 I am unable to update the banner situation in the skyway, despite what I said yesterday. I apologize; refunds will be offered at the door. But it’s possible they changed today, since I spoke with another fellow at the concierge, and he seemed to get what I was saying.
Standing nearby when I told him about the banners was a woman who looked at me with something close to astonishment, and said “who are you?” Like that. “Do you work in this building?” She asked, and I had to say no; over there. I guess the subtext was “why do you care?”
Because it’s wrong. I walked over with the concierge guy, and we read out the lines, and he got it.
“Goes to show someone looks at it,” I said.
“There’s that,” he replied.
“Benefits of being an English major,” I said, and he had the kindness not to say “there’s that, too.”
Hot day with a mean sudden storm; much appreciated. Drenching rain, lightning and thunder. I was driving Daughter home from the Walker Art Center when it rolled in, and handed her my phone: call up the last app on the last page. It was something that shows lightning strikes all over the world as they happen.
“How do they know?”
Uh - it’s tied into, the, the lightning database. See if it shows any lightning here.
“It’s beautiful . . . you don’t have any saved locations. You didn’t grant it access to location services.”
“Well grant it.”
So she’s peering at the screen to see if it’s showing any lightning in our area when outside the window you can see LIGHTNING IN OUR AREA, which is possibly the best example of modern times I can think of right now.
Let's check the ol' Detritus Folder for some internet gleanings.
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The original tweet said Millennials couldn’t invent anything because they couldn’t afford houses, and hence garages. The additional comment struck me as a bit peculiar - what, exactly, is he referring to?
As for Walt, that wasn’t his garage. It was his uncle’s. And Walt grew up poor. Mattel? Well, that was two guys, and they started out making picture frames. You could probably do that in your living room.
Google started out in a garage owned by the first founders’ friend. |
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If I understand the tweeter, all these guys had “privilege,” a magic ichor that let them blithely try something new without worrying about what would happen if they failed. And now people who have the resources to start something new are rich and have garages already, or are disconnected from the lower-middle-class world of crappy garages?
The only reason I bring it up is because you know this started out as an inspiration: all these huge businesses had humble beginnings. The internet, in its infinite wisdom, couldn’t let that stand because everything is horrible. Negativity is a sign of enlightenment. Positivity is a sign that you just don’t get it.
My favorite dialog box of the week:
Etiam ac porta est, id finibus nibh. Donec laoreet ante ut pharetra hendrerit. Praesent nec purus sem. Vivamus tincidunt orci vestibulum, pellentesque arcu ac, ultrices nisi. Donec iaculis volutpat nisl ut mollis. Duis maximus turpis nec posuere dignissim. In euismod et massa eget malesuada.
Finally: I don't know how I came across this, but I had to laugh:
Minnesotans in the audience, explain it for everyone else.
Mumps Lawson, back to work after his cleft-chin implant:
Early Lance was jowly . . . and easy.
The parking ramp columns, by the way, look a lot like the pillars i the old Star newsroom.
Another installment of America's purveyor of imaginative history.
Which is one way to put it.
Instead of the swank old sounds of Goodwill albums, this year we're going to share bad 1960s pop music. The second- and third-tier tunes.
The San Francisco psych scene was interesting, yes, but you might say a lot of these bands were derivative.
And now, the rest of the story.
We know a lot about this Zamperini fellow.
The flag anecdote? True. But Bill omits the liquidy inspiration:
Zamperini almost lost his life again, executing a harebrained prank: trying to snatch a Third Reich souvenir.
“They don’t have small-sized beers in Germany,” Zamperini says, by way of excuse for his lunatic caper. “I was drinking in a pub across from the Reichstag where some Nazi flags were flying, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to have that flag for a souvenir.’”
The inebriated American had already clambered up the flagpole when he heard the guards shouting and firing in the air. Zamperini’s German consisted of a single word: bier. All the same he got the point; meekly climbing down, he offered flattery: “I wanted to take it home to remember my wonderful time here,” he told the guards in English. After conferring with their colonel, the soldiers decided to let the crazy athlete have his souvenir. (That flag, along with the ring from Adolphe Menjou and many other souvenirs, are now part of the Zamperini Museum, kept in the attic of his Hollywood home.)
About the crash, and the ring given to him by
In May 1943, during a search-and-rescue mission 800 miles south of Hawaii, his B-24 went down over the Pacific. (Remarkably, Zamperini’s Trojan ring hooked onto the plane’s shattered window frame, enabling him to hoist himself free of the sinking craft.)
The story about the ring, I assume, is BS BS. Zamperini's plane went down on May 27, 1943; Charley Paddock crashed on July 21.
Bill made that up. Because the story of Zamperini wasn't exciting enough.
 See you Tuesday - it's a three-day weekend, and I'm going to enjoy it. Have a grand time, and I hope your weather's good.
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