Your Bag of Nothing for Friday, August 16, 2024

  • NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! Bad decision! –Nicolas Cage to Play NFL Icon John Madden in David O. Russell’s Biopic

    Amazon MGM is backing “Madden,” which will be written, directed and produced by Russell. The filmmaker was reportedly considering Will Ferrell and Hugh Jackman to star in the film before Cage was cast.

  • My late mother turned 76 yesterday. For her birthday, I would normally ask my readers to read something as my mother enjoyed reading.
  • I started this blog on one of her birthdays. That’s right, believe it or not, but this blog turned 19 yesterday.
  • The Harris Walz campaign are rolling out videos of the two getting to know each other. I watched one video in which they discuss music. It wasn’t surprising to hear Walz talk about Springsteen and Bob Seger and Harris about Prince. But I was surprised Harris’ husband is a big Depeche Mode fan.
  • It’s nice to see President Biden is lightening up; he had a pretty good one-liner speaking to a bunch of visiting influences earlier this week:
    • “You break through in ways that I think are going to change the entire dynamic of the way in which we communicate, and that’s why I invited you to the White House, because I’m looking for a job. You think—when I retire, where do you think I’m going? I got contacts, man, you all think I’m kidding.”
    • Of course, at his age, no one expects him to be building houses like Jimmy Carter, who, surprisingly, just won’t die. he’s been in hospice forever. But Biden is right, presidents have contacts, some you can’t even imagine. I wonder what he’ll do or what he has in mind. I’m guessing something small, like a retired POTUS podcast. Hey, that’s an idea. What if all the former living presidents got together on Zoom or some other medium and talked about their lives or current events once a month? You could get a presidential historian like Jon Meacham to host and keep the conversation flowing. Being such a people person, I could see him teaching and really enjoying it.
  • A 22-year-old NewsNation reporter in Chicago was killed last month after she was struck by an oncoming commuter train. You’d probably think it happened because she wasn’t attention because she was looking at her phone or couldn’t hear the train because she had earbuds on, but both were in her purse. The article mentions the parents following her commute home using the Life360 app and slowly realizing what happened in real-time, which is gutwrenching to read as a parent.
    • Then after five or so minutes, Bentkowski noticed her location started going backward toward the city instead of Northwest Indiana. He thought someone stole her phone, then the GPS dot started going 70 to 80 miles per hour toward the University of Chicago Medical Center. “I got a bad feeling she was the one who was hit, as soon as I saw she ended up at University of Chicago I hopped in the car and drove down there,”
    • Something that also must have been gutwrenching for them was watching a video of the accident with sound.
      • Family viewed video of the incident and told WGN News no horn was blown by the conductor and the train accelerated quickly. “No noise, no nothing. From the video all you hear is a thud,” Bentkowski said. “Then the engineer blows a horn.”
  • Yesterday the Musers talked about Texas high school stadiums. I thought it was interesting and smart of the folks in Denton to put the video board directly across the field behind the visitor stands so the home crowd doesn’t have to turn their heads. The visitors also have a scoreboard, but it’s off to the side. I almost want to go on a rant about how all high school stadiums, including the one in Mineral Wells, all have to have a video board. It seems they are standard now, even for small towns.

    This one is also interesting. It doesn’t look like that right now as it’s being repaired from storm damage.
  • Staying on the topic of athletic venues, the LA Clippers’ new home, the Intuit Dome, opened this week, and it’s caught my attention. Every seat will have a USB charging port. There’s a HUGE screen out front for fans who can’t get inside to watch the game outside with a basketball court in front of it, which is designed to be used by the community, and can be rented out for various special events. One concourse features a display of high school basketball jerseys from every single school in the state of California. Here are a few pics and videos.


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