don’t be a jerk

…I actually had quite a bit to write about lately, but I’ve been too busy/distracted/lazy to actually blog about it. Part of it has to do with the fact that, as cool as Apple iWeb 1.0 is, I’m really looking forward to version 2.0, and the (hopeful) improvements that will make posting entries less laborious and time consuming. I guess this entry will be a bit of catch-up hodgepodge.

I was listening to some radio news about the whole Iran/Nukes thing, and it’s embarrassing to me that our president is still pronouncing it “nucular”.

So it’s official - Ed O’Neill is a boy. The DNA tests finally came in. I’m just glad I didn’t have to rename him.

Came in from San Diego really late last night. This morning, the bird found it unacceptable that I had decided to sleep in instead of giving him my undivided attention, so he jumped off his cage and landed on my prone head. I screamed a little and then kinda fell back asleep. The bird just sat there on my head for like 10-15 minutes. Didn’t bite me or shit in my ear or anything. I guess he was happy just being there. What a needy little beast.

In San Diego, I met a dude, Russ, who used to work on the stunt team for the original Dukes of Hazzard series.

Lot of interesting stories out of this guy. He told me that the recent Dukes of Hazzard movie didn’t call back anyone on the original stunt team, but that they had asked for their techniques and calculations (which annoyed the OG stunt guys.)

Apparently all the “General Lee” jumps in the original series were real, actual jumps onto flat land, not ramps. Pretty amazing if you think about it. According to Russ, the movie-Dukes guys tried one jump and totally botched it and so every jump in the movie is a cable pull.

For the show, a specialist would custom reinforced the frame and chassis of the Chargers, and after the jump, that particular General Lee was pretty much bent and bottomed out and useless. Not worthless, mind you. An original General Lee with the proper paperwork goes for 6 figures. He told me that the show was contractually required to have 1 General Lee jump every 30 minutes. That’s 2 jumps a show, 22 shows a year, for 7 seasons. That’s a fucklot of General Lees.

There’s apparently a huge market for authentic General Lee replicas as well. There’s some guys in Washington who build them for 60 grand and have a 3 year waiting list.

I usually like making any information I dispense meaningful and relevant in the end. But this really doesn’t reflect on anything in my current life. I just found it interesting and figgered other people would too.