Lisa: My brother's gonna jump Springfield Gorge on a skateboard.
Lance Murdock: Could you leave me with the kids, please? Let me start by saying ... good for you, son! It's always good to see young people taking an interest in danger. Now a lot of people are going to be telling you you're crazy, and maybe they're right. But the fact of the matter is:
Bones heal.
Chicks dig scars.
And the United States of America has the best doctor-to-daredevil ratio in the world!
Second: You can make a tax deductible contribution via VDARE by clicking here. (Paypal and credit cards accepted, including recurring "subscription" donations.) UPDATE: Don't try this at the moment.
Third: send money via the Paypal-like Google Wallet to my Gmail address (that's isteveslrATgmail.com -- replace the AT with a @). (Non-tax deductible.)
Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.
You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.
Or you can send money via credit card (Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, Discover) with the industry-standard 2.9% fee. (You don't need to put money into your Google Wallet Balance to do this.)
Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).
Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here's how to do it.
(Non-tax deductible.)
Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)
Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)
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41 comments:
OT
BBC - Virginia gay marriage ban overturned by US judge
The BBC is less triumphalist than usual here, although they are clearly in favor of all things homosexual, and have been out front huffing up outrage at Russia.
However, here is the foto chosen by the BBC to accompany the story. It's pretty in your face, I would say.
Here is a foto of the federal judge - Arenda Wright Allen - who issued the ruling.
America 2.0 in all its glory.
Here’s my objection to ‘slope style”, in a foagyish sort of way.
It is totally unnatural. Its elements seem to be drawn from skateboarding. But skateboarders, suburban kids in urban or suburban environments, found the elements of their sport at hand. Drained pools, paved culverts, stormdrain pipes. Handrails, etc. Were these elements formalized into the ‘skatepark’, hell yeah. But at least they had a root in reality. And in fact, still do ... the best skating sessions are still kids finding an object on the street and skating the hell out of it. For me now, the equivalent are the parkour kids doing incredible stunts transversing the built environment ... but the key is that the environment wasn’t built for them... they built their sport around the environment.
Slope-style is totally artificial. Never was their a ‘rail’ planted in the middle of a piste. I’d much rather see a return of ‘speed skiing”. Or freestyle skiing in a natural environment.
But that episode had some weenie moral though about Bart quitting in order to protect his father (then the idiot somehow gets thrown across gorge anyway, I forget the details).
I don't know one person who's watched one second of these Winter Olympics-- I think some suit at NBC forgot how we have Youtube and Netflix now.
"Slope"style? Sounds racist! "Gangnam style" is more PC.
Back in the day, we used to jump ramps on bicycles. We used those banana-seated Sting Ray bicycles from the 60s. One guy jumped a flight of outdoor stairs at the school.
Great episode. Especially when they finally get Homer in the ambulance but it hits a tree and his stretcher gets knocked out again and falls down the Gorge again. His arms were strapped down the second time so it must have been very painful....
Dan in DC
The real-life Lance Murdock, Evil Knievel, spent his final years here in the Clearwater area. A guy I work with told me he met him once in a stereo store, and that he was a real prick. Rude and very bossy.
The Hulkster, on the other hand, I've always heard from people who met him that he's the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet. Always kind to fans, always willing to sign autographs and such.
Those are all the Pinellas County Celebrity Tales I have. This entry was kind of pointless, anyway ...
HBO's 'Crash Reel' is a perceptive documentary about daredevils and X-game sports. It seems as if making daredevilry into competitive sports has ratcheted up the pressure to "go big" with some life-altering consequences for the unlucky
12 Years a Prisoner:
Lots of people have been watching the Winter Games. Its rather refreshing to see a competition between the Holy Roman Empire (42 Medals), The Anglosphere (24 Medals), Scandanavia (21 Medals), and the Russian Empire (17 Medals), full of healthy attractive normal looking athletes. You know, like the Summer Olympics used to be.
Aren't ballet dancers also rendered physically worthless by the time they're 22? Except for those cowards who quit dancing earlier.
I think slope style, all the 'events' borrowed from the X Games are an attempt to keep the Olympics relevant to younger viewers. But they're going to have to evolve to real sports instead of play on snow. If you watch the downhill skiers and then compare the kiddies doing their little stunts you almost can't help but wonder where the sport is in that.
This painkiller and steroid and deer-antler spray abuse by ballerinas is getting out of hand--there will be a price to pay. Lying in a bathtub of ice all weekend, then punching out paparazzi on the walk back from the training stage. I have to turn my eyes when they push out some ravaged wreck by the time she's 20 for one last obligatory Swan Lake payday, her legs practically bent off the sides in 10 places. Oh America how you have lost your way. It's like The Hunger Games or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Fenollosa
white hispanic
Steve,
Operation Smokescreen has been thwarted:
http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/the-dark-enlightenment-exposed/comment-page-1/#comment-2852
Don't worry: Operation Weasel still strong.
There is hope yet.
The coverage of NBC is dated. Al Michaels? what they could not get a hold Brent Mussberger?
Slope skiing, see the hot snowboard chicks have a bad run and fall and get to the bottom of the hill and they are all smiles and Woohoo!
The other Theme is the American teammates and their relationship to the people they represent versus what the Europeans have, for instance downhill co-gold medalist, Slovenia's hot bod and a luminous star Tina Maze, now with her own television channel selling her line of sports wear, and lo! a bumper number-one pop song … so they got their claws in her but the local tradition is strong and she will be saved.
In contrast to the American athletes, the women skiers and snowboarders. Stellar looks, feminine faces and the glowing health of snow slopes and sunny skies. But who are they? no one even knows their names; whatever, California people. From last time around Lindsey Vaughn of Burnsville might be the exception proving the rule, almost transcending the flash in the pan but not really, did she take up for awhile with a vibrant?
Bones may heal but joints do not. I fractured my elbow as a kid and now in my mid 20's that elbow intermittently aches...and it's a non weight-bearing joint that has LONG time to get progressively worse. So I'm kinda screwed, but I definitely wouldn't envy someone who destroyed leg cartilage at a young age.
BBC - Virginia gay marriage ban overturned by US judge
___________________
There seems to be no issue, no subject on which a judge cannot issue a ruling these days and overturn any vote by the people nor any law by a state legislature or Congress--just term it a "civil rights" issue and that it. We are ruled by executive orders and by judicial orders.
Glad to see lib Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley go on Fox the other night and say that what Obama is doing is very dangerous, that the country is turning a blind eye to his behavior, that we will pay a heavy price and that he's afraid a "cult of personality" is responsible for the Left's attitude.
Something has to be done about the courts, I say!
"Slope-style is totally artificial. Never was their a ‘rail’ planted in the middle of a piste. I’d much rather see a return of ‘speed skiing”. Or freestyle skiing in a natural environment."
I agree about the artificiality of the sport, yet I also realize that the Downhill, that former King Event of any Winter Olympics, is now held on a course that is build the way Hollywood and Broadway stage sets are so I guess it's just a matter of degree.
Skaters still skate on ice, albeit indoor ice, but the surface on which they perform is much less artificial than any rails, any mogul fields, or any artificially shaped downhill, slalom, or ski jump runs.
But RAILS? Ye, gads, yeah, how awful, how out of place they look on snow.
Dan, that incident attained the mayhem of the old Warners Brothers cartoons. The shock of Homer's second fall was like seeing Wile E Coyote the first time. It's when I thought "this is really a great cartoon."
just another made up non-sport 'played' by non-athletes.
without slopestyle and snowboarding, would the US be able to win any medals at all?
sports bet: with the coming legalization of marijuana, the US has all the snowboarding and slopestyle medals on lockdown for the next 3 winter games at least.
I read a magazine article about Evel Knievel many years ago. The article was written about the time that George Hamilton was making his film biopic.
The producers had tried to have Knievel himself do the stunts. But they were frustrated by Knievel's ineptitude. It seems he couldn't do a simple wheelie without crashing. He was either very brave or very stupid, but he was no bike rider.
His fame apparently came from a unique ability (?) to return to stunt work after a serious crack up. They said that lots of riders could do the stunts. Most would have serious accidents sooner or later. But only Knievel would continue for crash after crash.
Albertosaurus
downhill is the real deal. hard, and very dangerous. takes skill and ability.
nobody does it, like all the other winter games sports except ice hockey, so it has a participation rate of about zero and no good athletes, but my respect is extended to downhill skiers.
now i will return to watching korean women speed skate in skin tight suits....
funny fact: the world record holder in the 1000 meters is some average baskeball player who had never speed skated in her life. 2 or 3 years after starting, she set the world record. LOL at winter olympics.
This is the first quote that I remember being recited from a Simpson's episode.
It will always have a special place in my heart.
"Dan, that incident attained the mayhem of the old Warners Brothers cartoons. The shock of Homer's second fall was like seeing Wile E Coyote the first time. It's when I thought "this is really a great cartoon."
Probably 2nd hardest I ever laughed at Simpsons.
First when Lisa explains what 10% of 120 million is to Homer after he had a heart attack.
"Lisa we really could have used that 12 thousand dollars"
But dad 10% of 120 million isn't 12k it's....then cut to intercom "code blue"
It's quite possible my explanation is not as funny as watching the actual show.
Dan in DC
Don't believe the lies you read, believe in Evel Knievel.
I haven't been following the Olympics very close, but didn't Bob Costas sneer at slopestyle as "Jackass type stuff"?
@12 Years a Prisoner of Abkhazians -
I don't know one person who's watched one second of these Winter Olympics
So you want congratulations on having a mostly prole, liberal and NAM social circle? Most educated white people consider the Winter Olympics a must see, and if you don't watch hockey, you are definitely a leftist.
Did Simpsons steal that from Shane Falco, or vice versa?
Shane Falco, Pain Heels
"Most educated white people consider the Winter Olympics a must see..."
According to Charles Murray, the "cognitive elite" watch hardly any television at all.
You can hear him say so at 14:30 in this C-SPAN video:
http://tinyurl.com/ljcen5e
What is the definition of cognitive elite?
Most people watch films. Most people will watch a sport.
If they report that they don't, it's very suspicious. I often find that people who deny watching TV or watching films rationalize the actual TV they consume.
@Awful Knawful: Back in the day, we used to jump ramps on bicycles. We used those banana-seated Sting Ray bicycles from the 60s. One guy jumped a flight of outdoor stairs at the school.
Yes, my friends and I did the same thing in the '70s. I was briefly a 7th grade celebrity when I attempted a big downhill jump off a huge hill across from the middle school. I was mimicing Knievel's Snake Canyon jump.
@anon: The Hulkster, on the other hand, I've always heard from people who met him that he's the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet. Always kind to fans, always willing to sign autographs and such.
Back in '03 I literally bumped right into Hulk Hogan doing some shopping with his son at the Westshore Mall in Tampa. He gave a head nod but I could tell he'd rather just get his errand done. He was smaller than I expected.
My very girly 5 year old daughter loved both the ice skating (she keeps asking when she can learn to ice skate now) and the womens' snowboarding. Interestingly, she wasn't too interested in watching the mens' snowboarding events. I think the pretty girls hugging each other at the end of the run fit what she thought a sport should look like.
According to Charles Murray, the "cognitive elite" watch hardly any television at all.
You'll miss a lot of references at iSteve if you didn't watch the Simpsons in its heyday.
The Charles Murray reference reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon in which a man is leaning forward in his armchair to turn on the TV while thinking, "I never watch television."
Back in '03 I literally bumped right into Hulk Hogan doing some shopping with his son at the Westshore Mall in Tampa. He gave a head nod but I could tell he'd rather just get his errand done. He was smaller than I expected.
About 25 years ago I tried to get an autograph for a friend's kid from Andre the Giant, who was parked on a stool at an atrium bar in the Hyatt-Regency, extremely drunk. He was bigger than I expected and much more baleful.
Back in '03 I literally bumped right into Hulk Hogan doing some shopping with his son at the Westshore Mall in Tampa. He gave a head nod but I could tell he'd rather just get his errand done. He was smaller than I expected.
Cool story, bro!
Do you think the president has been catching any of the Olympics, or like Mike Wise, does he find it too white?
"Most educated white people consider the Winter Olympics a must see"
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Yes, most of the annual participants in Gettysburg cosplay reenactments give Ye Winter Games "x # of thumbs up."
Rednecks and Mormons, together again...
Harry, some friends and I ran into Andre the Giant at the Naked I, a strip joint in Boston's late, lamented Combat Zone, back in the late 70s. He was enormous, and the fact he was with one of the midget wrestlers was a riot. He was inhaling 16 oz. cans of Budweiser and crushing them flat with his thumb and index finger for the patrons' entertainment. That gives you some idea about how big and how strong he was.
Speaking of big, some of the ladies on staff there commented on the size of one of his other appendages, but that's a story for another day.
Skiing is much easier to learn than snowboarding. The prevailing negative attitude towards snowboarding in this otherwise more discriminating abode carries the stench of naïveté. It's one thing to dismiss the complex aerial manuevers as over the top compared to a triple axel or the traditional straight ski-jump, but absurd to dismiss snowboarding as no sport.
An objective measure of physical demand on the athlete would be to compare kcals burned per hour of activity.
It's one thing to be conservative and favor traditions, but there's no reason to make an ass out of yourself needlessly.
"Aren't ballet dancers also rendered physically worthless by the time they're 22? Except for those cowards who quit dancing earlier."
Yeah, they spend their college-age years at the peak of their profession and basically at age 22 most of them have to make a living doing something completely different.
I once worked with a woman who was a professional ballet dancer in NY at age 20, and left that world scant years later. She then went to college but was always several years behind her peers. She became an OB/GYN and so did OK, but that's prob. not the usual career path for former ballet dancers. (Even in middle age, she still had a graceful, lithe figure.)
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