

    [1] Some days we get about 4% of that dataplate output nationwide, some days maybe 80%. The average output for well-sited wind farms is about 30%. Electricity demand levels are cyclic but generally predictable, unlike sunshine and wind.

  240. 240.

    eemom

    January 1, 2019 at 6:45 pm

    @eclare:

    OH. Sorry about that; I did think you were referring to Grammer rather than Winkler, who is not a RWNJ as far as I know. Will check out that series you mentioned, which I’d not heard of before.

    Damn, I’m fucking up a lot today. ?

  241. 241.

    Redshift

    January 1, 2019 at 6:46 pm

    @Ruckus: The other thing is that we don’t necessarily use more and more. A big chunk of those “green jobs” are in upgrading buildings for greater efficiency. It’s not as sexy as renewables, but it’s really important. One of my favorite statistics is that because of the energy efficiency initiatives started in the Carter Administration, even with Reagan doing his best to dismantle them, total US energy consumption didn’t rise above 1978 levels until 1992 or 93.

  242. 242.

    NotMax

    January 1, 2019 at 6:47 pm

    @rikyrah

    Predict it will be love at first cook.

  243. 243.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 6:48 pm

    @OldDave: Yeah, Grammer’s a wingnut, suddenly discovered his devotion to conservative principles after twenty years of booze, cocaine and strippers (several of whom he did marry for a while, so… family values), right around the time NBC started paying him dump trucks full of money to prop up their network.

    Henry Winkler’s very liberal, even joined Ron Howard in filming tongue-in-cheek Obama commercial in their old Happy Days costumes. Andy Griffith did one too with a grown up Opie

  244. 244.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 1, 2019 at 6:51 pm

    @Baud: You are an encyclopedia of Happy Days.

  245. 245.

    Redshift

    January 1, 2019 at 6:52 pm

    @eemom: Definitely check out Barry. Winkler is one of the many gems in it.

  246. 246.

    Bess

    January 1, 2019 at 6:52 pm

    @Ruckus:

    As one moves toward the poles solar becomes less of an ‘all year round’ source of electricity. But hydro tends to increase. Both in east and west US and Europe we have a lot more hydro at the higher latitudes. And wind tends to blow harder in the winter. The Bay Area (and Seattle) are not great places for solar but one has to go only a modest distance inland to find much better solar resources. Additionally, we are likely to ship power between sunny places (SW) to less sunny but more windy ane wet places (PNW). We’ve been shipping PNW electricity to SoCal for a long time over a HVDC line and we’re extending another HVDC line that runs from LA to Utah up to a really good wind source in SE Wyoming. Electricity is already being shipped around Europe and those transmission lines can be made larger.

    And offshore wind is likely to become a very major player. The hours of generation for offshore is high, meaning that we can use power directly without storage.

    As for US solar there is actually more solar at the utility level than on commercial/residential rooftops. I think the mix is about 2:1.

    The inconsistency of wind and solar is something we can engineer around. One way is “overbuilding” along with load shifting. Assume for sake of discussion that there’s a grid that could supply 50% of all hours demand directly with wind and solar. No storage. And all W/S generation consumed. Also assume wind and solar will drop to $0.02/kWh. Most likely they will go lower.

    Now double the amount of generation. Half of that extra generation now meets hourly demand so that we’re supplying 75% of our hourly need with W/S and no storage. The hours that were 80%, 60%, 50% supplied are now fully met. And the hours that were receiving 1% to 49% need less non-W/S input.

    The cost of electricity doubles to $0.04/kWh.

    But we then scrape up all the dispatchable demand we can find. We pump water up into municipal water towers, over the Grapevine to LA, heat up our water heaters, run desal plants, and the big one. We charge our EVs with this ‘extra’ electricity.
    Now that there’s a market for the overbuild the cost drifts back down toward $0.02.

    Overbuilding is likely to play a big role in the structure of future grids. it plays a large role in today’s US grids. We run our coal and CCNG plants less than 60% of the time and our gas turbines about 5% of the time. We match generation to demand now by the amount of fuel we burn. In the future we’re likely to do most of our supply:demand matching by turning wind turbines and solar panels on and off.

  247. 247.

    Bess

    January 1, 2019 at 6:56 pm

    @Robert Sneddon:

    The UK is either going to have to install more storage or increase its links to sunnier places. I’m sure sunny Portugal and Spain would be happy to sell solar electricity to the UK and buy back nighttime wind.

    BTW, by installing gas plants the UK has almost totally ceased its use of coal.

  248. 248.

    Burnspbesq

    January 1, 2019 at 7:01 pm

    @germy:

    It was actually kinda admirable that Hope continued to do it after he was insanely rich twice over from real estate.

  249. 249.

    Tehanu

    January 1, 2019 at 7:04 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: Bob Hope entertained troops for his entire career starting in WWII, even when he was really past his prime and the soldiers in Vietnam considered him their parents’ star, not theirs. He wrote at least 2 memoirs about it and how much it meant to him, and one really can’t fault him for not enlisting like Jimmy Stewart when you consider that he performed in combat zones and his plane was under fire any number of times. I loved him when I was a little kid although of course when I was a teen in the Sixties I was disappointed and, honestly, rather horrified at how right-wing he was. Somebody else up thread mentioned his movies and at least a couple are still worth watching, like Monsieur Beaucaire and Son of Paleface. They’re old-fashioned and cliched, but they’re funny. What Hope was really good at was playing the hapless coward, trying and (usually) failing to weasel out of whatever situation he’d gotten into. I can understand not getting him, and his stand-up is terribly outdated now, but you might get something out of him if you think of him as historical.

  250. 250.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 1, 2019 at 7:08 pm

    Seems to me it’s something you hear about a lot of comedians, that there’s no there there when they aren’t actually performing. It was said about George Burns, but when he was already a very old man

  251. 251.

    NotMax

    January 1, 2019 at 7:15 pm

    @Tehanu

    Hope + Crosby road pictures, even the lamer ones, are proof of the adage that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

    Hope in vaudeville began as a dancer, a skill he rarely if ever displayed in the movies.

  252. 252.

    Amir Khalid

    January 1, 2019 at 7:17 pm

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:
    A bad habit for anyone, let alone one who would be a writer. Speaking of which, how’s that coming along?

  253. 253.

    Steeplejack

    January 1, 2019 at 7:44 pm

    @Amir Khalid:

    Possible name for your acoustic guitar: Aura, from a Greek wind nymph or titaness, “the breeze personified.”

  254. 254.

    Bill Arnold

    January 1, 2019 at 10:11 pm

    @Ruckus:
    @mapaghimagsik:
    Another concern is that if PG&E screws it up somehow, either financially/construction issues, or in operation, any failures may(will) be used worldwide as propaganda elements by forces opposed to battery-based storage. [0]
    Bess is focusing admirably on the positive aspects of likely/achievable decarbonization pathways, thanks!
    (Dead thread, I know.)
    [0] Sorta like how Chernobyl and Fukushima were both monumental fuckups by the owner/operators, and yet massively reduced numbers of nuclear power plants (including potential numbers) over several decades.
    We’ve already racked up, and continue to accumulate, an enormous energy debt with all the CO2 combustion waste in the atmosphere that we either live (and die, many of us) with the next many centuries, or somehow remove from Earth’s atmosphere, and specialized nuclear-powered plants might be a way to accomplish that, e.g. [1] to the tune of hundreds of gigawatts, running continuously in wintertime in high latitudes in the linked (some would say nutty) proposal.

    [1] Paper has some numbers (no citations, fwiw) Thermal Removal of Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere: Energy Requirements and Scaling Issues (PDF, 1 May 2018)

  255. 255.

    zhena gogolia

    January 1, 2019 at 10:15 pm

    @eemom:

    I was def talking about Winkler, not Grammer!

  256. 256.

    Robert Sneddon

    January 2, 2019 at 1:56 am

    @Bess: Storage costs money and doesn’t add to the total generating capacity, it’s an extra cost over and above the cost of the extra generating capacity required to fill that storage and we might still be unlucky some winter, a long calm period and high demand could empty the storage and leave us stranded (right now as I type this our 20GW of wind turbines are supplying about 3GW of electricity, we’re getting 15GW from CCGTs).

    We’re going to lose nearly all our existing 6-7GW of no-carbon nuclear reactor power in the next decade or so. The AGRs built in the 1970s and 1980s are reaching end-of-life and for technical reasons they can’t be refurbished for extended operation. To replace that nuclear capability with wind would mean doubling our existing installated base and it will soon be time to start replacing the oldest wind turbines as they reach their own end-of-life after twenty years or so which means even more expense just to remain where we are, carbon-wise.

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