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The Friday Fives

1, What is your favorite song that tells a story?

You can with really any Springsteen / Dylan catalog here. I have blogged before about Bruce and “Sherry Darling” and how he can’t wait to marry her and get their own place so he doesn’t have to drive Sherry’s mother around – that is a pretty peppy story song. And of course – “The River”


2. What is your favorite LONG song (over 7 minutes)?

I made a decision to not count live versions as that is kind of part of the thing – a live riff on a piece of the performer’s canon. So I went with Wilco and Spiders from A Ghost is Born at 10:43 and a definite rocker.


3. If somebody kidnapped you and said “You die unless you sing one song perfectly” which one would you choose?

Taking nerves into account it would be the Happy Birthday song as I suck at remembering words and verses.


4. What fictional character death hit you the hardest?

Wait – Dumbledore is dead!


5. What fictional food would you like to try?

Any of the candy confections from Hairy Potter or Willie Wonka

What a long week and I only worked 4 days – I got my third vax shot – my Moderna booster yesterday I have a really achy ary today, and a headache and general brain fog but so far no major side effects.

Woke up Monday on a chilly morning with no heater in my car. after lots of YouTube study and troubleshooting determine it is the A/C connector switch that controls the blower. I will install this little gadget on Saturday – Yay DIY me.

Here is a fun link 12ftladder Based on the principle of the best way to get over a 10-foot wall is with a 12-foot ladder – so paste a firewalled article from the web in the search function and voila you have the formally blocked content. I use it a lot on NY Time Cooking articles and for New Scientist, Scientific American, and The Wall Street Journal.

Oh wait, did I tell you I have a really gnarly headache – yeah, I do.

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The Friday Fives

1. You can choose one species to go extinct, what would it be?
Head-in-the dirt-refuse-the-listen-to-any-logic-convinced-that-their-very-existence-on-the-planet-makes-them-right-about-anything-Right-wing-conservative-Americans.
2. If animals could talk, which would be the rudest?
Although the honey badger – he don’t give a shit – I am going with the baboon. They just love all that farting, shitting, and poo throwing – how rude.
3. What is your best example of ‘buy it before you need it?
Gasoline – don’t get sucked into “fill it up on empty.” The price of gasoline, like all prices right now, is pretty volatile – shop around and when you see it running low somewhere, pull over and fill it up.
4. If brands were brutally honest, what brand would have what slogan?
“Facebook – we know what you did last night!”
5. What are two pieces of popular advice that contradict each other?
“Always work to improve who you are” / “Be yourself”

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The Friday Fives

1. What’s a popular food or drink that you dislike?
Pumpkin spice most anything – well except for pumpkin pie – kind of dig that a lot. But coffee flavored with pumpkin spice? I’ll pass, thank you.

2. What is your addiction?
Wow, a loaded question. Let’s take that to media – currently, I am addicted to Chicago Med streaming on the Netflixes. I love me some Oliver Platt. (Yes, Greg, we know the medicine and science is all wrong – shut up and enjoy the ride. )

3, What’s a bizarre historical event you can’t believe actually took place?
We landed a frickin’ helicopter on Mars. Read that sentence again – we landed a frickin’ helicopter on Mars.

4, Which country will start WW3? Why?
It won’t be the big nations – the US, China, or even Russia. It won’t be North Korea because they are broke and have no imperial infrastructure to influence allies. In fact, based on that we may never have a world war again as the big five (US, China, Russia, Europe, and British Commonwealth) have pretty much squashed any ability for other nations to forge any kind of alliances needed to wage a global war. There will be neighboring country skirmishes and fights over borders and resources but as long as the world economy has free trade and open trade, global war makes no economic sense and that is usually why countries go to war – when economies no long function to allow the instigator the ability to advance economically and thus they begin taking things from other nations.

5, What is the most ridiculously believed piece of misinformation?
Any other makeshift supposed cures and preventative measures the anti-vax whack jobs are using to prevent/cure getting sick with Covid-19. There is one thing that can be done – get vaccinated – it is free, effective, and easy. Millions and millions of Earthlings have taken the vaccines with no or very limited minor side effects.

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Friday Fives

1. What is something you should never do after age 30?

Run a hurdle relay?

Cocaine?

A big stack of pancakes with heavy butter and syrup at IHOP?

2. What celebrities never seem to age?

Paul Rudd

3. If you were eating at a restaurant and Gordon Ramsay walked in with a camera crew, what would you do?

Get up and leave.

4. What is something that most people don’t use correctly?

The apostrophe.

5. What food combination sounded gross at first, but wasn’t that bad when you tried it?

Seriously. Stay with me on this. Oatmeal > Kimchi > Sour Cream > Figs. You won’t regret this.

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The Friday Fives

1. What useful unknown website do you wish more people knew about?
I have been obsessed with these two little ditties all week:
Drivenlisten uses an algorithm to grab dashcam video from youtube and matches that up with a radio station from cities and nations all over the globe to create the experience that you are driving around Amsterdam and listening to Dutch radio. It is nice to have it playing in the background while you Google cast your browser to your television.

astornaut.io is based on premise that this is what the aliens in space are watching as they observe us – again based on a youtube algorithm that grabs low to no viewer coun short videos and randomly runs through them.

2. What is a commonly held misconception that drives you up the wall every time you hear it?
Most conspiracy theories but the biggest one that really drives me up the wall are the pervasive theory that we didn’t land on the Moon – We landed on the moon, mother fuckers! pull out some binoculars or a telescope – you can see some of the trash that we left behind.

I have discovered a nice piece of Nerd-vana podcast: “I Quit Star Trek” where each week some London grad students micro-parse episodes of the various versions of ‘Trek to decide if based on the highlighted episode is worth quit watching Star Trek. From their episode, I take issue with their theory that Kirk and Spock have a deep homosexual love affair that dates back to their days at the academy.

3. What movie have you watched at least 5 times because it’s so good?
Parsing this down to just one is difficult but I will go with Casablanca, a nearly perfect film that I have written about on this blog several times before.

4. You got a potato in your hand, what do you do with it?
Peel it and take a nice big bite out of it – I have always liked a bite or two of a raw potato. I can’t eat a ton of them but a few bites are quite earthy, sweet, and yummy.

5. What’s a movie with a great premise but a terrible execution?
Most remakes – the one that immediately comes to mind is the scene-by-scene remake of “Psychic” by Gus Van Zandt. One of my favorite directors, but he missed the boat on this one.