Jump to content

Richard Kimball

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    964
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Richard Kimball

  1. Don't know if this fits, but about 45 years ago, I was cruising up I-35 at the lead of a pack doing about 85 between Round Rock and Georgetown. Speed limit was 70. Top a hill and see DPS running radar on the side of the road. He pops his lights as soon as he sees me, but has to wait to pull out until the rest of the pack passes. I panic, then see an exit and a gas station. Take the exit, pull into the station and park at the pumps on the back side and start gassing up. See him fly by going about 90. Finish getting gas, go inside, get a drink, use the bathroom, go back out, and slowly pull back onto the interstate. About a mile down the road, I passed him, and he had a car just like mine pulled over, and was giving that driver hell.
  2. There are four stages of attitude towards meetings, depending on where you are in your career. 1. Why aren't I important enough to be invited to the meeting? 2. Oh boy! I get to go to the meeting! 3. I would commit a felony to get out of this meeting. 4. I'm the one calling the meeting. I'm currently in stage 3/4.
  3. Wendy Peffercorn knew exactly what she was doing.
  4. It's weird how many people will pay the toll to take 130 around Austin, where the speed limit is 80, and putter along at 60 or 65. Another thing I noticed when I took 130 last week is a lot of people don't realize the rubber on tires dries out after about five years. Apparently 80 mph is the speed where those treads separate from the rest of the tires. Probably about four tire treads per mile laying in the road.
  5. True, but with marketing, a lot more could have been sold. Totally agree with you that a bunch of these kids have unrealistic expectations. Listen to them in interviews. 3X the number of players that go to the NFL think they're going to the NFL.
  6. On the Cafe Press, I get it, and think you're right. With "just in time" printing, it's not like the old days when you had to make a huge run of items to sell. Somebody makes a shirt, sells twelve, he gets twelve bucks or so. Here are my predictions: 1. Players are going to get even goofier on social media. A lot of guys are going to run around like the Kardashians, cause "raise your profile, raise your income." 2. We're going to start seeing some real locker room splits between players getting paid and players that aren't. 3. A lot of players are going to become less focused on the game, and more focused on being a media brand. 4. At some schools, the rabid fan bases will set up money pools to buy products to boost player salaries, and/or create endorsement projects that have no intention of really raising sales, but are just a legal way to funnel money to players. Is there any reason a booster club couldn't hire a player to be a spokesperson for the booster club? On your comment about the Ricky Heisman shirt, you're looking at it with Texas colored glasses, unless you were just talking about the Longhorn program specifically. Johnny Manziel would have sold a ton of T shirts, as would Robert Griffin III, Trevor Lawrence and several others.
  7. True story from when I was with Austin Fire. This was about 35 years ago. Cruising down South Congress on a Code 3 run (lights and sirens) and coming up on the intersection where the Dan's Hamburgers was. Check the light, eye contact with all four drivers at the intersection, and it's clear. Floorboard the accelerator and see a guy cut into the Dan's parking lot. Can tell he's cutting the intersection. Lock up the brakes and when a fire truck locks up the brakes, it sounds like you've got a load of live pigs in the back. Guy bails out of the parking lot right in front of me. Typical asshole in a tie and wearing shades, looks up and sees that big ass truck bearing down on him, and if you've ever wondered what someone looks like when they see God coming, that was it. I got the truck stopped, but by that time I was so close I could see his lap through his car window. Course, when he saw what he'd done, he sat on the brakes and was parked right in front of us. He just sat there with his mouth open, staring at us. Pretty sure he actually shit when I hit the air horn.
  8. Fun movie. Time travel plots are always going to have holes. Like in T2, Cyberdyne or whoever the company was, got the technology to build the Terminators by studying the chips from the Terminator that had already come from the future. Would have been cool to see on the big screen. Agree with @Dr Fear about JK Simmons using a precision rifle. I kept thinking, doesn't anyone have a 40 mm grenade launcher? Also, @atomheartbevo makes a great point that this movie would have been a pretty awesome mini-series. There were quite a few concepts that could have been fleshed out and been pretty intriguing. Acting was good, and Simmons stole every scene he was in.
  9. Jumping in here... Tombstone Treasure of the Sierra Madre Goodfellas Die Hard Major League Godfather I & II Smokey and the Bandit Dirty Harry All That Jazz Unforgiven Surprised that, unless I missed it, nobody else mentioned Tombstone. Dirty Harry has been ripped off so many times, it's unreal. Eastwood has only recently been given credit as a visionary, but his movies were the jumping off point for three genres: Redefining the western with the "Man With No Name" trilogy, vigilante justice against a psycho killer genre with Dirty Harry, and the guy being pursued by a hot psycho chick, in Play Misty for Me. Goodfellas and the first two Godfather movies were interesting takes on the same lifestyle. Goodfellas was probably closer to the truth. The Tommy DeVito character, played by Joe Pesci, was just a great character, but seems almost mild mannered compared to Tommy DeSimone, the guy he was based on. Pesci is 5'3". DeSimone was something like 6'4", 230 lbs, and according to Henry Hill, enjoyed killing people like it was a hobby. Smokey and the Bandit and Major League are junk food comedies, but always make me laugh. I don't think they could be made today.
  10. That wasn't just an A&M thing to cover up for the autograph signing thing. A&M had a game with Alabama coming up. In 2012, they'd beaten Alabama in their first year in the SEC. John McLain said it best, before the penalty was handed down, that they'd sit him for a half against Little Sisters of the Poor, but there was way too much money on the line in terms of TV ratings for the NCAA to sit Manziel for the Alabama game. That rematch was going to draw huge ratings, and it would cost the network, the SEC and A&M if Manziel wasn't on the field.
  11. Yeah, the photo shows the regular characters from the first season. Amos was never a regular, and Betty White's character was, if I recall correctly, planned to be a one off in the third season, but her character worked so well they kept her.
  12. Ed Asner is the only one left, which is weird. If people were placing bets in the 70s, he'd have been first on the bucket list from a heart attack. Still rolling at 82. Cloris Leachman was a surprise, cause she was in her mid forties when the show started, and acted up until a few months before her death this year. She did the voice of the grandmother in the Croods, and two movies will be released posthumously.
  13. That was the dream sequence, where Ted, Murray and Lou all fantasized about marrying Mary. I think it ended up with them running a train on her. MacLeod really latched onto that Captain Stubing role, almost like Alan Hale latched onto the Skipper persona. He wore that captain's outfit for the rest of his life. Sometimes, in interviews, he sounded like he really thought he was a ship's captain. I think he loved the role so much because all of his career he'd been cast as a kind of pathetic character. In McHale's Navy, he was always dirty and greasy, and got two lines, at most, per episode. Kelly's Heroes, basically the same character, but in the army. In Mary Tyler Moore, he was a downtrodden writer who wrote for a moron, and spent all his time simping over MTM, even though his wife at home was pretty hot, at least hotter than he deserved. In an interview, he talked about how much the role of the captain meant to him, because he'd always been cast as the low man on the totem pole. He also mentioned that he'd worked for quite a while to change the persona of the character, as he'd originally been written as a severe, by the book, somewhat tyrannical character, and he didn't think the character could survive on a show that was mostly about good feels, so he badgered the writers, and softened him. He had a long life, and got to play a lot of different characters. By all accounts, was a good guy. RIP.
  14. Kinda weird looking, but the Rock is fun. Reminds me of some of the cheesy movies Arnold made in his prime. Disney returning to making movies named after rides. Definite African Queen call backs in the trailer, right down to the outfit the Rock is wearing. Also some vibes of Indiana Jones and the Jumanji movie he made. Seems to definitely be aimed at the younger set, like too young to drive, but those can be fun, too.
  15. The director matters a lot. This is an extreme example, but Frank Capra directing "Kill Bill" and Quentin Tarantino directing "It's a Wonderful Life" would have produced radically different movies. It would be like Marie Osmond singing "Cocaine Blues."
  16. Angelina Jolie is in her forties and has had a double mastectomy. Salma Hayek is in her fifties. Rule 34 and all, but I'll pass on that aspect. Maybe 20 years ago. The trailer epitomizes where Disney is with Marvel, now. Hayek was selected as the lead, according to the director, because she's in her fifties, and everyone needs to fight ageism in Hollywood, and because she thought it was time for a Hispanic female super hero. Opens with ponderous music, and insane CGI levels, no real plot to discern, but the money part is at the end. One guy says, basically, that the bankable stars from the previous movies (Evans and Downey Jr.) are retired, so who's going to be the face to bring people into the box office. One guy says he could, and everyone laughs. That summarizes where Disney is right now with Marvel. All their bankable stars have been exploited, and they're not sure where to go. Brie Larsen can't carry the load. Tom Holland is okay, but he can't carry a movie, and Sony isn't giving up the rights to Spider-man. Disney wants the toy sales from characters they own. Top management doesn't want the ice cream and candy bars of a comic book movie. They want to make a social statement, so they're dressing up broccoli and cauliflower in an ice cream suit and hoping we'll buy it. Disney is worried about this movie. Chloé Zhao, the director, is from China, and Disney played that up a lot, until it came out that she escaped Communist China and has bad mouthed them. This means China may not allow the movie to be released there. [why she makes films about the American heartland] It goes back to when I was a teenager in China, being in a place where there are lies everywhere. [Filmmaker Magazine, 2013] Zhao has mostly made art house films. I think her biggest film so far is Nomadland, which made $2 million in the US, and $13 million world wide. That's fine, cause the total budget was $500,000. Not sure how an art house film made with a massive budget will play out. The last time Disney tried this was with Rian Johnson.
  17. So many... "I'm your huckleberry" "It was Barzini all along" "I'll be back." "Do you feel lucky?" "Say hello to my little friend"
  18. Avatar doesn't check out.
  19. Damn, I've spent a whole morning going through these songs. Here are a few that, to me, are perfect: George Strait, Amarillo by Morning. Wife and I are coming up on 38 years. This is our song. Chuck Berry, Johnny B. Goode It's not just a great song, the lyrics are great poetry Deep down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans, Way back up in the woods among the evergreens, There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood, Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode Who never, ever learned to read or write so well, But he could play a guitar just like he's ringing a bell. Rainy Days and Mondays. Karen Carpenter obviously suffered from depression and eventually died from anorexia. She is the only person that could sing this song, and make it bring tears to your eyes. Wagon Wheel, Old Crow Medicine Show. I'm a sucker for fiddles and banjos.
  20. Bring two popsicle sticks and a rubber band, just in case.
×
×
  • Create New...