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Right Angle: Backstage (06-30-2020)

This week’s Right Angle pre-production meeting of Bill Whittle, Scott Ott, and Stephen Green, brings you never-before-seen ideas and unheard of images. Unthinkable!

39 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage (06-30-2020)”

DVD Show was a staple in our house. My favorite is still the un-toupeeing of Alan. Mary looked so sad. You wanted to cry with her and then laugh uproariously.Carl was perfect in movies. Never saw his version of Ocean’s Eleven, but loved him in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Laura Petrie getting her big toe stuck in a hotel bathtub faucet, having to have the faucet cut off, and attending the big formal even in her gown and left foot in a high heel, right foot wrapped up in a club shaped bandage. Something ANY wife would have done. Classic.

Don’t worry about, Scott. I’ve been reading/watching Bill for about 22yrs now and a number of his stories have become quite familiar.

Guys I finally got that dying Drobo back up and running. But one of the bays is totally horked. Not only will it not read a drive in that bay, if a put a drive in, its screws up the drive in another bay. Upshot, I got lots of storage space but I’m very dubious re: the reliability of my local NAS storage right now.
Also, Drobos seem to be unavailable for purchase these days.

Funky. I happen to have 2 Drobo’s on my desk right now. One working, one not so much. This is the 2nd Drobo to die on me – my HDs never die, but the Drobo box itself seems to have a life measured in minutes after the 3 years of service runs out. If they aren’t available, I can’t say I’m surprised – I’m going to be researching alternate replacements tonight on BWL.

I’ve found I get about 7-10yrs of service outta them. I have a very dead original Drobo at the office. If you find a suitable replacement, please let me know.

Ya wanna see wind outta her sails, the episode where Laura is convinced the hospital gave them the wrong baby. The look on her face at the end of the episode where the other couple comes over to “exchange” babies…

Actually it was Rob that was convinced that they gave them the wrong baby. The look on his face was priceless.

Swear to god, Rob calls Lauren in from the kitchen to meet the Petersons(?). She walks in and is just floored.

No, they just ran that episode on METV. It was one of Carl Reiners favorite episodes. They are both in the living room when Rob opens the door. They said it was the longest laugh in television history when the Peters walked in.

Like Steve, I grew up w/ The Dick van Dyke Show in reruns. And a little while ago I went back and watch the whole series. Including the never aired pilot ep. In the pilot ep, Carl Reiner plays Rob.

I watched that entire interview, Samuel, before we recorded this. By my recollection, he said both that the people who came onto his property were Marxists and terrorists, and that he is supportive of Black Lives Matter (perhaps the idea, rather than the organization) and in the course of his legal work, he has done civil rights work.

I should watch it again, but the way I remember it, he called BLM (and not people outside his house) Marxists and terrorists, and said he represents cases of people wronged by the police. Which is a good thing, the way I see it.

Start at 36:33 and watch to 37:39.

I’m not playing “internet tough guy” when I say that I *will* defend me and mine by whatever means necessary. I live just a few blocks from where Allentown puts on their annual Independence Day fireworks show and, even though there have been zero related violent incidents in the area since George Floyd’s death, I will be sitting here with loaded gun in case anything starts on this day that seems ripe for new rioting.

I didn’t start it elsewhere, I don’t intend to start it here, but if it starts and I am threatened then I will do what I think is required to end it. Responding to violence initiated against you – and that’s what we who want to protect our liberty against these marauding hoards are experiencing right now – with violence in self-defense is not wrong. He who initiates the force has forfeited his right to peaceful response. He is a violent danger and it is not only morally right but morally *required* to end that threat.

The other side has started a war. Our side has *not*, to this point, fought back with the same violence that has been visited upon us, even though we would be perfectly justified in doing so. I will *not* allow the war to destroy me. If attacked, I will act to defeat my attackers.

I’m not looking to suppress anyone. I have no intention to, nor have I ever suggested that anyone should, suppress anyone’s peaceful activities. And I understand quite well that “whatever means necessary” includes neither initiation of violence nor oppression after the fact. But, morally, once one side has started a war then all violence coming from those who seek to end *that* oppression is justified until the initiators are incapable of continuing their attacks. And all casualties that are innocent bystanders are the consequences of the *aggressor’s* actions, not the defender’s.

As I said, self-defense is NOT brutal suppression.

Now, I know that the Backstage sessions are informal and sometimes you guys will slip up a bit in what you say. But expressing our thoughts clearly, even in informal settings, is essential when addressing … well, *everything* … but especially life or death matters, which the ongoing conflict across the country has already become. (See CHAZ, Chicago, St Louis, etc.) That’s why I brought this up. We need to be careful to say precisely what we mean so that those who hear us have no excuse to twist our meaning or to excuse their misunderstanding. (Also, in the words of Richard Mitchell, “When we say our thoughts clearly, we often see that they are stupid.” I try very hard not to be stupid. Not by any means saying you are, just emphasizing the necessity of clarity.)

Thanks for listening.

You’re not who Scott was talking about. You’re the “quiet people” that Bill was talking about.
The people who Scott was talking about are living the hero’s role in an action adventure movie in their own minds. The type is disturbingly common in internet forums. They’re the “By God it’s time to go out and fight these evil doers wherever they may be found!!!” types. They are either tacitly or openly calling for civil war and they’re idiots. You’re not one of them, I can tell by your post.
I watched this Backstage episode last night and what Scott was talking about in that time slot stood out prominently to me also. I don’t know why you interpreted it the way you did but I know exactly the type he’s referring to. Because I’ve been on the internet and World Wide Web since it began and before that BBS systems and I have a lot of context for this kind of thing. There is a type of “Rambo” mentality that fails miserably to distinguish between action movie entertainment and reality. I served in the Marine Corps in some fairly unsavory places and I’m not one of them.
These nincompoops calling for civil war do not have the first idea what they’re on about. I have seen a civil war up close and quite personal. I was in Lebanon in ’82 & ’83. Civil war is dirty, dangerous (real danger not movie danger), smells horrible, and is terrifying at unexpected moments. We want to exhaust all possible recourse before resorting to that kind of drastic measure.
I know Scott often reads the comments on YouTube and I’m sure he’s seen some of mine. (I’m using a similar screen name and avatar here just to jog his memory …) I’m absolutely sure you’re not who he and Steve were referring to.

I’m sure you’re right, that they weren’t talking about the quiet people Bill mentioned. I do wish, however, that the rioters had been stopped from the beginning, by force where necessary. The longer they’re allowed to go on, the worse it will be in the end. If Trump wins reelection – and I think he will – the current rioters will be emboldened by the lack of action against them and they might erupt into full scale civil war. There will be outside manipulation (e.g. Soros) but they’ll be ripe for it.

I sent my first email in college in 1981 and, like you, I’ve watched the net grow from infancy. (I remember 300 baud dial-up!) You’re correct, that there have always been those bad actors (in the usual sense and in your adventure movie sense). I sometimes wonder if there are more of that type, as a percentage, on the internet than in real life simply because it’s so easy to be that way online.

I don’t even try to discuss the ongoing unpleasantness with anyone on social media (which is Facebook only for me – Twitter is an intellectual desert, Reddit is for rude assholes, and as far as I can tell the others aren’t even worth looking into to find out). I’ve lost my only sane (I thought) son in a Facebook comment discussion about the rioting – he doesn’t “give a f-ck about *stuff*,” it turns out, so he’s all in favor of “protestors” destroying “their enemies'” stuff since “presumably the businesses have insurance.” Civil war turns families against each other and I’m living it.

(My other son … well … he went crazy in a different way, sucked in by his girlfriend’s family that is, effectively, a fear-based cult centered on her father. I’ll probably never be allowed to see my younger granddaughter – the girlfriend’s child – again because I don’t put up with them. The father once threatened to “beat the sh-t out of me” if he ever saw me on the street. I had had words with the girlfriend about her abuse of that son’s *other* daughter – not her child. Long story – as if this bit isn’t long enough.)

Anyway, thanks for the considerate reply. It helps. 🙂

Steve – 160 megabytes? You lucky bastard. 😉 My first PC had 10. And I thought I was in heaven when I got a special driver that made it hold 30.

You had disk privilege.

When I went to college I had an IBM PC. No other qualifier. I paid extra for the 10MB Hard Drive.

I don’t remember how much space my 2nd computer had but my first was a Zenith 8088 with dual 5.25″ floppies. I got it a little late though, around 1991 or maybe 1992 probably, so my second might have been a 486.

Texas Instruments 99/4A – disk drive? We were rocking the cassette tapes!

I had an Amiga 3000 w/ two, TWO, 50mg hard drives. Man, I thought I was hot snot.

I can’t tell you how much I lusted after that Amiga 3000, but at the time I couldn’t even scrape together enough cash for an Amiga 500.

Only reason I could afford was the student discount coupled w/ the employee discount cause I worked at the Univ. bookstore.
It was a really good machine. But by the time it was released, Amiga was a dying concern. The only good programs for it were Deluxe Paint and a vector based drawing program I can’t recall the name off… Art Expression, I think.

Yep Art Expression.

That was my first IBM-compatible machine. My first computer was a VIC-20 — bought gently used for $100 — with 4k on on-board memory. Although I did spend an extra $100 of lawn mowing money on a 16k memory cartridge.
For external storage I had a Commodore 1530 Datasette, which could load 2k-4k programs off of a standard audio cassette in mere minutes.

I’ve been designing & writing software since just after I invented dirt. Punched paper tape, baby! Only way to go.

As I heard it, Costello was the brains of the outfit. He was a comedian looking for a straight mans and pulled Abbott outta the box office. That’s the way I heard it and could be complete wrong.

Also, Gracie was the brains and mover & shaker of that team.

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