Years ago, though in living memory, a phrase was coined. “Too big to fail” meant an institution is of such significance that the government must bail it out no matter what amount of incompetence, mismanagement, or pure corruption has put it at risk. In the intervening decade or two, the meaning of that phrase (along with the meaning of very nearly everything else) has softened. It’s now “too big to go against,” meaning anything whose shortcomings it would be inconvenient to mention.
Today’s rain would have altered plans, if today were thirty years ago. Thirty years ago, my family was sitting at a table on pea gravel under our deck eating a meal together, chalk on the concrete foundation proclaiming the venue “Augusta the Third’s” — a pop up eatery in today’s parlance — to celebrate my grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary. And they were ecstatic.
The Zippy Crew returns with musings on Aldi, Cheese, Monkeypox, preaching, Dale Earnhardt and more in an episode as packed as a summer potluck.
Paul Sorvino died on Monday at age 83. He was involved in an anecdote that I cherish a little. In some respects it might surprise you.
Last night I watched an engrossing movie. The Wind Rises was master filmmaker Miyazaki Hayao’s last work (or so he said after its release; there are always rumors of new projects). It is the story of Horikoshi Jiro, the idealistic young engineer who became the chief designer of the famous Mitsubishi A6M, notoriously known as the “Zero,” the most effective Japanese fighter plane of World War II.
February 28, 2001. A lovely Sunday, and a great day for a Daytona 500. That is, until we lost Dale Earnhardt (Sr). The racing legend began his dominance at the precise time that television and advertising was beginning to make NASCAR—-the pre-eminent stock car racing series here in the US—-visible to a mainstream audience. Earnhardt won 7 season championships in NASCAR’s top series, between 1980 and 1994, and was most likely its most beloved driver by fans. (His son, Dale, Jr., was far and away NASCAR’s most popular driver his entire career.)
There is so much to talk about, almost none of it good. Money that you earned and saved is being effectively squandered by inflation, as those savings lose their value in large measure because the political party in power is made up of idiots and liars. The president, who was a louse before he was insane, doesn’t care about you any more than the reprehensible Donald Trump did, and neither do any of his lefty elitist colleagues.
I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect keyboard for a while now, and the Royal Kludge RK100 offers an attractive option from a well-established brand that falls just below the attention around Kickstarter stars Epomaker and Keychron. In so many ways, this keyboard checks every box I was looking for and for a remarkably good price. Let’s give it a spin.
Sixty-four years ago, the number one song in the nation was a simple thing sung by the Kingston Trio. It was called “Tom Dooley.” The performance, coming at the height of the great folk scare of the 1950s and early 60s, began with Bob Shane’s banjo riff, played on a plectrum banjo like — maybe the same as — the one I have upstairs in the banjo locker.
I see it on the faces of everyone I talk to. The war wearied look of two years and three months since life changed. As we peer into a fall in which COVID continues to roar along and many I know who had dodged it are now catching it, life-February-2020-style feels more distant than ever.