We were hit by the same snowstorm y’all were hit by this weekend, but fortunately it was a) under 6 inches; and b) waited until Saturday, which is a good thing. Hate commuting during a major snowfall.
Regrettably, it was followed by a temperature plunge, so out of the closet comes the Parka of Tribulation for an unknown period of time. It was 3 above zero when I got up this morning, and while it will get into the high 20s during the week, next weekend looks pretty grim, too.
But this is winter. Make soup.
Fortunately there was no snow when women had to get to Cobo in heels for the auto show Charity Preview, so let’s get to the pix, eh?
This is an Infiniti concept something-or-other. Alan notes that it cannot be left outdoors in the rain, because it will fill up like a bathtub. Very nice design, though:
And right next to it, another Infiniti concept, this one a sedan. Because every back seat needs a bud vase, don’t you agree? Also love the suicide doors and the steering — thing, because it’s not a wheel — that retracts into the dash. I assume this is a concept for the autonomous era.
On to Kia’s new concept-but-bound-for-production model, the Telluride, its three-row SUV. J.C., please be advised that the video wall had all that falling water animated, to remind you of the streams you will be able to ford in your rugged machine:
But you probably won’t want to use this one, because you’ll mess up the fine bespoke leather work on that spare-tire cover. Note the ladder, so you can get on the roof and glass the distant lions on the savannah. Again, mind the leather and those million-dollar suitcases.
Not to spend too much time in Kia-ville, but I liked the color juxtapositions here:
We were making our way steadily to Subaru, having heard from a reliable source that their display featured puppies. Nope. Only one dog, reppin’ a Subaru trait as popular as the gay-friendly thing — they’re beloved by those who own big-ass dogs.
The dog came courtesy of the Michigan Humane Society, of course. She wore a pink bow tie on her collar, because it was a formal event.
This will be the last show in January, and it showed — besides the disgraced VW, there were no European brands on the floor. This freed up space for what Alan derided as “used-car lots,” although they were extremely luxury-focused lots, with Lambos and McLarens and all those rich-D-bag models, including this BMW.
Remember Miss Michigan? She made a splash last fall when she introduced herself at the Miss America pageant like so. She was there, and mobbed by people wanting selfies, but I was able to get a few words in with her. She’s not only a badass, she has a nose ring and TWO tattoos. She said she was having a blast now that Miss A is over and she can just “do the fun stuff, like this.” Miss Michigan, Emily Sioma:
I entertained Alan’s young colleague with stories of covering the Miss A pageant back in the early ’80s. A very different time, in so many ways.
Everybody loves a sexy-ass Corvette, so here’s a Corvette with a sexy ass. Alan said, “They don’t cost as much as you might think.” He pulled out his phone, scrolled for a minute, and said, “They start at $56,000.” The turntable brought the product specialist into view, and I said, “What does this one cost, as equipped?”
“$135,000,” she replied. OK, then.
Here’s that color again, this time on a Camaro. At least you can find it in a parking lot:
And here it is reflected in the amazingly shiny dress of one of the floor photographers. Year after year, I notice the real risk-takers, fashion-wise, are African Americans. I missed a lot of good outfits because I couldn’t deploy the camera fast enough, but this lady will have to do. She had matching boots, too.
And that’s it for your car-show roundup. Signing off with a self-portrait, because Alan only took one picture of me and it was terrible. Guess I’ll have to wear the dress again soon.
Until June 2020! Although this stupid blog will be back later in the week.
Sherri said on January 20, 2019 at 12:44 pm
Forget the cars! I came here for the dress! Alan let me down!
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nancy said on January 20, 2019 at 12:58 pm
It was this one, although I paid substantially less than that, so it may be a somewhat different one. But that’s the idea, and the color — stand-up collar, midnight blue, flared skirt.
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Deborah said on January 20, 2019 at 2:23 pm
I really like the dress, I bet you look smashing in it. You’ll have to put it on and take a picture of yourself in a full length mirror. Please?
The woman in the silvery dress taking the photo has an appropriate dress for the venue, she fits right in. We went to a dive bar in East St. Louis once in the late 80s in the wee hours of New Year’s and saw Leon Spinks there in head to toe mink, a hat, a long coat and even his boots were mink. He rightfully commanded the room, it was worth it just to see him.
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Julie Robinson said on January 20, 2019 at 3:28 pm
Sigh. I will never have enough soul to wear a dress with silver sequins.
A few years back we had a Corvette as a rental, a convertible no less. Hubby’s car was in the shop and the other choice was a little dinky something or other or the Corvette. And I am here to tell you that I DON’T love the sexy-ass Corvette.
It sits so low to the ground that it’s hard for the creaky-knee crowd to climb and out. And the windshield is about 10 inches high so visibility is horrible. I drove it for a minute and my eyes were at the same level as the top of the windshield bar. Couldn’t see a dam thing!
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Joe Kobiela said on January 20, 2019 at 3:55 pm
Hard for the creaky knee crowd, hence one of the main reason Ford’s dropping cars and focusing on cross overs, their easier to get in and out of for older customers, not talking about jacked up pickups but suv’s like the escape, that plus you make a wad more profit on suv’s than on cars.
Pilot Joe
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alex said on January 20, 2019 at 4:11 pm
Not much of a fan of new cars these days except for the redesign of the Honda Accord last year. Honda copied the silhouette of Audi’s biggest luxo-barge and managed to make an even better-looking car than the Audi, IMHO. And they still make a manual transmission, so I want to snag onto one of those before they eventually kill it just like they did to their V6 and their coupe.
The last time anyone put that jarring chartreuse color on cars was in 1970, particularly on Chrysler muscle cars. I predict it will disappear just as abruptly as it did then.
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basset said on January 20, 2019 at 6:47 pm
I have driven a Vette exactly once, across the parking lot at the factory in Kentucky. Don’t remember much about it.
Now that I think of it… don’t remember ever sitting in a Cadillac, much less driving one. Or a Mercedes, and certainly not a Lexus or an Infiniti.
Lowest car I’ve ever been around had to be an original Ford GT40 Mk II, best-looking race car ever built. Asked the owner if I might sit in it and he told me no. Asked why, since I’d been all over several of his other cars and was even invited to drive em… he says no, you’re welcome to, you just can’t, try it.
Sure enough, I could not get my legs under the dash and my butt into the seat… top of the roof came to my back pockets.
Here’s what one looks like, not the same car but similar:
https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/MO18/Monterey/lots/r0073-1966-ford-gt40-mk-ii/692159
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LAMary said on January 20, 2019 at 7:18 pm
I’ve been very lucky. I’ve driven a Corvette, a 68 Jaguar xke, and two Mercedes gull wings. The Jag was the most fun. It was a convertible. We had some wealthy car freak neighbors. The Corvette was one my late father in law was loaned by someone. There was some sort of story attached to that situation and it pissed off my mother in law a lot. The ex and I chose to not pursue details.
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Deborah said on January 20, 2019 at 7:34 pm
I’ve had a series of MGs as I’ve said here before, and they’re very low, but they never bothered me, I was younger obviously. They had 3 windshield wipers because the windshield was so narrow top to bottom.
I’ve got another damn cold. I had one almost the entire time we were in London/Paris a month ago. I was around uncle J’s great grandkids last week, some of them had colds darn it. Love those kids but I probably shouldn’t have hugged and kissed them.
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Dorothy said on January 20, 2019 at 7:52 pm
The color of that Camero? My first pair of bell bottom pants were that exact shade. They got short on me very quickly because I was growing like a weed. I wrote a note to Santa asking for ‘bot’ pants for Christmas and that’s what I got – neon yellow/green bell bottoms. (My mum sewed a lot of our clothing when we were little, hence my desire for ‘bought’ pants.)
I got a ride home from work one night from my boss who had an MG. Not comfortable for someone who is 5’9”. I felt like Fred Flintstone, ready to move the car along with my feet if there had been holes in the floor. Another boss had a fancy little black sports car that was a stick. She asked me to take it from the parking spot over to the portable car detailing truck that was on the property. That was fun even if I only drove it for maybe 1/2 mile. Wish I could remember what it was. We inherited a Mercedes sedan, pea green, when my mother-in-law died. She had inherited it from her Aunt who proceeded her in death by only a few years. We sold the Mercedes very quickly and turned around and paid cash for a station wagon. We had one child and another on the way so the station wagon made much more sense. Dodge Polaris, 1984. We were offered an upgrade on a rental during a trip to Florida several years ago. We got a Mustang convertible and of course it was red. That was fun.
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alex said on January 20, 2019 at 8:37 pm
Here’s a prime example of one of those 1970 muscle cars:
https://journal.classiccars.com/2013/07/01/1970-plymouth-road-runner-superbird/
Note at the end where they say the dealers were stuck with a lot of these unsold two years later and had to de-uglify them just to move them. Surviving specimens are worth a pretty penny now.
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Julie Robinson said on January 20, 2019 at 8:59 pm
Someone in our house thinks a Tesla would be a good retirement reward, and took a test drive on our last trip to Florida. Someone came home with a very big grin on his face. Someone else didn’t even bother to go along.
Dorothy, did your mom also sew tucks into hems so they could be let down? And when the pants got too short, did she sew on a two-inch wide piece of trim all the way around?
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David C. said on January 20, 2019 at 8:59 pm
I drove my brother-in-law’s Corvette. I wasn’t impressed. It rode like a buckboard and was noisy as hell. The US automakers dropped sedans because they’re not very good at building them. When we bought our Sonata, we tried a Malibu and a Fusion. They weren’t even close. We weren’t stupid enough to spend any time in a Chrysler 200. Life is too short to spend any time in anything from FCA.
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brian stouder said on January 20, 2019 at 10:52 pm
Here’s an automotive semi-non-sequitur:
Have you noticed the Ford truck commercial that includes a shot of several of them rolling down the road hauling things –
and one of them is loaded with a giant Big Boy statue, such as stand outside Big Boy restaraunts (here in Fort Wayne, that would be Azars; but in Ohio it [used to be?] Frisches)??
Struck me as somewhat odd
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susan said on January 20, 2019 at 10:54 pm
Holy moly, bassett, that Ford GT40 Mk II went for $10,000,000. !! It was almost hard to type that…jeezo. There is a photo on that page of someone getting into that car on a race track. I see what you mean. One has to have a young back and good knees.
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basset said on January 20, 2019 at 11:52 pm
Well, totality in Nashville is behind a thick layer of clouds… some impressive telescopes here at the park nature center, though.
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Joe Kobiela said on January 20, 2019 at 11:59 pm
Clear in N.E. Indiana.
Looks awesome, very distinct coloring, glad I stayed up to see it.Would love to have been airborne.
Pilot Joe
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Jakash said on January 21, 2019 at 1:42 am
In Chicago, a couple miles from the lake, it was hit and miss during the partial umbral phase, then we got to see about 10 minutes of the total eclipse. Then a thin band of lake effect snow came riding in and clouds completely obscured the Wolf (and the skyline, for that matter.) But either there was a thin layer of clouds, even when it was clearest, or I don’t see so well, because what we saw was not as red as any of the photos I’ve seen, including some from around here. Which is in keeping with my long history of being set up for disappointment with astronomical events. I usually give them a shot — they seldom deliver what was promised. This one was particularly annoying, in that it was sunny today, which got my hopes up for a clear night. Which would have seemed to have been a reasonable expectation, since it’s 9 freaking degrees out at the moment.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 21, 2019 at 6:28 am
Minus nine at 6:30 am in Granville, Ohio. The blood moon effect was very nice, but hard to enjoy for too long in sandals and a bathrobe.
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Dorothy said on January 21, 2019 at 6:58 am
Julie I don’t recall if my mother did that to the hems. I know I let down hems on my jeans once I was in high school, and added braid to them as a trim. I’m guessing the reason Mum did not make a wide hem in order to let it down later was the fact that I had 3 younger sisters. Hand-me-downs were a big thing in my family. If clothing wore out of course it wasn’t passed down. There was also the trick of cutting off pants that had a hole in the knee(s) and they magically became shorts! I didn’t really get any clothes from my older sisters that I can recall. The eldest is 10 years older than me and the next one is 6.5 years older than me. My brother Joe is five years older than I am; Mum had a miscarriage between him and me so there’s a five year gap between Joe and I.
Sorry for misspelling Camaro. Friggin’ spell check made it Cameron and I only backed off the n.
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basset said on January 21, 2019 at 9:01 am
We had patchy clouds early & saw the start of the eclipse before the thick cover rolled in. Our park folks were live streaming to some kind of multinational connection that was playing on the big screen in the park building – Morocco and the Griffith Observatory in LA had good clear views but the locations in Argentina and somewhere in Africa were just as clouded over as we were.
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Deborah said on January 21, 2019 at 10:14 am
Since my husband and I both have colds again, there was no way we would have gone outside to see if we could spot the moon, it would have involved bundling up and taking an elevator ride. Our windows were all fogged up so we wouldn’t have been able to see it if it happened to be in our view. Besides we needed to sleep. I’ve looked at photos this morning. Maybe if we’d been in Abiquiu, sans colds, we could have gone up on the roof. I usually like to see stuff like that, but not this time.
We need some supplies at the grocery store and the pharmacy. My husband thinks he’s going to walk to Whole Foods and stop at Walgreens but I’m trying to convince him to take a Lyft to Jewel where he can get the groceries and the cold remedies at the same place, then take a Lyft back. This is what you fight about when you’ve gotten rid of your car and you’re both sick.
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Pam said on January 21, 2019 at 11:38 am
Just 2 observations. The Telluride SUV is ridiculous and I wouldn’t even think about buying one. And, the lady in the slithery dress looked like Michelle Obama’s famous boots, that I also don’t like. That weird green doesn’t impress me either, but at least you can see it on the road. Too bad we didn’t see the dress, it looks sensational in the model photo.
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beb said on January 21, 2019 at 12:23 pm
We had crystal clear skies last night which meant it was too darn cold to go outside.
It’s been ironic that though Detroit is in the Midwest we have had no snow (beyond a dusting) this year until this weekend. For a time I thought I might not need to get gas for the snowblower. But finally I did. Later his week we’re going to have more rain. This is what global climate change looks like.
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Jakash said on January 21, 2019 at 12:30 pm
Don’t know if you’ve considered this, or care to, Deborah, but lots of Jewel and Whole Foods locations have delivery these days.
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Jeff Borden said on January 21, 2019 at 1:39 pm
The move toward boring colors in cars –and it’s not just in the U.S.– was puzzling. As I recall the 1960s cars arrayed in the driveways of my youth, virtually all them were different from the other. It’s not so much that I remember “loud” colors like red or yellow, but different shades. The guy across the street had a light turquoise metallic 1966 Chevy Impala with a white vinyl roof. The sales guy down the street had a 1964 gold Pontiac Catalina. We had a light green metallic 1969 Olds Cutlass. My beat-up Chevy was a light metallic blue. There was a guy down the street who only bought white cars. Otherwise, it was jellybean city. It’s why I opted for a fire engine red Fiat 500 Abarth six years ago. The only other choices were: black, white and silver. Ugh.
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Jakash said on January 21, 2019 at 2:10 pm
Even Chicago’s favorite landscape/cityscape photographer, Barry Butler, didn’t get to see the blood moon last night. He was prepared, though! If you’re unfamiliar with him and like awesome photos on Twitter, he’s somebody to follow. As evidenced by yesterday’s “Winterscape” photo.
https://twitter.com/barrybutler9/status/1087375921659682817
https://twitter.com/barrybutler9/status/1087148010604253185
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Jakash said on January 21, 2019 at 2:18 pm
Jeff B.,
I don’t really know what “Verdoro green” is, but the coolest car I recall from the olden days was when one of our neighbors drove up after buying one that looked a lot like this:
https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/pontiac/firebird/2181336.html
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Mark P said on January 21, 2019 at 3:42 pm
Corvettes … hmph! The last one I liked was a 1967, and if we won the lottery I would probably get a pre-Stingray version, although I expect it would ride and drive like a truck. These days I see very few Corvettes, and those are driven by old guys (maybe even as old as me), and slowly. I used to make a weekly 120-mile commute from Rome, Ga, to Huntsville, Al. Part of it was on a twisty, hilly two-lane where I liked to make good time in my diesel Golf. If anyone was ahead of me, I passed them. Once there was a long line of cars behind a truck. I picked them off one at a time, including a Corvette. That had to be embarrassing.
In high school and early college I drove a 1959 Triumph TR-3. They have cut-down doors, so you can rest your elbow on the door without lifting your arm. I could lean over slightly and touch the pavement. I miss that car, but I would probably hate to drive it today. It would ruin my memories.
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Dave said on January 21, 2019 at 3:54 pm
I’ve driven two Corvettes, one that belonged to my uncle and the other to a lifelong friend. My uncle’s was a 65 or 66, it really wasn’t that much fun to drive, it rode rough, and was noisy. My friend’s was (is, he still has it) a 72, he bought it new, and it was a little nicer. My brother also had a Corvette for awhile but I can’t remember ever driving it. Eventually, it was stolen and he never saw it again.
We had two different Cadillacs. One was inherited and the other was just a good deal at a time we needed a larger car. My other brother was working for Columbus Motor Car, the Caddy dealer in Columbus, and we got it through him.
Today we drive a 2011 Accord, it’s got 106,000 miles on it, and I’d like to get something new but there’s nothing wrong with the Honda.
Greetings from Quito, Ecuador, where we’ve been for nearly a week. Our daughter-in-law’s maternal grandmother came from here, and she’s always wanted to visit. They still have extended family here, some of whom we’ve met. We’ve been to the equator and to a coffee farm and seen some other attractions. This is a place I never thought I would ever go.
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Dave said on January 21, 2019 at 4:01 pm
Couldn’t get back in time to edit but one of my school buddies had a 68 Firebird, brand new right out of high school. It was a hot car and he tore that car up, mistreated it terribly.
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susan said on January 21, 2019 at 4:38 pm
I had a ’72 Vega.
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Bitter Scribe said on January 21, 2019 at 5:00 pm
Subaru is gay-friendly? You’d never know it from their sappy straight-white-family TV commercials.
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Dorothy said on January 21, 2019 at 7:16 pm
The MG I got a ride in in 1974? It was Vedoro Green! Or pretty damn close. Susan – my first car was a 1976 Pontiac Astra, which was a kissing cousin to the Chevy Vega. What else? It was green.
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susan said on January 21, 2019 at 7:42 pm
Dorothy, I hope they didn’t go beyond kissing, because that Vega was a real piece ƒhi†. I liked the body design (hatch-back), and it was fun to drive, but under the hood, in the brakes, under the body…crap! Burned oil from the git-go. When I went back to the dealer, where I bought the thing new, and complained it used a quart of oil every 700 miles and what are you going to do about it?? Nada. “Hey, that’s just the way they were built!” He got that right. One time when I was embarking on a 300-mile trip, the oil light came on FOUR times. Had to add four quarts of oil each way. Well, I had always carried half-a-dozen quarts with me anyway, so I only had to buy two more on the way home. This, at 44,000 miles…Piece of ƒhi†.
After the engine rebuild and a few more years, I bought my ’85 Toyota pickup. 360,000 miles, never burns oil (I still have it), same engine, no rebuild.
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alex said on January 21, 2019 at 8:48 pm
Verdero green is just British racing green with metallic flecks. Very Pontiac and very 1968. I don’t remember seeing it on other GM cars, but that one was like Pontiac’s color of the year. You’d see it on low-end Catalina sedans with blackwall tires and Grand Prixes and GTOs. The overall palette for the era tended toward olive/gold metallics as I recall.
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Jakash said on January 22, 2019 at 1:02 am
Susan, after #32, I was gonna say “I’ll see your ’72 Vega and raise you a ’71 Pinto.” But after #35, I can only bow before you in awe. Mine had its problems, but lasted ten years and I’ve got no stories like that…
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Julie Robinson said on January 22, 2019 at 8:20 am
And I will trump you both with a ’67 Corvair, the unsafe at any speed car. Dad bought it at a police auction for $25, because no one else bid on it, and my sister drove it for two years before she went off to college and it became mine.
Problems? Well, it had a few, most notably a leak that delivered exhaust along with heat to the passenger cabin. No biggie, just drive with the window open a few inches. No working gas gauge just meant I filled it every Saturday. It also tended to break down when driven for more than 20 minutes. But school was seven minutes away, and none of my friends more than 15, so that didn’t bother me either.
None of it bothered me. It was wheels and it was freedom. We lived in the country and I was always involved in something after school, or in the evening, so it was freedom for my folks too.
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nancy said on January 22, 2019 at 8:47 am
I learned to drive in our ‘66 Corvair. I loved it, my mother loved it, and she side-eyed Ralph Nader for the rest of his career as a result. It was fun to drive. Built in Ypsilanti, I learned recently.
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alex said on January 22, 2019 at 9:19 am
My dad had a ’57 Chevy — yes the iconic one — and it had a metal emblem on the trunk lid with the dealership name and Ypsilanti, Michigan, which is where my dad bought it when his ’49 Chevy broke down on his way to visit family in Detroit. He sold that car in 1969 to a friend’s son for something ridiculous like ten bucks, but at that point people weren’t yet nostalgic for that particular car.
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Julie Robinson said on January 22, 2019 at 9:31 am
Nancy’s right, the Corvair was fun to drive. It had amazing pickup and handled well. I had a lead foot in those days, and when I drove on the flat and straight country roads around home it was easy to get it up to 80. Maybe a little higher, if I’m honest.
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Connie said on January 22, 2019 at 9:54 am
My college car was a 1964 metallic turquoise Chevy Belair. It got a quart of oil every Friday. I was dismayed when my dad replaced it with an AMC Matador. Which I traded in on the first car I ever bought myself, a 1979 Chevette.
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Sherri said on January 22, 2019 at 10:30 am
I learned to drive on a 1976 Mercury Bobcat station wagon, and later took it to college. By the time I took it to college, the gas gauge didn’t work, so I just kept track of how many miles I had driven since I last fueled up. That worked until there was a leak in the fuel line between the fuel pump and the engine, so that I didn’t notice I was leaking fuel until I was out of gas before I should have been.
That car was replaced by a Ford Escort when I went to grad school.
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jcburns said on January 22, 2019 at 10:30 am
There’s a guy whose work I follow on Flickr, Tomas Henriksson, who publishes dozens, hundreds of nice photos of great American muscle cars and beautifully preserved classics from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Amazing thing is, they’re all over in Sweden (or thereabouts) where he lives. They all have euro license plates. How each made it across the Atlantic must be a story in itself.
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beb said on January 22, 2019 at 12:08 pm
I had a Vega. Heard about how it’s engines tended to die around 50,000 miles so I sold it just ahead of that milepost. Don’t really remember much about it. The Vega was terrible because it was a first generation aluminum block engine and the engineers some how didn’t realize how badly aluminum wore out.
I replaced the Vega with a blue Chevette which got totalled in an accident. Replaced that with a red Chevette which I liked but it had a leak in the windshield which let water every time it rained.
The only car story, though involves my wife’s first car, a beetle. She had it for a long time. Eventually it had no floorboard but the crisis was when the front wheel shock absorber fell off. A truck driver at the company I worked at the time spent a day making a new shock absorber mount and a cast iron floor door. It last a few more years until one day when she tried to stop — it didn’t. Traded that in for a Renault Alliance.
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Sherri said on January 22, 2019 at 12:13 pm
I’m going to vent a little bit, about HOAs, NIMBYism, and general stupidity.
I live in a neighborhood in Redmond that thinks it’s the most important in the city. I’m not exaggerating. I live in a development in that neighborhood that considers itself the “jewel of the city.” (Really, one of my neighbors said that.) Across the street from us is a senior living place, one of the type you buy into that takes you from independent living to assisted living to skilled nursing. The two developed more or less contemporaneously, and have both been there since the 90s.
The seniors need to expand, to add a new assisted living facility. It would be three stories, so significant, and the only convenient place to put it is next to the road, in what is currently a buffer between the seniors and our neighborhood. So, trees would be cut down, and while trees would be planted, no question, there would be a difference. You’d be able to see this building from a number of homes in the neighborhood, including mine. Maybe 50 out of 200 homes would see it.
You’d think a toxic waste dump was going in next door from the reaction of my neighbors. The fight has been going on for a year and a half now, and the things I hear people say! I have tried my best to stay out of it, because I hold an opinion unpopular in the neighborhood (I think SFH zoning is bad), and I serve on the Planning Commission, so I figure it’s best that I just don’t engage.
But when I hear people complain that the senior housing there is for rich people (true, it’s not affordable housing), I just want to smack them. *Our* neighborhood is for rich people! One of my good friends is leading the charge, and she actually complained to me about all the sacrifices we’d made living next door to senior living. When I asked what she meant, she said, the ambulances. (There are more ambulance calls than a typical neighborhood, but it’s not like it’s every day.)
I’m frustrated because I hate seeing this in my friends and neighbors. Part of me really wants to stand up and tell them what I think, but it’s really not worth it. The cost would be too high, and they’re really unlikely to win, anyway. They’re relying on a pretty strained reading of the code.
But this whole mess does highlight a conflict that I think will continue to play out: what does being green mean? It used to mean preserving green space, but I think it’s going to have to morph to address climate change.
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Jakash said on January 22, 2019 at 12:44 pm
Sure, Pontiac had some classic names — GTO, Firebird, Grand Prix, etc., but if we’re moving on by a decade, I then went with a T 1000, which was essentially a Chevette that they gave a robot’s name, for some reason. Got over 150,000 miles out of it, despite a few glitches here and there, but gave up on it when I began having to turn the engine off in order to put it into reverse…
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Deborah said on January 22, 2019 at 3:18 pm
Sherri, I think HOAs are evil. Out in Abiquiu there are about 16 homes in our area (I’m stretching it to call our cabin a “home”) one of the residents tried to start an HOA, it ended up being a disaster and everyone pulled out because the guy was a tyrant. They tried to rewrite the covenants because the original ones were about to expire. I got involved in that which I lived to regret, that fell apart quickly too. So now we have no covenants which is fine by us. We have the most acreage, your vote depended on how much land you own. It was a mess and I’ll never do anything like that again.
I just watched a couple of episodes of Tidying Up on Netflix. We’re very tidy and we don’t have a lot of stuff, but I did reorganize my shirt drawer the way Marie Kindo shows, and boy howdy did that make a difference. Everything fits so much better and I can see everything at a glance. I will never fold my shirts any other way. And the folding is very zen like.
It was astounding to me to watch, some of the places are soooooo cluttered before Kondo helps. I would have gone insane if I had to live with all of that clutter and disorganization. I’m of a mind that everything must have a place and it must look good in that place even if I’m the only one who sees it. I haven’t been this way all of the time, my husband helped me see the light decades ago. He has been a neatnik all of his life, some would say he’s a little OCD.
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Deborah said on January 22, 2019 at 4:13 pm
I meant Kondo, the first time I mentioned her in my comment #48 I typed Kindo.
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basset said on January 22, 2019 at 5:34 pm
Sherri, as a recently retired Planning Dept. employee I feel your pain. People like their communities the way they used to be.
No college car for me, walked all over Bloomington. When I met Mrs. B she had a ’76 Pinto with the exploding gas tank and tread-shedding Firestone 500 radials. We got down to Jackson, Mississippi not long afterward and sold it to buy a VW Rabbit with a black interior and no a/c. In Mississippi. Young and stupid, that was us.
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Sherri said on January 22, 2019 at 6:05 pm
Basset, I didn’t even mention that the VP of the HOA is a recently departed city council member who lobbied one of his buddies on the council to propose a 6 month moratorium on senior housing recently. It failed, but what a stupid move by the current council member, who is up for re-election. Now, seniors are pissed at him, the pro-growth people are pissed at him, and the anti-growth people are pissed because he didn’t do anything like this until his buddy was affected.
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David C. said on January 22, 2019 at 6:46 pm
Once you let the wrinklies in it’s goodbye neighborhood.
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basset said on January 22, 2019 at 8:58 pm
Maybe we’ll see some signs along the curb… “Drive like your grandparents live here!”
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Colleen said on January 22, 2019 at 9:56 pm
My parents brought me home in a 66 Corvair. It was a manual and they had to sell it a year later when my dad broke his leg and couldn’t manage the clutch.
My first car was a Renault Alliance. It had a wonky headlight switch that would plunge me into darkness without warning.
RE: HOAs….ours just had a meeting during which they noted that we are to place our trash bins inside our garages and not store them in front of our houses. The Facebook page got very active with people objecting to that regulation. You’d think they were being told to give up their firstborn. It looks tacky and makes the whole development look, as my mother used to say, Hillbilly Heaven. (I know that term is probably not kosher) And people are arguing that in front of the house is the appropriate place for trash cans. They knew what they were doing when they bought a house in a development with an HOA. There were going to be rules. Some they may find silly. Too bad. We can’t paint our unit pink, either. You don’t want rules, don’t buy in a new development.
Now get off my lawn. Which really isn’t mine…
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brian stouder said on January 22, 2019 at 10:42 pm
The neat thing about cars is (of course) the memories around them.
The only new car my dad bought (when I was in the world) was a 1967 Pontiac Catalina. It was a 4-door hard-top, champagne colored, and very nice; in fact, I recall getting a birthday present (must have been when I turned 6..!) of a bicycle from the back seat of that car.
Soon thereafter he changed jobs to become an insurance sales representative, and was provided a brand new Chevy Impala 4 door, and proceeded to get a new Chevy Impala (company car) each year up ’til 1972. I remember the 1972 Impala in particular, (green with a lighter green vinyl top) because my dad was beside himself that the sticker price on the car was $4,800 – and it had a PLASTIC DASHBOARD!! (presumably, it should rightly have been metal!)
In later years, before I graduated from high school (class of ’79), I had a 1972 Olds Cutlass. Bought it from a friend – it was a great car, with a Hurst-Olds transmission….all I knew was, the shifter was on the floor, and you could put it in ‘D’ for drive, or further to the right you could shift from 1st to 2nd to 3rd gear (no clutch) – and beat anyone from the redlight.
I had that car for about 6 weeks, and then totaled it on Calhoun street, while taking several other folks home from school. I wasn’t speeding – but at the light just before South Gate shopping center, a guy turned left in front of me, and justlikethat – boom; done.
There used to be a McDonalds there, and it was an insurance salesman (!!) who turned in front of us, trying to dive into McD’s. (The folks there gave us all free soda pops as we awaited the police)
I think I made my friend mad, when I broke the news that the Cutlass was dead
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alex said on January 22, 2019 at 11:53 pm
Colleen, the only thing tackier than garbage cans outside is garbage cans outside surrounded by DIY pens made of lattice. Seriously, the cans would look better than some of the hiding places people have put up in my neighborhood. As for ours, we don’t have room in the garage and the totes, being a subdued gray, aren’t terribly offensive. In a nearby community they have pink totes that are absolutely ghastly. But I don’t feel any great compulsion to hide my garbage and I’m glad we have a very hands-off HOA that doesn’t micromanage such details. In fact, it seems that our board always consists of the people with the trashiest properties, no doubt to protect their interests.
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Julie Robinson said on January 23, 2019 at 12:26 am
Keep your garbage in the garage in Florida heat? I’m grateful we don’t have a HOA either here or in Orlando. Yeah, not all the neighbors keep their homes up the way I’d like. Live and let live.
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Deborah said on January 23, 2019 at 7:23 am
In Santa Fe people put their trash bins every which way, and on trash pick up days they put them smack dab in the middle of the sidewalks, which means you have to walk around them in the street. Santa Fe sidewalks are a mess to begin with (telephone poles right in the middle etc). This didn’t really bother me until I pushed LB around town in a wheel chair last summer. Santa Fe is no town to be disabled in.
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basset said on January 23, 2019 at 7:34 am
I understand this Marie Kindo says a tidy home should have no more than thirty books. The hell with that – I have 27 just in the stacks by the bed, not counting magazines.
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Diane said on January 23, 2019 at 9:00 am
Our HOA also has the no trash cans outside and it is rigorously enforced. It is a county ordinance as well as HOA rule. But it is necessary in the fall and if it it isn’t enforced all year people get lazy or forgetful. The problem here is bears foraging getting ready to hibernate.
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Suzanne said on January 23, 2019 at 9:04 am
I never had a car of my own until I was married and that one was a 1972 Chevy Caprice that I filled up with leaded gas, which was still available in the mid-1980s. Car got about 8 mpg but it had pick-up like I have not experienced since.
We made sure our kids had a car to drive in college. I was so limited without one, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I also had some harrowing rides home from people whose names I got off the “ride board” in the IU Union building. I look back and it still kind of terrifies me, but I made it with nothing horrendous happening to me. One time my parents picked me up and took me back with parting words that if I couldn’t find a ride home and back, don’t come home. It truly was a different world back then.
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Julie Robinson said on January 23, 2019 at 9:27 am
The ride board, I’d forgotten about that! I had a few dicey trips too, but it was so much less than a plane ticket that it was irresistible. I had a car my last two years so after that I got my gas covered. It’s pretty horrifying to think about now, total strangers getting in the car with you. Since the IU campus is closed to cars, I left the car at my apartment and took the bus in every day. I miss good public transportation.
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Deborah said on January 23, 2019 at 10:28 am
Yeah Basset, I don’t agree with the Kondo rule about books. They give me great joy and I like having lots of them. After I’ve read a book I like knowing I can go back and look something up without having to use the Internet, even if I never do it. But I will admit they are a pain when you move.
Just found out this morning that an old friend from St. Louis died suddenly. Bummer, in the last few months I found out about two other youngish people that I worked with have died. One was only 57, the other a woman was 68, which is my age. Jim the guy who just died was my husband’s age, 70/71. He was a heavy, heavy smoker who never cut back or tried to quit.
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J. Bruce Fields said on January 23, 2019 at 11:17 am
“I understand this Marie Kindo says a tidy home should have no more than thirty books. The hell with that – I have 27 just in the stacks by the bed, not counting magazines.”
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/1/17/18185657/tidying-up-marie-kondo-netflix-books
“The 30-book figure does have some basis in Kondo’s words, but it’s not prescriptive advice. Here’s what she writes in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: “I now keep my collection of books to about thirty volumes at any one time.” But that does not mean she thinks you should have only 30 books. That number is just what works for her.”
Or, the more entertaining version: http://www.pointsincase.com/articles/im-marie-fucking-kondo-and-you-can-keep-all-your-fucking-books-you-ingrates
I’m feeling despair about the politics around housing supply. Thanks to Sherri for her efforts.
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basset said on January 23, 2019 at 12:13 pm
One of my retirement projects is to neaten up the room I’m typing in right now, the one with bookshelves, guitars, mandolins, framed stuff, Macintoshes, a rollator, a cat carrier, and other clutter all around. Looks like a plane crash in here.
I actually did have a car, VW Beetle, for one semester at IU… didn’t think of it previously because it was in my second time there and it mostly stayed parked. I ran out of money and motivation middle of senior year, worked for two years, then came back to finish up. Lived in a dorm, Willkie, that was a mistake.
Several previous years were in the Willkie Co-Op, though, where we did kitchen and cleaning work in return for a break on the fees and were something of a community, fun times.
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Sherri said on January 23, 2019 at 12:23 pm
I read this long profile of McConnell in the NYTimes (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/magazine/mcconnell-senate-trump.html) and have tried to figure out what’s important to him. Sure, getting judges confirmed, but to what end? He’s not a true-believer evangelical Christian, it’s not all about abortion for him, in fact, you won’t find abortion in this article. You’ll find a little about tax cuts and getting rid of regulation, but where did I see the passion? Campaign finance reform. Opposing it, that it. That was the first thing he fought as a freshman Senator. When campaign finance eventually did pass, he set about gutting enforcement of it at the FEC, which is where he connects to Don McGahan, Trump’s future campaign lawyer.
Keeping money in politics seems to be the animating focus for McConnell, the thing more important than anything else.
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Deborah said on January 23, 2019 at 12:49 pm
If you haven’t seen the interview with Ta Nehisi Coates and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from MLK day, I recommend it. I’m putting this link here, but it may not work if you don’t have a Facebook account. I read AOC’s Twitter, that’s how I found out about it. They make a lot of sense, and she’s definitely moving the Overton window as they say. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=581651792309581&id=1573003556254759&_rdr
I’m making a concerted effort to spell both of their names correctly, I hope I didn’t screw up here.
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basset said on January 23, 2019 at 12:56 pm
Haven’t read this yet, but it looks fascinating:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/28/the-secrets-of-lyndon-johnsons-archives
Frustrated this morning. Tried to get tickets for King Crimson at the Ryman Auditorium in September, didn’t have the presale code or know where to get one and the show essentially sold out, down to single seats, in four minutes. Ticketbastard strikes again… tried to call this morning to see about that code and the recording said essentially “we’re getting so many calls that we’re not answering them, try again later.”
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Jakash said on January 23, 2019 at 1:10 pm
From the “entertaining version” linked to by Mr. Fields:
“Don’t tell me you’ll start that David McCullough book on Harry Truman…”
Well, yes, my wife and I have both read it. Does that warrant keeping the half-a-cinder-block-sized hardback on the shelf for a quarter of a century? Probably not. Do we regret that? No. My regret is that we don’t have enough bookshelves to hold both that, all the other books we’ve read and the dozens of more recent arrivals that are stacked up in various locations. I’d guess that there are more than 30 in the “IN” basket. But we’ve got a boatload of other junk I’d gladly part with before we’d consider paring the bookload down further. (We have gotten rid of plenty during various moves. I was sad to jettison our old encyclopedia set, e.g., but that was a pretty clear choice.)
I’d say I have perhaps a handful of clothing items that “spark joy” for me, if that many. And I’ve definitely been folding my camisoles the wrong way! Somehow I soldier on, unenthused about my wardrobe, having to seek joy elsewhere. Such as being reminded of the Truman book, which I enjoyed a lot.
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Deborah said on January 23, 2019 at 1:51 pm
I know this has been a topic here from time to time on nn.c, paring down our processions especially as we age. As I’ve said here before, my husband and I have been giving this a lot of thought lately. Having tiny spaces to live in certainly incentivized this thinking. Plus there’s the Swedish death cleaning practice that I’ve recently heard about, who will want our stuff after we’re gone? And who are we going to saddle with taking care of getting rid of it? The Tiding Up program was interesting to me because of the spiritual angle, thinking about processions as something to “communicate” with has the potential of changing one’s consuming habits, perhaps (?) and if it catches on maybe will have some impact on the environment over the long haul.
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Sherri said on January 23, 2019 at 3:21 pm
Joe just doesn’t get it: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/us/politics/biden-speech-fred-upton.html
The energy and passion among Democrats is not to be found in right of center old white guys. That might get you positive press from the bipartisan-for-it’s-own-sake-loving punditocracy, but not the nomination.
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brian stouder said on January 23, 2019 at 10:46 pm
Jackash – I enjoyed the Truman book as well; and the Beschloss roundup of transcripts and tapes of LBJ was surprisingly enthralling.
I’m to the last 50 pages of Woodward’s Trump tome, which has been enlightening. One thing Woodward does with some regularity is note what a person in this or that meeting is thinking – which must be almost like a footnote, telling us who the source was for that interlude.
Aside from all that, I think Pelosi has trumped Trump all to hell, over his SOTU venue. Gotta love her!
PS – Sherri – AGREED!
I think Senator Harris will be our next president
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Suzanne said on January 24, 2019 at 7:02 am
Brian, I read the Woodward book a while back. It showed what I pretty much assumed about the White House chaos but I was surprised that Steve Bannon kind of came across as the adult in the room, the only person to kind of bring order.
Also, I am reading Joan Didion’s Political Fictions and the names that crop up during the Clinton impeachment mess are names that are still on the political stage (Kellyanne Conway’s husband comes to mind). The GOP really can’t quit the Clintons. They just can’t.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 24, 2019 at 9:12 am
I bet posting this link will provoke Nancy to a new entry.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/571437/oscar-mayer-wienermobile-hiring-drivers
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Dorothy said on January 24, 2019 at 9:48 am
Jeff back in the early 70’s my husband had his picture taken with some little squirt of a guy who was supposed to be Oscar Meyer. (we were in high school when the pic was taken – Mike worked at a local hospital in the kitchen and the guy was doing promotional stuff in the hospital). He was in town in that wienermobile – well, an earlier version of it.
I love to read but since I work full time and prefer to spend my free time quilting or knitting, I will have a LOT of reading to do when I retire. That Truman book is on our shelves so I’ll be sure to get to it. I bet I have 50 books at least that I’ve not read yet but got as gifts or purchased myself over the last decade. Our front room, which would normally be a living room, is our library. We have an old piano in there (bought for Mike when he was six – hasn’t been tuned or played on in YEARS), house plants and lots and lots of books. We could use more shelves because several shelves have books sitting horizontally on top of vertically stacked ones. I did organize them pretty well five years ago when we moved in and I didn’t have a job yet. Novels are what we have the most of. I should work on getting rid of a lot of the paperbacks. My husband is quite insistent that we keep them all, though. His recall about plot lines and characters from books and movies is rather stunning.
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Joe Kobiela said on January 24, 2019 at 11:14 am
I was in Madison Wisconsin one day, and on the way back to the airport we came around a corner and in a big parking lot were all the wiener mobiles and 4-5 Mr. Peanut vans, they were practicing driving backing up and such, stopped and watched them for awhile looked pretty cool.
Pilot Joe
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Connie said on January 24, 2019 at 11:54 am
When I worked in Seymour the Wiener Mobile once showed up in my parking lot. Somewhere there are pictures.
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Sherri said on January 24, 2019 at 3:11 pm
Hearing some of the stuff coming out of the World Economic Forum suggests that the best place to put a wall might be around Davis right now, while we’ve got the plutocrats trapped there.
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Deborah said on January 24, 2019 at 5:31 pm
Holy cow, I haven’t listened to Trump speak to the press in a while because I can hardly keep from vomiting. But today I heard him speak after the votes in the senate and that guy is nuts. Hearing him slap himself on the back for everything is sickening and so obviously ridiculous. Wow, anybody who can listen to that and support it is really living in lala land. I couldn’t help myself from screaming at the TV. What a jerk.
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beb said on January 24, 2019 at 5:40 pm
There were a couple interesting posts on Slate today. One’s headline read: “The Insane Overtime Format the NFL Doesn’t Realize It Needs.” I’m not a sports fan so I hoped this would be how to keep football games from pre-empting Bob’s Burger. Sadly it turned out to be a quick way to resolve a tied game. Apparently Football is so hard on the player’s body that no one wants to play a fifth quarter. This “one simple trick” as the internet click-bait says. Would put the ball on the fifty yard line give each team alternating chances to more the ball and the team that moved it closest to their goal won. Perdonally I like the soccer model — no time-outs and if at the end of regulation play the score is tied … the game is recorded as a tie.
The other article was “Maybe Scandinavia Has Strong Social Welfare States Because All the Individualists Came to the U.S.” The article mostly talks about how the researchers determined that it was individualists who emigrated to the US. It doesn’t talk about why the lack of individualists is why Scandinavia is socialist. So in that respect the article is a bit of a disappointment. That aside I wondered for a time if the problem of American violence is because most of the people who can to this country were individualists. Not just people looking for a better life but people who were trouble-makers, crooks, scammers etc. This article suggests (without much proof) that such is the case. Then again Scandinavian was always a homogeneous region whereas the US was always a melting pot of differing nationalities, customs, languages so the rough edges of these ethnicities might be enough to cause the level in violence we see. I’m not saying we should exclude people who are different. Rather we need to make people feel more comfortable around people who aren’t like them.
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LAMary said on January 24, 2019 at 6:27 pm
Basset, I didn’t know you were a mandolin fan. Have you heard the band Mandolin Orange?
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Colleen said on January 24, 2019 at 6:44 pm
So the Commerce Secretary doesn’t get why people are struggling when they have been a month without a paycheck.
And they call the liberals “elitist”.
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Suzanne said on January 24, 2019 at 7:06 pm
beb, have your read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg? Her premise is that this country was, in its early years, a dumping ground for the unwanted masses from many European countries. Individualists to a point but mostly because they were people that couldn’t function well in polite society. It’s an interesting book.
And to add to the Commerce Secretary’s verbal crap add Trump saying that people can just buy groceries by opening an account at the grocery store. See, federal worker problems solved!
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Sherri said on January 24, 2019 at 7:07 pm
Beb, soccer doesn’t just call it a tie all the time. In the World Cup, they go to shootouts, which are crazier than just about any other overtime scheme.
My favorite is playoff overtime hockey. Keep playing until someone scores.
Apparently Wilbur Ross loves velvet slippers.
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Dave said on January 24, 2019 at 7:50 pm
I always wondered about the old pioneer stories, the rugged individualists, so the stories said, who moved way out in the middle of nowhere, defying Indians, many hardships, and the like, putting their families in danger, who supposedly moved if a neighbor got so near that one could see the smoke from their chimney. One would think these may have been some odd, unfriendly people.
I may well spring from some of these folks, who kept moving until they finally ended up in Southern Ohio.
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basset said on January 24, 2019 at 9:15 pm
LAMary, I’m more of a mandolin owner than a player but I do tinker around with it some.
Not familiar with Mandolin Orange but will look em up tonight. In return, I will recommend the Nashville Mandolin Orchestra.
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Deborah said on January 24, 2019 at 10:05 pm
Ross likes $600 custom made velvet slippers with the commerce dept logo on them according to Chris Hayes.
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Diane said on January 24, 2019 at 11:19 pm
LA Mary,
I heard Mandolin Orange here in Colorado about two years ago. I liked them.
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Sherri said on January 24, 2019 at 11:35 pm
Oh, Ross has more than one pair of velvet slippers. The man definitely has a thing for them.
https://twitter.com/hunterw/status/1088443594816585729
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alex said on January 25, 2019 at 5:33 am
The way I’ve always heard it explained, England emptied its prisons into Australia and deported its insufferable religious fanatics to America.
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David C. said on January 25, 2019 at 6:24 am
It’s a beautiful day. Roger Stone has been arrested in the Mueller probe. I hope the boys in the pen like his Nixon tramp stamp.
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1088758658106904578
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Deborah said on January 25, 2019 at 8:24 am
I’ve been waiting for Stone to spend his time in the barrel. Hope he sings his heart out.
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