BagOfNothing.com

• That’s a picture of me and SisterGeeding, circa 1996. I sent her that picture yesterday because I wore that same shirt to church yesterday. But I’d rather be able to fit into the same pair of pants but that would defy the law of physics.
  
• It seems like every inch of Denton County got hit with hail and major storms, but GeedingManor didn’t get one drop of rain.
• Two interesting things happened while eating dinner at Chick-Fil-A on a Friday night. For the first time, the kids didn’t go to the play area, they just enjoyed spending time with their parents. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed debated with them who would win in a fight between He-Man and Darth Vader.
• WifeGeeding and one of her friends in the neighborhood watched Beauty and the Beast on Saturday.  Her friend bought tickets ahead of time but bought the 3D tickets unaware that because WifeGeeding only has one eye, she can’t see anything in three dimensions. However, if she does wear the glasses, the image is clear and no longer distorted.
• I wonder how much autonomous vehicles can increase the efficiency of leaving the parking lot of a huge sporting event with over 80,000 people.
• I’m not a fan of basketball players wearing compression leggings or whatever they are called. Those North Carolina players last night looked like they were wearing white pantyhose. However, that was a great game, and even though it was overplayed in arenas for about a decade, it was nice to hear “Rock and Roll Part II” again, I felt like I was living in the early 90s again. But then again, maybe I’m the only one that hasn’t heard it in a while.
• Phil Knight (Oregon) vs Michael Jordan (UNC) next weekend.
• This attorney was on ’60 Minutes’ last night in a story about the Garland terrorist attack. At first, I thought it was Mike Ehrmantraut of ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Better Call Saul’ fame.
  
• Doesn’t everyone put away $18,000 a year for three vacations? – Scraping By On $500,000 A Year: Why It’s So Hard For High Income Earners To Escape The Rat Race
• GameStop is the next Blockbuster, everything will be offered online either by streaming or download.
• Tennessee bills teen to replace guardrail that killed her
  • The state of Tennessee erroneously has billed a dead teen nearly $3,000 to replace the guardrail that killed her in a car crash in November. Her flabbergasted father said he will not pay and also contends the model of the guardrail his daughter struck is poorly designed and dangerous.
  • Instead of deflecting the car or buckling to absorb the impact, the guardrail end impaled the vehicle, striking the teen in the head and chest and pushing her into the back seat, according to the report. She died instantly.
• That time when Michael Irvin wore an Atlanta Falcons helmet and Daryl Johnston wore a Green Bay Packers helmet because their Cowboys helmets were stolen.
• In this CNN article about four teachings of Jesus people often get wrong, this one sentence stood out, “Every biblically literate Jew would know that if there are two sons, go with the younger: Abel over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Ephraim over Manasseh.“
• This may have been the most enjoyable BBQ article I ever read – How Texas Beef Ribs Became BBQ’s Newest Star – To escape the shadow Aaron Franklin cast with his world-famous brisket, pitmasters have leveraged the enormous, Instagram-ready beef rib to stay relevant. But at what cost?
  • When beef ribs first took off, many wrote them off as an over-the-top fad that would soon fade, but the pitmasters I talked to disagree. “The first time people buy them is as a novelty,” says Todd Davis of Cattleack. “They’ve never seen such a thing. The second one they buy is because it’s probably the best cut of meat they’ve ever had.”
• Another Benjamin L. Corey blog post, and here’s my usual disclaimer, I neither endorse or oppose him, but appreciate how he will add to theological thought and discussion – For The People Who Say “The Moral Laws In The Old Testament Still Apply To Us”
• A few tidbits from my book about the relationships amongst presidents:
  • Ike never really kept his VP, Nixon, in the loop or treated him kindly. It makes me wonder if that helped contribute to why Nixon was such a control freak. You know, kinda like having “daddy issues”. Well, he already had that since his brother died when he was young and his mother felt he was trying to live the life of two sons.
  • Nixon won a scholarship to Harvard but didn’t attend because he couldn’t afford the trip from California.
  • Nixon and Kennedy actually were pretty close. Both entered Congress together as part of the class of 1946, were Navy officers, and had offices across the hall from one another. Kennedy gave Nixon a campaign contribution of $1,000 from his father for his Senate race. Nixon wrote a sponsorship letter for Kennedy when he applied for membership at Burning Tree Club, some kind of country club or golf club. And they once shared a sleeper compartment traveling to Washington from Pennsylvania on train.
  • When Kennedy received the last rights after a severe infection from surgery to insert a metal plate in his spine, VP Nixon told Jackie that if there was a tie vote in the Senate during Jack’s absence, he would not exercise his right as VP to cast the deciding vote. I’m not sure how close that would have come to happening, but it was a nice gesture.
  • Sometime after the election against Kennedy, Nixon had three interesting phone calls in a span of ten minutes in which he spoke to Hoover, Ike, and Kennedy. He thought that was probably an unprecedented series of conversations.
  • We’ve seen Al Gore have to sit on the inaugural stage and watch his opponent take the oath of office. And like Al Gore, Nixon as Vice President had to preside over the roll call of the Electoral College to confirm his opponent. But I thought he had some eloquent words, “This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the presidency announced the results of an election in which he was defeated. I do not thing we could have a more strinking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system.“
• Watch Ted Koppel Tell Sean Hannity That He’s “bad For America” – Koppel said he’d attracted followers “who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.”
  • After the interview aired Sunday, Hannity dared CBS News to release an unedited version.
  • Following the broadcast on Sunday, CBS did release a web extra of the Hannity interview, which included the “journalism is dead” interaction.
  • Here’s the entire ‘Sunday Morning’ segment if you are interested, which I thought was pretty good overall.
  • I wish I could express myself as poised and detailed as Koppel.
  • I only know of Hannity and have never watched his show, but from what I’ve seen, and he did this with Koppel, he likes to interrupt and point his finger.

“Do you think we’re bad for America? You think I’m bad for America?” – Sean Hannity
"Yes." – Ted Koppelhttps://t.co/RFcUEHpHBb pic.twitter.com/WD0IDSbI2r

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 26, 2017

• Somewhere in Ohio, John Boehner is puffing on a cigarette gleefully enjoying his time away from Washington.
• If my non-alternative facts are correct, over the past few years, the House has voted more than 60 times to repeal or alter the ACA.  Republicans finally have control of the House, Senate, and the presidency and finally had the chance to follow through but delayed the vote. And now President Trump is saying if they don’t vote yes today, he will move on and blame them for failing to repeal Obamacare, which I think is a political savvy move.
• WifeGeeding and I had a “date night” last night and went to Fair Park to watch NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!’ record a show. We used a new baby sitter this time, and, well, she locked herself out of the house.
  
  • I knew what all these folks looked like, but I was surprised to see the host wear a suit. When I listen to show he seems too relaxed to have a suit and tie on
  • It was interesting being part of an NPR crowd, most of them are what you’d expect but there were some surprises. I should have counted all the hiking sandals and gloved-shoes as they were everywhere.
  • They usually record the show on Thursday night and air it on Saturday, which is a 55-minute version. From what we experienced, the show was just under three hours long, so they will have a lot of editing. Because of this, they will sometimes read two sets of jokes depending on how the news will turn out the next day.
  • At the end of the show, they re-record some lines, mainly questions and introductions, if there were audio problems or they were too tongue-tied.
  • The humor can be a bit raunchy at times, and I bet that’s the stuff that’s easily edited out.
  • The contestants on the phone may speak for no more than a minute-and-a-half the entire time to answer three questions, but the host and panel chat so much they don’t get back to the caller for another question for another 15-20 minutes.
  • Their special guest was no other than 83-year-old Charlie Pride, and it was his lovable ability to ramble and not actually answer a question which made our show the longest one ever recorded, or so we were told.
    • I think the host and panelists asked him five or six different times how he was able to transition from a baseball career to one in country music, but Pride just really wanted to talk about baseball.
    • When asked about how did he first get involved with country music, he stated he was listening to the radio and his father’s favorite show, Mr. District Attorney, would play and he’d repeat the opening words, “Mr. District Attorney! Champion of the people! Defender of truth! Guardian of our fundamental rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!”
    • He said that was the first time he’d been on the Fair Park stage, but he’s been in the audience. But he did state he played on the Bass Hall and Meyerson stages.
• ‘Hookers’ turned gay man straight with ‘anointed cake,’ Dallas evangelist says
• Mark Cuban’s hoverboard will hit Kickstarter in April
• There should be more of these things at sporting events for the kiddos:
  
• Bill Maher is very polarizing, but when he cancels a show he tries to make up for it. But I have a feeling the BBQ will come from a place like Dickies:
  

• That’s my father sometime after Navy bootcamp.
• Last night’s ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ was the one where Nancy Reagan makes an appearance for her Just Say No campaign. She did a good job, it’s like she was an actress or something.
• Yes, I know she was an actress in Hollywood back in the day.
• I apologize to those of you who thought I may have been taking a jab at Neil Gorsuch yesterday. My comment about him “dodging” a question about ducks and horses was made in jest.
• I only caught the first part of WFAA’s late night broadcast, but I think I heard Pete Delkus he was going to answer viewer email during his weather segment.
• NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” is recording in Dallas tonight and WifeGeeding and I will actually be in the audience. She was nice enough to surprise me with tickets. For those of you familiar with the show, I have no idea who the panelists will be, but I think I read somewhere Mo Rocca lived in Dallas at a time so maybe he’ll make an appearance.  And yes, there is a twist of oddness we are paying to watch someone that is only available via radio and audio podcast.
• DaughterGeeding has met all the requirements to take her Taekwondo red belt test, except for one. One of her requirements is to be respectful to family, but she hit her brother twice in one day recently. We had an internal investigation into the matter and found BoyGeeding didn’t do anything to provoke her, she was just having a bit of an attitude problem. We may have let it slide if it was only one hit, but punching him twice in one day was pushing it and thought this would be a good lesson regarding actions and consequences.
• Domino’s stock has outperformed Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon this decade
• Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M – Official: “[This] is not an invitation to drivers to try to beat the red light.”
• Gang rape was a ‘hoax’ by bloody teen who ran into church half-naked, Denison police say
  • An 18-year-old Texas woman’s claim that she was abducted and assaulted two weeks ago were a hoax, Denison police said Wednesday. The incident caused a whirlwind of speculation in the town near the Oklahoma border after the bloody woman ran into a church wearing only a shirt, bra and underwear and lied about two black men raping her while a third held her down, Denison Police Chief Jay Burch said.
• Jalopnik – Consumer Reports’ Worst Cars Of 2017 List Is Brutal And Accurate
  • I’m so glad I held off purchasing a Maserati Ghibli.
• Here’s a NY Times interative article about the size and spending of the U.S. military.