Leaderboard

Time to watch my favorite Robert Duvall movie, "The Great Santini." RIP to one of the greats. Need to fit in "To Kill a Mockingbird" too.

Even as a 10 year old, I thought this was great.

Have a TICEtastic birthday Steve! Cheers!

Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights icon, dies at 84. I met him in 1999 or so by being at the wrong place at the right time. I worked for Amherst College in the Media Center in the late 90s. It was a lousy job that paid terribly. I never saw $10 an hour, and my boss had to keep my hours under 20 a week or the college would be forced to give me benefits. That meant I'd have to take entire weeks off but also get called in last minute because I was needed. At that time, Jesse Jackon's star had ridden pretty high and he hadn't yet been rocked by any scandals. He was giving a talk at Amherst College. The largest auditorium space they had (outside of the goddamn gymnasium, which was an echoey nightmare) was Johnson Chapel. I was tasked with getting the sound running, but I wasn't allowed to wire up the speaker with a lavalier mic. Filthy peasants like me weren't supposed to get near the important people. Joke was on them, because Jesse wanted a conventional podium mic. Long and not super interesting story short, I was late getting to one of the locations. I arrived huffing and puffing. There was extra security on campus because Jesse Jackson was a big deal but the cops were still pretty chill (this was pre-9/11 and the age of paranoia). The town police had no idea who I was of course, the College ones knew me. I told one of them "I'm here to do sound, where are they?" He said "they're in the The Octagon, doing a press conference." I jogged over there and went in the front door. The press conference was in what had been the Octagon's library. One part of the downstairs was home to "The Afro-American Department" (the sign had not changed since the 70s) but it was too small even for a press conference. The library was upstair and the steps to are spiral (octagonal) and very creaky. I knew if I went up them, even slowly, I'd make such a racket everyone would be staring at me as I entered. So I stood there and waited. Next thing I knew there was a very tall black man, standing over me with his hand out. I hurriedly shook it and "uuh nice to meet you Mr. Jackson." The entire press gaggle and all the various dignitaries followed him down. Once the scrum had cleared, I went over to Johnson Chapel and found my boss and his (full time) assistant working. He gave me the look of death. I quickly told him the above story and he was sufficiently amused that he didn't admonish me for being late. There was a group from Poland that was video taping the talk. They had one guy who spoke English. He asked me for an audio tap from our sound board. I said "Yeah, not problem. It's mic output only however." He said "I had better get our sound engineer." The engineer spoke no English, but I pointed at the output that said "mic" and he nodded. The English speaking Pole said to my boss "the universal language of sound engineers."

"Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!" Thank you for that reminder!

The man just wanted to find a good beach to surf. Something with a good break. RIP, Col. Killgore.

I love that movie and True Grit (1969) has one of my all-time favorite exchanges

So sorry Peter, I know how much you've loved them. You can take some comfort in knowing you gave them a life they never would have known otherwise.

Happy Birthday Steve!!!

Happy Birthday Steve! I hope you have a great one!

Hope it’s a great one Steve!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Huge Happy Birthday, Steve!!

Happy birthday! (party favour noise)

Cheers Sir TICE! -- Happy Birthday. May all your wood dreams come true.. -

Go on, squirt a few!

blankets.mp4

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/963124454/jesse-jackson-civil-rights-leader-rainbow-coalition-dies ☹️

Bobby (the cat pictured in the beginning of this thread) was put down a year and a half ago. Skye (companion I got for Bobby in 2014) got sick the next month. I fed her through a feeding tube and saved her life. But not fully. She passed away a week ago. In my hands. I was heartbroken. She made this trilling sound -- like a pigeon cooing -- all the time, to get my attention. It was always very insistent. I heard it today. I started to respond (I make a version of that noise in response, to let her know, "I hear you."), but then I realized I will never hear that sound again from her. My heart broke all over again. RIP Skye (2014-2026)