A good friend called “bullshit” on my suggestion that the 2020 election was shady.
In a kidding-not kidding way, he diagnosed me as having had a mental breakdown. My experience bringing automation into heavy manufacturing plants required me to develop a thick skin. I take no offense, and interpret my buddy as not kidding about his actual puzzlement at my election assertion.
This article is interesting because the numbers aren’t what I’d have guessed. The graph lumps press conferences in with interviews, but the article provides more detail.
Biden hid from the press, but I wouldn’t have guessed that Reagan wasn’t out there more.
I got on this track because, “The White House press corps is already “exhausted” at the outset of the second Trump administration.”
It’s never appealing to hear people complaining about their jobs, but it is appalling to hear grumbling from the White House press corps.
Being a part of the White House press corps is, I understood, a prestigious position for a journalist. They really aren’t going to like it when bloggers and social media influencers are given press passes.
The White House press corps was derelict in their duty to inform Americans about President Biden’s frailty and deteriorating mental health. They should be ashamed.
In an alternate time-line, the corporate press would have reported on Biden’s condition, Dr. Jill would not have insisted upon a second term, the Democratic Party would have held a legitimate primary, the world would not have learned that Kamala Harris was dumb and unprepared, nobody outside of Minnesota would be familiar with Tim Walz and some other Democrat would have run for president against Trump.
The election result may have been the same, but it wouldn’t be as embarrassing for the Democratic Party.
Can’t Stop the Music is the movie that featured the YMCA music video, so I decided to watch it. The movie is on Youtube. It has an IMDB rating of 4.3. It is bad, so I’m watching it in German to avoid the painful dialogue. Even though it takes place in NYC, it is a fascinating depiction of the disco era.
I notice so many things that were common then, but we don’t see now. Like:
The movie is a fictionalized origin story for the Village People. The 4.3 rating is about right.
The “Leatherman” does ride a chopper motorcycle, so maybe I was close with the Eric Von Ripper association.
Caitlin Jenner recently posted this YMCA video because he shows up in it.1
I’d never seen this music video before, and that’s surprising because I was a fan of The Village People. I even bought the Macho Man 8-track.
At the time, my oldest sister told me that one of the Village People was gay. She was being informative or mean-spirited, I don’t know, but I found that difficult to believe. Like, what are the chances that a construction worker, soldier, Indian chief, policeman, motorcycle punk2, or cowboy, would be gay?
Turns out, the chances are about a 100%.
Apparently only the cowboy and Indian were gay, but teh gays sure liked that song.
1 The subject and pronoun don’t match in that sentence, but that’s not my fault. This human was the man, Bruce Jenner, at the time. I didn’t make up this stupid linguistic fur ball.
Along the same line, I don’t apologize for using “queer” in the title. The politically correct, “LGBTQIA2S+”, is intentionally unwieldy and absurd. Anyone attempting to stay current with the label is bound to be wrong because any letter can be added and the new members of that group will be furious. The Q is in there, so they can’t be too offended that it applies to all of them.
2 What I thought was a motorcycle punk, is the “Leatherman” character. I thought the character was similar to the Eric Von Zipper character in the beach movies of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.
I may seem astoundingly unsophisticated, but that’s what it was like before the internet. There was no way to look anything up.
This photo was taken almost two years ago, the day after I brought Sparky home. Man, he has really let himself go. No wonder his nickname is Señor Piglet. He needs to get on the carnivore diet.
At the orphanage, he didn’t have his own name. They called him ‘Sammy’, but he hated that. Like I’ve mentioned previously, he’s kind of racist, and it bugged him to be named after the indigenous people of Northern Europe. He says the Sami people have small, round heads, large hands, and wide feet with splayed toes. I have no idea what he was talking about.
When I first brought him home, we were trying to establish some common interests. I told him that I taught physics. He didn’t know anything about that, but liked chasing pigeons. Being a congenial dog, he asked if I had any physics stories about pigeons. I told him about Nikola Tesla and his fondness for pigeons. He enjoyed that story and wondered if I had any stories about physics and dogs. I read him Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog.
Reading the story will give you some context. He wanted to know if Tom Edison was a real guy. I said that he was, and that he happened to be Tesla’s nemesis. He was happy about that. In the story, Edison is a jerk to the dog, but the dog is really smart, and makes Edison look foolish. The dog in the story is named Sparky, and since the dog isn’t real, he wanted that name.
Eventually, Sparky became self-conscious about not having a last name. He didn’t want to take my last name because he felt it implied something about our relationship that he didn’t want to explore. We put a pin in it.
Sparky and I like watching movies featuring dogs. Months later, we watched Laurie Anderson’s movie, Heart of a Dog. Sparky didn’t understand what was going on in the movie, but liked how Anderson talked about her dog, Lollabelle. Also, since Lollabelle was allowed to play a keyboard, Laurie Anderson must be a nice person who understands that good dogs are smart and should be allowed to do whatever they want.
If I’m honest, I didn’t understand the movie either, but agreed that Laurie Anderson was a national treasure. Sparky wanted Laurie Anderson to be his godmother. He took her last name as an homage.
Señor Piglet became Sparky Anderson. He prefers playing with Mr. Moose, but will chase balls until they roll under the furniture. He doesn’t mind that there was a ballplayer named Sparky Anderson.
Sparky was all ears when I told him the troubling news. Yesterday, while Sparky was patrolling the grounds, I saw a coyote between the chain link fence and the sound wall. It wasn’t far from the grape vines where Sparky likes to snuffle. They would be on opposite sides of the fence, so that’s not an issue.
My concern, and now Sparky’s, is how the coyote got passed the chain link fence. The likely access is under the fence at the creek by the land bridge. That is one of Sparky’s favorite spots because there is a culvert pipe to crawl in, rocks to stand on, high weeds for pooping and whatever wiggly things live in the creek mud.
I provide overwatch for Sparky when he is on a recon mission for the KISS army, but now we have to actually be cautious. Sparky likes to kid around about being a friend of Wily, but after that possum encounter, he is starting to understand that this isn’t a petting zoo.
On Tuesday, I maxed out on the bench press at 175 pounds, which is 5 pounds more than my high school maximum.
To be fair, I mostly screwed around in my high school Physical Fitness class. We were supposed to be running or lifting, but by telling the coach that we were running in the back gym, we could do flips and jumps onto the high jump pit.
My brother and I are 16 months into our work-out routine. That’s the longest I’ve ever stuck to any fitness program. Working out so consistently, I wasn’t concerned about damaging something by attempting a max lift.
I’m currently doing two sets at 155 pounds. It’s rough, but I can get about 10 reps in for each set. Based on that, I should be able to max out at around 200 pounds, but I want to slowly approach the max.
Conventional wisdom is to do three sets of 8 to 12 reps, three times per week. We only do two sets to get more different exercises in. Two visits to the gym per week gives us more recovery time.
Bold action like this would get teachers to eat in the cafeteria again.
The NRHS cafeteria used to serve the best bagel sandwiches. You know how some restaurants serve the best bread or rolls? It’s not just butter or garlic, they do something to make the rolls feel, smell and taste just right. NRHS bagel sandwiches were like that. I think they steamed them or something, then wrapped them in aluminum foil. They weren’t greasy or sloppy, just warm, soft and savory.
Michelle Obama ruined all that. The cafeteria ladies at Normandy and NRHS used to cook. Lunch might be casseroles, pasta or pizza that they made that morning. What ruined everything was requiring nutritional information, like you’d get on packaged food, for each item. Restaurants can afford to determine that information for each recipe, but school cafeterias can’t. Bagel sandwiches stopped soon after that.
Sparky and I are having a lovely morning. He is napping by the fire, and I’m watching, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
While browsing online, someone mentioned this movie from 1969 as Maggie Smith’s break-out role. She won an Academy Award for it.
Maggie Smith plays a woman with progressive attitudes teaching at a conservative all-girl school in Scotland. The teacher, Miss Brodie is in her prime, so fashionable and fetching, spouting a bunch of romantic and leftist nonsense popular in the 1930’s.
The viewer just has to accept the premise that Miss Brodie is fetching. Maggie Smith was 35, looks 45, and is supposed to be 30. On the attractiveness scale, she’s a California 3, a Navy 8, an Ohio 5, which probably makes her a Scottish 9.
Old movies that take place in schools are interesting, as are Scottish movies. The school, teacher and students are very different from the 1967 Sidney Poitier movie, To Sir, With Love, but the formal, old-school culture is similar. A good sequel to both movies would be a mash-up where Miss Brodie is on staff with Mr. Thackeray. Miss Brodie would be challenged to date a Black guy, but Poitier is very smooth. In many ways, they are opposites, but that may have something to do with the era depicted in both movies.
Miss Brodie is teaching in the interval between world wars, and is infatuated with fascists. She is very taken by Mussolini and Franco. Since the movie filmed in England, 29 years after the Battle of Britain, mentioning that energetic fellow who just became the chancellor of Germany, might have been too much.
While Miss Brodie explains that Mussolini was a man of action and made Capri a sanctuary for birds, he was making plans to invade Ethiopia. I bet she felt stupid a couple of years later.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has depth and substance that modern movies lack. Parts of it offend modern sensibilities, but everyone seems more intelligent and thoughtful than we would see today. I enjoyed it, and would give it an 8/10.
The movie has a 7.6 IMDB rating, and is currently available on Youtube.
Lia in Brussels addresses the movie in greater depth.
Looking for analysis and commentary on the recent election, I stumbled on Megyn Kelly on Youtube. When she was a journalist for ABC or Fox, she was attractive and engaging, but not that different than anyone else. She was managed by the network, like everyone else.
Now that she is running her own show, she has become one of my favorites. Megyn is smart and well-connected, and has the freedom to cover what interests her. She is much more animated, making casual. At 54 years-old, she looks great. Megyn brings to mind the Audrey Hepburn quote, “I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls.”
© 2025 Big Stick Physics
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑