I write the blog that makes the whole world schwing

I’ll go with Walk in the Woods. As for Hitchhiker, I’m not that big a fan myself; plus, it doesn’t have, shall we say, the gravitas I’m looking for.

I’ve added a couple of movie items (or I will, before the day is out). I don’t want to overrate Nine Queens, but if you like that kind of movie, you’ll like this one. I mean, how many Argentine films have you actually seen, that you can start caviling over including this one? And there’s no point in my recommending obvious stuff, even though I do consider the Firefly Continuum pretty mainstream (although if it were all that mainstream, it would still be running as a weekly series). That whole obvious tag is what stays my hand on the GRL. That and, as I say, gravitas. But I’ve enjoyed the whole Firefly Continuum business way too much not to push it on others, so that will go on there too.

I do love when a private in the VCA scribbles something elliptical, as in a comment I just read to the effect that people (the government? the IRS? Valerie Plame?) are reading this blog and reacting to it with their own blogs. What? I have great fear of starting a trend where every dumb coach in America feels some pressure to blog just because I do; one dumb coach ought to be enough! And I hardly believe that we are setting trends here. If that were the case, TOC would do the honorable thing and evaporate, the Legion of Doom would report what mischief they were up to in Dallas, O’C would turn off his computer for a week and concentrate on the moment, the entire country would rise as one to support the Modest Novice, someone would volunteer to adopt Tik pronounced teek before he completely destroys the chez, the new Bump invitation would write itself (as would my new how-to-judge materials), someone would offer me 10 of their Yale rooms within walking distance (I think our hotel, nice as the sales guy was, is in Cleveland), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anyhow, if someone is blogging about debate stuff, regardless of whether it’s in reaction to CL, please point me to it (provided they have some staying power). I don’t exactly consider myself a voice crying in the wilderness, but if there are other tumbleweeds blowing across the net, I’d be interested to make their acquaintance.

And one last thing, a propos of nothing. I don’t think I mentioned that last week the Spawn treated me to the Cyclone and all the Nathan’s hot dogs I could eat. Let me put it this way, roller coaster fans. The Cyclone is about 75 years old. It is about as smooth as a rockslide. As far as air time is concerned, at least from the back seat (which is, of course, the location of choice on a wooden coaster), the real issue is that there is not enough seat time. About two minutes after embarking, one pulls oneself off the rickety thing battered, bruised, and confident that this contraption isn’t going to last another day. In other words, this is as good as it gets. Keep your metal coasters. Keep your half-metal coasters. Wood all the way. And classic wood, if you can get it. Yeah, I’d still like to do the Beast and a couple of other modern marvels, but the Cyclone sets the standard. Don’t believe it? Disagree? Feh! Keep it to yourself.

What LD needs is more rolling and coasting.