I’ll say one thing for this Twitter business: It sure makes me never, ever want to own a Tesla.
Seriously, the return of Trump last night only shows how ridiculous this whole affair has become. At least we have the pleasure of Trump declining to rejoin, ha ha, because his own worthless social network is doing so well. When Musk took over Twitter, a number of people jumped ship and a couple urged me to do the same. I’m thinking: Nah. This shit is too funny. If it fails, it fails, and I’ll read more books. That’s a good thing.
Sherri commented on the last thread: If Elon runs Tesla the way he’s running Twitter, Tesla vehicles are a clear and present danger on our roads, because the man is demonstrating that he knows nothing about software engineering. As the wife of the former Detroit News autos editor: Can confirm. How the NHTSA lets Tesla get away with so much of the shit they’ve pulled — there are many examples, but the biggest is calling their driver-assist technology “autopilot” — is simply mystifying. He’s the living embodiment of one of my favorite Peter Arno cartoons.
And we awakened Sunday to yet another mass shooting. I hope that whoever the Colorado Springs gay-bar patron was who disarmed and pistol-whipped the perp, stopping the massacre, that she was a drag queen.
So the week of thanks begins. Congratulations if you’re off. I, unemployed and quote-unquote retired, have two interviews scheduled — not heavy lifting, I grant you — and the usual complement of errands and tasks to complete before the Day. I’m mostly done, but I forgot Cool Whip, the secret ingredient for my trashy-but-delicious Waldorf salad, and I’m-a get a big block of cheddar to perhaps whip up something new for the before-bird snacking. And Friday’s my birthday. Sixty-damn-five. And you may ask yourself: Well, how did I get here? One year at a time, that’s how. Rewatching the video at that link, though, I gotta say I don’t wish I were younger. (Just a pain-free 65.) We had some great music to enjoy when it was fresh. We still have great music, but it’s much harder to find. It reminds me of after I moved to Fort Wayne, and would subscribe to the Village Voice, just for the music coverage, in search of something, anything to listen to that wasn’t classic rock. Now everyone outside of a few large cities has to do something like that. Because so many radio people are simply awful.
Maybe we’ve discussed this before, but long before newspapers ruined themselves by trying to be everything to everyone, radio did the same. I’ve probably told this story before, but when I briefly worked at WOWO, they had a consultant who gave them top-secret, proprietary, must-shred-upon-completion playlists. Or maybe he just looked over the ones they had and made suggestions. Whatever it was, he vetoed the Carpenters’ “Goodbye to Love” as too edgy for WOWO’s conservative, very middle-of-the-road listeners. Remember that song? A slow ballad, Karen’s voice warbling in self-pity over her broken heart. The Carpenters? you’re asking, as I did. The consultant explained that there’s a fuzz-guitar break in the middle and whoa, too-too much. The program director pushed back, and he said OK, you can play it, but not in the morning.
Blow that pathetic example out, add shock jocks like the two guys in your town who make dick jokes and the extremely loathsome Randy Michaels, and you see why I’m no particular fan. You public radio people are exempt from this judgment, you know that. But if you ever ran a rock station, and rejected the B-52s for more Led Zeppelin in the playlist, you know who you are.
The weekend was good. Saw Kate play at the Magic Stick with her second band. She joined us in a small area with seating for the Protomartyr set, and I saw something even more impressive: Her handling an old creep who wanted to chat her up. Toward the back side of middle-aged, wedding ring, standing too close to my 26-year-old daughter, who was wearing a short black dress and bright red lipstick. It was pretty much this situation exactly:
I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back, the guy was there but she was gone. “He had stank breath,” she said later. Of course I made a meme:
OK, time to go. Painters are here to do the final-final bit of Home Improvement, and I have one of those interviews in…23 minutes. Ciao!
Joe Kobiela said on November 21, 2022 at 10:06 am
Well after watching the talking head video I can ask myself why didn’t pee wee Herman do that dance?
Happy birthday I turn the 65 number next month and yea I wonder sometimes how I got here but I’m glad here is where I’m at.
Pilot Joe
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Jeff Borden said on November 21, 2022 at 10:12 am
Thanksgiving at our house crashed and burned yesterday. Johanna and I are still testing positive for the coronavirus and only today are we beginning to feel roughly human. Those of you who were vaccinated and said the covid was like a mild cold. . .you were very lucky.
We consulted with our doctors, who argued against hosting unless we went to the trouble of making everyone wear masks except when eating. And my sister and her husband have their own health issues. My 68-year-old sister was diagnosed a few months ago with ALS. My brother-in-law has had two strokes and a heart attack. They had already reached the same decision, but since my sister has decided she will not succumb to the extremely expensive and ultimately pointless treatment for her condition, it’s weighing hard on me. How many more holidays will she here and cognizant? Old age really isn’t for sissies.
BTW, we’re both on huge anti-viral packs and they seem to be working. Finally. Please use us as an example to remain vigilant. Keep washing your hands and being wary of getting too close to others. Stay home if you feel poorly. We’ve had all the shots and it still kicked our butts.
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Deborah said on November 21, 2022 at 11:05 am
Happy birthday Nancy! At least you can get Medicare now (or after Friday) and Social Security too.
Sorry Jeff B, that sucks.
I have joined the ranks of the employed with this design project I’m working on, part time and at home except when I’m running around town collecting material samples. I’ve already had a deadline that got extended. I’m only a design consultant which is the fun part.
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ROGirl said on November 21, 2022 at 12:04 pm
I’m home this week, my kitchen is being torn up, and my front door is now wide open as the debris is being removed. The temperature has warmed up to a purported 36 and I have put my coat on and closed my office door. I had a guy from Best Buy come to my house last week for some appliance quotes, and will meet him at the store this afternoon. I haven’t even seen the cabinets yet (they’re sitting in boxes in my garage), I want to do that before I order the countertops and tiles for the backsplash.
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Scout said on November 21, 2022 at 12:14 pm
In case I’m not on here much this week, Happy Birthday to the Proprietress and congrats on getting Medicare. I’m assuming you began on 11/1.
The Twitter implosion, despite being maddening because I get a whole lot of my news from there, is highly entertaining to me. The whole trump being reinstated “by poll” fiasco is actually pathetic and shows exactly how emotionally stunted and developmentally arrested Elmo is. He also let kanye back on. I’ve got all three of them blocked. True story; we were saving up for a Tesla to replace our ageing Prius when the time comes, but now? No fucking way.
The Colorado nightclub massacre is horrifying. This is what happens when an entire political party embraces violence as a means to their end and refuses to acknowledge the obvious about gun control. The two patrons who stopped the shooter proved they have way more courage than the heavily armed Uvalde PD who sat shaking in their boots while babies were being murdered in cold blood.
Jeff B, I’m so sorry you and Johanna are down with C19. You’re doing the right thing by cancelling or postponing Thanksgiving, though. It’s ramping up again. Our good friend got it, her birthday was yesterday and she had to cancel her celebration plus Thanksgiving that was to be hosted at her house. So now wifey and I are doing our own, just the two of us, vegan feast.
Happy Thanksgiving to all here at the nn.c outpost.
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JodiP said on November 21, 2022 at 12:33 pm
Jeff B. I’m also sorry to hear about your Tday plans needed to be cancelled. We have a similar situation in my family where two little ones are sick with RSV, so we might not be going there. I’m pretty sure my wife has it, and It. Is. Awful.
Happy birthday, Nancy!
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Julie Robinson said on November 21, 2022 at 2:51 pm
Hoo boy, sounds like Thanksgiving among the Covid-is-over crowd is shaping up to be a real superspreader event. I’m hopeful everyone feels better soon and perhaps you can gather another day instead. Jeff, if not for your vaccinations you might be in the hospital right now instead of at home. Amongst our crew we had the full gamut of symptoms and a couple of us took a month to recover.
Anyway, we spent the entire morning at three grocery stores and struggled to find parking spaces at two of them. But by God we have both refrigerators full and a game plan for 10 people, including the vegans. If we have to cancel we’ll just eat it up ourselves!
We had a tree damaged in Hurricane Ian with a little extra from Nicole, and yesterday the arborist finally made his way to us. It turned out to have extensive holly growth inside the tree, so the whole thing had to come down. It was only a scrub pine, which are junk trees. People plant them because they’re cheap and they grow fast, but fast-growing trees are usually weak. The holly thing was new to me, but he’s actually a friend of our daughter and trustworthy.
So, the friend rate was 1K. It would have been more but the city will pick up the wood as part of their hurricane services. Don’t plant scrub pines.
We had him look at the rest of the property proactively and everything else is sturdy.
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LAMary said on November 21, 2022 at 3:28 pm
KCRW. You can listen online.
Teslas are not high on the list of most reliable vehicles and honestly everyone I know who owns one is sort of a jerk. Different sort of jerk from a BMW owner or a Dodge Charger owner, but a jerk nonetheless.
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JodiP said on November 21, 2022 at 3:41 pm
Two friends of ours own Teslas and they are lovely people. They are both GI docs so had the money to buy them. They were in it for the environmental aspect.
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alex said on November 21, 2022 at 4:32 pm
Too conservative for Karen Carpenter. Yep, that’s the Fort Wayne I grew up in. Can’t listen to a fucking wah-wah peddle in a pop song ‘cuz it might give someone a boner or make ’em try marijuana. Too, too outré.
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David C said on November 21, 2022 at 4:51 pm
Anyone who bought a Tesla a while ago and I’m not sure what the statute of limitations should be is OK. Anyone who buys one now knowing Elmo is such a pig and there are good alternatives would seem pretty suspect.
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Deborah said on November 21, 2022 at 5:10 pm
We have a far, far, leftist friends who bought a Tesla also for the environmental aspect. We’re getting together with them sometime soon after thanksgiving so we’ll find out what they think about their purchase then. They’re both writers so it should be interesting.
I was going to make a pie for Thanksgiving, we’re in charge of dessert and wine. We went to Eataly today for something else and I saw Panettone so I got a limoncello flavored one which I’m going to serve with berries (raspberries, blackberries and blueberries) with mascarpone. Sounds much better right now than a pie to me. The panettone was about $30something bucks so it better be good. My husband is in charge of the wine so that’s up to him. We have 2 dinners to attend one on Weds and the other on Thurs so he has to get wine for both. The dessert is only for the first one.
Scout, waiting for your report on the governors race in AZ one of these days. Is Lake really going to pitch a hissy fit?
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Sherri said on November 21, 2022 at 5:15 pm
The information that Musk is a terrible boss and person has long been available. There’s a reasonable argument that Tesla accelerated the electric vehicle market, but it did so while having a significantly higher accident rate at its factories than any other car manufacturer and stayed afloat by selling carbon credits to other car manufacturers to allow their SUV fleets to continue polluting.
I have a lot of friends who have Teslas. They aren’t jerks, but they’re techies who fell in love with the myth of the Tesla, and ignored the ugly story behind the myth, particularly the labor story. That became harder to ignore during Covid.
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Scout said on November 21, 2022 at 5:53 pm
Deborah, Katie Hobbs will be our next Gov, but yes, sKari fLake is pitching a hissy and won’t concede. Her concession is not necessary. However there are a few counties (red ones of course) who are saying they won’t certify until after Thanksgiving. It never ends. Kris Mayes won the AG race by just over 500 votes, so that one goes to recount. Oh Arizona.
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FDChief said on November 21, 2022 at 5:58 pm
My understanding from people more knowledgeable about cars is that Tesla developed a terrific drive train and then built a very mediocre vehicle around it. QC is iffy and service issues – providing you can find someone to service it – abound.
Frankly, that sounds to me very dot-com; good idea, shitty execution. Not sure if that’s Musk, or whether that’s a generic techbro thing.
And why on Earth would anyone be even faintly surprised that someone who marinated in the white South African ethos and inherited a pile of fuck-you money in his twenties would be an arrogant racist a-hole? It’d be more shocking if the guy had turned out humble and wise.
Oh, well. That’s what tumbrels are FOR, after all. A la laterne, les riches.
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David C said on November 21, 2022 at 6:11 pm
I knew a guy who worked at Tesla’s Detroit office before Elon had a hissy fit because people who knew how to build cars told him he was full of it. He told me about meeting with an engineering tech from Fanuc, who makes industrial robots. Elon made his manufacturing engineers break into the code that limited the speed and amperage of the Fanuc welding robots thinking they could weld the unibodies quicker. When the Fanuc engineer explained to Elon why it couldn’t do what he wanted, Elon had a fit and threw him out of the plant. I guess Elon loved to see sparks when things were being welded too. Roger Smith had the same disease when he ran GM.
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Sherri said on November 21, 2022 at 6:31 pm
I have an acquaintance who worked at SpaceX, until he totally burned out from the insanity. He’s been in meetings with Musk and thinks he’s an asshole.
Of course, pretty much all the tech CEOs are assholes.
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FDChief said on November 21, 2022 at 7:32 pm
David: re the Fanuc story, there’s a saying in construction; there’s “cheap”, “fast”, and “good”. You have to pick two because there’s no possible way to get all three.
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MarkH said on November 21, 2022 at 8:24 pm
All you need to know about Tesla, and Musk, today. Tesla stock, at one time in the high $300s, is now down 55% YTD, closing today at $167.87. The ether has gone out of the balloon.
And, regarding Tesla service, there’s this from Jalopnik. A GM president is bragging that a number of GM dealerships have been quietly servicing Teslas since early 2021. A give-and-take, the thinking is they are using their Volt experience to not only fix, but reverse engineer Tesla systems for improvement of GM’s own EVs.
https://jalopnik.com/gm-dealers-have-been-quietly-repairing-teslas-for-over-1849803291
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David C said on November 21, 2022 at 8:48 pm
I was reading that too MarkH. The question I had is where they’re getting repair parts. Even Tesla service centers have a hard time getting parts. I know the franchise auto dealer system is antiquated in the era of the internet. Whatever you think of the system, they’d raise holy hell if they weren’t able to get repair parts.
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LAMary said on November 21, 2022 at 9:05 pm
Maybe it’s just the locals here in SoCal who are jerks that own Teslas. The word about working for Musk is out. He was in the news here frequently for problems with the state related to how he treats his workers.
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Mark P said on November 21, 2022 at 9:58 pm
Musk has said, “ Physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.” I am a scientist and I don’t recall learning that particular false dichotomy. It’s pretty much bullshit, but I have to give him credit for SpaceX, whose success is probably more due to the competition being huge aerospace companies used to milking the government than to true original thinking. But give him that. I also credit him with helping to make battery electric cars a reasonable choice for personal transportation, if you can afford it. I want a BEV, but I will never buy a Tesla. I have been a passenger in one, and I think I have mentioned here that it struck me as a very well done kit car. Whatever the faults of the legacy automakers, they know what the inside of a car needs to be like and how controls should function. Turning on the windshield wipers with a touch screen is not that. Teslas fanboys like to tout the touch screen as if it were a true engineering decision, but it was strictly price and ease of manufacturing. It’s easier to program a control than manufacture and install a physical control. Every car maker is either making or will make BEV’s. Reasonably affordable ones are available now, and almost (almost) any one of them would be a better choice than a Tesla, even if Elon Musk were not involved.
As far as Tesla support is concerned, every car maker is having supply chain problems. I have ordered a Ford Maverick pickup, which I expect to see within a year. I have read a number of accounts of people with Mavericks who need accident repairs but can’t get them because the repair parts are not available to the dealers. Supply chain problems are also why it’s so hard to go down to the dealer and actually see and drive a BEV. They just aren’t there, at least not in Podunk where I live.
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Dexter Friend said on November 22, 2022 at 1:24 am
President Joe should give the Medal of Freedom immediately to Richard Fierro. He charged the gunman, stripped him of his backup pistol, and pistol-whipped the fuck out of him, saving many lives, surely. He ordered a passing queen to stomp the killer with her high spiked heels. He is a retired US Army Major with combat experience. Mass shootings are so common here that well, there aren’t enough emotional triggers left for the public, but Rachel Maddow’s account and the Times story really got to me. Major Fierro is a straight man who was there with a party to watch a drag show. He sounds like a well-adjusted vet; he let his hair grow out and grew a white goatee and had his hair tied up into a bun with a ribbon. He accepted his kids’ lifestyle. But when the shit hit the fan, this man turned into a goddam bear. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/us/colorado-springs-shooting-club-q-hero.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap
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alex said on November 22, 2022 at 7:20 am
The NRA’s “good guy with a gun” nonsense fails for a litany of reasons, and an assassin wearing full body armor is just one more. What it takes is a good guy willing to use his bare hands.
###
Teslas fanboys like to tout the touch screen as if it were a true engineering decision, but it was strictly price and ease of manufacturing. It’s easier to program a control than manufacture and install a physical control.
I’ve noted for some time now that the automotive press has been praising automakers when they go back to using buttons and dials on the dashboard instead of touch screens. Touch screens are often non-responsive to my touch and I’m sure I’m not the only one with bad juju that way. I can’t even get my cell phone to cooperate a fair amount of the time. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be piloting a vehicle and distracted while trying to make a touch screen work.
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Jeff Gill said on November 22, 2022 at 7:26 am
Thanksgiving blessings, friends, and happy birthday to the proprietor. I got my father-in-law to consent to using a wheelchair for yesterday’s visit to the heart hospital, and we’re avoiding as diplomatically as possible a Thanksgiving gathering because I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to argue charmingly with family who are putting ten people in a small house most of whom work in customer service. They’ve repeatedly offered to “do things to help” get him and us there but I’m not going to put our 93 year old, vaccinated and boosted though he is, in the middle of that for even thirty minutes. And it’s a pretty much 100% anti-Trump group, but they’ve self declared COVID as over. I’m morbidly curious to hear afterwards how that gathering sorts out . . . but that’s been the whole last two years, minimizing risk for the senior in our care, and confused though he is mostly, it just doesn’t seem right to toss caution to the winds, or coughing fits.
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basset said on November 22, 2022 at 7:50 am
Don’t plant scrub pines, and don’t plant Bradford pears, which are about to be illegal in Ohio: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/04/13/ornamental-pear-trees-banned-ohio-2023/7294370001/
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Suzanne said on November 22, 2022 at 9:15 am
Happy Thanksgiving one and all! I am particularly thankful this year because I am still alive to celebrate.
Speaking of shock jocks, back in the day in Fort Wayne, during my high school years, WLYV was the station to listen to. Phil Gardner was one of the morning guys, crass & shocking by mid-70s standards. Then, the station was bought out, changed formats, he didn’t take it well apparently, moved on to another market where the same thing happened. He was the son of a preacher & had a come-to-Jesus moment after that, says God talked directly to him (I heard him tell the story at some event), so he quit rock music & ended up back in Fort Wayne as morning dj at a Christian radio station. When I heard him speak, he still seemed like he was kind of a jerk, but now he pushed God rather than rock & roll.
And you are right, Dexter. Richard Fierro should get a Medal of Honor. Amazing story & God bless this man.
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ROGirl said on November 22, 2022 at 12:27 pm
This guy builds up a good head of steam on the Elon front.
http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2022/11/21/being-thankful.html?printerFriendly=true
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Scout said on November 22, 2022 at 2:36 pm
ROGirl, that was so good I posted it on Twitter.
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jcburns said on November 22, 2022 at 2:51 pm
So good AND so printer-friendly.
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Mark P said on November 22, 2022 at 3:55 pm
The piece reminded me of
another aspect of Musk’s management style — overpromise and underdeliver, consistently.
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Mark P said on November 22, 2022 at 4:45 pm
And now for something completely different … everyone on Earth has probably already seen and heard this, but I just heard it for the first time, and it’s great. Search for The Heimatdamisch and Jump, and Highway to Hell. Van Halen as Polka.
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jim said on November 22, 2022 at 5:47 pm
Some Tesla recalls: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2022/11/22/tesla-recalls-airbag-taillight-over-the-air/10755072002/
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LAMary said on November 22, 2022 at 6:38 pm
Not as weird as the Van Halen polka but really good? Joe Cocker covering Feelin’ Alright.
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Deborah said on November 22, 2022 at 9:15 pm
Is there a more official name for “scrub pine”. We planted an Austrian Pine in the side yard of the Santa Fe condo building about 9 or 10 years ago , it grew incredibly fast, it was barely 2 Ft tall when we planted it and it’s now almost as tall as the 2 story building. Also before we had a presence in the building the owners planted Bradford pear trees which we aren’t crazy about and would love to have them taken out and replaced with Honey locust trees. LB hates the smell of the Bradfords when they’re blooming, while beautiful they smell like jizz (sorry). They’re scrawny and not great shaders compared to other species.
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Julie Robinson said on November 22, 2022 at 9:34 pm
It looks like the Austrian pine is ideally suited for your location, Deborah. https://www.arborday.org/trees/treeguide/TreeDetail.cfm?ItemID=898
The local Extension agent, Ricky Kemery, was on a mission to get the Bradford pear banned in Indiana. BTW, he just published a gardening book, which I’ve ordered even though it won’t cover Florida. I learned so much from him, I figure it’s the least I can do.
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susan said on November 22, 2022 at 9:39 pm
In 2018, the WAPO had a great article on the bugaboo bradford pear. I had no idea it was such a horrible pest until I read that piece: “Scientists thought they had created the perfect tree. But it became a nightmare.”
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basset said on November 22, 2022 at 11:29 pm
Deborah, just give it a year or two and a few good strong winds and your Bradford problem will take care of itself… you’ll need to clean up the stumps and splinters, though.
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basset said on November 23, 2022 at 12:31 am
This was posted here a few years ago, and could probably stand another look: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44956/when-the-frost-is-on-the-punkin
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Dexter Friend said on November 23, 2022 at 3:59 am
The ink hasn’t dried from last night’s post and now this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/23/multiple-deaths-after-shooting-at-walmart-in-chesapeake-virginia
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David C said on November 23, 2022 at 6:14 am
I haven’t heard of a Bradford pear problem here. Our big problem here is buckthorn. People started planting it because birds love their berries. Also the birds spread their seeds all over the place and chokes out native plants.
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Deborah said on November 23, 2022 at 8:23 am
I got Wordle in 2 AGAIN! Just a few days ago I got it in 2, and only once before that in all the time since I’ve been playing.
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Julie Robinson said on November 23, 2022 at 1:36 pm
Congrats, Deborah. I like word games but wordle has eluded me.
A young family walking by just rang the doorbell to see if they could take some slices from the tree that was cut down. He makes coffee tables from reclaimed wood, and of course we said an enthusiastic yes. It was 32″ at the base, so a good size for him. The damage was higher up, and there are holes of 10″ in the middle of those pieces. I’m glad we got it taken care of, and super happy that it will become more than just wood chips.
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tajalli said on November 23, 2022 at 3:19 pm
Scrub pine’s scientific name is Pinus virginiana. Wikipedia has a nice page, just search for the scientific name.
In other news, I’m exploring Mastodon servers – various groups sponsor a server, you join a general or topical server group of your choice and then can access anyone in any server group so you can have a distributed collection of friends and followers. You can also switch groups later. Mastodon overall seems to have a cleaner set of behavioral rules, but then things can devolve or be subverted, so we’ll see.
https://joinmastodon.org/servers
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Sherri said on November 23, 2022 at 3:29 pm
Elon Musk continues to turn into Trump. Now, he’s stiffing Twitter vendors on bills.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/technology/elon-musk-twitter-cost-cutting.html
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Julie Robinson said on November 23, 2022 at 4:10 pm
The scrub pine was here when we moved in and it’s been trimmed back a couple of times, so apparently the damage was recent. I said holly; it was actually mistletoe. The neighbor came by and was excited by the patterns in the slices he took, but it will have to cure for six months to a year before he can work with it. He will fill in holes with mica and resin, should be really cool.
And we won’t be replanting the scrub pine. Our landscape guru has plans for native plants to go in there. The goal is for the yard is plants and shrubs that are sustainable without additional water, except our veggie garden.
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Mark P said on November 23, 2022 at 8:21 pm
We have a mixed pine and hardwood forest on our mountain. The pines are loblolly and Virginia pines. The Virginia pines grow like weeds. I haven’t cut my grass in a while — it’s almost dormant now — but there are little Virginia pine sprouts everywhere across the lawn. They appear at the edge of the grass where the woods begin, and before I know it they are three feet tall. Or more. It’s a major job to cut and gather all of them. Not my favorite tree at all.
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LAMary said on November 24, 2022 at 12:16 am
Until it shut down I had a mail subscription to the Village Voice. I still miss it. I remember a column by a Warhol muse, a model whose name eludes me right now, about maternity clothes. She said that the styles available in maternity clothes seemed to be designed to make you look like a virgin at the time of your life when it’s obvious you fuck.
Just looked it up. It was Ultra Violet.
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Dexter Friend said on November 24, 2022 at 1:43 am
Mary, there’s another doc streaming about The Chelsea Hotel’s renovation which has taken 9 years already, slowed by the residents who refuse to move or be relocated to the first floor. It’s a fascinating production of old people with memories and dreams.
I stayed there a couple times for a few nights in 1984 and 1985. Manager Stanley Bard took a liking to me and gave me rooms for little money, like $38 per night. My view was a water tower.
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Deborah said on November 24, 2022 at 2:37 am
I’m sure I mentioned this here before, my husband and I stayed in the Chelsea Hotel for a couple of nights in the 1990s just to say we did. It was very run down but its history was palpable.
Happy thanksgiving to all. I’m grateful for this place to hang out on the internet.
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alex said on November 24, 2022 at 7:21 am
Happy Thanksgiving. We’re having quite an appetizing one. The toilets are overflowing at our rental and hubby’s running a power augur on the roots in the pipes. Looks like the start of a shitty day.
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ROGirl said on November 24, 2022 at 9:32 am
Happy Turkey Day, everyone. We’ve almost made it to the end of another year. I think the Warhol superstar with a Voice column was Viva (I had a mail subscription for a while, too). Her daughter is the actress Gaby Hoffmann.
I went to some places to select counter tops yesterday, I’m going with quartz. One of them will make a sink in the same stone as the counter, and that sounds much better than stainless, but they have to work up the quote. I ordered my appliances and set up the delivery date for the 12th, and then I owed the contractor another payment for the completion of the kitchen demo.
They left me with a working sink and appliances until Monday, but I expect the sink will be gone soon, and I will have to use the bathroom or the laundry sink in the basement.
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LAMary said on November 24, 2022 at 10:30 am
You’re right ROGirl. I knew there was a V or two in there.
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diane said on November 24, 2022 at 1:18 pm
Happy Thanksgiving all!
I too am thankful for this sane place to hang out on the Internet!
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jerry said on November 24, 2022 at 5:26 pm
Always good to think about what you have to be thankful for.
My family (wife and sons), our new home (we moved a month ago), my health (recovered from prostate cancer).
For a birthday treat (mine on Friday) Myra and I went to see the stage production of My Neighbour Totoro. We love the film and adored the play – absolutely brilliant. We loved it.
Happy birthday, Nancy, and I hope you all enjoy Black Friday.
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alex said on November 24, 2022 at 9:20 pm
Thankful for this forum.
Thankful for nicotine vapes.
Thankful for non-bloodletting diabetic monitoring devices.
Thankful for sanity amid the maelstrom, and midterm elections that prove that our country hasn’t surrendered to neo-fascism.
Thankful for having, for once, things to be thankful for that I give a shit about.
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Deborah said on November 24, 2022 at 9:26 pm
We’re back in our hotel after our second thanksgiving, the food was amazing and the company was great. But I’m glad the hoopla is over. Onward.
Tomorrow we meet with uncle Jake’s caregivers, they were such a fantastic crew when they were so needed. I’m looking forward to seeing them again.
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Mark P said on November 25, 2022 at 1:35 am
I’m thankful for our neighbors. One of them learned that we would be at home, alone, and with no Thanksgiving dinner plans. His wife prepared plates for us, ham and turkey, dressing, gravy, green beans, mashed potatoes, and pecan pie. It was wonderful.
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Dexter Friend said on November 25, 2022 at 3:01 am
I am thankful my aged cat and dog are still with me.
Thankful Jeff Bridges beat lymphoma.
Thankful to be debt free after so many years seemingly buried under it.
And thankful that at age 73 I have perfect eyesight and can still drive my vans anywhere I want to go. Being here with no driving privileges or not being able to afford a car would drive me into a nursing home, likely.
Grateful, too, for the internet and streaming television programming which keep me up to date on the world.
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FDChief said on November 25, 2022 at 3:33 pm
Did a full turkey this year after acceding to the three-to-one dark-meat haters for a decade and just roasting the breast (boring, but we’re a republic, not…). Big hit with everyone and now a week’s worth of leftovers…
Today also resuming a (much older family) tradition long skipped due to lack of resource. In my childhood home my mother, child of the Depression that she was and unwilling to waste anything edible, would boil down the holiday turkey carcass. The resultant broth would become some version of turkey-vegetable-barley soup.
My sister and I, children of the cushy Sixties, thoroughly mocked this as anachronistic cheese-paring and dubbed the resulting substance “turkey bone gruel”, gruel being the worst pejorative we could think of for a thing redolent of poverty and misery.
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Robert said on November 25, 2022 at 3:37 pm
Happy Birthday, Nancy!
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diane said on November 25, 2022 at 3:58 pm
FDChief, your mother knew what she was doing! My turkey carcass is simmering as I type. It will ultimately make a fabulous stock that can be used for many things.
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Julie Robinson said on November 25, 2022 at 5:15 pm
We have dark meat lovers too but I want a whole bird so I can make turkey corn chowder. Tried it with chicken and it’s not the same.
We actually participated in black Friday when we saw an ad for a computer refurbisher. Daughter’s church has an ancient desktop that was running like molasses. Son opened it up to see if it could take more ram but it was a no-go.
The store opened at 7 am and they were the only customers, so they snagged a new (refurbished) unit for $150! Had eight people helping them.
They passed several shopping centers and didn’t see crowds at any of them.
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David C said on November 25, 2022 at 6:24 pm
I’m not usually a black Friday shopper but my phone bricked yesterday so I went out an got a new one. I needed to switch soon anyway because I am on Spectrum Mobile and I’m getting fiber optic internet from another carrier so Spectrum won’t allow me to stay on without their internet. So I got a new, better phone for pretty cheap and a better data plan. They got my old phone working long enough to transfer my stuff, so I’m pleased. I guess I better start backing up to the cloud. They hollered at me for not doing that. Just from traffic, it looked like the shoppers were our in force.
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Deborah said on November 25, 2022 at 6:45 pm
LB boils the leftover carcass of every bird she roasts for stock, has for years. But she still has to buy stock from time to time. This year she made Cornish hens for her Friendsgiving. Meanwhile where we were yesterday they had 3 turkeys. One was deep fried, one was roasted and one was smoked. There were 20 people, so there was all lot of leftover turkey. Plus potatoes, at least 3 different kinds. And many vegetable dishes too. Five pies were on the dessert table, plus cookies and some other sweets I didn’t recognize. It was all delicious. All we did was bring wine. There was plenty of other booze too. Burp.
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Dorothy said on November 25, 2022 at 8:34 pm
I’m late to post about Thanksgiving cuz my daughter and her partner have been here since Monday.
I cooked the yams and made two pies. Ate at our son’s house a half mile away. I brought the yams in a Corning Ware pan, and when we went to warm them up to serve along side the turkey and all the other yummies, we found out the microwave was no longer working. So they’re going to be buying a new microwave. In the meantime we have one that we rarely use downstairs at our bar and so we’ll lend it to them until they can get one. (We had to buy a new one about a year ago when our wall unit died in our Dayton house. We ordered a new one but it took a couple weeks to come in. That’s why we have an extra one – it is a small one I got at Target.) You can’t really have leftovers without a microwave. We went out for Chinese tonight and it was scrumptious. We know of a really good restaurant that has a really extensive gluten free menu and that’s why we frequent it – my son has celiac disease.
A quick funny. My daughter’s partner writes sci-fi books and she asked questions about what he was doing when he was working. Laura explained he was a writer and what he writes about. She must have been giving it a lot of thought because she asked this morning “Has Josh ever been to outer space?” “Well, no he has not.” “Well then how does he know how to write about it?” A five year old’s logic is really a wonderful thing to behold.
Mark I’m SO glad you were given some plates of food from a neighbor! Goodness really is all around us and that heartens me quite a bit to know you were treated so well.
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Mark P said on November 25, 2022 at 9:07 pm
Dorothy — We thought we would be fine just throwing some crap together for Thanksgiving, but the homemade dinner really made our day. It’s also nice to know someone was thinking of us.
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Deborah said on November 25, 2022 at 10:06 pm
Even in high rises neighbors can be nice. Residents who are there during holidays usually take a plate down for the doorman and so many people do it the doorman takes the plates to their break room and shares with the maintenance guys and garage attendants. Everyone usually gets plenty to eat.
Whenever we get chocolates from friends for the holidays we give them to those guys because we can’t eat much chocolate these days because of the caffeine.
And all the residents give to a holiday fund that gets shared with everyone who works for the building compound. I hope they get paid enough but I always wonder, tips are always appreciated.
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alex said on November 25, 2022 at 11:25 pm
We aren’t Black Friday shoppers, but we heard a new one today at Home Depot at the rental department where we borrowed a snake…
Brown Friday.
Yes, it’s a thing. Toilets tend to take a shit during the holidays, and if you can’t wait for a plumber you become one yourself. And as owners of a rental, we can attest that furnace and plumbing failures during holiday weekends are an inevitable part of the business.
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Dexter Friend said on November 26, 2022 at 3:23 am
I am most grateful nobody cooked yams or sweet potatoes and insisted I try some. I think that when I was a kid someone dished up some sweet potatoes covered in marshmallow sauce for me and I gagged. I hate them with passionate revulsion. I can indeed eat a nice butternut or acorn squash with pepper, salt, and butter.
I bought a refurbished Dell computer from my workplace at a cheap price for my first computer years ago. Remember pop-ups? This damn thing had been used by a porn freak and filthy pop-up ads plagued this thing for a month or more before I got them to quiet down. Refurbished, yeah, right.
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David C said on November 26, 2022 at 5:53 am
I swear more people have been put off sweet potatoes by marshmallows than for any other reason. I’ve never actually tried sweet potatoes with marshmallows or candied “yams”. It just never looked right to me. A sweet potato with just butter and salt is a tasty, wonderful thing though.
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Julie Robinson said on November 26, 2022 at 6:11 am
We love sweet potatoes with a little butter and cinnamon. Last year I tried a casserole with a brown sugar and pecan topping and almost no one touched it. This year I skipped them entirely and didn’t hear anyone asking if we had any. Simple is good.
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Deborah said on November 26, 2022 at 6:22 am
LB makes delicious mashed sweet potatoes, not a marshmallow in sight. She puts lots of butter, then heavy cream, cream cheese and sour cream in then mashes. They are fantastic with salt and a little pepper.
Her guests this year brought regular mashed potatoes and wasabi mashed potatoes, LB said they were tasty. Never thought of mashed potatoes with wasabi but it does sound interesting.
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David C said on November 26, 2022 at 11:24 am
We used to have a Korean food truck in town and they made the best french fried sweet potatoes. We’ve tried to home fry some and they’re mushy right until the point they’re burnt. I don’t know how they did them but they were perfectly done, crispy on the outside and tender in the middle. I miss that food truck so much. Little Bird’s mashed sweet potatoes sound amazing Deborah.
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Julie Robinson said on November 26, 2022 at 12:20 pm
David, do you have an air fryer and a Costco? Trader Joe’s also carries them but the ones from Costco fry up better. So good!
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LAMary said on November 26, 2022 at 1:33 pm
I make sweet potatoes like a regular baked potato. We eat them with butter and salt and pepper and they’re very tasty. I never liked any of the sugary versions. Habit, a burger chain in CA serves sweet potato fries that are pretty good. I don’t think they hold up under the heat lamp as well as regular spuds. Before the pandemic put them out of business Souplantation was a great place to bring kids here in CA. Buffet type food but heavy on good vegetable options and pretty tasty soups. They had baked russet or sweet potatoes and I attribute my kids having no food pickiness issues at least in part to eating at Souplantation. Son Pete, who loved dinosaurs, piled green peas on his plate because I told him that Parasauralophuses loved peas.
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Julie Robinson said on November 26, 2022 at 2:38 pm
The sweet potato fries definitely need to be eaten right out of the air fryer. I like baked sweet potatoes with a little butter and cinnamon. Not sure about putting salt and pepper on them.
There was a chain here that sounds similar to Souplantation called Sweet Tomatoes with a humungous salad bar, soups, and a variety of rolls/corn muffins and desserts like brownies. Oh, and a softserve ice cream machine. The kids loved that when they were little. We went there about three years ago and it had gone way downhill, and they closed the whole chain about two months into the pandemic.
Two local eateries closed the day before Thanksgiving. Our daughter used one of them as her office–I would say second office, but she never uses the office at church. High food costs and lack of workers were cited by both places. The entire neighborhood is in mourning.
I should add that both were open 15 years or longer and always seemed to be busy. I feel terrible about both families who have had their dreams shattered.
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LAMary said on November 26, 2022 at 3:50 pm
Sweet Tomatoes and Souplantation were the same company. I didn’t notice any decline at Souplantation but I wasn’t going there very often after the kids were no longer kids.
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Deborah said on November 26, 2022 at 5:19 pm
Off topic: Abiquiu NM makes the New York Times again. This time it’s in the piece about Rituals. The Christ in the Desert Monastery is covered. It’s a wonderful place to visit, an amazing (but can be muddy) drive along the Chama river to get there. It’s peaceful and serene, I’ve never actually seen any monks there but I see them near the village of Abiquiu (miles away from the Monastery) in their robes and sandals buying groceries etc. They used to make Monk’s ale at Christ in the Desert but not any longer, they used to serve it there too but the pandemic seems to have put a stop to that. They keep gardens and other activities Monks do. You used to be able to stay there for a completely quiet retreat, again not sure if they still do it. I actually haven’t read the article yet I was so excited to see it that I had to comment here, especially to Jeff (tmmo). So maybe they cover a lot of this. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/26/style/united-states-faith-rituals.html#desert-monks
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David C said on November 26, 2022 at 6:13 pm
Our kitchen is quite small so we don’t really have room for an air fryer. We’re going to get a convection oven when our stove dies. Because we’re planning on it though it won’t happen. Every major appliance we have dies except for the one we want to.
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LAMary said on November 26, 2022 at 7:03 pm
In the last two months my refrigerator and my dishwasher both died. The stove? Which I hate? Nope.
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susan said on November 26, 2022 at 7:39 pm
2022 appliances: *break within 2 years*
1970s refrigerator: I will outlive you and everyone you love. I am eternal. I am time itself.
This is True.
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Deborah said on November 26, 2022 at 7:49 pm
So far in Chicago, only our sink faucet and dishwasher died, I’m waiting (hoping) for the old, dreaded stove to die next, then the refrigerator. The rest of the kitchen needs to fall apart quickly after that so it can all be replaced.
In Santa Fe the sink faucet, dishwasher, fridge and stove have all been replaced relatively recently, only the fridge was replaced with a used, a little newer than the original one by the former landlady, so that will need replacing next.
I can’t imagine still having a fridge from the 70s, Susan. How is that possible?
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LAMary said on November 26, 2022 at 8:26 pm
I had a used 70s fridge when I moved into this house. It was harvest gold. When we re-did the cabinets about ten years after we bought the house I gave that fridge to the daughter of a neighbor who was moving into her own apartment. Since then I think I’ve had buy four fridges. The most recent one has no ice maker, no water dispenser. It’s just a fridge. White.
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Mark P said on November 26, 2022 at 9:58 pm
We put all GE appliances in our kitchen about five years ago. I had to replace the controller board on the dishwasher. One eye on the electric stove is dead and I will have to replace that. I had to replace the over-the-range microwave. So far the refrigerator is OK, but it’s making odd noises.
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susan said on November 26, 2022 at 11:32 pm
Talk with any appliance repair-person, and I bet they’ll tell you refrigerators and stoves and so forth from the ’70s/’80s work for decades. Stuff from the late ’90s on, especially after 2000 break down after maybe 10 years at most. My frig is from 1992 and is an ugly white beast, but hey, it keeps chugging along.
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Dexter Friend said on November 27, 2022 at 4:09 am
My late friend Bert, born in 1892 and who worked the railroads in France during WWI, told how he landed in Belleview in 1929 and worked the railroad there, bought a house and a refrigerator. I began a friendship with him in 1979, which lasted just 2 1/2 years until he passed at age 89. The refrigerator he bought in 1929 quietly hummed along cooling food in 1979, and probably was fine until his son carted him off to a nursing home in Clyde.
And oh boy. I know…those damned Parasauralophuses cleaned out my pea patch every year. 😉
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David C said on November 27, 2022 at 6:16 am
We built out house in 2008 and we’re on our forth dishwasher. We’ve had Whirlpool, GE, Samsung, and now Bosch. It’s always the circuit boards that crap out on them. The guy who came to repair our last one recommended Bosch but even those, he said, were only a bit better. The circuit board they charge you $300-$400 for are simple as could be. He also told me it only costs them $10-$20 to make. All it would take to change the situation would be a law allowing anyone to reverse engineer the circuit boards. That’s not going to happen ever though.
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Suzanne said on November 27, 2022 at 10:00 am
My mom got rid of her old Co-Op refrigerator just a year or two ago. It still worked but the electric company had a campaign to offer a couple of hundred dollars for the oldest working refrigerator. I am not sure if she won but they did cart it away for her before it broke. The fridge dated back to the late 50s and was probably older than me born in 1958.
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Dorothy said on November 27, 2022 at 10:46 am
Marshmallows have no business being anywhere near sweet potatoes or yams. However I use brown sugar with my melted butter when cooking them in a frying pan. First I parboil them to soften them a bit. So they’re essentially double cooked. My mom made them that way so I do too. I had never had a baked yam or SP until we moved to Cincinnati and one of the local steak restaurants served them. We eat them baked with butter and cinnamon all the time now. They jazz up pork roasts. And I buy the frozen sweet potato fries too. Alexia I think is the brand but OreIda makes them, too.
Not sure how old my father-in-law’s fridge is but when he died in ’09 it got moved to my son’s house and he still has it in his garage. And it was old in 2009. The door does not always close tightly so you have to push it sometimes. I bet a new seal would fix that (if you can find the materials).
We cut down a really nice 7′ tree on Friday and today Olivia and I are going to put the ornaments on. I put the lights on this morning before breakfast. They have a 10′ tree in their family room. I haven’t done a tree in several years. Who wants to go to all that work when no one is going to see it but us two?! Pandemic didn’t help. We went into the kids’ house the last two years. So this year feels very special and I’m enjoying it even though the calendar still says November. How do people keep it fresh and fun if they put stuff up really early? My sister Janet says her ex and his second wife have had FIVE TREES up since October. Just kill me now….that’s gagging to me. I’d be sick of it after two weeks, let alone two months. Everything has it’s own season and time to enjoy. Why do people want to prolong or drag out Christmas? I like what each month brings and the possibilities of things to do. I don’t think it’s healthy to put that much oomph into one holiday.
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Deborah said on November 27, 2022 at 11:53 am
Since we’re only going to be in Chicago until Dec 10, I’m doing the little bit that I do today so we can enjoy it for a little less than 2 weeks. It involves polishing some Tiffany silver snowflakes that I lay out on a table and filling the floor trough with red and white puff balls and jingle bells. I change the trough seasonally. The trough is there because we took all the walls out of our place since it had (still has) travertine marble floors on either side of where the walls were. We mostly inserted wood into the troughs but kept a 4 foot area near the perimeter windows that I was going to use as a skinny planter for succulents (it’s only about 2″ wide and about an inch and a quarter deep). But we’re gone so much of the year I couldn’t keep the succulents alive so now I use that small section of trough to fill with small seasonal things. I used to put photos of it on Facebook but I quit FB so I don’t take many photos of the various arrangements anymore. A portion of the troughs are filled with small, shiny black pebbles which people visiting often accidentally kick around because who expects people to have pebbles in grooves in the floor? That is only temporary (over 5 years now) because we couldn’t decide if we like the wood insertions and haven’t figured anything else out to do with the floor issue. We like having a remnant of where the walls used to be in our unit because it’s a building on the historic register designed by a famous architect so it seemed fitting.
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alex said on November 27, 2022 at 12:36 pm
Haven’t done a Christmas tree for years. It takes up too much time and too much space and it’s a bitch to get down from the attic and put back up there. I suppose if we had kids or planned on entertaining it would be worth the trouble, but December’s gonna whiz by in a nanosecond and we have other things to do.
With the nice weather yesterday, I put a strand of white lights through our hedge while tackling other chores. That’s my concession to the season.
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