Barnacle

Little Anklevich, my 6-year-old, is making Lego Barnacles. I should tell him that they’re called Bionicles, but it makes me chuckle too much, so I’m letting it be.

Stodgy

I know I'm a stodgy old curmudgeon traditionalist, but you'll never convince me that there's any merit to a pizza that looks like this:

What is that, dandelions on there? The worst part is that it's almost gone. PEOPLE HAVE EATEN THIS THING? I think the CDC needs to be notified right away.

The Man Just Isn't What He Used To Be

I was out with my kid at Hermann Park, and came across this sign:

It's nice of the man to be so encouraging these days.

I don't know why, but things like this always make me chuckle. I suppose it's because I'm still really immature or something.

Starman

They launched the Falcon Heavy rocket today. It was pretty cool to see, especially because of the way the booster rockets returned back to their platforms and sat back down after doing their job. That's just rad.

This mission is just a test mission to see if they could everything to work properly, and it looks like they still have some work to do, because the third booster didn't make it back quite like it should have. As a sci-fi nerd, I'm always excited about the possibility of space travel, so I can't wait to see just what all will come of this.

And now that space has been opened up to private companies, it's interesting to see some of the things they've come up with, like Starman:

Is there anything out there that could make a nerd like me smile more? It's just so very cool.

Maybe I'm wrong, but this seems like one of those moments that will be forever crystalized into this unforgettable image. In the future, the picture of Starman cruising the heavens in his Tesla roadster will probably sit side by side with the pictures of Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the moon, the photo of his footprint, and the photo of the American flag planted in the lunar dust.

Can't you just see some future version of whatever will pass for mass media doing a flashing promo with Starman's likeness in just the same way that MTV did with the astronauts?

I couldn't help but throw together my own quickie video with what we'd rolled off of the Starman feed.

And then, of course, there's the fact that they called him Starman. If you know me much, then you know that I appreciate David Bowie who I got to know well because of writing a story ostensibly about him. It's called ChloeyYou can read the story here, or listen to the Dunesteef episode that featured it here.

Check out the animation of the mission, set to the tune of Bowie's "Life On Mars?"

I wonder what those future Martians a thousand years from now will think when they go and visit the site of Starman and his Tesla roadster the way we visit the pyramids or the colisseum in Rome. Will Bowie will live on echoing through their minds? Will there even be humans in existance by that time? I just love to think about it. I love it when something like this comes along and fills me with wonder.

Preternatural

I'd heard that they'd greased all the poles on the street signs to prevent crazy fans from damaging them when they climb them in their frenzy. This guy must be a climbing savant, one of those Lumberjack Games kind of experts.

The Big Game

Watching the Super Bowl (oops, I mean the big game) at work. Surprisingly, this is the first time I’ve ever had to do that in all my years in news.

Prude?

I've been really getting into funk music recently, both the original stuff from the sixties and seventies and the newer revival stuff. So, I really enjoy Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk" with Bruno Mars in it, as well as "Feel Right" with Mystikal in it.

I find it funny though that I can't bring myself to get the explicit version of the song. I know it probably makes me super white or something, but I just don't like songs that are an endless stream of profanity. Here's the original, explicit version:

I feel like a complete hypocrite, but I got the clean version of the song. I'm the same guy that rails against anybody who wants to take a filmmakers original concept of a film and cut it down to make sure it doesn't offend somebody's sensibilities, and here I am doing the same with a song. I hate those people like VidAngel, and have complained about their affront against art for years, and then I get the clean version of "Feel Right".

Is it different with music? They made the clean version for squares like me to buy, right? So, it's not the same as some third party eviscerating the things that their sensibilities say shouldn't be allowed, is it? I'm curious, because I honestly don't know.