Bag of Randomness

KUmWd3c

  • Oscars thoughts:
    • The opening of the Oscars was superb and NPH did an exceptional job as host.  I was laughing so hard at his two Travolta jokes I almost woke the kids.  But I could have done without the predictions bit, and I bet in retrospect, he knew it made the show drag a little towards the end.
    • Who doesn’t love JK Simmons, especially after his acceptance speech.  I also enjoyed hearing Eddie Redmayne’s for The Theory of Everything.
    • I never heard of Miles Teller until last night, but at first sight, I thought I was looking at KD Lang.
    • As odd as it might sound, I always look forward to the “In Memoriam” segment, but this year I was disappointed as they used portrait looking stills as opposed to the traditional short video segments.
    • Common gave a hell of an acceptance speech.
    • Lady Gaga proved she’s more than just an act, though I’m sure no one recognized her looking so “normal”.
    • John Stamos was in the crowd?
  • BoyGeeding used a urinal for the first time over the weekend.  I guess that’s his firs step towards manhood.
  • We had a guest pastor fill in Sunday and he preached over fear and compassion.  Interestingly, he used County Judge Clay Jenkins as an example during the local Ebola scare, referencing the time he walked into the family’s apartment with no protective gear and then parents calling his daughter’s school asking for his daughter to stay at home.
  • I use to think the echelon of dining was a great filet mignon or rib-eye, but after experiencing the superior Central Texas BBQ, I’d rather eat brisket or a beef rib.  But when it comes to all three of those meats, no kind of sauce should be required if they are cooked right.
  • That’s not to say I won’t pass up a chicken-fried steak at Babe’s Chicken Dinner House.
  • I bet a lot of out-of-towners think I’m referencing some kind of breastaurant when I mention Babes, but that’s not the case.  An old man use to call his wife Babe and that’s how it got it’s name.
  • Hutchins BBQ was ranked as having the best BBQ in the area by the readers of The Dallas Morning News.  You kinda gotta take that with a grain of salt with Hard 8 coming in second, but I thought I’d check it out once I saw a beef rib featured on their website.  Since there’s two locations, I called mid-Saturday morning to see if the closest location to me had it, and I actually talked to one of the namesakes, Tracy Hutchins.  Unfortunately the beef rib hasn’t been sell well and neither location served it, but he told me to come on by and seek him out, which I did.  You gotta like it when the owner of a place tries to makes a personal connection.  Overall, I can see how it was voted the best – great smoke ring, tender, tasty char, though I still think Pecan Lodge is the best in the area.  But with Hutchins, we didn’t even have to wait at the Frisco location.  The sides were the best of any BBQ joint in the area, and I like how they respect the BBQ tradition as there’s pictures of other great BBQ places hung throughout the establishment.
  • One interesting tidbit about the Hutchins Frisco location, it use to be called Randy White’s BBQ and kind of had a breastaurant theme to it, with Hutchins having a bit of influence.  We ate there when it was Randy White’s and now all the Cowboys themed stuff and skimpy dressed women are gone.
  • One of my friends drove through Alabama and stopped at a place that served white BBQ sauce.  I never heard of such a thing, it sound sacrilegious.  That same friend told me he ate at a Whataburger in Florida and the customer service was friendlier, kinda like what you’d expect at Chick-fil-a.  I didn’t think their reach extended that far.
  • I was looking up Cal Ripken stats and one thing lead to another and I ended up researching the breaking of the glass at Jewish weddings.  Wikipedia states the tradition has to deal with either making sure joy must always be tempered or mourning the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  I like this explanation on the latter.  I’ve never been to a Jewish wedding so I’ve haven’t witness such an event.
  • I have been to a handful of black weddings and can’t recall ever witnessing the jumping of the broom, which I always thought was cool.
  • My cadaver book had a chapter about the Shroud of Turin and how a French physician, Pierre Barbet, used a cadaver and then cadaver parts to test where the nails were placed in Jesus during his crucifixion.  If you’re up to it, you can actually see a cadaver placed on a cross here for one of the experiments.  A lot of art show the nails are through the palm, but many believe that would be false as body weight would just tear through the flesh.  Barbet’s research lead him to believe the nails would best support the weight of the body through the wrists, specifically through an area call Destot’s space.  However, a NY doctor later disproved the French physician’s findings stating that nails through the palm could support body weight, even when stressed as the subject would pull the body up for a breath of air.
  • I was driving down the President George Bush Turnpike and noticed a van driving a little slowing than the rest of traffic, outfitted with cameras everywhere, a flashing strobe light, and a huge warning sign stating “Caution, Lasers In Use”.  It kinda look like this one but fancier.  It was testing the condition of the pavement.
  • The Dallas Morning News had a feature on 94-year-old Jim Leavelle.  He was the guy cuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby.  I feel like I know a lot of uncommon nuggets about the event, but didn’t know that suit was from Neiman Marcus (that means it was quite expensive) and given to him by a friend, and it was originally double-breasted until he had it tailored to a single-breast.  Leavelle felt that a double-breasted jacket impeded his ability to grab his weapon and couldn’t afford another suit.  But perhaps the part that touched me most was the mention of his wife that passed away in October. – “I wake up at night and look over to see if she’s still there. Sometimes I see something interesting on TV and say, ‘Did you see that?’ and then look up and remember she’s not there.
  • The military keeps an impressive boneyard of retired planes in Arizona.  Heck, it’s just fun checking that place out on GoogleMaps.  Last week, for the first time ever, they had to un-retire a plane, specifically a 54-year-old B-52H, to replace one lost in a fire to satisfy an arms treaty.  Even though it spent seven years baking in the desert, it didn’t’ take much to get her back up and running, mainly replacing things like the jet’s fuel lines, seals, and tires.  It sounded like the cockpit was a bit dated which might have been a challenge for the pilots, “We had none of the traditional navigation equipment we’re used to, the inertial navigation system, GPS, so I challenged my navigator, to do ‘dead reckoning.’ Basically he had a radar system and a doppler, so he could ground map with his radar system.
  • Drunk driver and occasional Olympic athlete Michael Phelp got engaged.
  • While waiting for my allergy shot the music ringtone “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye sounded off in the waiting room.
  • God is a woman- Priest who died for 48 minutes claims
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6 Responses to Bag of Randomness

  1. WGII says:

    Have you tried Meet U Anywhere BBQ in Grapevine? Word has it that it's pretty darn tasty!!! Haven't had a chance to try it myself but I will be doing so!!!

    • Geeding says:

      I will now! I have to admit the thought of a valet stand at a BBQ place is a bit of a turn off, but I guess that's what Grapevine has become. I saw the website show a beef rib but it wasn't on the menu so I contacted them and they said it's sold on Fridays and Saturdays only. Heck, if the weather wasn't so bad, I'd be there checking out the brisket right now. Thanks for the heads up!

  2. Flash says:

    Your post on the un-retiring of the B-52H was interesting to me. I flew in Strategic Air Command (SAC) during the Vietnam War. At the time SAC mainly flew two types of aircraft: the B-52 and the air-to-air refuelers, the KC-135. The airplanes first came into service in 1955 and 1957 respectively. When I left SAC in 1975 the command was very excited about the next generation of aircraft (sorry, "aerospace platforms") which would replace them.

    Fast, fast forward to 2015 and both planes are still in service and the Air Force is talking about flying them, with modifications, until 2040.

    I often wonder how many times Boeing executives cursed the design team that created airplanes that the Air Force would not have to replace for 85 years.

  3. Brute says:

    You mentioned the Shroud of Turin. I still find this topic interesting. The shroud was supposedly exposed as a fraud in 1988 through radiocarbon dating, which placed its age to the 12th to 13th century. However, there is an argument that because the area that was subjected to radiocarbon testing was only on the very edge of the cloth, which was touched most often when it was handled, the radiocarbon area tested may have been contaminated. There have been other types of tests that put its age back to the first century. As I understand it (from a documentary on PBS), whatever its true age, no can explain how it was created. I believe they have ruled out, thus far, that it was painted. No one can satisfactorily explain how it might have been made, in the first century or in 13th century.

    Keith, does your cadaver book illuminate??

    • Geeding says:

      Actually, it does illuminate . . . mainly because it's on my Nook GlowLight e-reader which allows you to illuminate the screen at night.

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