The American Dream

I have pinpointed the exact perfect year to have been born an average, non-exceptional middle-class white man in America, and it's 1930:

Too young to fight in World War II
You'd also get out of Korea by going to college
Which was either totally free or like $12 for the entire 4 years, and a college degree was still a really big deal
Post-war America was the exact perfect time to drop into some cushy bullshit job at a big fat corporation that you'd stay at for 40 years, slowly rising amongst the ranks through grinding mediocrity while your wife and 2.5 kids stayed at home waiting on your 3 weeks of vacation in August
You'd hit your financial work peak during the economic "greed is good!" boom of 1980s
Your career would be winding down just as computers were really taking over offices, so you never had to feel threatened by them and would only ever know the Internet as something "fun to look at"
You'd retire at the perfect moment of the prosperous 1990s, with the stock market roaring like never before along with one of the last pensions that felt like an entitlement
You'd die with Obama in office, feeling good about the direction of the country & everybody in it

Life. It's Really Happening, Isn't It?

I've never once in my life seemed to use a colander that wasn't just slightly too small for the exact amount of pasta I cooked.

Xmastime Asks, "What If?" 🤔

What if Michael Jordan had meant to send this to the White Sox & was just too embarrassed to admit his mistake? 🤔

Xmastime Unsent Text du Jour

I'll Say This.

Everybody loves Michael Keaton but nobody talks about how great he was in his guest star episode on Frasier.

OMG du Jour 😮🤯

Have I found the Snoopy cherry??!?!??!?!!? 💰💰💰💰

Xmastime, Genius Photography Genius

 I call this one, The Opening Scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas, Thank You Very Much

Here's the original photo I took. You may give yourself permission to be humbled. 😔

I Mean FFS I Am Not Made of Stone, People

Of course only Bono can get the one secret of the Universe from Paul McCartney that's not in every one of the 14 billion books written about The Beatles. 😮🤯🤗❤️❤️❤️❤️🇬🇧

Don't Worry About it Buddy We've All Been Caught with Our Mitts in the Cheetos Bag

Not All Dogs Go to Heaven

Looks like a buncha rich fucks in New York City are campaigning to save pit bulls:

Corry’s nonprofit and its comedy event, Stand Up For Pits, has long attracted famous New Yorkers with its mission of advocating for pit bull-type dogs, which, she says, are among the most vilified and abused dogs on the planet, echoing a claim from PETA.

"Third person"? Where Was the Second Person? 🤔🤷‍♂️

Hmm...

...is this argument available for the abortion debate? 🤔🤷‍♂️

Questions. I Have Them.

Seriously, how far away are we from just telling the potato chip people exactly whatever unique or customized flavor we want & then getting that very flavor of potato chip? I mean by say September 2026 can I be chowing down on some pork egg foo young potato chips one day & then Arby’s roast beef chips the next? Why not?

Xmastime Fun with Inspect Element!

A Word On John Mulaney's Live Netflix Show Wrapping Up for the Season

I'll say the same-ish thing I did last week: no matter how many missed opportunities came & went during the live show, him actually going through with the fight with three 14 year-old boys he'd been promising for weeks is one of the best things I've seen happen on tv in years. Not the actual fight, but that it actually happened at all - of course like everybody else I assumed something would happen at the last minute to make the fight not happen but it did happen and I'm not joking that we're all better off for it:

...until around 8:04 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, John Mulaney versus three teen boys was still a going concern. At the end of April, John Mulaney announced he’d be fighting three teenage boys during the finale of his talk show, Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney. As the weeks went by and more teen boys were given their own fight promo shoots, folks began to wonder, Is he really gonna do it? And now we know. Hell yeah, he was.

As Joe Mande, Adam Sandler, one of the writers’ babysitters, a cigarette-ripping Sean Penn, announcer Richard Kind, and Saymo looked on, the teens worked together to topple their tall foe. One kid kept trying to go low to either flip or Three Stooges–style trip Mulaney, and that was a great instinct. Once John was on the ground, the collective weight of the teens was no match for one father of two. He tapped out, and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony heralded their triumph in song.

Oh F*ck This Bitch!

I know this is bad timing on my part but yes, my used bathwater is also for sale starting today. Thank you.

I'll Say This.

If dusting off my high school transcript is what I need to do to fight for academic freedom then that is what I'll do. 😔

WE ARE BULLDOGS! 🤗🕺

"All the boys remember Marlene" 🤣

Happy birthday to the always delightful Sue Holderness, aka Marlene Boyce from Only Fools and Horses and its spinoff featuring her & Boycie, The Green Green Grass. 🤗🤗🥳🕺

PERSONAL PET PEEVE: in the first scene featured below, after Marlene says her mother thought Boycie was a vampire he replied "she'd know, the old bat" but whoever put this video together cut that off and that irks me. 

Random Brilliant Line from an Old Xmastime Post Hereby Presented w/o Context

"You wanna crack down on oil, talk to Obama. Twistin' up some ass? That's my department."

Art World Horrified to Realize It’s Missed Mona Lisa Holding the Ace of Spades This Whole Time

John Roberts is a Fucking Idiot

I've spent years blasting John Roberts for being the absolute corrupt piece of shit that he is but now we have to add "dumb as shit motherfucker" into the mix; according to this article, as we already know John Roberts went out of his way to ensure that Trump has absolute immunity as president but now he’s GASP! SURPRISED! that Trump has run with this superpower, including stripping Roberts' own Supreme Court itself of its own power thanks to Roberts’ ruling.

Couldn’t be happening to more of a piece of shit fucking idiot than John Roberts. Fuck that shithead.

Cap Doffed

As you people already know there are plenty of times in which I give The New Yorker a lot of shit about the quality of their "winning" cartoon captions; this, however, is not one of those times. 👏👏👏👏🤣🤣🤣🤣

Trump's Merry Fucking Band of Idiots

We've had 10 years now of MAGA & so far their best idea is to blindly agree 100% with whatever the dumbest, shittiest human on the planet says, and so here we are today. When do we finally get a good idea from this crew? When do these “real” Americans, “the folks!”, actually deliver something that’s not just soiled diapers from President Asshole? After 10 years is that too much to ask?

This decade-long experiment of “the stupid people are really the smart ones!” shit has got to end, enough is enough already; you don’t demand that only short people play in the NBA because you’re pissed you’re only 5’7”. I'm sorry you're a fucking idiot but at least have the sense to know that insisting on people being as dumb as yourself run things is the reason your life is only getting shittier with each passing day of "owning the libs!".

Torn.

I'm not one of these Democrats for whom homelessness is some sort of moralistic test of tolerance or whatever bullshit and while I roll my eyes slightly at the idea of homeless people just doing whatever the fuck they want at all times in city streets, which is what Republicans want you to believe, to me "solving" homelessness in our city streets is very simple: we build UK-style city council buildings to house them, complete with mental health facilities et al. Nothing fancy, but a clean, safe apartment unit for each person to live in with some dignity while they try to get their shit together.

Meanwhile, I'm constantly hearing about homeless people not wanting to go to a shelter as if it’s "oh well that's the end of that I guess 🤷‍♂️" and so I'd be like well its either one of the buildings we've built for you or jail, so you tell me buddy.

Of course he real reason I'm telling you nice people this is that I can't believe we've gone this long with the fucking nightmare of private prison system and the Republicans haven't figured out yet what an absolute flood of $$$$$$$$$$$ for their shithead private prison buddies this idea could be. 😬

Questions. I Have Them.

How many people get sick because the last thing they do before washing their hands is touch a soap dispenser that presumably has been touched in the exact same manner by who knows how many people for who knows how long and is therefore presumably covered with bacteria/germs/etc?

Will the world's first true trillionaire be whoever invents the super-easy-to-use/not gaudy-looking home kitchen or bathroom sink soap dispenser that's foot-operated? And how many lives will be saved because of it? 🤔🤷‍♂️

Good News Everybody - The Newest Batch of Wegman's Jizz Donuts are Now Available.

And you better believe it's a first-come first-served sitch.

Xmastime Sitcom Worlds Colliding 🤗🤣🤣🤣🤣

ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES Happy Returns, February 1985
SEINFELD The Yada Yada, April 1997

 

Podcast Ideas. I Have Them.

A super-honest podcast about dieting called This Fucking Sucks.

Speaking of Assholes

Fuck this asshole; he wants to kiss the ring at Mar-a-Lago & then condescendingly shit on Democrats for not doing the same then he's either too stupid or too corrupt to be in office so either way he can just fucking bounce & go fuck himself already thank you very much.

Grrrr du Jour

A second problem with premade salads at any fast food restaurant is they pack them in their plastic casings all the way to the gills so you can't toss everything around for a balanced spread throughout; therefore you run into the old salad problem of eating up all the good stuff that's on top of the lettuce before having to cow-chud your way through a goddam forest of lettuce that you'll only finish if fueled sufficiently enough by a newly raging hatred of said jaw-crushing lettuce.

Fuck This Asshole.

10 years of this MAGA shit now; 10 years of being scolded about needing to listen to the "forgotten" noble patriots & it turns out this is the shit they want. Fuck this asshole.

13 Years Ago Today

Don’t Forget…

…Xmas Your Enthusiasm is also available on YouTube!! 🤗😜🕺🕺

Questions. I Have Them.

Was I REALLY ever this adorable??? 🤗😜🤣

OH SHIT ARE THESE A THING NOW????? 😮🤯😬😬😬

I have spent way too much time thinking about a Nutty Buddy bar I had the other day, the first I've had in decades, and wondering if I'm dreaming or is it possible they're even better than I remember from my youth. - XMASTIME, 2020

These just debuted. My doctor's never gonna speak to me again.

Thoughts & Prayers.

THIS

Who was the last GOP presidential nominee who didn't have serious Daddy issues? - XMASTIME, 2012
Will we ever get a Republican nominee again who doesn't have daddy issues? - XMASTIME, 2024

FINALLY here's the rest of the planet finally starting to catch up to what I've been saying for years re: the GOP's weird daddy issues that are going to fucking get us all killed. 😡😡😡😡

I Mean Look...

...in Trump's defense, Harvard could end this in a heartbeat with a televised ceremony announcing him to be the smartest & bestest big boy ever, so 🤷‍♂️.

Oh Fuck Off, Amazon

"Unable to detect" feels a BIT like piling on. 😡😡😡😡

Sorry The New Yorker

But this...

...would've been funnier if you flipped it:

 

For Fuck's Sake

There is a list of the most confused yet completely unhurried people who are neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeever in any bit of a hurry no matter what and that list is:

1. anyone in line in front of me at a salad bar
2. anyone walking in front of me on the Amtrak platform to get on the train

😖 😖 😖 😖

The World.

The Atlantic has a note about anti-semitism:

Anti-Semitism will not be expunged by the 0.2 percent of the world that is Jewish, but by the 99.8 percent that is not.

I'd suggest that this construct also works with a small edit:

Poverty will not be expunged by the 0.2 percent of the world that is poor, but by the 99.8 percent that is not.

Just Putting This Here So When It Happens I Can Brag About It

The amount of corruption from rich motherfuckers using the "no tax on tips" shit Trump's pushing for is going to be off the fucking charts.

Am I About to Have The Elevator Yips?

Whether its at work or at home, whenever anyone gets off the elevator & says some version of “have a good one” I find myself saying “you too, thanks” instead of the much more rhythmically pleasing/natural “thanks, you too” and if I’m being honest it’s becoming a thing in my own head now & I’m worried I’m gonna freeze up & not say anything at all, which would rather quickly make me “that guy” throughout the building(s).

Current Events

This is exactly like Republicans' frustration about being accused of saying and doing racist things & their solutions never seem to include "stop doing and saying racist things".

Oh, Fuck Me

I asked ChatGPT how I can finally trip my Wordle winning percentage over from 96 to 97% and now I'm just totally fucking depressed:

Starting from game 1,080, your record is:
• 1,079 games played
• 96% win rate, so:
1,036 wins
43 losses

Let’s say you play x more games starting now, and win all of them. You want your total win percentage to hit 97%, so:

\frac{1036 + x}{1079 + x} = 0.97

Same equation, just with your current stats:

1036 + x = 0.97(1079 + x) \\

1036 + x = 1046.63 + 0.97x \\

x - 0.97x = 1046.63 - 1036 \\

0.03x = 10.63 \\

x = \frac{10.63}{0.03} \approx 354.33

Answer: You need 355 straight wins starting from game 1,080 to reach a 97% win rate.

Xmastime So Sayeth, So Sayeth Xmastime

John Mulaney's live Netflix show hasn't QUITE lived up to its promise based on last year's initial run but I've still enjoyed it and it's had some genuine hilarious moments; with one episode left, this is still the absolute funniest thing I’ve seen out there anywhere so far this year. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 

Annual Garfield du Jour

Ah yes, of course this officially means we share the annual post about the time my mother convinced me to write about making spaghetti with a tennis racket 😜🤣🤣🤣.

Deliver Us from Nowhere

Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen is fighting back at Trump and yes, I will be buying it:

As the news emerged that Springsteen had packaged his anti-Trump remarks into the project, which also includes the songs “Land of Hope and Dreams,” “Long Walk Home,” “My City of Ruins,” and “Chimes of Freedom,” Trump responded by posting a doctored video that depicts him hitting the musician with a golf ball.

My bold. I mean, that's incredible - at the very end of a serious news article, this last sentence just matter-of-factly gets tacked on & if you read the whole article it feels like the world's greatest punchline with a timing that takes comedians years to master. Again: incredible.

Game Ideas. I Have Them.

REWATCHABLES RUSSIAN ROULLETE

How to play:

1. Get a gun
2. Start an episode of The Rewatchables
3. Any episode
4. When anyone starts doing their Tony Romo or Cris Collinsworth impression take the gun & blow your fucking brains out
5. You're welcome

 

Life. It's Really Happening, Isn't It?

A coupla weeks ago I lost my mailbox key & then walked around bitching & moaning about the thought of whatever hoops I'd hafta jump through to have it replaced until about a few hours ago when it took however long it took me to type LOST MY KEY into the property management portal whatever & about 5 minutes later I got a text "your key is ready" which is great but now I have a sneaking suspicion they're all the same keys & anybody could just open anybody else's mailbox they want. 🤔🤷‍♂️

"Backlash": The Backlash

This song has always frustrated me; an "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!" 1991 one-time-only rock &roll dream team supergroup of Joan Jett & Paul Westerberg production (based on what I said just a few days ago I'm *guessing* Westerberg wrote 99.9% of it 😬), the verses are AMAZING, really incredible, but the chorus is kinda meh and then after the second chorus the whole thing just kinda meanders on & on for a while - to be honest, I'm surprised they made an official video for it since it feels unfinished, which is a tragedy when you hear how great the verses are.

One remarkable thing is the video itself, a great document of 1991 featuring short-hair Joanie and an unfathomably dorky-looking Westerberg.

Making Friends, with Xmastime

I'll Say This.

People like to roll their eyes when you mention Trump resembling Hitler in any way, "oh come on he's the all-time worst ever, nobody's ever topping him" and while maybe that's true the fact is that there are literally people alive today who can remember a time when there was someone before Hitler for which people would make the same claim/eyerolls so now you tell me what's what.

Questions. I Have Them.

Why so frightened?

Welcome to St. Bullshit 🙏

HAPPY BIRFDAY K-ROT!

Keith Campbell, one of my all-time favorite partners in crime art.

George Wendt

Of course he’ll always be Norm but one of my favorite tv surprises of all time was when he popped up as a guest star for an episode of The Green Green Grass, John Sullivan’s sequel to Only Fools and Horses. And best of all, his character’s name was Cliff. 🤗

CHESS LESSONS w/Xmastime*

* ask about our affordable rates

PREVIOUS CHESS W/CORNBREAD HERE

Afuckingmen 😡😡😡😡

Insta du Jour

If You Wanna Know What Happy Looks Like...

...I'm pretty sure this is it; it sure makes me happy anyways. 🤗🤗🐶🐶 #Sccoter #Shep

Vis-a-Vis Trump's Gift Plane from Qatar

Let me see if I have everything straight so far:

1) Trump tells the American people they're gonna hafta make do with fewer Christmas presents this year because of his tariffs
2) Trump comes back form Middle East with a $400M airplane from Qatar like a labrador retriever with a bird in his mouth
3) Trump calls it a "gift to the American people!"
4) Trump wants to use it for Air Force One
5) It will take a coupla years & who knows how many millions of dollars to outfit the plane to be suitable for Air Force One
6) Dollars the American people will be paying, of course
7) The plane is supposed to end up at Trump's presidential library, please insert joke here

8) Even after he's done as president, if that glorious moment ever comes, he's free to whiz around the world in the plane for free whenever he wants  
8) Take a guess re: how many of the American people will get access to the plane that was "gifted to the American people".

I guess that's it, until of course we find the ACTUAL details of what's going on with all this, of which the only thing we know for sure is that it's definitely even worse than we're all imagining right now.

Dafuck du Jour

Air is an easy, quasi-enjoyable movie to watch & there's a lot of ridiculous shit to roll your eyes at, the absolute worst of which may be:

In the movie "Air," George Raveling, a former college basketball coach and basketball marketing director for Nike, tells Sonny Vaccaro that he has an original copy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Raveling obtained the speech while volunteering as security at the 1963 March on Washington.

The story is slowly, dramatically revealed to a spellbound Vaccaro but wait, that's not the ridiculous part - Raveling really DID get MLK's speech that day; the absolutely ridiculous part is right before this scene when Vaccaro's going to meet Raveling he mentions to his officemates that he & Raveling are best friends and Raveling was the best man at his wedding...and yet this tiny little factoid of human history never came up before? REally? Raveling has MLK's I Have a Dream speech and his best friend for whom he was best man at his wedding had NO idea about it at all???? REally? I know not all dudes are chatterboxes & we all have our secrets but the movie really wants us to believe that this never came up at all the ensuing 21 years????! 🤔🤔

Xmastime So Sayeth, So Sayeth Xmastime

The one millionth reason you know Donald Trump is a piece of shit that you can't trust is that he was a teenager in 1964 and YOU KNOW he shit on The Beatles when they came to his own New York City that February.

WELL Well Well, QUITE the Coincidence Here, People...

...wow there's no chance in hell I'd have guessed Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen hasn't played Dylan's Chimes of Freedom since 1988. 😮😮😮🤯🤯🤯

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), "didn't you JUST HAPPEN TO MENTION the song a mere days ago, which obviously means Bruce is a big fan of. certain somebody's bloggity-blog-blog? Blog?"

Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I did.

Republicans Who Like to Curl Themselves Up in the American Flag Crying About How Much They Love America When You Ask Them to Pay Taxes to the American Government in Order to Help the General Good of the American People:

Current Events

On top of the normal absurdity of Trump shitting his pants over Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen criticizing him from the stage while on tour in Europe is the idea that in the Year 2025 Anno Dominos Pizza we're supposed to GASP! and clutch our pearls about it being said "on foreign soil", as if it's not the Year 2025 Anno Dominos Pizza in which we hear everything anybody says instantly 24/7 around the entire planet and we’re in the old days of standing at the docks every day awaiting news from overseas by steamship (insert several eyeroll emojis here please).

It's Official:

When it comes to Toast Chee, Peanut Butter > Cheddar Cheese (but either way you KNOW I love the orange!! 🤗🤗🤗🕺).

Why the Fucking Dramatic Reveal?

Can't you just say which one it is in the headline? Or are you really setting up some sort of dramatic reveal in anticipation of half the country being stunned into disbelief and the other half being overwhelmed with relief? Dafuck?

Come On Science Get Off Your Ass Please

Unless I'm popping down the hallway to my trash room, LITERALLY anytime I leave my apartment I have to take an elevator. - XMASTIME

We put a man on the Moon like a million years ago & can splice the genome and yet we simply cannot crack the fucking code when it comes to getting a cell phone signal inside an elevator. 🤷‍♂️

When You Walk in On the Ice Machine

 

RIP George Wendt 😢

The first thing I thought when I heard the news today was that there be a helluva “Norm!” at the Pearly Gates today. 

Here's my all-time #1 Normism. 😭

State du Moi

I always kind of thought if I was a nice person eventually something good would happen to me. But it’s getting late.

Big Exciting Announcement Everybody

We have a new contender in the "I shot my wife because of some loud-mouthed asshole" genre, taking on the OG classic of classic, Indiana Wants Me.

Indiana Wants Me still wins of course, but this event even happening is petty thrilling, enjoy, Earth! 

The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, but It Bends Toward Xmastime

Moi Say Moi:

...while John Lennon wrote a million great songs in The Beatles, anytime you hear anything "interesting" in one of his songs, the odds of it being because of Paul is about 90%. 

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand since the Universe is finally catching up to me, here's an excerpt from I an Leslie's newly released John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs:

McCartney's bass powers the song from beneath. In the middle section he walks down the scale as the vocal line moves up, an early example of his ear for the contrapuntal. "Please Please Me" is a model for how McCartney would impose himself on his partner's songs. Through his talents for arrangement, singing, and playing, he helped to turn a somewhat maudlin, aggrieved ballad into a cruise missile carrying a payload of joy.

Another great example I pointed out a coupla years ago is Ticket to Ride:

The song is primarily John’s in the writing, but the arrangement is McCartney’s work — in this middle period of the group’s career most of their truly astounding work comes when Lennon brings in the song but McCartney experiments with the arrangement and production. Over and over again we see McCartney taking control of a Lennon song in the studio and bringing out aspects of it that its composer either had not considered or had not had the musical vocabulary or patience to realise on his own.

It goes on to explain how it was Paul who came up with the song's iconic drumming and guitar line. In other words, pretty much what makes the song the song. 

 

This. This is the Fucking Problem.

We don't need "renegades" we need scientists; this is the fucking problem in a nutshell: these people think they're in a Marvel movie, and their supporters think they're watching a movie. 😡😡😡😡

Come On Panera 😡

As much as I'm loving how much I'm absolutely destroying Panera's Sip Club - I'm on pace to his almost $300 in savings for just this first month, funk you people very much - they're fucking grinding me down with their app; here's a quick video of what I hafta do every time I wanna order up one of my many, many, many free drinks throughout the day and while yeah of course it's not digging ditches in July, having to fucking click 9 FUCKING TIMES every time when you're doing it up to 7 times in one day when it's the exact same thing over & over again seems a tad egregious and now I'm wondering if they're doing it to get me so frustrated that I quit the club before I bring the whole goddam operation down.

A Note on the Curious Career of Joan Jett

I don't begrudge Joan Jett anything, but in watching her on Letterman just now I gotta ask: has there ever been an artist with a more dramatic inverse ratio of Greatest Hits packages to actual songs written than Joan Jett? - XMASTIME

The irony of Joan Jett and the whole "she had to show everybody she could rock like a guy!" thing is that she always seemed perfectly fine playing rhythm guitar like a guy, singing like a guy or working a crowd like a guy, but was either unable or uninterested in writing a song herself, which is the one thing nobody ever questioned whether or not a woman could do. 🤔🤷‍♂️

Wannabe THE ONION Headline

NATION OF BASEBALL BROADCASTERS FINALLY ADMIT THEY NEVER HAVE A FUCKING IDEA WHAT PITCHER JUST THREW

Coincidence du Jour

When I was a kid and was reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and the narrator announced the date, which was the very day I was reading the book (for some reason I think it was June 22...I could be wrong, but that's stuck in my head). I immediately went "whoa!", closed the book, put it down, and walked out the door, - XMASTIME

Just started watching Seinfeld. Look at the date. 😮😯🤯

 

Today in Xmastime News

EVERYBODY IN TOWN HATES THIS ONE MOTHERFUCKER WHO INSISTS ON CALLING THE BEATLES WHITE ALBUM BY ITS TECHNICALLY CORRECT NAME, "THE BEATLES"

Fare Thee Well

Ed Smylie, who came up with the "square-peg-in-a-round-hole" solution to remove excess carbon dioxide from the Apollo 13 landing module cabin made famous in the awesome Apollo 13 movie, has died at 95:

He and about 60 other engineers had less than two days to invent a solution using materials already onboard the spacecraft. The crisis is depicted in Ron Howard’s 1995 blockbuster film, “Apollo 13,” starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Lovell, Kevin Bacon as Mr. Swigert and Bill Paxton as Mr. Haise.

Onscreen, a character inspired by Mr. Smylie dramatically dumps rubber tubes, garment bags, duct tape and other materials onto a table. “The people upstairs handed us this one,” the character says, “and we gotta come through.”

In reality, the engineers printed a supply list of the equipment that was onboard. Their ingenious solution: an adapter made of two lithium hydroxide canisters from the command module, plastic bags used for garments, cardboard from the cover of the flight plan, a spacesuit hose and a roll of gray duct tape.

“If you’re a Southern boy, if it moves and it’s not supposed to, you use duct tape,” Mr. Smylie said in the documentary. “That’s where we were. We had duct tape, and we had to tape it in a way that we could hook the environmental control system hose to the command module canister.”

The best of the absolute best of the best. And a reminder to take a minute & be grateful that John Aaron, NASA's steely-eyed missile man, is still alive on Earth with all of us.

Hold Up a Second...

...I'm sorry but why exactly has Bernard King not been narrating Ken Burns documentaries this whole time???

Questions. I Have Them.

Is the name "Solo" supposed to be ironic? I mean he's the one character who literally has a partner/sidekick with him at all times, so... 🤔🤷‍♂️

Cap Doffed du Jour

A lot of us are out here trying to do our best every day & then someone like this shows up, whose goal is to show a different Bob Uecker clip every day until the Brewers win the World Series, and you know that some of us are doing more meaningful work out here than others.
  

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Posting Daily Videos For Mr. Baseball ❤️💔 (@bobueckereveryday)

Goals. I Have Them.

Just once I'd like to be at a dinner party or something & someone starts excitedly bragging to everybody else about how good I am at something so I can quickly cut them off with curt shake of my head before they really get started so everybody gets the broad strokes that I'm great while I appear humble, neither of which would be true.

You Better Get Me to School on Time

I've blathered about the Clark Family Collective for a coupla years now and I've blathered about loving School of Rock for MANY years now so you KNOW I love seeing these two proud institutions of young kids rocking come together so awesomely! 🤗🕺❤️🎸

P.S. - they should go back and redo all their songs now that they’re all so much better

Questions. I Have Them.

Why is there emergency HEAT but no emergency COOL? 😡😡😡😡

Life. It's Really Happening, Isn't It?

This is me for the first time realizing they sell fortune cookies in grocery stores; I mean I know they're total bullshit & all but doesn't this take away even the PRETEND behind-the-curtain mystery bullshit that's part of enjoying them, particularly since no human being has ever wanted to actually eat one of them?