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Right Angle: Backstage 03/21/23

True tales of Saints in Bali, Steven Wright comedy, Frazier goes to church, $40 million dollars for three seconds on the phone and other assorted Deep Thoughts.

True tales of Saints in Bali, Steven Wright comedy, Frazier goes to church, $40 million dollars for three seconds on the phone and other assorted Deep Thoughts. All this and so much less on this edition of Right Angle: Backstage.

39 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage 03/21/23”

I remember back in the 80’s when several states were talking seriously about changing the highway signs to the metric system…overheard a trucker complaining, “Used to be a hundred miles to Cleveland, now it’s gonna be 160 kilometers?? Who’s gonna pay for all that extra gas?”

Sort of the same thing I heard in Queensland AU when they would argue about Daylight Savings Time. They said the cows wouldn’t know when to get milked and the extra daylight would fade curtains faster …

Lord help us, those sorts of people get a vote that counts exactly the same as a normal person’s.

I did a computer search and there is a vaccine that was introduced in 2016 – Denguivax (sp.?). Doubt you got that.

I heard him (Kelsey Grammer) read the Biblical Christmas Story compounded from the Four Gospels at Disneyland opening the Christmas pageant. It was very powerful.

Of course Disneyland gave up on that a long time ago so that dates me somewhat.

My favorite Stephen Wright was …

I got home late last night… it was really late. It was the next night.
I fumbled around for my keys … and I pulled the wrong keys out and I put them in the door and the building started up.

So I drove it around for a while.

Then I pulled it into the median strip and ran out and yelled at everyone to get the hell out of my driveway.

Ok, not word for word, but … I loved that one.

Scott: Remember the Monty Python song…
“I like Chinese
“I like Chinese
“They only come up to your knees
“That’s why I like Chinese”

My favorite Steven Wright line: “Rice, when you’re hungry and want 2000 of something.”
I still think in Imperial and I have lived in Canada for over 60 years. I am getting better with it, so hopefully by the time I pass on, I will know all of it.
As to the DI (real Marine) He was awesome in that movie. I bought it on VHS when it came out. I wore out several sections just playing his scenes over and over. The tape literally imploded, took forever to clean out the player. But it was totally worth it.
I told my sons that I thought about getting a tattoo on my breast of a rose. But I changed my mind when I realized that it would look more like a carnation, by the time I hit 60.

A Canadian friend taught me this to convert temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit: double it and add 30. This works in temperatures above 0 C.
Conversely, 82 F would be (82-30)/2, or 26 C.
Not exact, but close enough.

Don’t know if this was intentional or not, but Scott stumbled into one of the easiest temp conversions to remember, because 82 deg F is approximately 28 deg C

The Magnum & Hawaii -50 reboots totally sucks.
When Magnum ended, he was shown rejoining the USN as a full commander to give his daughter Lilly a stable life.
Fast forward to Admiral Magnum entering his car and it goes BOOM!
Lilly NCIS/CIA/DIA/WTF investigates his death like the original episode.

Hey Bill? Yeah, when a real Drill Instructor is pissed off and delivering those insults in real life in real Boot Camp … There’s nothing funny about it at all. They’re “pecking” at you with the hard brim of that felt Smokey Cover the whole time. Right at the base of your nose where it joins your face above your mouth. It hurts and makes your eyes water. I doubt they could do that on a movie set without getting a bunch of grief over it.

I was terrified. Terror and humor are diametrically opposed emotions.

That said, the Boot Camp scenes in Full Metal Jacket were the most realistic I’ve ever seen outside the real thing. Thanks to R. Lee Ermey. May he Rest in Peace.

Ermey BTW has done more for the Marine Corps than any other actor in history including John Wayne. I and some fellow Marines looked into getting him a posthumous promotion to Master Guns (Master Gunnery Sergeant) but the Pentagon wouldn’t go for it. Their excuse was it would mess up his survivors benefits which would have to be paid at that rank instead of GySgt. Poor thanks to a Great Marine.

Semper Fi, Gunny Ermey.

Ermey was medically retired as an E6 Staff Sergeant, and the promotion to Gunnery Sergeant by the Marine Corps was honorary..His DI performance in FMJ was almost entirely adlibbed, one of the rare occasions when Kubric allowed an actor to go off-script. He wore his patriotism as a badge of honor, and despite over 120 film credits and a Golden Globe nomination, the Motion Picture Academy excluded him from their usual tribute to those who passed away in 2018.

Yes, I knew all that except the Motion Picture Academy bit. Other than that the rest has been repeated many, many times. Even so, it’s good for you to get that on record here for anyone who reads these posts.

It doesn’t surprise me at all that the Motion Picture Academy would shun Ermey. The Left never pays more than lip service to the military and especially the Marines. If they can get by without even that much it’s my experience they will do so. Anything the Left says that’s positive about the military is nothing but empty words and empty words are their forte.

I met Ermey once at a military vehicle swap meet in CA. He was in person exactly as you’d expect him to be having seen him on film. I don’t know if he was “acting” that day but he seemed genuine to me.

Ermey was a shining example of the profound, life long effect serving in the Marine Corps has on us. It’s neither desirable nor possible to give up on being a Marine long after we stop wearing the uniform, at least for a huge percentage of us.

Even the bad ones and much to my dismay there are absolutely Marines that either were bad to begin with or went bad after they left the Corps.

My best friend is a now retired Marine G2 Lt. Colonel who still works in his chosen field. We understand each other and that’s not something I can often say for any non-Marines outside my family.

Re Bill’s feel good story. I had a similar experience, but in 1998 in the center of Bangkok. On an business trip, I had an open Saturday to just walk around in the 115 deg F heat and humidity of the lovely city, and found myself in the main palace park, where the final day of the International Kite Festival was being held. Amazing sights to see with absolutely beautiful kites being flown, battles in the sky between giant Kula (star shaped) kites and little annoying kites trying to cut it’s lines. I went a little crazy going from craft booth to craft booth, buying up some of these handmade and hand painted amazing tissue paper kites. At the last booth, I had set down my 10 other kites I had just purchased to buy a couple more. I gleefully walked out of that booth with my purchase, leaving behind my other kites.
I’m at least 3 blocks away from the the festival grounds, and running up behind me is the last booth craftsman, with my other kites in hand. He had run all over looking for me (pretty easy in Bangkok) and finally found me to return what I had left behind. I tried to pay him or give him a tip, and he politely declined, smiling all the way, he was just grateful I had purchased 5 more kites from his booth. He turned and ran back to his booth.
I still remember that feeling of amazement, 25 years later, that this kind person tried so hard to return what I had left behind. On the walk back to the hotel, I kept thinking that at a similar festival let’s say in San Francisco, the booth owner would have waited an appropriate time, then sold my left behinds and pocketed the cash.
yeah, no one got dengue fever in my story, but it felt good anyway.

I watched the Ep. 1 of TCW on DW last night.
To hell with “theater of the mind”. Those video clips, audio coming from an old radio, and Perfectly Coiffed Bill, saying words he wrote, better than he said them in the original recordings. Daily Wire’s guys and gals nailed this one. Much more to see, much more engaging. Way to go Bill.

Meh …
It all depends upon context, which I believe Bill made very clear. For scientific measurement, the metric system is superior given the simplicity of the relationships between various units and scales. This also applies to engineering analysis and design. For human communication about everyday life experiences, the Standard/Imperial system is much more intuitive.

As you say, Bill and The Guys made the differences and context very clear.

I have an engineering certificate, of sorts (an MCSE so nothing like an actual engineer) and I do use the metric system when forced and/or it is the preferable system. And I hate it with a passion.

I had to use it in the military and I had to use it when I lived in Australia but I was constantly doing shirt-sleeve conversions to the Standard/Imperial system in my head.

Some of this rancor at the Metric System no doubt derives from having grown up with the Standard System but not all of it.

There are many day-to-day instances where the Standard System is more precise. 0 in Fahrenheit is freakin’ cold. 0 in Celsius is considerably warmer and more tolerable to a guy who grew up not far from the Canadian border. 100F is hot, 38C is hot too, but it doesn’t convey nearly the same idea. The Celsius scale on a regular thermometer is half as precise due to having nearly 50% fewer graduations.

Driving a car in a metric country means that if the speed limit is 60 MPH then the speedometer is going to read nearly 100 KPH.

Etc.

I hate the metric system except in the cases where it actually is better than the Standard System and even then I’m working on something that I don’t need to intuitively grasp in Standard. I don’t care if a nut is 9mm and the corresponding socket is 9mm because I don’t really think of that sort of thing in terms of being 1/2 inch or 9/16ths inch so much as what fits and what does not.

In machining, millimeters and microns are very useful units vs. thousandths and ten-thousandths of an inch. I can work in either, but have never been very good at going back and forth between the two.
A modern-day Cliff might inform that the meter was not arbitrary:
Originally, the meter was 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the North Pole and the equator on a line passing through Paris. Apparently they made an error in calculation originally and the 1st platinum 1 meter bar was 0.200mm (200 microns) short. In the mid-twentieth century, a meter was defined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of Krypton-86 radiation in a vacuum. Then in 1983 after improvements to measuring Einstein’s “c”, it is now the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/meter

So what? So someone found arbitrary measurements that equal a meter. That’s what.

Had someone decided to standardize the cubit they would have done as well.

I’m sure everyone is going to find useful application for the fact that a meter is how far a photon travels in a vacuum. I’m sure I’m going to memorize the number 1/299,792,458 and use it on a daily basis.

I know for a fact that I’ll never forget that a meter is 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of Krypton-86 radiation in a vacuum. I’ll likely use that information the next time I’m sawing some random board for some random purpose.

Someone had to arbitrarily decide the distance from the North Pole to the Equator, on a line passing through Paris, divided by one ten millionth, was a useful way to measure things.

All three of those examples could be just as easily expressed in yards, feet and inches. Which makes them all arbitrary.

Metric has its uses. Machining might be one of them, I don’t know I’m not a machinist. No doubt a base ten system of measurement is useful in scientific and academic applications.

That doesn’t mean I want to use the metric system for EVERYTHING. I’m not a machinist, scientist or biomedical researcher. I WAS in the military and measuring by meters is standard there. It’s one of the things I detested in the military.

Like Steve said and said so well. There are two kinds of countries in the world. The one that doesn’t use the metric system and put men on the moon — And everyone else.

BTW, your little ‘facts’ delivered delivered in the manner of Cliff Clavin do not an argument make. I could have looked up the meter on Wikipedia too, if I had sufficient interest which I do not. Thanks for doing that for all of us.

I had to look it up, but Queen and Bowie sued Vanilla Ice. It never went to court because they settled for Vanilla Ice paying for the licensing of Under Pressure for $4mil.

“Worship of the primitive.”

That is is the best description of tattooing and body piercing. Given my innate aversion to idol worship (Exodus 20:3-4), it succinctly declares why such practices should be avoided.

The Geico commercial with R. Lee Ermey is a veritable classic. “You know what makes me sad? YOU DO!!!” He then yells at the guy more and finishes with “YOU JACKWAGON!!!” He was a treasure.

Dengue Fever, a mosquito-born virus, has had a 30-fold increase in global incidence in the past 50 years. Your wife’s daughter experienced hemorrhagic fever. It’s rare in the US, but common where its vector the mosquito lives. It’s getting more common with all of the illegals coming from Mexico and into Florida as well. Death is rare, however, with an estimated 21,000 per 100 million infected.
Currently binge watching “Frazier”, a great series that got less great when its two best writers died on 9/11 as plane passengers.

I got vaccinated for EVERYTHING when I was in the Marines. Had to keep up on all of them too. Never piss off a Corpsman or a Doc, they’ll toss your shot records, declare them lost and force you to get them all over again. Very painful.

I can’t remember if Dengue was one of the ones they vaccinated us for, maybe you’d know? I don’t even know if there is a vaccine for Dengue Fever but if there is, or was then, I got it.

Thanks, then I didn’t get vaccinated for Dengue. Good thing I didn’t spend much time in areas where it was common. I was in urban and semi-urban areas but not when I was in the tropics and subtropics, which was mostly all remote ‘boonie’ stuff. So me and Dengue never crossed paths that I know of.

I looked it up, the vaccine is Dengvaxia and it only works on people that have evidence of prior dengue infection. So … Pretty much useless to an American transiting the tropics for whatever reason.

In Boot Camp we got our initial vaccinations which started our shot records. That involved running a gauntlet of Corpsmen with vaccination guns filled with every vaccine known to man, or so it seemed. It was at least a dozen shots, evenly split between each deltoid, and a big wad of penicillin the consistency of toothpaste at the end, in the end. Glute that is.

Mosquito neutralization via repellents is real big in the Marine Corps in tropic/semi-tropic climates. Having grown up in Northern Minnesota I was well aware of mosquitos and how to keep from getting bit. I practically bathed in whatever repellent was available so I was used to that.

The city guys not so much. They’d be slapping themselves silly trying to squash mosquitos after it was already too late. If you feel the mosquito, it’s already bitten you.

I’d tell them to put on repellent and they’d say “I’m not wearing that greasy, stinky sh!t” … Ok, get bit then.

In the Middle East I ran into ‘smart mosquitos’. Generally it’s not a problem to squash a mosquito wherever it lands or even while in flight. The mosquitos in the ME were as hard to swat as house flies. Which is not to say impossible but you’d need something for a swatter. They’d spook as easily as a fly, fly around and come back for another chomp.

I have spent quite a bit of time in Bali due to work and the people there are fantastic BTW the actor who plays Magnum was also Millers partner in the first 4 or 5 episodes of The Expanse.

If only you guys lived in the same area. You could have a set, where you’re all sitting around a kitchen table drinking coffee…because that’s exactly what this is like. Three guys sittin’ ’round, shootin’ the…well…you get where I’m goin’…lol.
Oh, almost forgot…Steven Crowder’s loss may be your gain…
After he:
Ripped me out of $80 by not answering any requests for instructions on what to do with my membership. (BlazeTV kept the money)
Left all of us hanging for 3 months with millions of unanswered questions.
Then left us down, by him and Locals with their current lack of consideration for those of us on a fixed income (eagerly willing to give him money), with no way to return to membership…
So, once I financially recover from that, I’m thinking of returning to sustaining member status. There’s one thing this taught me, power goes to one’s head, absolutely. Even if it’s just forgetting the ones who made you. God bless you guys, and thanks for having a monthly payment plan.

I agreed with him on the part that the DW does play a bit too nicely with The BeastTube, but he went off track going public. I’ve said it to many Conservative commentators, don’t air your grievances with other Conservative commentators. It’s bad for your reputation.

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