Bag of Randomness for Thursday, May 12, 2016

Trump-Oval-Office

  • Man, there’s nothing like a game seven in hockey, until one team starts to kill the other in the first period. I’m no hockey fan, but game sevens usually are worth tuning in.
  • I’ll often to talk a grandfather while at DaughterGeeding’s taekwondo lessons. About thirty years ago he decided to start his own delivery service which he said slowly turned into a casket special delivery service. He can fit up to two caskets in his delivery van and gets paid by the mile. His longest haul was to San Francisco from DFW. He said he couldn’t figure out why the customer in California couldn’t just purchase a casket closer to San Francisco, and there was nothing particularly special about the casket he was delivering, but he wasn’t going to complain since he charged by the mile.
  • Last night’s ‘The Americans’ focused on the 1983 ABC movie The Day After. I don’t remember watching it when it first aired, but we had to watch it in high school and is surprised me how it affected the country and policy makers. A few things about the movie per Wikipedia:
    • Interesting cast:  Jason Robards, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum (‘Northern Exposure’, ‘ER’), John Lithgow, Amy Madigan (Field of Dreams)
    • More than 100 million people watched the program during its initial broadcast. It is currently the highest-rated television film in history.
    • President Ronald Reagan watched the film several days before its screening, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was “very effective and left me greatly depressed,” and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a “nuclear war”.
  • That episode of ‘The Americans’ reminded me of how you needed to set your television to channel three or four in able to use the VCR.
  • This guy was wondering what actor has had the most on-screen deaths, so he did the research and posted it on Nerdist. The top honor goes to John Hurt and is followed by Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price.
  • I’m not much of a grilled cheese eater, but these grilled cheese tacos look really good.
  • Welcome to ‘Weroburger,’ Mexico’s knock-off version of Whataburger
  • Dallas Morning News – The silence of Ken Starr – Baylor’s president focused on football, fumbled on sex assaults
  • Detroit news – Priest removed for sex abuse works at pregnancy center for teens
  • Saudi family therapist gives advice on how to ‘beat your wife’ – ‘The goal is merely to make the wife feel that she was wrong in the way she treated her husband’
  • Totino’s Pizza has made some changes. The last pizza I bought was no longer in a box but just in a wrapper. On top of that, the pizza is no longer round but a rectangle. I’m okay with change, but hey, let’s take some baby steps.
  • I’ve mentioned many times that I’m a fan of presidential history, and it’s quirky stuff like this that I really dig – The Secrets of All Six Oval Office Desks
    • Most folks are just aware of the Resolute Desk, but it hasn’t been used the most. The Theodore Roosevelt desk was used by seven presidents, the Resolute, six. But I’m certain the Resolute will stay never be replaced, it’s just become a part of the office.
    • Nixon used the Wilson Desk and thought it was named after Woodrow Wilson; however, it was named in honor of Henry Wilson, 18th vice president of the United States.
    • The Theodore Roosevelt Desk was the first desk to sit in the Oval Office.
    • I’ve always loved the story behind the Resolute Desk. The HMS Resolute was a British naval vessel found abandoned in the arctic in 1853 by an American whaling vessel. The ship was sailed back to America, fixed up at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and sailed back to Britain as a goodwill gift. The Resolute never saw much action after and was broken down in 1879. Queen Victoria had the oak timbers of the ship used to create what is now the Resolute Desk and it spent most of its time in the presidential study.
    • The Resolute Desk did not make it to the Oval Office until the presidency of John F. Kennedy, but it was not he who chose to put it there. It was First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy who found the Resolute Desk, then forgotten in a White House broadcasting room, and had it installed in the Oval Office as part of her overall restoration of the White House. After Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ removed the Resolute Desk from the Oval Office. It didn’t return until Jimmy Carter was elected and chose to once again use the ornate desk as his presidential throne.
    • One of the few seals in the White House that features the eagle facing the arrows instead of the olive branches.
    • carved presidential seal—one of the few seals in the White House that features the eagle facing the arrows instead of the olive branches.
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6 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Thursday, May 12, 2016

  1. RPM says:

    Thought it was a really good episode last night. I definitely remember watching The Day After. The scene where the kids were clinging to a chainlink fence at a playground when they get vaporized really stuck with me back then. It's always the first image that comes to mind about the film.

    • Ben W. says:

      Was that The Day After? I was thinking that was Terminator 2. I guess my "Cold War nuclear apocalypse" scenes are all running together.

      • RPM says:

        It was a made for TV movie about nuclear war. It was about "the day after" the USSR launched a nuclear attack against the US. It was extremely graphic for it's time.

  2. John Mackovic says:

    I remember that it went up against some JFK mini-series on some other network (it was around the 20th anniversary of his assassination)

    Our teacher at school the next day (I was in fourth grade at the time) asked if we had watched either one and wanted to discuss it. I clearly remember saying that I watched neither, and instead had watched The Jeffersons.

    A grilled-cheese taco? Aren't those called quesadillas?

  3. Mr. Mike Honcho says:

    I remember "The Day After" well. I was 12. We talked about it in school the next day. And the next. And the…

    That show did more than anything to leave an impression (and depression) about what a global nuclear war would do. That impression/depression lingered in the back of your head until about '89.

  4. Sara says:

    I have a "Day After" story as well.
    9/11 happened at the start of my senior year of highschool. My teachers were crying and upset about it, which made us cry and upset about it. I didn't really grasp what was going on, but I knew that if the adults were freaking out, than it had to be really really bad.

    Well the next year in college, I was in some us history class. I fell asleep.
    I woke up and the lights were off and the tv was on and everyone was staring at it. It was a news broadcast about a missile launch and people were running and dying and my heart started to pound so fast, I almost started to panic. And I couldn't understand why the class and teacher was so calm.

    Then I saw Steve G's face and I swear that was the biggest relief I'd ever felt in my life until then.
    I didn't fall asleep in that class again.

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