Fancyin' Flight

We certainly glorify combatants – I think we can all name a few generals, a wrestler or two, some famous action movie heroes – we’ve got the Fight part of Fight-or-Flight covered, but we seem to put a lot less emphasis on that second half.

Most of the runners I can think of are more about infamy than excellence: Jim Fixx, mostly remembered because of his death; Ben Johnson, infamous cheater; that poor bugger Pheidippides, of Marathon fame, keeling over at the end of his run (and do they name it the 25k Pheidippides? No.)

Even the intensely fast Jesse Owens seems to be mostly remembered for sticking it to the Nazis, not his four gold medals & race barrier breaking deal with Adidas.

Chantix

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w-XrQaNqkM]

This isn’t the exact ad that plays in my market, but the concept is all there, including the mid-commercial warning. I remember the day’s when the anal leakage warning on Lay’s chips was a big deal – the first time I saw this commercial I almost thought it was some sort of clever campaign for something like The Crazies.

When are the symptoms going to outweigh the convenience? Maybe after you’ve murdered your family in a chemical haze.

Titanic vs. Lusitania: Get Rich Or Die Tryin'

I’m almost tempted to print out this TIME article in broadsheet format, just so I can read it while wearing a monocle and puffing at a comically large pipe – feasibly while fiddling with an extravagantly well greased moustache.

From mid-article:

The results told a revealing tale. Aboard the Titanic, children under 16 years old were nearly 31% likelier than the reference group to have survived, but those on the Lusitania were 0.7% less likely. Males ages 16 to 35 on the Titanic had a 6.5% poorer survival rate than the reference group but did 7.9% better on the Lusitania. For females in the 16-to-35 group, the gap was more dramatic: those on the Titanic enjoyed a whopping 48.3% edge; on the Lusitania it was a smaller but still significant 10.4%. The most striking survival disparity — no surprise, given the era — was determined by class. The Titanic‘s first-class passengers had a 43.9% greater chance of making it off the ship and into a lifeboat than the reference group; the Lusitania‘s, remarkably, were 11.5% less likely. – TIME

The discussion later in the article about polite behaviour  vs fight-or- flight self centered action is interesting, but I can’t help but notice that ‘polite behaviour’ basically saves rich ladies, a category I will likely never be counted in.

Olympics

Dear NBC,

Thank you for helping to cover up how bad a nosedive the Olympic closing ceremonies took after Neil Young. (Who, frankly, put all the projectors and dance numbers and ridiculous inflatables to shame with his acoustic guitar.) Your greed has saved a lot of Canadian embarrassment.

Thanks again,
54º 40′ and Surroundings

Diff'rent Strokes & The Bicycle Man

As far as I know, Diff’rent Strokes was really the show that began the trend of Very Special Episodes – which arguably peaked and receded during the final season of Blossom.

A lot of things can be ‘Very Special’ however, and Diff’rent Strokes liked to cast a wide net. Have you ever heard of The Bicycle Man?

Gordon Jump, (the boss from WKRP in Cincinnati & The Lonely Maytag Repairman,) played a bicycle shop owner who was quite interested in cutting Arnold a deal – in exchange for his pants. It’s surprising, for an early ’80s sitcom, how far they went with this Child-Molester warning.

It might have been a little more effective without the laugh track though.

Here’s the crux, but you can find both episodes dealing with the subject on youtube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlkoxsEpODo]