BagOfNothing.com

• That’s a pretty creative pop-culture Christmas ornament.
• WifeGeeding drove to East Texas with the kids a day early, so I borrowed SisterGeeding’s Mini Cooper since the Nissan Leaf can’t’ make it that far. I’ve sat in many cars, but that Mini Cooper had the most comfortable seats I’ve ever sat in. It made for quite a pleasurable two-hour (four, there and back) driving experience. Those Mini Coopers are a lot faster than I thought.
• When I left Lindale, the car’s dashboard stated the outside temperature was 76°F. Forty-minutes later, it read 30°F. When I got out of the car to fill up with gas, I can’t recall feeling wind that strong or biting cold in my life. I saw this sign posted on the gas station door. I can understand the safety concern regarding the hoodies, but I don’t for the pants.
  
• I don’t care if Jerry Jones or his son are rich beyond their dreams or how successful and famous they are, none of that should take away the joy and pride they had in watching their grandson/son win the state championship in high school football as the team’s starting quarterback. And I don’t care how rich and privileged that child is, he can’t control the circumstances of how his father and grandfather are. For him to quarterback his team to a high school state championship in the stadium his family is responsible for is quite unique. There’s no telling how much crap he had to listen to from opposing players about who he’s related to.
• Attendance for the game was just a tad over 35,000.
• It was interesting seeing Tony Romo watch Jerry’s grandson play in the state championship game sitting next to Jerry in the owner’s suite. The kid does wear Romo’s number. But I thought it was even cooler for Stephen Jones to just be sitting in the stands with other parents. And I’ll hand it to Jerry, he didn’t walk appear on the field until after the champions had some time to celebrate for themselves, it’s like he understood (for once) his presence would be a distraction.
  
• The Wall Street Journal had a feature on Jerry Jones yesterday.
• During Cowboys home games, the broadcast team will often show a profile of the new practice facility, similar to this one. What’s misleading is that field is just a gathering area for the public and not used by the players, the actual outdoor practice fields are out of the picture, located mid-left of the domed structure.
  
• Random house in University Park. The Big Tex head really sells. it
  
• Non-spoiler Rogue One: A Star Wars Story thoughts
  • We watched the movie at the Harkins Theater Cine Capri, which was a first for me. The screen was massive and the theater was a tad swanky with the curtains hanging around the screen. Before the start of the movie, the curtains close and cover the screen, a man in a suit comes out with a microphone to welcome the audience, he boasts about the size of the screen and the quality of the surround sound, asks for everyone to either turn off their phone or set it to silent, and then the curtains open again and the previews start.
  • Before the start of the movie, I jokingly asked my friend if he had any hand lotion because my hands were dry. About a minute later, a woman sitting in front of us handed me a bottle of lotion.
  • They decided to do away with some Star Wars tradition you see at the start of the film, which felt odd, but it had my blessing with how it was done.
  • I felt The Force Awakens forced too many things in how they connected old characters or with some comedic moments, I only sensed it one time in this film, but I was okay with it for the most part.
  • I first saw it in Ant-Man with Michael Douglas and then again with Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War. Special effects have made it possible to make the actors appear as their younger selves, and this Star Wars film was able to resurrect dead actors and use them substantially in incredibly real detail.
  • One character for the Empire wore a white uniform which stood. All I could think of was Col. Nathan Jessup from A Few Good Men commenting on whta he thinks of white military uniforms.
  • A lot of movies and television shows will try to push a strong female lead and/or diverse cast, and in doing so, the quality of the product is diminished. This film accomplished it and you don’t even notice it. There’s no replacing a strong storyline and with good acting.
  • The Darth Vadar scenes alone was worth the price of admission.
  • This film’s storyline takes place before A New Hope, or the very first Star Wars film ever released. I really appreciate the technology and designed they used to keep that same feel of the original trilogy. One major complaint of prequels George Lucus did was that the storyline took place before the original films but the design and technology used by the characters looked more advanced.
• Obama got pranked by the White House staff

Sometimes you gotta have fun. For the past three weeks, there have been four snowmen on display in the Rose Garden (see photo in earlier post). We’ve been joking that we should move the snowmen a few feet closer to the Oval Office every day to see if anyone noticed. Then we realized the snowmen were too heavy to easily lift. But finally this morning before the President came to the office, some helpful staff–I won’t say who–moved all the snowmen so each one was peeking through a different window into the Oval. This photo was taken this afternoon as the President signed end-of-the-year bills.

A photo posted by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Dec 16, 2016 at 1:47pm PST

• Slow news day? The lead story on CBS11’s 10:00 PM news was a line to see Santa closing early.
• I have no idea how much I’ll blog for the rest of the year. I’m not returning to work until the start of the new year, and with the time off, I might just avoid being online as much as possible.
• DaughterGeeding’s school reported a case of mumps yesterday.
• The bathtub the kids use has some moldy caulk that I can never get out. But I tried the trick of mixing bleach and baking soda into a thick paste and slathering it on. But here’s the kicker, I placed some plastic wrap over the top of the paste to keep the bleach from drying out. I left it on for about four hours and when I scrubbed it off, no more mold.
• I never heard of the movie La La Land until two days ago and now it seems like it’s the greatest movie ever conceived.
• It’s the weekend before Christmas, which means I’ll be traveling to East Texas to celebrate Christmas with WifeGeeding’s family.
• Arizona Sheriff Arpaio Revives Obama Birther Conspiracy With New Claims – The outgoing Arizona sheriff revived the birther conspiracy theory around President Obama’s birth certificate, saying a years-long investigation proves it is a “fraudulently created document.”
• I don’t know a lot about Ty Cobb other than he was a great baseball player and was regarded as a jerk, but yesterday I learned he was an early investor in both Coca-Cola and GM and died a very wealthy man.
  • When Ty Cobb died in 1961, his investment portfolio included lucrative early stakes in companies like Coca-Cola and General Motors that were large enough to be worth the modern equivalent of hundreds of millions and potentially billions of dollars today.
  • Ty became a very early investor in Coca-Cola and even a member of the company’s Board of Directors. His initial Coke investment started with 300 shares, twenty years later Ty’s stake in Coke had grown to more than 24,000 shares. He believed so strongly in Coke that he also ended up purchasing three Coca-Cola bottling plants, located in Idaho, Oregon and California.
  • In 1924, Ty was paid $25,000 to appear in a newspaper advertisement for United Motors. As per usual, instead of pocketing the money, he used every dollar to purchase United Motors stock. United Motors was eventually bought by General Motors and Ty’s shares were converted to GM shares just as the American car industry was taking off.
  • A few days before his death, he checked into Emory University hospital with two bags. One bag contained personal items such as clothes and toothpaste, the other bag contained $1 million in negotiable bonds (essentially cash) and a Colt .45 pistol. At the time of his death, the value of Ty’s portfolio had grown to be worth an astounding $12.1 million. That’s equal to $97 million in 2016 inflation adjusted dollars. . . . before he died that portfolio was paying out $450,000 every quarter in dividends alone. That meant his personal net worth was growing by roughly $15 million per year (in 2016 dollars). He also owned a vast amount of real estate including more than half of what would become Lake Tahoe in Northern California.
  • If Ty hadn’t donated his Coca-Cola shares to charity where they were divested and distributed to the those in need, after 50 years of stock splits and compounding dividends, today his stake would be worth more than $2 billion!