Eat This, Buzz Lightyear

Riding the people mover through the SFO terminal on my way to baggage claim after returning from a week in Kauai, I was in kind of a post vacation funk when something caught my eye that completely lifted my spirits. When I got off the people mover I called my girl friend to come back with me to look at this!

That's just one part of one of the most fantastic toys I had as a child, the Fireball XL5 Space City playset. In addition to that rocket, which has a detachable nose section and opening side doors to expose the transport bay, the set came with people, gas storage tanks, a launchable rocket, personal space vehicles (car and motorcycle-like), and so much more. For a kid of the sixties, before we had actually landed on the moon, this was a great toy, a great way to let the imagination soar out of my bedroom. Thanks to the SFO Airport Museum for bringing those memories back.

Posted Without Comment

The Abu Ghraib Play Set is Next

Betcha can't wait to get your kids and grandkids Playmobil's Security Check Point toy.

The Amazon customer reviews for this are priceless.

Via The Washington Monthly.

Asshat Update

On the Armstrong and Getty radio show this morning, one of the interchangeable asshats commenting after an audio clip in which Barack Obama noted that his intelligence team would not continue Bush administration policies that had tarnished the agency, said, "I don't know what he's talking about. I wish I did, but I don't."

Really, now. Here's a man who for a number of years has co-hosted a morning radio talk show, discussing salient issues of the day, and he is unaware, or wants us for some reason to believe that he is unaware, that Barack Obama, the president elect of the United States of America, disapproves of the torture regime of the Bush Administration. It's not really important to me which is true, that he doesn't know of this or that he's pretending not to know of this. He is, as I've repeatedly said, an asshat. What I wonder is why any of his listeners would give somebody, who by this example is either abysmally ignorant or willfully misleading to his listeners, any credibility at all.

Good News Everyone!

Joe Starkey, the execrable long time play-by-play announcer for the Forty-Niners, is being replaced by Ted Robinson. In recent years I've found that I can't stand more than a minute or so of Starkey per week, so this means that I will once again be able to listen to the game broadcasts. A typical Starkey play call would include the mention that a pass had been thrown downfield, but would usually leave out such information as to whom the pass was intended, how far downfield it had been thrown, and whether or not it had been completed. I have been amazed for years that somebody so obviously incompetent could have retained such a visible job for so long. You could blame it on the York family's infamous inablility to distinguish talent from the lack thereof, but Starkey's presence and lack of discernable talent on 49er broadcasts is a holdover from the Debartolo era.

Ted Robinson isn't the second coming of Bill King, but he's at least competent and easy to listen to. I caught him on a broadcast a couple of weeks ago and was pleased to have some sense of what was happening on the field.

More on Starkey's retirement, from SFWeekly.com.