Streaming, and steaming, and flinging of poo....

[captainsblog]

We'll work backwards, because I'm sure you want to hear about that last part.

Thursday brought my first, and probably only, live court appearance of this month, and only my third time putting on a suit since March.  I described the resulting procedure on my return thus:

It was more fun than a barrel of monkeys. A barrel of rabid, eye gouging, poo flinging monkeys.

Let's set the stage in the small claims official version of the Peoples Court, Wapner style:

Duh-DUM-dum! This is the plaintiff, a broker that was asked to find a buyer for a business, found one, and the seller then backed out of the deal. They're suing for $5,000.00, for their commission on the broken deal.

::clickety-clack::

Duh-DAH-dah! This is the defendant, who showed up almost an hour late after their lawyer rolled in 45 minutes after the appointed time, getting away with it only because the Karen v. Karen kerfuffle from the previous episode was still going on. HE claims he never authorized the listing or the deal, and that it was his evil son with the same name who did it. He's accused of backing out on a business deal.

::more clickety and cue the drum machine::

My guy dealt with evil son, who called HIM in the first place. Evil son produced tax returns for the business to be sold, which had his signature on them. My guy MET evil son numerous times at the business location where evil son showed every sign of being in charge.  Oh, and the lawyer who showed up late and suffered no penalty for it? Was listed on the deal as lawyer for both the seller AND buyer, so it's likely we can prove HE knew about it and is telling a different story now.

Despite Not Wapner giving the Karens way too much time to fight it out (and even adjourning it after close to an hour for them to come back), our hearing got cut off after barely 20 minutes.  Could mean it was slam-dunk for us or agin us. Either side has the right to retrial before an actual non-tv judge, and if we got slam-dunked, it's going to be more of a horror movie than a judge show for the other side next time.

----

I returned to the office here yesterday for a relatively light day- only one appointment, made mid-morning, to get papers from a client. But then the oven came back to life:



We lovingly refer to it as the "1957 Buick rammed into our kitchen wall." Original to the house and the only thing not replaced when we renovated everything else from the counters on up five years ago, its main heating element gave up the ghost in July. Undeterred, Eleanor tracked down an almost-the-same replacement from Home Depot that arrived a week later and kept our food in the warms for two more months....

until two Fridays ago, when the much smaller insulator on the connector to the wiring gave up a much smaller ghost while she was trying to bake some rolls, and we were facing the prospect of our oven being pronounced dead and a $1500-plus replacement joining the 21st century Internet of Things.  She hauled the rolls-in-progress to a neighbor's to finish off, while one of said neighbors looked at our setup and pronounced it only mostly dead. (This happens a lot around here;)

But he, and another friend-of-friend, strongly recommended that we get professional help in the repair. Not as easy as it sounds: We tried finding somebody local, but the appliance people foisted it off on electricians, and at least one local electrician Eleanor found said he didn't handle appliances.

But hey, we know a guy- a longtime Rochester electrician client who sometimes sends workers to do commercial work here. He got back to me yesterday to say he had one of his electricians working near the house. We set it up for this morning, and despite concerns that we'd need to replace a lot of behind-the-scenes wiring (and probably have to remove the oven from the wall and replace the new element), Adam solved the problem in under half an hour by just putting spade connectors between the existing wires and the element. No massive new wiring job, or removing the oven, or replacing the element.

A new built-in of the same size would have run at least $1500 before installation and likely would have lasted five years if we were lucky. But it would have been able to talk to Alexa and the smart tv, so we're missing out on that;)  We "broke in" the "new" oven for dinner tonight, and it's as good as new.

----

That gets us to streaming- one video, one film:

Cheeto has a pretty limited range of artistic support: Kanye (allegedly running against him), Scott Baio, Ted Nugent. Be still my shitting pants. Biden, on the other hand, has the support of just about every artist I follow, respect and have met or at least seen in person over the years.

Including this guy, who I met opening for Stephen Page in the Falls last year. He just added his video to the universe of truth:
 

Watch on YouTube

A lovely sentiment, to be sure, but I felt the need to revise and extend. For Dean is also Wikifamous for something he had little if anything to do with- a 1970s doo-wop ad for the Crazy Eddie chain that predates Dr. Jerry's screaming jazz-hand adverts. I've since learned that Dean has embraced the bizarre connection, so when I saw this earlier, I suggested he update the commercial for 2020:

(Whoa WHOOOAA-oh)
♫We don't think it's funny
You'd vote for Crazy Donnie
The man who's done so much to wreck this country of ours
He screwed up the pandemic, the economy's in panic,
With four more years he'd wreck it more and start twenty wars!

So VOTE HIM OUT, and put him in the clink!
(Five to twenty's not enough, we think)
Replace him with a functioning adult
And then get rid of all the traces of his cult!

We don't think it's funny
You'd vote for Crazy Donnie
The man who's done so much to wreck this country of ours
And so November 3rd, across the USA,....
Vote for Joe Biden and take Crazy Donnie awayyyyy!
(WOOOOO-OOOOOO-oooo, ooooooh....)♫

Vote Biden! Anything else is innnn-sannnnnne!

----

Then this afternoon, I finished the stream that premiered online the other night of a documentary about the beloved musician Harry Chapin. Members of his family were involved in its production, and it features kind words, besides theirs, from Springsteen, Billy Joel, the rapper DMC, a US Senator and numerous record and artistic connections of his.  So many memories and so much new to experience- with his brothers on a 60s show in Winnipeg also featuring a very young Joni Anderson (Mitchell, as she'd later be known); getting the attention of both Republican and Democratic senators for his World Hunger Year project with Father Bill Ayres (who I listened to Sunday mornings on WPLJ) and almost mooning the Secret Service when he got to bring his message to the White House; sweet remembrances from his daughter Jen, son Josh and wife Sandy and so many others who knew and loved him; but it was this shot, from a televised performance long after he'd achieved his fame and not long before his tragic 1981 death, that somehow brought Harry completely home for me- this kludge of a capo:



Harry, it doesn't suck.  And neither does all the effort made in the almost 40 years since we lost you, from WHYHunger to LICares to We Are the World, that owe their movements to those in your hands and mind and heart from the 60s through 1981.