- While driving home from the doctor’s office yesterday I took the long route, the one in which I always get stuck at traffic lights, so I could listen to the whole segment. This time, I made every single light and arrived home in record time.
- The new season of ‘Better Call Saul’ premiered last night. I’m not going to spoil anything, but I noticed two actors were involved in two long timelapse scenes and I’m curious to know just how long each was filmed.
- The new season of ‘Angie Tribeca’ also premiered last night. If you are the type that enjoyed the comedy of Airplane!, The Naked Gun, or the Hot Shots! movies, then I highly recommend you set your DVR to record a few episodes to sample. There’s so much comedy in the background you have to abandon your phone or you’ll miss some good humor.
- I watched some of the first episode of ‘American Experiences’ special on the first World War. I thought they did a great job at the beginning of setting what the U.S. was like . . . In the summer of 1914:
- Babe Ruth began playing for the Boston Red Sox and Charlie Chaplin was king of the movies.
- A loaf of bread was six cents.
- The nation’s population was about 100 million. It’s now over 322,700,000 million.
- A third of the nation were immigrants.
- One out of three Americans lived on farms.
- Women could vote, but in only 12 of the 48 states in the union.
- The U.S. Army ranked 17th in the world.
- It took a week to sail to Europe.
- The British Pound was the world’s reserve currency.
- I didn’t care much for the new Thor movie trailer until I saw the ending and now I’m totally in, all because of a little humor.
- Last night’s ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ was the one where Arnold thinks about practicing the Jewish faith and Milton Berle plays a rabbi. Sadly, when I now think of Milton Berle, I think about that weird exchange he had withRuPaul at the MTV Video Music Awards back in 1993.
- I’m surprised “BaD Radio” and others are such fuddy duds about Romo being part of the Mavs lineup and gets to participate in warmups and ride the bench. I’m all for it. It’s unique, a tad absurd, a cool way for a fellow sports franchise to honor another, and it meant in good fun since it’s the last game of the season and has no impact on things whatsoever. But I do like the jokes about him possibly getting hurt in lineups or enough Mavs trying to foul out or get ejected just to get Romo in the game. And to be honest, I’ve always fantasized what it would be like for athletes in one sport to try another. For instance, where would Shaq play, tight end, defensive end? What kind of receiver would Jordan or Lebron be? Would Gary Payton be a good cornerback? What NFL QB would be a decent pitcher? Seriously, anyone who grew up in the early 90’s and saw all those “Bo Knows” commercial and saw Deion Sanders score a touchdown and hit a homerun in the same week must have thought about this. Romo saved us from a QB drought for over a decade. He sucked in the playoffs and never sniffed a Super Bowl, let the guy have a little fun.
- I’ve written how I wonder President Trump will react as “Comforter in Chief” after a national tragedy, so I was checking his Twitter accounts often yesterday. But to my surprise and disappointment, he hasn’t tweeted a single thing about the elementary school shooting in California but did tweet several times about congratulating Justice Neil Gorsuch.
- I’ve resigned to the fact and become somewhat accepting that politicians will default on campaign promises. But my one exception is when they campaign as a champion of family values and the Christian faith and then get caught in a sex scandal. The latest example is the now former Governor of Alabama.
- Random presidential fact – Richard Nixon became only sitting president to travel on a regularly scheduled commercial airline flight in 1973.
- When that happens, the plane becomes Executive One.
- If the president’s family members are aboard, but not the president himself, the flight can, at the discretion of the White House staff or Secret Service, use the callsign Executive One Foxtrot. ‘Foxtrot’ is the phonetic alphabet designation for the letter ‘F’, with that being the first letter of ‘family’.
- If you are wondering why Nixon decided to fly commercial:
- Mr. Nixon took a commercial plane instead of his own jet to save fuel in the energy crisis. By one calculation, Mr. Nixon, by his decision, saved at least 60,000 gallons of jet fuel, which is similar to home heating fuel. Normally, a Presidential trip to California would entail a transcontinental flight not only by his own plane but also by a back‐up plane, a press plane, three helicopters and a steady stream of White House courier aircraft.
- I would have like to interview that pilot years after the event and see if he felt any added pressure because the acting President of the United States was on board or if he just felt it was simply another flight and he treated the responsibility of all lives and each flight the same.
- When that happens, the plane becomes Executive One.
- I think it’s neat that former presidents (and opponents) George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton meet at least once a year and have a meal together.
- I’m sure if you were asked which state produces the most coal, the majority of you would say West Virginia or maybe Kentucky. But the correct answer and with an impressive lead is Wyoming. And to be honest, I didn’t know Texas produced any coal. Here’s the top six: Wyoming 40.2%, West Virginia 11.13%, Pennsylvania 6.24%, Illinois 6.15% Kentucky 5.97%, Texas 5.47%
- The Dallas Morning News – 5 things churches lose when they give up hymnals
- Texas lawmakers might let community colleges offer bachelor’s degrees
- The untold story of U2’s 1987 video shoot in downtown Las Vegas
- And it was all done in one take, shot in less than three hours with a skeleton crew and an unsuspecting cast of extras, some seated at slot machines, others just passing by. Nothing was rehearsed; every interaction was spontaneous.
- “And I thought, ‘OK, well let’s shoot the most sincere song they’ve ever written in the least sincere city they’ve ever played.’ There was an ironic counterpoint to the song, in a way, by shooting it in Vegas.”
- The sound system was pushed around in a shopping cart borrowed from a homeless man.
- Ford built a hybrid police car designed to handle punishing pursuits
- The company says its new Ford Police Responder Hybrid Sedan could save police departments $3,900 per year in fuel use because cop cars spend so much of their time on, but idle.
- It also has a “maximum performance” mode that uses the full power of the hybrid system to help the car accelerate faster when the accelerator is held at 100 percent for five seconds.
- An upcoming X-Files audiobook reunites David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and more
- Woman donates ambulance – and ends up being rescued by it
- After watching video of that man being dragged off that United Airlines plane with his belly fully exposed, I really want to a decent set of abs….just in case something like this happens to me.
- What Would Jesus Disrupt? – Entrepreneurs from Cincinnati’s Crossroads Church try to scale their startups without selling their souls
- For years I’ve wanted to add a poll at the bottom of each Bag of Randomness and have readers rank how good or poor it was for that day. Like a one to five scale, with one being it stunk and five being great.
