No politics tonight because I find myself in a non-homicidal mood, probably because I did not read anything today other than the front page here. It was lovely out- 95 with a breeze but overcast so the sun was not too bad, so Joelle and I went to the pool for a bit and then came home and I made her a cocktail and she made a large tray of chicken enchiladas with roasted tomatillos and corn, and I am about to go have seconds.
Currently watching Coachella because Joelle loves a show. For years she was in the music industry as a roadie and stage manager and talent handler, probably for a bunch of bands you know, like Rasta Rafiki, Karma to Burn, Modest Mouse, and she was with Rusted Root for a long time. She also worked with a bunch of other people you may not know like Brownie Mary.
New SNL tonight, also.
BellyCat
Rusted Root! :-)
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin’, y’all.
Spent ALL day assembling this:
Caribbean Outdoor Playground Set w/ Wave Slide, Rockwall, Swing Set, and Porch-Style Bench Swing
I’m an engineer … and I’m having my ass handed to me.
TF79
Given the varying… quality… of Modest Mouse shows I’ve seen over the years, she must have some interesting stories.
Portly Neighbor
@Nukular Biskits: Mississippi Meetup!!!
Nukular Biskits
@Portly Neighbor:
Hey, neighbor! You here on the Coast?
eclare
@Nukular Biskits:
Wow! I sat in dirt and made mud pies and had a plastic “tire” hanging from a tree to swing on.
Your grandkids will love it!
frosty
@Nukular Biskits:
I just looked at your link – you set yourself up with a Real Project there. Have fun!
Scout211
@Nukular Biskits: Wow. You have a lot of grandkids, Nukular Biskits. But they all look super happy playing on your new awesome playground! ;-)
Nukular Biskits
@eclare:
Ms. Biskits gives me “the look” when I tell her that all we need to give the g’baby living with us is a cardboard box, some rocks and sticks.
Kids these days …
Jackie
@Nukular Biskits: HOLY COW! You have some extremely happy grandkiddos along with their friends!
Nukular Biskits
@frosty:
One of the things that pisses me off is the instructions keep changing the perspective; i.e., they’ll show the assembly from the front for step 1, 90 degrees rotated for step 2, -45 degrees rotated for step 3, etc.
They have a 3D app you can download to help assemble but, since I am a man, I don’t need any damn directions LOL
Portly Neighbor
@Nukular Biskits: Left coast (but I do have distant (!) relatives in Biloxi)
BellyCat
Well said. Was excited to see Cake circa 2008 at an MIT show and…
Nukular Biskits
@Jackie:
While this is for all my grandkids, I did this primarily for the (almost) 5-year old living with us. She’s on the autistic spectrum and I really want her to branch out and spend more time outside.
Besides, despite all my bitching about the complexity, I do love building things.
eclare
@Nukular Biskits:
The cardboard box was officially inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Toy_Hall_of_Fame
Class of 2005.
Nukular Biskits
@Portly Neighbor: Where on Left Coast?
My business travel takes me frequently to SAN.
Martin
New sport for you to watch.
RevRick
MrsRev and I just spent the evening watching, first, The Breakfast Club, because it was in the news about the five central cast members being together for the first time in decades, and then, episode five of The Residence. We love Cordelia Cupp.
Nukular Biskits
@Scout211:
Only three grandkids but, with sufficient sugar, 3 can appear to be as many as 12.
Nukular Biskits
@eclare:
I’ll be damned.
I can’t tell you how many forts me and my brother built out of the stuff.
ETA: I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the importance of the cardboard box with respect to the invention of the transmogrifier.
RevRick
@Martin: When all you want to do is be a seaman.
Scout211
@eclare: @Nukular Biskits:
For a few years my parents owned a furniture store. Some of the sofas and chairs they ordered came in boxes. He would bring home the largest ones and we would set up whole towns in our back yard for all the neighbor kids, each of us decorating our home with crayons. We had so much fun. Until the next rain.
eclare
@Nukular Biskits:
Forts for me were a blanket over a card table, with pillows inside.
eclare
@Scout211:
That sounds awesome!
Joelle
@TF79: they slept on my back porch while opening for Beck. In sleeping bags. The next day I came home from working at In Pittsburgh newsweekly and saw mail in my lil tin mail box. I grabbed it and hiked up the stairs to my second floor unit. Right above the top flight attendant (male) for US Air when Pittsburgh was their hub. He owned the Pittsburgh townhouse and looked like a member of the Village People. I started to instinctively rip it open and continue to huff my way up the stairs while reading the letter enclosed. It was from the lead singer to his GF at the time. I felt so bad. I wrote a letter of apology explaining why the letter envelope was so fucked up and with the letter obviously somewhat read. Ugh! And I re-enveloped it and took it up the PO to make sure it got out the next day. Later I met up with MM in Cleveland and mentioned the letterkerfuffle to Isaac and he was like “Oh goddamn my girl got sooooooo mad at me. She thought I was cheating on her while on tour. Oh man! We broke up eventually. So I guess it’s not that bad a thing but still!! Holy cow!”
Portly Neighbor
@Nukular Biskits: WA. How cool would it be for BJ meetup pix at your playground (on the slide is ___, on the Swing ___, etc.).
Joelle
@Nukular Biskits: and OG Modest Mouse is unparalleled.
Nukular Biskits
@Scout211:
Furniture and appliance boxes were the bomb!
Nukular Biskits
@Portly Neighbor:
LOL
persistentillusion
@eclare: My kids grew up with both the cardboard box and the out-door play-set. I preferred the cardboard box (a box from a new dish washer than I painted and named “The Indoor Playhouse”. These were kids distracted by bubbles in an extremely cold front porch, so the cardboard box worked a treat.
The out-door play-set involved vomiting on their part.
NotMax
@eclare
Toy which will never make the cut: Evilstick.
;)
frosty
Goddam right! The second time you ask for directions or look at the manual, it falls off.
ETA, oh no, it’s worse! You’re an engineer. I’m a PE and my dad was an electronics engineer and of course we can do anything. It took me awhile to figure out my dad’s philosophy wasn’t “Don’t pay someone to do something you can do yourself.” It was “Don’t pay someone to do something you think you can LEARN to do yourself.”
Which is why we plunged into an engine rebuild without ever having done something like that before. And carburetor rebuilds. And bodywork to fix rusted out floorboards. Etc etc. Oh, and he built our first color TV from a Heathkit!
kalakal
@Nukular Biskits:
Wow ! That’s amazing.
I can see why the Engineer in you must have had a blast.
On the other hand as an ex Chemical Engineer it’s probably a good thing I don’t build things for the grandkids
eclare
@NotMax:
That is terrifying.
BellyCat
Thou shalt never ask for directions while traveling, neither. LOL
eclare
Is anyone watching Dying For Sex on Hulu? It stars Michelle Williams and Jenny Slater. I just watched the first episode and the performances are already amazing. Very touching.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/dying_for_sex
Based on a true story.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
WTF do you find this stuff?
Rusty
@Nukular Biskits: I remember building something similar for our two older girls 25+ years ago, and the “kit” was the slide, swings and a few specialty parts, along with a list of lumber to purchase and a cut list. Forget assembly, this was major construction. When we went the sell the house, we got an offer for asking price, but they wanted the play ground too. My wife looked at me, worried I would refuse, and was shocked when I blurted out, sold! There was no way I was taking that damn thing apart and reassembling it at the next house.
Nukular Biskits
@frosty:
I live by the immortal words of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers:
frosty
@eclare: Fond memories of an appliance carton my twin brother and I could get into. We drew instrument panels on the inside to turn it into an airplane cockpit then practiced flying “on instruments”. One of us would call out directions and the other would walk around the rooms holding a model plane flying it per the instructions. Typically into a wall, after which we’d switch places.
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
That would be telling.
:)
Almost Retired
The Coachella set with the LA Philharmonic was phenomenal. (We are watching on you tube). My youngest son is out there now and my oldest goes most years. I always check out the lineup online and give them some suggestions for acts they should see.
They very much appreciate my input because this gives them a list of bands they should avoid at all costs.
eclare
@frosty:
Fun!
Nukular Biskits
@Rusty:
When my sons were young (approximately 3.7 billion years ago) I bought some plans for a play center and, being me, extrapolated it into a three-story behemoth in our backyard.
It was built to withstand a nukular (tongue-in-cheek there) blast with plenty of concrete anchoring the 4×4 posts. Even into their teen years, they’d climb up into the third floor and relax into their beanbag chairs to read during the lazy spring and summer months.
Even now, it stands and will probably outlast me.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax: I double dog dare you!
Kelly
One winter before I started to school Dad scavenged shed full of 2x lumber scraps to feed our woodstove. I was 5 I guess. Oh my, the castles my brother and I built from a pile of wood blocks twice as tall as us.
sab
I have a basement room full of big boxes turned into a cat condo association. Every cat has his or her own private box.
Nukular Biskits
@Kelly:
Growing up, my brother and I built battle cruisers out of wood scraps and took the with us whenever we went swimming at Okatibbee Lake.
Oh, how I miss those days.
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
::
stares at ceiling and softly whistles:::)
NotMax
@sab
For hoomans — Dave Made a Maze.
;)
karen gail
@frosty: Building a Heathkit item; I helped build the TV, did the trash compactor and a second TV for relatives. His soldering was better than mine since he did a great deal of it for work. We also built the speaker boxes and while woodworking decided to do a fancy chess table.
Yet Another Haldane
@eclare:
Yes, that is the One True Fort.
Two weeks ago I (age 66) washed mattress pads. One of them didn’t get properly dry in the huge laundromat dryer, so I brought it home and hung it in the living room over two dining chairs. Voila, a tunnel/fort! My knees are still bruised from trying it out.
tobie
I just howled in laughter. Some brilliant folks in Silicon Valley hacked into the announcement system at cross-walks and created messages in Elon Musk’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s voices. This article has tapes of the announcements. One says
Nukular Biskits
@karen gail:
“Heathkit”.
Now there’s something I haven’t heard in a long time.
Craig
@eclare: thanks for cheering my day. The world is a strange and fantastic place
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
From a long ago parody radio spot for “Heapkits.”
am
How are just mentioning this (unless I missed it)? That is bad-ass.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
Now there’s another term I haven’t heard in a long time!
Kristine
Many thanks to the commenters who recommended “The Residence” on Netflix. It’s just the sort of show I need right now.
Love idiosyncratic detectives.
OldDave
@Nukular Biskits: One thing I learned the hard way – never build the same Heathkit twice. The first one there’s discovery and the joy of doing something new. The second time – it’s just a job, and a boring one at that.
Martin
Heathkit is still a thing, btw.
My grandfather loved Heathkit and assembled a bunch of their stuff, including his TV. I remember helping him repair a few things.
Craig
@Nukular Biskits: those guys were the best. Truly transcendent radio. Pretty much a protopodcast. I can hear their voices right now.
Craig
@Kelly: when I was 5, or 6 my neighbor’s older brother brought us into the older(12 year olds) group to build treeforts out in the woods. There was a bunch of new construction going on at the abandoned airstrip 15 minutes hike away and backed up on the same woods. They led us over there and appropriated 2x4s, nails and plywood for our castles in the sky. Traipsing through the woods trying to carry 4×8 sheets of plywood with our tiny little arms…we were like a screwball combination of the seven dwarves and The Artful Dodger’s urchin gang. Our secret getaway that no one’s parents would even want to know about.
TF79
@Joelle: Wild! I really hope Isaac gave a good “WELL…” along with the “goddamn” in there too
Pete Downunder
@Martin: I loved Heathkits. When I moved to Oz I still had some test equipment I had built – oscilloscope, VTVM etc but Oz uses 240 vac not 110 like US and the gear was so old it was not worth trying to re-wire the power supplies so it was sadly abandoned. All point to point wiring. Tried to build a Theramin kit here recently, all the parts were tiny and it’s still not working properly. I need my oscilloscope.
frosty
@Pete Downunder: Ah, you needed a Variac adjustable transformer to lower the 240 to 120. My dad (of course) had one. Among other things, he used it to set up a fan for the fireplace. Plugged it in, plugged a computer box fan on the other side, changed the voltage to change the fan speed.
Engineers! I liked to think of him as the king of the jury-rig. I’ve taken up the mantle.
Joelle
@TF79: yeah he talks just likes he sings. All kinda Octaves up in there.
lowtechcyclist
@Nukular Biskits:
I put together a smaller version of one of those for the kiddo when he was little, maybe about half the size of that thing. IME, it was a lot easier if I had another person helping me because doing it myself, it always seemed it would be easier if I were in two places at once.
My older sister, who is a civil engineer (>30 years with the Corps), came over one afternoon and we got it together pretty damn quick. 15 years later, it’s still standing.
lowtechcyclist
@Joelle: I love Modest Mouse. Got “Lampshades on Fire” going through my head now, thanks to this thread.
lowtechcyclist
My friends and I used to build leaf forts in the woods behind our houses. You start off with some small trees several feet from each other that have branches or crotches not too far off the ground, then you take deadfall branches and make a network of branches dense enough to stuff leaves into it (or on top of it, for the roof) and have them stay put, and next thing you know, you’ve got your own little leaf house. Or not so little – by the time we were in our pre-teen years, some of those forts got pretty grandiose.
I built one for the kiddo in the woods behind our house when he was maybe five or six years old. He loved it.
Jacel
@NotMax: I suppose Happy Fun Ball won’t be selected for that Toy Hall Of Fame, but there’s probably nothing that could stop it if it wanted to get in.
Paul in KY
@TF79: I bet!!