My Current Travails

I missed my 7AM flight to LA from Vegas this morning, because I’m a dumbass, and went to the wrong concourse, and by the time I figured it out, it was too late to get to the right one (Note to self: in the future, look at your boarding pass). They put me on standby for the next flight that was scheduled for 1130 (and all flights are 100% full, because they’re still trying to recover from the CRWD update that had the same effect as a cyberattack). At 10, they rescheduled the flight for 1936. So I’ve now been here for ten hours, with a couple to go before I board. If I board. If not, I’ll go back to the hotel I’ve been staying and try for the 7AM flight tomorrow that I missed today.

So how’s your day going? Besides Biden ending his campaign. Or someone writing a letter ostensibly from him saying that he’s ending his campaign, without really explaining why. I wonder if he knows that he’s ending his campaign? Anyway, as Joe would say, anyway.

Thoughts from Mark Steyn.

[Monday-evening update]

Sorry for the lack of update. Yes, I caught a (slightly) earlier flight and got home last night.

[Bumped]

Hisamitsu

For years, I’d been wondering what that little phrase was that you hear women sing at the end of commercials for Salonpas pain reliever. I did eventually manage to track it down. It sounds like “Sammy too,” but it’s actually the manufacturer with the name of the title of this post (obviously Japanese). I would have thought it was pronounced HIsaMITsu, but apparently it’s HiSAMItsu .

Anyway, they must have finally gotten the message from viewers that it was a head scratcher, so for the first time this morning, I saw an ad in which they actually showed the word at the end. It’s funny that they’d been singing it for all these years with complete ineffectiveness at conveying what it was.

[Update later afternoon]

Apparently I misspelled it: It’s Hisamitsu.

Bob Newhart

RIP. He was a very funny guy, with a deadpan delivery that couldn’t be beat. A great straight man as well. And not just visually. He was famous for his hilarious phone calls, in which you only heard his side. We had one of his albums when I was a kid in the 60s. It was called “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart.” Here’s an example:

It’s funny, but I recently saw a rerun of the 80s show, and I’ve had the theme song (which was by Henry Mancini!) getting stuck in my head periodically since. The last episode might have been one of the most brilliant endings of any television series, if you were a fan of the show in the seventies. It was part of one of the best Saturday-night prime-time comedy lineups in television history, with All in the Family, and Mary Tyler Moore. Oh, and Mash.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!