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Right Angle: Backstage 06/20/23

In this week’s ninetyminapalooza…

In this week’s ninetyminapalooza: Hello to our NSA friends joining the conversation, Taylor Swift, Billy Joel, Mel Brooks and Mary Payne; plus Apollo 13, Washington’s compass, smoker’s hack and Strange New Worlds… All this and so much less on this edition of Right Angle: Backstage.

36 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage 06/20/23”

I am so happy that we finally got past the group ass kissing for Taylor Swift. I was just about to jump the BWN ship. I simply can’t get past her political leftwing ideology to see how the nations attention is focused on her concerts. Maybe I am just too old but I wouldn’t walk across the street for front row seats to her show if you paid me. Glad some of you enjoy it. The backstage episode did get better with the space talk about astronauts and Blazing Saddles which still makes me laugh because race relations in this country were the best they have ever been when that movie was made along with the tv shows, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, and many others.

I’m 6 months short of 70 and still riding my motorcycle that has a engine bigger than most Japanese cars. I’ve been riding since I was 8-10 years old. You guys have missed out on one of the few activities that let’s you know you are still alive. The key to longevity as a biker is recognizing that everyone else of the road is out to get you so plan for it.

congrats to you John. After a lifetime of cycle riding, after I turned 70 with much regret, I sold the bike and bought an old convertible sports car so I would not have to worry about the old knees giving out or all the modern morons driving their I phones down the highway. I miss the bike but still drive in the wind and feel safer on 4 wheels. You are so right about the mental preparation for motorcycle riders to understand that everyone is out to get you. It kept me safe all those years.

My real gripe about the current Trek is they lack the imagination to come up w/ anything new. They keep going back to the well for the ‘member berries.
Did Uhura spend her entire career on the Enterprise? Doc M’benga? How come he got busted from CMO to just another doc on the ship? Cause it’s fan service ‘member berries! Cause the current production team lacks the talent and confidence to come up w/ new compelling characters.
I’m just glad that I don’t have those streaming services so I don’t feel compelled to watch and get angry.

I rode one of those blasted mopeds in Bermuda in ’68 or 69′. My little sister and I took a spill on it together. They are about as stable as a unicycle. Also, drove a Morris Mini up a hill/rise/bump/pimple on the island and we almost had to have someone get out to push.
As for real motorcycles, scooters with actual engines, I had a Harley from my senior year of high school (69-70) through college. Motorcycling is like crack. So addictive. The power. The freedom.
Sold the bike after I did a Steve McQueen at 60 mph to avoid a collision. It felt like slow motion: letting it skid out, laying it down, and staying behind it so it wouldn’t flip on me. Broke my ‘Easy Rider’ rose shades, a little bruised, and messed up the left side of the bike and handlebars. Oh, my left knee did crush almost half the gas tank. Still, I drove my bent bike home that day.
About a year ago, someone offered to give me a very nice H-D for free. It was used, but barely. I looked at that sweet ride for a long time and I felt that same old adrenaline rush. But, when my brain kicked in, I had to tell him “Thank you, but no. I may not have accepted mortality, but I have accepted my structural limitations.”

I saw a video not that long ago about how Taylor Swift changed, or was going to change, the music industry. I don’t remember who the show was by, but he (or she maybe), interviewed Rick Beato a bit about Swift re-recording her master tapes to regain the ownership of them. She had the copywrite by writing them originally but had sold the recording rights to the label when she was getting started. He pointed out how they sounded a bit better now than the originals, as she was a more practiced and polished singer, the equipment was better now, and I think that she had brought in some more people, though she had most of the originals too.

Jackson Browne is another example of not allowing happiness into his music. When he was together with Daryl Hannah, his music was left wing shit! When she broke his heart by running off after JFK, Jr. his music became the best of his career!

I initially thought “backstage” would be the preamble for “right angle”. After listening to most of it today, I loved listening to you guys ramble, but this stuff doesn’t have anything to do with “Right Angle” does it? I’m happy to be retired and be able to kill time like this without feeling guilty about it!

Training new Warders at Hampton Court Palace I used to encourage them to socialise after work, or in the Mess, and share their experiences of less than perfect encounters. It’s cathartic to have a good old kvetch about the awkward and unpleasant customers with your colleagues. I used to tell them. “Remember, you can be polite to the public, or about them, don’t try to do both, you’ll burst.”

Well, as the song doesn’t have actual lyrics, it would be difficult to interpret. 😉

I guess the statement should have been “I can’t comprehend why they wrote and performed it”. The answer always comes back, “it’s music, it’s creative, you don’t have to comprehend it”.

I saw Cleavon Little and Judd Hirsch on Broadway in “I’m Not Rappaport” in the mid-80s. They were tremendous together.
He died quite young, just 53.

I >was< actively trying to kill myself in my 20’s! While in college, I kind of fell into semi-pro racing on small road circuits in the Southern US. So, on Friday nights, I would meet the crew, get in the van and drive to the fairgrounds/regional track stadium, prep the car for the following days racing. Race 3 times over the weekend, back in the van, back in time for a short nights’ sleep and class Monday morning.
Later, in the Navy, I rode a motorcycle as a primary vehicle. Rain, cold, snow, whatever. I also got involved with a club racing group. A pro racing motorcycling school held a weekend mini course at a local track. I signed up and learned how to run a bike around a track at 175 mph.
That was my idea of fun! (still is, but I’m in no shape to do it anymore)

Road Circuits! Asphalt! I spent nearly a decade video documenting the action at the local NASCAR affiliated banked dirt track oval. I wasn’t even driving, but that was a lot of fun. Except, of course, when the raining mud clods fall into your beer cup. Would have loved to have seen a road course in person! Phil….Photos please!

To my eternal regret, no photos. This was in the mid 80’s, so no digital. I was too busy driving and the publicity pix went to the owner. I never thought to ask for copies! Sorry bubba!
If it’s any consolation, I drove a ’78 Monte Carlo with a sequential shifter. Gold and Brown #38.

I’ll just have to use my imagination watching that Monte Carlo sway through the turns with you behind the wheel!

My mom was one of the 10000 screaming girls at the big Sydney Beetles concert. The Beetles were not a hit when they got on the plane to Australia. They had recorded several shows in the Britain and the USA but they did not broadcast immediately but went big. The news got to Australia before it got to the Beetles.

Turnstiles has to be included if only for “New York State of Mind”.
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant is one of our favs of all-time.

“New York State of Mind” will forever make me weep, after seeing BJ perform at the ‘Concert to Remember’ after 9/11. Just him, a piano, and a damaged NYFD Captain’s helmet that had been pulled from the wreckage.

Blazing Saddles is almost unwatchable. I just tried to see it again, remembering vignettes as hilarious. Seeing them again was OK but it was exquisitely painful sitting through with a wife who was not a Mel Brooks fan.

Same experience I had with Animal house, which at the time I thought was hilarious – now just painfully cringy. Didn’t age. Caddyshack on the other hand……timeless!

When Ronette was 9, my wife and I took her to see Taylor Swift for her birthday. First real concert for her. I have been to more than I can estimate (truely I used to do security and was in the pit for dozens in college).
After the concert my mom (not a fan of pop music, she was Rat Pack and Opera, Aretha, Ray Charles . . .) asked if it was any good. I said, mom, she’s got it. She held the crowd like Sinatra did. Even as a teenager she understood the value of silence when working the venue, of 18,000 people.
I don’t know that you can really learn that skill, it has to be something you just get.
He personal life may be a wreck and lived out for people to see, but she can perform.
I was impressed and I am pretty jaded when it comes to performers.

BAH! Naive thinking once again….
“The mind” may cling to things, but without negative examples/scenarios one would be ill-prepared to handle them. One would look like a deer caught in headlights when the unexpected occurs. Military training comes to mind for some of the most difficult scenarios. Even our favorite fictions give nod to such things — Kobayashi Maru anyone?

Once when returning to San Diego after being home on leave I was pulled over by a State Trooper for speeding and when he asked why I was speeding when he was highly visible I replied if I had seen him I sure as hell would not have been speeding he let me go with a warning.

So with the first thing Scott brought up about training and they show the bad, I literally had to sit through one at work yesterday.
It showed three little scenes with a new employee who made small errors with others and then asked what could she have done differently.
One of the “situations” was in a conference room and the light on the projector hung from the ceiling blew. The ladder was way down the hall and one of the ladies was going to stand on a chair to replace it. The Newbie says, please don’t fall and get hurt on my first day. And they got the ladder. This was supposed to be interpreted as a bad way to engage as it didn’t really show concern for the coworker.
Me being me said that humor is actually a great way to deflect someone’s bad behavior and this was actually an example of a good way to do it.
We moved on after that.
The other two scenes were just as stupid.

I wonder if people losing their minds anticipating the Taylor Swift concert is happening in people who have no belief in a higher power.
When I was in surgical training, the ENT ICU was shared with the Neurosurgeons. Our side was filled with people who had head and neck cancer surgery. Their side was filled with handsome young men with brain injuries from motorcycle accidents. I never had the desire to smoke (cancer) or ride a motorcycle afterwards.

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