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UpperWestside

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by UpperWestside

  1. I believe that the three types we saw were a Sand shark, Galapagos and Hammerhead. Apparently the hammerhead is fairly rare to see around there, but it appeared briefly. Was really cool just watching them swim. One woman was fairly scared of them before we went in, but her friends got her to go. She really seemed to enjoy the experience. I would definitely do this again on my next trip there. Watching them get within 3 or 4 feet of us and just swimming away was unique to see.

  2. On 2/14/2022 at 10:36 PM, CurlyDumps said:

    Got stuck "watching" (browsing surly/internet) MARRY ME with family.

    The opening concert scene: J-LO is in an almost nude bodysuit, surrounded by nuns in leather, singing a song about going to church. And it's not supposed to be a joke, or funny.  A master class in unintentional humor.

    I have the AMC Pass so sometimes I go to movies because I have an extra one still to see for the week. I had zero expectations of this one, but it was light-hearted and enjoyable. I like Owen Wilson as an actor. I do not really follow Jennifer Lopez, but I thought she was good in this. It is definitely a date movie.

  3. On 2/11/2022 at 2:25 PM, RPM said:

    The King's Man -  Very well done origin story and they left room for more prequels. Solid cast. Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton and a slew of your favorite stars.

    I enjoyed this movie. Ralph Fiennes was fantastic in it.

  4. 1 hour ago, BabaYaga said:

    I think like any extreme undertaking, the safety is in the preparation and who you engage with.  Like base/sky jumping or wing suit diving.  If you are 100% dialed in on your craft, it's not too bad.  If your friends are spending most of your time making sure your Go-Pro's are on so you can immediately post to social media.....those are the one's I'd stay away from.  

    Absolutely. I would steer clear of folks like that, especially if you are going to be going into something that is going to require you to be on your game so to speak. I have a lot of respect for people who are really good at things that require them to be 100 percent dialed in. Alex Honnold would be someone in that mold. The El Capitan ascent was amazing.

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  5. 1 hour ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    That is about the most dangerous thing you can do underwater apparently... sharks aside that is.

    From what he has described of it I would have to agree. He’s undergone a lot of training and tests to be where he is at with it. He and his girlfriend are planning to move to this place in Florida that has a cave dive they can do regularly. I am not sure I’d move to Florida for that reason. Wish I could remember the exact place he said. 

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  6. 4 hours ago, BabaYaga said:

    Had a friend that is a "master" diver (whatever that means).  He's done it all.  Technical dives.  Diving expert-level wrecks.  All over the world.  What he WON'T touch - cave diving.  That makes my hands sweaty just thinking about adding water and silt to the underground tight spaces.

    I have a friend that is a diver for the New York Aquarium. Diving is his life’s passion. He’ll go diving anywhere if he can afford to do it. Cave diving is a huge favorite of his. He can talk your head off about it. I think it would be fun to try at some point.

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  7. 9 hours ago, South Austin said:

    Fear is a natural survival mechanism.  Declining to swim with sharks isn't letting fear dictate my life.

    I do not disagree that fear is a survival mechanism. I am no adrenaline junkie so I would hope my view does not come across like that. I just choose to do things in life that are off the beaten path.

    • Like 1
  8. 14 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    I don’t have that kind of abject fear, but I can tell you the beach we swim at, two Thanksgivings ago there was a 12-15 foot great white shark named Mary pinging 8’ offshore where we swim in the Summer. There’s shark tagging research group that’s tags them and has an FB page.  I think it’s OSearch or something similar.

    There are a lot of bull sharks in those waters, and there have been more than a couple incidents along that beach the last 5-10 years.

    It doesn’t keep me out of the surf, but I do pick and choose times of the day to stay out.

     

    sharks freak me out a bit, yeah.

    I went swimming with them in Hawaii for a couple of hours this past September. We did what the captain asked us to do and honestly it was an awesome experience free-swimming with them. I always try to remember when I am in the ocean that it is their territory I am intruding upon. I like to surf and just in general be in the ocean, but there’s no guarantees in life on anything. I will try to find the pictures the captain took while we were swimming.
     

    When I tell people some of the things I have done in life that are considered dangerous I remind them that we all have an expiration date and I am not going to allow fear to dictate how I live until that time comes.

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  9. 7 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

    I have only had one flight since COVID began.  It was international on Swiss.  No issues.  Then again, I have been avoiding domestic travel like the plague because of idiots.

    I have had a handful of flights since the beginning of Covid and all have been incident-free. The smoothest flight was the 2nd half of the trip from NYC to Honolulu this past September. Switched in Vegas to Hawaiian Airlines for that. Granted the destination was amazing, but still the flight attendants were so pleasant and people behaved.

    I believe if you are going to cause an incident on an aircraft then yes you should be banned from flying and if the federal government needs to be part of this effort so be it. Pick another place to spew anger, hate and violence besides 35000 feet. 
     

     

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  10. 55 minutes ago, ztejas said:

    Jokic gives zero fucks.

     

    I heard them mention Vic Lombardi in that clip! He’s been a sportscaster in Denver ever since he left Austin. I loved listening to him when I was younger when he would do the late night sports on KXAN I believe it was.

  11. 1 hour ago, ztejas said:

    Lakers have clawed back to make this a fun game. 

    But my lord do they do a lot of posturing and preening for a team 5 games below .500.

    I’m not certain most of them could accurately tell you their record right now. Of all the Laker teams I have watched in my many, many years of being a fan this would be a top three most unlikable Purple and Gold roster. The Kwame Brown, Smush Parker, Chris Mihm outfit was one I could never have imagined seeing play together, but this one takes the cake. Mihm is still the only Laker I never rooted for. I remember looking up his stats from his age 25 year and he was being outdone by Vlade in his age 35 season.

    Outside of the 86-87 and 87-88 teams my favorite Laker team was the 92-93 version that had game five stolen from them against Phoenix in the final 30 seconds of regulation. That team played harder than any Laker group I have ever watched. Big Game was on his last legs and Vlade, along with a young Elden Campbell, was having to hold things together on a paper thin frontline that won 39 games that year. I have always wanted to meet Barkley to remind him he never would have gotten beaten by MJ that year in the Finals if the refs had not looked the other way on a clear offensive goaltending. I went nuts when Paxson hit the three that ended things in Game Six.

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  12. 20 hours ago, hullabelew said:

    Roscoe Plowboys was a big winner for me and extra bonus for knowing the Jr. High was the Clod Hoppers. I wrote the Jr. High name in and he was duly impressed.

    I have some stories from a guy who was a letterman for the Plowboys. He spun some truth with some mixing of the grandiose better than any story-teller I have ever heard. He told me a story one time that had me crying laughing from when he was an assistant coach in the early 80’s for the San Antonio Lanier Voks. Before his story I only knew it as the school that upset Chris Bosh and his Purple Tigers from Lincoln in the 2001 state semi-final. That was probably one of the biggest upsets in the history of the boys tournament. They got smashed in the final two days later Ozen and Kendrick Perkins, but they can never take away that semi-final game from them.

  13. 1 hour ago, Deej said:

    Craig Way has entered the chat.

    Haha. Craig would kill me on anything to do with all the new schools built across the state in the metro areas. I can go toe-to-toe with him on random stories about small Texas towns and sports.
     

    When my old coach was the head basketball coach at the basketball Big Sandy (Not Lovie Smith football Big Sandy) out by the reservation I went to visit him. They were in their first year fielding a track team and I showed some of the shot and discus athletes how to throw both. They had no track so they ran out in a field near the school. We go to the track meet down in Evadale a couple of days later. Three things I remember about Evadale. One I met the boys basketball coach from Goodrich there. He was the coach who always wore an orange jacket at the state tournament when the Hornets made it. Two the boys basketball coach at High Island was there. His name was Bill Shaw and was the head basketball coach my freshman year of high school. He looked EXACTLY like Dr. Red Duke and would guzzle Diet Coke during games. I have not seen him since that track meet. Third one of the boys running the two mile puked his guts out when he crossed the finish line. He was one of the Alabama-Coushatta athletes and this was his first time running track. No one told him that it wasn’t a good idea to eat chili dogs right before running. 

  14. 6 minutes ago, Vito Andolini said:

    Ok, is this a bit? Are you going to post a The Simpsons “That’s the Joke” meme? Or is your friend Bert Kreischer?

     

    I’ve seen that show. Funny, but no, different story. My friend is way too serious to ever pull off telling it like that. I would imagine anyone traveling in Russia at the time he was probably has some similar tales to tell. I could probably head down to Brighton and hear some similar stories from people who are friends with the Russians that live there. 

  15. 4 hours ago, slorch said:

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^

    I never worked in Times Square.  Peep show or otherwise...

    I have a story for that. I worked with two guys here three years or so ago. One was an upstater from a pretty small town. He had quite the life in his younger days traveling Europe, Russia in particular. His story about Russians putting pet bears in wagons had me laughing quite a bit as did his train trip through Russia where he accidentally became friends with Russian mobsters while drinking on the train with them. I believe he wound up being friends with some that lived in Brighton Beach. This guy is probably the most intelligent human being I have ever met. His life revolves around his love of diving. Shockingly he is a diver for the New York Aquarium.
     

    Anyhow this guy and the other from a small town in Oklahoma told a story about a guy they worked with who came back from lunch one day bragging that he got a BJ at one of these places in Times Square. He was telling everyone that he went to one of those spots and paid 5 for it. I guess he was kind of a manly man so the guy from Oklahoma, who is gay, told him in front of everyone “The person on the other side of the wall was a guy.” He didn’t feel so proud of his accomplishment after that. 

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  16. On 2/12/2022 at 8:00 AM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    52 years in Texas and and still learning town names.

    This is a fun one to see in the news. An old coach was the principal at the high school there after he got out of coaching. I think his wife still works for Seymour ISD. Not sure what he does now as I have not seen him since I used to run across him in Austin at the state tournament every March. That’s been many years ago.
     

    I learned the name of darn near every Texas town in high school because a football coach put up a list on the wall in his history class of every school that was in the state of Texas at the time. I used to look at it every single day in class and the town names just stuck. You would be surprised how many times I have had people tell me they are from Texas and that it’s some town I would have never heard of. 
     

    Worked with a guy from Progreso on Long Island. Surprised him by telling him his mascot was a Red Ant. Had a job interview in Times Square and was offered the job on the spot because I told the guy that I would indeed know the town in Texas he was from if he told me because at first he was vague and said he was from near Lubbock. He said Abernathy and I said “Oh the Antelopes. They’re pretty good at basketball.” Had someone hand me a debit card for the bank from Happy. I said “Oh a Cowboy, huh?” Saw them get shelled one year at the state basketball tournament.” So many random towns I have been through and around Texas that there are none that I have not at least heard the name of at some point. I have a friend that calls me from Dallas and he’ll say a random town and ask me for a story about the town. I am pretty good with useless information so I almost always have something to tell him. 

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  17. It’s funny how these things work out. Smart is probably a better fit at a school like Marquette. It’s out of the limelight, but the school is all basketball all the time which helps. I think that this is a place he can probably consistently win at in the regular season. He’ll get players that fit what he wants to do and you can probably pencil him into the tournament every year.

    His tournament coaching acumen, outside of that one Final Four run, leaves A LOT to be desired. Maybe he learned from his struggles at Texas and worked on his shortcomings as a coach. If so good for him. If not it’ll show when the lights are their brightest in March. 

  18. I liked it. I have always enjoyed movies with Halle Berry. It’s an action movie that gives you a quick break from reality. At times it felt like I was watching an updated version of Independence Day, but that was a good movie when it came out in 1996.
     

    We all need those kinds of movies at times where you just forget everything for a couple of hours and watch stuff explode. I also enjoyed seeing John Bradley (Samwell from GoT) in it. He is just a highly likable actor.

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  19. 14 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    I've always considered BLM as a concept and not an actual group. Perhaps a group has taken on that name but I don't believe they speak for anyone except for people that work in that legal entity. 

    It's like when I receive a cold call for a group called "The fund to help the widows and orphaned children of Texas lawmen killed in the line of duty LLC" I don't think of those as the actual widows and children. They're just some group that may or may not advance a cause.

    I do as well. I have never looked at BLM as an organization. It is the idea that a black life has as much value as any other life on this planet. When I went to protest marches in DC and NYC in 2020 it was always the idea and thought behind the phrase that I support. I could not tell you much of anything about the legal entity.

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