Interesting distortions

This morning, I rewatched “When We Were Kings”. I think I've seen it three times and it's still terrific. But for the first time, I decided to see if I could watch the actual fight afterward: Ali vs Foreman, in The Rumble in the Jungle, in Zaïre, in 1974.

In the movie, they (especially, Norman Mailer and George Plimpton) romanticize the rope-a-dope – Ali's strategy of tiring out Foreman by leaning on the ropes to get away from his punches, which Ali definitely did a lot of.

But watching the actual fight was kinda wild, because I think Ali wins every round. He spent most of the earlier rounds absorbing Foreman’s body shots and slipping nearly all of his head shots. Then, whenever Ali had openings, he absolutely punished Foreman with his extremely quick combinations, almost all to the face/head.

Maybe Foreman won a round or two, but those were surely close. Regardless, it was an incredible fight, definitely worth all the hype at the time, but not so accurately represented in the documentary. I'm glad I watched it.

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I’ll have more comments about 1974 sporting events coming soon….

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2023.Cycling.Distance

2023 wasn't my year. Early on, I was busy on all the nice days and free on all the shitty/cold/windy days. Then, I dunno, life kept getting in the way. Then, a trip home to the States, etc., etc. It wasn't the best of years for me (but it aslo wasn't that bad).

I really started to ride in mid-August and September and I managed to get up to 1239.36km for the year. I hoped, blandly, to make it to a thousand and I did manage to get beyond that.

I will not repeat this in 2024. My goal is 4000km, a distance I have not yet reached. And I should be able to get there, barring catastrophe.

We'll see.

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Weird Playlist

Here's a weird thing I started 20 years ago and never got back to. I'ma built this in Music and add to it when I think of vaguely-related/-similar songs.

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In Old Mexico - Tom Lehrer
Lonely Apache - Los Straitjackets
Louie Louie - Sandpipers
Guantanamera - Sandpipers
Llorando (Crying) - Mulholland Drive Soundtrack
Desconocido Soy - David Byrne / NRU
Manifold de Amour - Latin Playboys
Hotel California - Gypsy Kings
Outta Gear - Los Straitjackets
Spanish Bombs - The Clash

Possible additions:
And I Love Her - Sandpipers
1970s Chiquita Banana commercial....

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¯\(ツ)/¯

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Odd what you forget to remember

I didn't recall this little moment until I read this just now, a memory from a far-off time (mid-July of 2003) in a far-off place (Corvallis, OR, USA).

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My father and I gathered up the telescope-stuff, tossed it in the Xterra, and took off to find a dark, light-pollutionless hillside from which to watch the Moon occult Mars, only to get out there and discover pretty quickly that the angles were wrong and the Moon was most likely going to pass under Mars - which it did, by a considerable number of degrees.

So we repacked everything and came home.

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Nobody said we were geniuses.

Actually, joke aside, this would not have been terribly difficult to have figured out at the time, but, with smartphones and apps, it would be an absolute breeze to figure out now.

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I totally paused!

There are dates I wish I knew; this was one of them. Turns out this happened June 17, 2003:

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First Warning!

I've gotten 4 or 5 (heretofore, speeding) tickets – one in Oregon, the rest in Texas – but tonite marks the first time I've ever been pulled over and gotten off with a warning. The ticket would have been for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign - even tho it was 2:10 in the morning and there was no one else around. Aside from the nearby cop....

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The cop was nice enough - he let me go after watching me look for the registration for a few minutes, saying only that if you drive a car you should know where everything is. That is, of course, absolutely correct. But I still don't know what the hell the registration looks like. Last time I was pulled over, dude said he didn't need to see it, and I'm pretty sure I never have. I never needed a copy when I got pulled over in Texas (theirs might be a sticker that's adhered to one's car's windshield).

Whatever. I didn't get a ticket. I'm jazzed. And tired as hell.

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I should add that at one point the cop asked how my day was going "otherwise". I laughed at this. This may have been part of the reason he let me go: maybe may have found my laugh disarming, or he may have appreciated my enjoyment of his subtle, late-night humor. I dunno which.

Anyway, I drove the rest of the way home like an old lady: Slowly and with my turn signal on.

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I'm the only one in this left alive

I got my father saying peeps (short for people, if you're fucking 90). There's something completely hilarious about hearing a nearly-57-year-old white guy stick peeps into his conversations. He was talking to his mother earlier today, and he said (of whom I know not), "Well, he is good peeps."

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Also earlier today (yesterday, technically [June 15, 2003]), I was browsing a websiteful of obscure words. He and I are both word fans (lexiphiles), so as I was browsing I was copying choice words into a Word document for his entertainment.

When I finished, I handed my father the pageful of nifty words and he enjoyed them, commenting occasionally. Then he said, "I'll use these. I just hope the definitions are right. If the definitions are wrong, these words are lexifuckupimous."

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2023.Random.Phrases

This is the best thing I keep track of, if not the best thing I do altogether:

Here are 2023's bits of random phrases, some from me, most not, that struck me interesting for whatever reason; all were seen/heard in 2023.

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Fuckable foot
Fuck off, he hinted
Galvanized us in the watching
Either failed immediately or failed eventually
Cream & Bastards Rise
Disconcert the shooter
Diplomatic evasion
Attitude of attentive repose
Your sorrowing friends
Heeled absolutely cleanly
Capering women and monkey-faced men
Useless in retail
Bubbling cauldron of creativity
Layout judgment
Solid spine of decency
An Administration of the vengeful
Culture catch on
Superman and The Idiot
Cosmetic discoloration
Abort Retry Fail
Pausing for data lag
Losses are lessons
The closer the knit, the tighter the fit
Got my candle relumed without danger
Weak monarch in a dangerous interregnum
Radical transparency
Pure vision of an invented world
Brutal and summary injustice
More apparent than sincere
Headbutt your mouth’s face
Comet-haunted emptiness
The horns of the cuckold
Contagious abortion in cattle
Gentle hills, planted in wheat
Sin-guilty consciences
You have a problem I don’t have and I have a solution you don’t need
Creates the entertainment perfect
Russia's sunless orbit
The tenement den
Innocent and magnificent
Consistent system
White gaussian noise
Gross hugging
Shine my halo!
Fantastic pistachio
A moment to learn, a life to misunderstand
Lay low and wear beige
A matched pair of neurological events
The N-word situation
You’re on the wing; I’m out the way
Good Conservative nonsense
The stage of dignified reluctance
Lyrical beauty and ethical depth
Repertoire of adornment
Unconscious thought
World’s oldest glacier mummy
A high pitch of excellence
Parlor bolshevik; armchair bolshevik
Toweringly disagreeable people
Serially cascaded
There remained things unchanged
Getting plowed in the dumper
Smattering of indifference
Literate rudeness
In a transport of agony and ecstasy
As shattering as buggery
Solipsistic whimsey
Grotesquely ornamental shins
Itinerant typesetter
An air-conditioned demonstrator
Smeared by high velocity
Inharmonious with the mood of the lounge
An orgy of masochism
Both barrels of the Interstate
Withered balloon of an old man
Gymnasium shoes
A tissue of misunderstandings and impossibilities
The possible and the aspirational
The best revenge
Fully-deployed John
When I attended her dying
Mothers and things
A succession of embraces and escapes
Wonderful for the vanity
The sharp sunshine of the dusty street
The new sincerity
An expensive coach with a bad team
Spectacular tedium
A somber condo

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Here are 2022's.
And 2021's.
2020's.

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My Father Liked To Wear My Shoes

It was weird because he had small feet (9½ or 10 in men's) and I don't (13 or 14 in men's). When he stood in them, he looked absolutely cartoonish: a little man, his feet aswim in pontoons.

Occasionally I'd walk around the house trying to remember where I left my shoes, and in frustration I'd finally ask, "Have you seen my shoes?" He'd reply with something like, "Yeah, I wore them to check the mail" or "I mowed the lawn in them."

I have no idea how it can be comfortable to wear shoes that are bigger than one's own calves, but okay, whaterver.

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First one Reads like Mamet

Is there any line from Shakespeare that sounds more modern than this?

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
–"Henry VI", Act IV, Scene 2

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More, because I don't want to waste another entry on related frippery.

God send everyone their heart's desire!
–"Much Ado About Nothing", Act III, Scene 4

If god sent everyone their heart's desire, no one would be left alive to accept it.

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Heaven hath a hand in these events.
–"Richard II", Act V, Scene 2

If such could be said of any event, so could this: Heaven never stayed a horror.

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I still think about this sometimes

These are also from ~20 years ago:

My father has the most contagious laugh I've ever heard. Some lady on the TV just sang, "I threw my ring down the toilet, 'cause that's where our love went." He started laughing and then so did I. Later, I'll write about seeing "Blankman" with him. It was awesome.

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[Later:]

(It's very likely this won't translate in print.)

Re: Blankman:
I went to see this awful film with my father, in a theater with maybe 10 other people, tops. We'd see everything together and, after all the quality options were seen, we'd lower ourselves to watching truly horrid shit like "Blankman".

In the movie, Damon Wayans (who plays Blankman, a semi-retarded, self-styled superhero) has typical superhero gadgets, but his are ultra-low-class versions thereof – stuff you would expect to see if Batman shopped at Kmart. One of them, for example, is a grappling hook made from a short-stemmed fishing pole. In one scene, Blankman is in an elevator stuck between floors (I can't recall if he was in the elevator when it got stuck or if he got in to help the others out, but I suspect the latter).

The doors to the elevator are opened and cops are lifting people out to safety on the higher floor†. When only Blankman remains inside the box, a cop reaches out his hand and Blankman slaps it away. He can get out on his own, dammit; he's a superhero. Then, from the upper floor, you see Blankman's head slowly rise. After that you see his shoulders, then his arms, and finally you see that he's frantically spinning his little fishing-pole grappling-hook, coming up on his own (absurd use of) power.

At this totally-, ridiculously-stupid scene, my father began to giggle. Then he began to laugh, and added, "What a stupid son of a bitch!". I began to giggle. Then he began to guffaw. Then the people across the center aisle started to laugh; then, the people behind us, too. Soon, and for the rest of the terrible movie, we were all laughing.

The movie may suck beyond all comprehension – not "may", "does" – but it remains among my favorite movie-going experiences, solely because my father found that scene so ridiculous it made him, and therefore the rest of us, laugh.

That was my "Blankman" story.

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It's likely not even Damon Wayans remembers "Blankman", but I will; I still enjoy thinking of this experience occasionally. I can't believe it happened nearly 30 years ago.

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† Fun elevator fact: most elevator-related deaths result from people jumping down to the lower floor when their elevator gets stuck between floors. They jump down, lose their balance, and fall backward into the open shaft. If you're ever in a stuck elevator between floors, climb.

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Got a little teary reading this

From June 9th, 2003:

The Nice Friendliness Of Pets

Occasionally, while I'm sitting here typing, one of my dogs will walk in, with his nails tapping on the tiles as he approaches. Just to alert me that he's near, he'll touch my leg with his nose. It's the cutest thing. That's the extent of it: tap, turn, leave.

I always immediately pat him on the side, and each time it seems to scare him a little, but he's always happy for the attention and will stop and wait for me to finish.

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Been a long time gone, now, nearly 20 years later, but still love and miss those little dudes.

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In the early time of blogs...

... there were things like Friday Five† – a list of five new/different questions posted each Friday to give people something to write about, a prompt for some fun. There were other types with similar prompts; the idea caught on. Here's one of my FF answers, from 19.5 years ago, that I appreciate. (Question 2 was a about quotes. I kinda went nuts with that one, so I've excised it here.)

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It's Monday! What better time to answer the Friday Five?!

1: What do you most want to be remembered for?

I don't want to be remembered. When I go, I'm gone. Leave it at that.

3: What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?

I've lost some weight.

4: What about the past ten years?

I've lost a considerable amount of weight.

5: If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?

Don't ever willfully harm another person, and don't take pleasure or profit from others' harm. Other than that, enjoy life and let nothing stand in your way.

Actually, come to think of it, I was talking recently with one of my in-town cousins (a 7 y/o girl) and I told her never to do anything that bores her. I quite like that; it's probably the best advice I'll ever give‡.

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† The original website, fridayfive.org, seems to have vanished entirely. So it goes.

‡ This assumption has (so far) withstood the test of time. I don't think I've offered anything that surmounts this.

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An Old Idea, Resurfaced

Looking thru an old blog of mine that, recent days excepted, I haven't looked an in a very. long. time.

In it, a few months shy of 20 years ago, I had this idea. I still like it (never did it, but I like it). Edited and added to a bit, here it is:

One of my uncles had stupid shit cheaply framed in his bathroom and I stole this idea. I framed a $6.00 a jury-duty check, and a few of my favorite New Yorker cartoons, for instance. But I just had an inspired idea. When I took Photography in high school, I only took one really good picture - it's of a urinal (unfortunately).

So hers's my idea: What if I were to cheaply frame pictures, not of random shit, but of bathroom-stuff themselves (toilets, urinals, sinks, soap dispensers, giant-ass towel loops, whatever else is in bathrooms) and hang them in my bathroom? Is or is that not inspired?

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Harper's New Monthly Magazine

Harper’s, the monthly magazine, was first published in June of 1850, and initially cost $3 per year.

Seems cheap, but:

$3 in 1850 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $121.80 today, an increase of $118.80 over 174 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.15% per year between 1850 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,960.16%.

(https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1850?amount=3)

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I just subsribed for $46 – an absolute steal!

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