The Big Ass Effect Before you get too excited, let me explain that yesterday I hosted a Zoomathon for my American Flyers Motorcycle Club, who formally celebrates its Silver (25th!) Anniversary this month. There were eighteen participating callers with a total of thirty-four attendees plus two (Nik and Charlene) who I inadvertently left out in the Zoom waiting room, failing to admit them after I had admitted three tranches of other entrants waiting. Oops. I…
Ultimate Democratization The year was 2000 and we had just come through the Y2K scare relatively unscathed. It was not for lack of scrambling and effort as you may recall, so who knows whether we averted a crisis by getting out ahead of it by sounding the alarms, or if the concern was over-hyped and was never really a big risk. Either way, it was nice to see that Y2K did little to slow the…
Conquering Paradise It’s Monday morning and another great day in Paradise. Yesterday I started watching the 1992 movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise with Gerard Depardieu. I was prompted in that direction by a National Geographic article on a great new Mayan (more likely Toltec) artifact find in Chichen Itza in the middle of the Yucatán jungle. That reminded me of the Mel Gibson directed film Apocalypto about a manhunt by tribal people though the jungle.…
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday I don’t mind outing myself as a Monkees fan. In the 60’s everybody my age was a Monkees fan. And then for thirty years or so I had to secretly hanker for a little Daydream Believer not to mention Another Pleasant Valley Sunday . Now that both Davy Jones and Peter Tork are dearly departed, only Mike Nesmith and Mickey Dolenz are left and between the two they have over 150…
Keeping Busy Yesterday, Kim and I made the trip from our home to Ventura, which, for those not familiar with California geography, is 175 miles north of here on the Pacific coast north of Los Angeles. I had ordered that new motorcycle seat for the new bike and I didn’t want to trust or suffer the over-burdened package delivery services since I had to both get my new seats and drop off my old seats…
Needless Mark-up I hear that Neiman Marcus is likely to declare bankruptcy soon as the latest signal that the retail business sector is the next in what promises to be an ongoing array of zombie business segments in the new normal. This morning I heard a retail analyst talking about it. He was actually quite balanced about it all. Clearly Neiman Marcus is an iconic brand that has been around for 113 years. It originated…
Donut Holes I can tell that this quarantine has gone on too long or at least long enough. It’s been seven weeks by my count and any way you slice it, that’s a long time to be at home. The problem is, I can’t reasonably expect any sympathy for that since the entire world considers staying at home the least troubling of the three choices. The first choice is to be sick with COVID-19 and…
Ghost Writing More than two years ago a friend of mine sent me the first fifty pages of a manuscript that he had “written” than chronicled his career and life. He had put together some 230 pages of thoughts and notes in somewhat random order and had hired a ghost writer to help him bring it all together as a book that would be both readable and compelling. He sent it to me to read…
All Tesla All Day Almost three years ago I got it in my head that I might want to own a Tesla X to use out here when I moved for good. The experience from start to finish was interesting. Kim and I went to one of the urban malls that are scattered in San Diego. This one was near La Jolla, which meant it was close to the mother lode of excess disposable income.…
Reefer Madness The 1936 cult classic movie Reefer Madness has been called one of the worst movies ever made. I suppose that is what made it a cult classic. It was produced by a church group as a cautionary tale for the youth of America to warn them about the hazards of recreational drug use (mostly marijuana) and how it could lead to harder drugs, personal failure and general societal malaise. In overshooting its mark,…