Double Trouble.

You know, twins got a really bad rap in the “Wonder Woman” TV series back in the day. Even before Lynda Carter famously filled the satin tights, twins were wreaking havoc in the world for Cathy Lee Crosby’s Wonder Woman.

They’re not really twins, kinda like Cathy Lee Crosby wasn’t really Wonder Woman.

Cathy Lee Crosby as Wonder Woman in 1974

Then alien invaders called the Skrill came by Earth to steal Vincent VanPatten’s brain with an illuminated egg and they picked up two twins along the way. There was no explanation in the two part episode that told us how the twins came about to join the Skrill, they were just there. It must have just been because they were twins. According to IMDB, the Hendricks twins never appeared in any other television or movie production. They were only in “Mind Stealers from Outer Space” on “Wonder Woman”.

They tried to scare Wonder Woman with a canister of glitter

More twins starting creating problems for Wonder Woman with crazy man Mariposa, who loved to dress up in purple and capture Olympic athletes in “Screaming Javelins”. Unlike their predecessors the Hendricks twins, the Kearney twins did appear on television but only once more, on an episode of “Welcome Back, Kotter”.

Evil twins were everywhere on “Wonder Woman”. I wonder why there was such a focus on the double trouble. I don’t recall if there was such a focus on evil twins on other shows like “The Six Million Dollar Man”, but the Hager Twins were on “The Bionic Woman”. They were trying to capture Helen Hunt who was Princess Aura before she was “Mad About You”.

Why were the twins always evil?

30 December 2020 by Fun and Games Dept 0

RIP Mary Ann.

Dawn Wells, Mary Ann from “Gilligan’s Island” has passed at age 82. She died of complications from COVID-19.

30 December 2020 by Spiritual Stuff. 0

One Down.

I just nuked one of my Twitter accounts. I have a few (but really, how many?) that I use and I nuked the “general purpose/Star Trek fan” account.

There wasn’t really anything that provoked the decision to deactivate the account. Over the past several months I’ve been a little surprised at how narrow minded many in the Star Trek fan community tend to be to one another, and I’ve been dropping folks I follow based on horrible comments exchanged. Politics inject themselves into Twitter no matter how many keyword blockers or other filters you have in place. And we all know the United States is a mess, I don’t need constant reminders in “trends” and “hot news” sidebars that are way too pervasive.

So I nuked the account. I’ll probably nuke another. Let’s see how I feel about the matter tomorrow.

30 December 2020 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Leftovers.

So either the movie production company left the Christmas decorations up or the folks on the street that was used for the movie set wanted to make a splash of their own. Either way, the decorations are still up and they’re quite lovely.

29 December 2020 by Chicago City Life. 0

Burn, Baby, Burn.

When Grandma City passed on I inherited her Christmas decorations. She was the crafty one of the my two grandmothers and I always enjoyed the way she decorated for Christmas. She’s the one that showed me how to change the bulb inside the reflector of one of those midget Christmas lights we had in the 1970s. Don’t mix up the voltages.

Part of her Christmas collection included these carolers. It’s a set of four of them. One of them has Little Orphan Annie eyes, but they’ve held their own for half a century.

If you look closely, you’ll notice they are candles. Yes, these caroling children are candles and have wicks coming out of the top of their head. Which makes me wonder, did people really light these children on fire as candles? Were the carolers set ablaze in some households, the cherubic singing faces melting into a puddle of multicolored wax?

Obviously Grandma City couldn’t bring herself to set these carolers on fire, hence they’re intact over 50 years later. But someone in the 1950s or 1960s had a really weird sense of humor.

28 December 2020 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Beat Saber.

This is not me. GIF courtesy of Giphy.

You would think a big dork like me would be all about the video games. The truth of the matter is, my age and affinity for retrocomputing lends its love to the likes of the Atari 2600 games Super Breakout, Astroblast, and Centipede. I’m not one to jump into games like Command and Conquer or whatever the latest shoot ’em dead game is these days. As far as gaming computers go, while we’ve had and Xbox and Wii in the relatively near past, I’m not huge into gaming.

We bought Oculus Quest 2s a month or two ago and I’ve become addicted to Beat Saber. I love the whole VR experience when it comes to gaming, but I still don’t want to shoot things. I’m happy just smashing blocks flying at me with lightsabers that I swing around. It’s the closest thing to Super Breakout that I’ll probably find in the 21st century.

If you’re not familiar with Beat Saber, it works like this. Blocks are coming at you in time to the music track that’s playing. You hit the blocks with the appropriate lightsaber in time with the music. The more accurate and definitive the hit, the more points you score. The tracks I’ve been playing have several different levels of difficulty. I’m up to “Hard” (three out of five) on most of them. I’ve tried “Expert” a couple of times (it’s the fourth level) and I usually fail about a third of the way into the track. I need to get more practice.

Unlike the days of the Atari 2600, playing Beat Saber with the Oculus Quest 2 is the best cardio workout I’ve had in the house in years. My arms are consistently sore from the excursion of anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes. I sweat like a crazy man, usually soaking the foam padding on the Oculus (once of the reason we bought two). The game is also fun for the whole family; we play across the miles courtesy of our broadband connection.

I’m sure the neighbors are watching through our balcony windows as we thrash around the living room (Earl) and bedroom (me), swinging at colorful blocks they can’t see. I don’t care. I love the immersive experience of Beat Saber and if I’m getting a decent amount of exercise thrashing my arms around in the air I’m happy with it.

28 December 2020 by Fun and Games Dept 0

WW84.

Photo courtesy of bookandfilmglobe.com

When it was announced that “WW84” or “Wonder Woman 1984” or “the second Wonder Woman” movie was going to be released in both theatres and on HBO Max on Christmas Day I was genuinely excited. Wonder Woman is my favorite superhero and while I haven’t kept up with her adventures in comic books at all in the 21st century, I’ve always been a fan of both the Lynda Carter and Cathy Lee Crosby adventures and I enjoyed the first Wonder Woman movie. I like Gal Gadot in the part. The costume is a bit more “Xena” than I’m used to, but I can deal.

I’m going to try very hard to not reveal any spoilers here, but consider yourself warned that I may refer to a couple of scenarios here and there that could be spoilerish. Plus, I’m going to give you my feelings on the film, and if you don’t want your upcoming viewing adventure impacted by my opinion, you’ve been warned.

27 December 2020 by Everyone's A Critic. 1

Masks.

My husband and I took a brief trip into Indiana yesterday. Rest rooms are scarce in these pandemic times, and we usually stop at a Walmart, Target, or Menards1 to do our business before continuing on with our journey. We always wear our masks, because it’s the responsible thing to do for both our own health and the health of those around us. In Illinois, at least in Chicago, folks are pretty good about wearing masks when they’re suppose to, but there’s too many people that think having a mask covering only their mouth and not their nose is an acceptable way to do this. For the uninformed, it’s not. At our Target stop there was a much higher percentage of folks wearing their masks over their mouth but not covering their nose, and there were too many using their mask as a chinstrap.

I don’t know why I’m surprised that apparently the average American doesn’t understand the purpose or mechanics of wearing a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic. I mean, a couple of years ago, a hole blew in the side of a Southwest Airlines flight and interestingly, people did two things: take a selfie and put their oxygen masks on incorrectly.

Photo courtesy of USA Today.

Now, I’m not the smartest guy in the room. I’m not even the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I do know that if something involves feeding oxygen to my body through an artificial means, or if I’m trying prevent something from being inhaled or exhaled, I’m going to need to cover both my mouth and my nose with whatever implement I am trying to use at this time.

It’s common sense.

Every flight has a demonstration of the correct use of an oxygen mask. Every flight attendant on every flight is going to show you how to use the oxygen mask before the airplane is even cleared for departure. That’s the way it works. Yet, look at these fools on the Southwest flight.

Back to the folks that don’t know how to wear a mask. I choose to believe they’re not that stupid. Perhaps they are, who knows in 2020. But I do choose to believe that they just don’t care about the people around them. They’re selfish, uncaring, unsympathetic, and devoid of compassion. They don’t care if grandma dies, they don’t care if their kids die, they just want to be able to stand in line at Starbucks or throw back a White Claw in their favorite pub without having to worry about this bothersome pandemic, but please give me a $2000 check.

If you don’t care about your own health I’m not going to try to save you. It’s not my place. But I’m going to do everything I can to keep me and my family safe. I love my family. I love my friends.

And the mask that doesn’t cover your nose or is around your chin pisses me off. I hope karma gives you what you deserve.

1 Save Big Money at Menards!

27 December 2020 by Why. 0

24.

Earl and I took a shot of ourselves in Virginia Beach before heading home. March 2006.

This picture hangs on my wall in my office. It’s probably one of my most favorite photos of the two of us. We spontaneously decided to drive to Virginia Beach on a snowy Friday after work, spent the night in Newark, Del. on the way down, and then drove the rest of the way to Virginia Beach Saturday morning. We spent Saturday there and drove the 10+ hours home, not hitting snow again until we were north of York, Pa. In the middle of a Central New York winter it was a great respite. I wrote about it here.

One of the countless number of reason I am in love with my husband is because he’ll travel anywhere at anytime with me and enjoy the experience as much as I do. Due to Coronavirus and sensible precautions, we have not done much of this spontaneous travel in 2020. To celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary, today we hopped in our Jeep Cherokee and drove around the northwest corner of Indiana and the northeast corner of Illinois before heading home to Chicago. It wasn’t a long drive. The highlight of the trip was a pass through a Target to use the restroom and a Taco Bell drive thru for lunch. We drove through a couple of small towns we hadn’t seen before and had some great conversation, held hands, and laughed a lot.

24 years ago today we had a small commitment ceremony on a pier on the Delaware River at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia, Pa. Our commitment was witnessed by Earl’s youngest brother Rick and at the time his girlfriend (now wife) Helen. Rick was a senior in high school. Earl and I were quite young.

That night I married my best friend.

The big photos and celebrations and attendance of our marriage was at our legal wedding ceremony, when the law allowed us to get legally married in New York State back in 2011. It was a beautiful day and a moment I will always treasure.

But the original commitment ceremony will always be our wedding day, and will always sing a song in my heart. On that night I married my best friend. He is the only other human being on the planet that can occupy the same space as me when I want to be alone. He’s the only one that has ever fully understood me. He is my best friend. I see fireworks whenever I see him. We laugh. We cry. We love together. We have no secrets. I never thought I would find what we have.

I’ve said in the past that becoming a pilot was the second best thing that I’ve ever done. 24 years ago today was the very best thing I’ve ever done.

26 December 2020 by Love. 0

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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