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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Oh, no—we lost to Ohio State. How will I ever survive?
  2. The idea of Nebraska celebrating a win over Cincinnati is so weird to w.
  3. For someone of my generation, it is so weird for that N on the helmet not to have any meaning or strike any fear.
  4. The place seems to have pretty good blackout curtains.
  5. Cross-posting from the oyster thread, but the Hampton Inn on Franklin Street is up a very short back stairs from Eventide. It might as well be the hotel bar. This is where I’ll be for the next four days, if anyone wants to pop in and hear some hot takes.
  6. Ok—for those of you looking for a recommendation in Portland, the Hampton Inn is a short walk up the back stairs to Evantide. It might as well be the hotel bar. And for the next four days, that’s where l’ll be hanging out from about 9:00 to midnight.
  7. I needed another half-dozen Pemaquods for dessert.
  8. It begins!
  9. D'ja enjoy those three Super Bowls? I know you did. I know you did.
  10. I think that is entirely wrong and fundamentally misguided. I have the benefit of viewing this drama from the perspective of a non-Cowboys fan. I was a Cowboys fan in the early 90's for those two Super Bowls, but hiring the Football Antichrist killed it for me. Moving the team to Tarrant County put it in the ground. Marrying a New Yorker shoveled dirt on the coffin (Go Giants!). But regardless of whatever time I may support, the purpose of the Dallas Cowboys (and the New York Giants and the NFL as a whole) is to make money for its ownership. It's a business. That's it. Its purpose is to sell shit to people who will buy it. Winning football games is generally helpful to meeting that purpose. But as Jerry Jones has demonstrated, it's not at all necessary. @Iceman is entirely right in his assessment. Jerry Jones is the most successful owner in the NFL. He alone was responsible for driving the NFL's revenue stream over the past 35 years. The team is now probably worth more than 100x what he paid for it. That's not really due to any other ownership group; it's not really due to Roger Goddell's leadership. It's largely due to the changes Jerry Jones pioneered, advocated, and implemented. The Chiefs have more recent success than the Cowboys. But the Hunt family owes Jerry Jones a huge debt of gratitude for making that franchise what it's worth today. And do you honestly think that Clark Hunt wouldn't trade Jerry franchises tomorrow straight up? Has Jerry damaged the on-the-field product? I mean, yeah--maybe. But when viewed through the perspective of the Cowboys as a money-making venture, maybe not. Because what we want more than wins is drama. And Jerry has delivered drama. It's the best show in the NFL. Hell--it's the best show in professional sports. Again--I'm not a Cowboys fan. But damned if I don't listen to Cowboys talk on the Ticket because it's entertaining AF. Jerry has entertained the Metroplex (and really, all of America) for 35 years. You want wins? Go cheer for the fucking Eagles. But if you want to be entertained, there's nothing better than this fucking circus.
  11. Since when did the United States give a fuck whether an ally was a "democracy?" Speaking strictly of the Middle East, our staunchest ally going back to World War II has been Saudi Arabia, which is one of the very few countries in the world that makes no effort to style itself as a democracy or a republic. China calls itself a "people's republic," though it's anything but. North Korea protests too much, styling itself a Democratic People's Repubic. Saudi Arabia is like, "nah--fuck all that. We're an absolute monarchy goddamnit." I added that last part. But they're not alone. So is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. So is the UAE. And Bahrain. And Kuwait. And Qatar. and Morocco. And before their absolute monarchies were overthrown, the Imperial State of Iran and the Ethiopian Empire were staunch American allies in the Cold War. And we won't even talk about some of the less savory dictatorships--I'm looking at you, Egypt and Pakistan. But it's not just the Middle East. Our love of dictators in Latin America is (in)famous. Just as notorious is our record in Asia, from the collapsed (South Vietnam) to the deposed (South Korea, the Philippines), to the still-going-strong (Singapore)--we fucking love our dictators. Nah, man--it's all the "pro-Western" bit. Or at least it was while the Cold War was going on. But now that justification is gone.
  12. This reminds me of Easter Egg hunts my grandmother's house. Like you, we did them outdoors with real eggs. And more than once in the hunt for the eggs we'd find a lost egg from the previous year. It was . . . not safe for human consumption. My grandmother was a child of the Great Depression. As such, she didn't fully trust banks. She would hide money all over the house--under the mattress, in empty Blue Bell half-gallon cartons in the freezer, in her jewellery box (because thieves aren't going to be looking in the jewellery box). But she'd also hide it in containers out in the yard. After we found the first $1,000 in a coffee can in the backyard, we got a metal detector out and found another half-dozen coffee cans. But I guarantee you she had some in cigar boxes and other non-metallic containers back there. There are probably still thousands of dollars buried on that property backing up to Walnut Creek.
  13. It's not just "memories of what happened in WWII" that historically justify our sponsorship of Israel. There were certain Cold-War realities that made it advisable. Syria, Egypt, and Iraq were in the Soviet camp during much of the Cold War. Israel served as a necessary Western counterweight in the Levant. But the Cold War has been over for more than 30 years. And while we still want to restrict Russian influence in the Eastern Mediterranean, Isreal isn't exactly the best vehicle (or even a good vehicle) toward accomplishing that.
  14. I mean, yeah. But at the same time . . . you didn't want to give your offence even the opportunity? You know and I know that if Stanford gets the ball back on its own 25 down 3 with :20 left to play, the sequence is going to be Incomplete; Incomplete; Sack. So it probably doesn't really matter. But isn't there a 0.01% chance that one of those incompletions is actually caught and he dude runs at least into field-goal range? And isn't that better than the 0% likelihood of winning that you have with taking those TOs with you to the locker room?
  15. Shortly after @DDD Dad and I finished with a bunch of Ballinger work, I hit it off with an entirely different really cute Ballinger gal on a Southwest Airlines flight. Sadly, I was (and am) married. But damn--she seemed really fun.
  16. "Well this is champagne football from Tottenham Hotspur right now."
  17. I'm sorry. If my little story contained a "woe was me" tone, then I wrote it poorly. Flying all over the world for free was fucking amazing. I virtually grew up on airplanes. To this day, I can recite the gates to which Southwest assigned its flights at Love Field (San Antonio flights went out of Gate 1; Amarillo and New Orleans flights went out of Gate 2; all Houston flights went out of Gate 4 (Gate 4A at the top of the hour; Gate 4C at the bottom)). And I loved fingering through the OAG guide to plan out contingencies in case we got stuck in fucking Kansas City. So yeah--nothing hard about my youth. And I'm going to miss the OAG, which was a reminder of it. But still--crawling into a suit in a bathroom at HNL was some bullshit.
  18. Ghost of LL

    Tex Mex

    The new salsa verde at Maudie's is pretty damn good. But it pisses me off that they're charging for salsa. Oh well--I'll fucking pay for it.
  19. Ghost of LL

    Austin FC

    I went to the game Saturday through the chairity of @Brisketexan, and I was amazed by how bad the game presentation is. They don't run any video throughout the game of the play. For probably a quarter of the game, the videoboard is just showing a big sign that "Austin FC provides closed captioning . . . ." Great. But nobody is saying anything during play. So what does anybody care of there is closed captioning? The replays weren't any better. There were only a couple replays of each goal (and of the second goal, the replay came only after the ball had been back in play for about five minutes). No replays of any fouls. So I really couldn't tell you whether the PK call was bullshit. If I had any interest in what was actually happening on the pitch, I'd have been vastly better off at home. Fortunately, I had minimal interest--I was there to hang out with Brisket and my son. And so from that perspective, it was a successful evening.
  20. So my perspective is a little different. My dad was an airline employee. So we flew everywhere NonRev. But two things about flying NonRev: (1) it was standby, and (2) you had to be in a suit. The first point is why I'm so familiar with the OAG. I can't tell you how many times we got stuck in some place like Boston or Denver because the flight we had anticipated getting on ended up being sold out. So then we had to pop open the OAG in the terminal to figure out what flights we might be able to piece together to get back to Dallas. By the time I was a teenager, my father would have two--one for him and one for me. So we would sit there with our own OAG piecing together options. "Ok--we can catch that Continental flight to IAH and then get the one that leaves 40 minutes later to SAT and then get on a Southwest flight to DAL." "No--that's not going to work. That CO flight to IAH is always oversold; check out the TWA flight through STL." The second point sucked, and it's why I don't share the often-expressed nostalgia for people dressing up to fly. I can't tell you in how many airport bathrooms I've changed from shorts and t-shirt into a suit. It really is probably a hundred. And you could always tell the NonRevs in those days because they're the people hanging out near the gate agent wearing a suit in goddamned Honalulu. It was ridiculous.
  21. Ok, but counterpoint: the "and paying the price" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. But even with that lift, it's wrong. If you compare the similarly priced products--a First Class seat today vs. a Coach seat in 1970--the flyer today is getting a waaaaaaay better product. It's a product that the flyer in 1970 would only dream of. And for a small fraction of the price of a Coach seat in 1970, the passenger flying in Economy today is getting a product that is in some ways worse. But in some other ways it's better. As you point out, the Coach seat in 1970 was bigger.* There was more leg room. You sometimes got a meal and a drink.** But let's be real honest about that meal. It was bad. It was actually often borderline inedible. But it was also your only choice. Because back in 1970, airports didn't have restaurants that offered to-go meals in them. In a standard 1970 airport, you had one bar and one restaurant, both of which were places that were owned by the best friend of the local city councilman. They were by-and-large pretty terrible. Ok--the one in Albuquerque offered a damned good breakfast taco. But that was an exception. But the idea of grabbing something from Campisi's or Chik-fil-a or Whataburger before your flight and eating it on the plane? It was unheard of. You were going to get the equivalent of a Stouffer's tv dinner that was either badly overcooked or badly undercooked (often both), and that was it. Your entertainment was going to be a 13-inch television screen mounted in the ceiling of the cabin five rows in front of you. It would show one movie. That's it. You've already seen that movie? You don't like that genre? Too fucking bad--read your goddamned Time magazine and shut up. Now you get wifi (which airlines are starting to offer for free). Or you bring your iPad with you with the movies you've already downloaded. In 1970, you couldn't have dreamed of having those entertainment options in your home, much less in an airplane. I get it, brother--I'm old, too. I find myself prone to nostalgia. But I do still have a decent memory. And I'm going to tell you that the Golden Age of Commercial Aviation wasn't that great.*** *The Coach seat in 1970 was wider solely as a function of the aircraft used. The Lockheed Electra and other propeller-driven aircraft were still widely in use on domestic short- and medium-haul flights. And those planes had a wider fuselage, which allowed for wider seats. But if given the choice between flying on a Lockheed Electra and a 737-200, you'd never choose the former. The 737 family has always had a 3-3 seating configuaration in coach. And from 1967 to today, the 737 has always had the same width: 12' 4". So when you're comparing similar aircraft types, the seat width is exactly the same as it was in 1970. ** The free bottle of alcohol was a short-term promotion offered by Southwest in 1973, but it has become part of the airline's founding mythology. Southwest was facing a cash-crunch in 1973 (only its third year in operation). In an effort to drive Southwest out of business, Braniff started a fare sale and offered $13 fares between DAL, HOU, and SAT. That was half the standard fare on Southwest. In response, Southwest also offered a $13 fare. But it kept its standard $26 fare and offered a free fifth of Chivas, Jack Daniels, or Smirnoff with it. The idea was that any business traveler on an expense account would pay the higher fare and get the free booze. But one important note on this--you observe that this was pre-deregulation. But regulation only applied on interstate routes. The intra-Texas route was always deregulated. That's how Braniff could start a fare sale in the first place. So the entire story could only take place in a deregulated environment. *** Ok--there was one aspect of it that was fucking great, and you're omitting it entirely. The Stewardesses. They were hot. Airlines could still get away with hiring only young hot women who met a weight restriction. And because of the societal whatevers back then, they were almost (1) uniformly unmarried, and (2) interested in being married to a guy who could afford to fly. As a counterpoint to that, I've got nothing.
  22. It's still magical if you want to pay the amount that people routinely paid for air travel in the era when "air travel was magical." The average cost of a flight from JFK to LHR in 1970 was $550. Adjusted for inflation, that's $4,500. If you want to spend $4,500 for a flight from JFK to LHR, it's going to be magical. You're likely going to be in First. You'll walk right up to BA's First counter and a very lovely agent will check you in within five minutes. Then you'll walk right through security with no line directly into the Chelsea Lounge where they'll pour you a glass of Laurent Perrier Grand Siecle. Then you go to your plane and your lay-flat seat. That's a fuckton better than the shitty coach seat that you would've gotten for the same price back in the Golden Age of Commercial Aviation. The OAG Pocket Guide is a master schedule of all airline flights. It comes in four regional versions--one for North America, one for Europe, one for East Asia, and one for South & Southwest Asia. Inside, it lays out by airport every destination to which that airport has nonstop flights. The flights are organized by departure time and identify the departure time, the arrival time, the equipment, and the airline. So the entry for Austin would look like: AUSTIN, TX Albuquerque, NM 0645 0805 738 WN 0915 1040 73G WN etc. It's an easy reference guide for anyone who does a lot of traveling to immediately see what flights are available between any given city-pair. With the internet, it's obviously pretty obsolete. But before all airlines were on sites like Expedia, it was the only place that had a comprehensive listing of all the available airline options for whatever destination you wanted to go to.
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