Top Secret

The passing of Val Kilmer on April 1st made me sad as he was an amazing actor. Compare and contrast his performances in Top Gun and The Doors (he basically was Jim Morrison). 

His death also reminded me of his first movie, the under-appreciated, 1984 comedy, Top Secret. 

Top Secret was the movie made by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker after they created the hilarious Airplane movie. (The trio had nothing to do with Airplane II.) In it, American rock star Nick Rivers, played by Kilmer, goes to communist East Germany to do a concert. Interestingly, East Germany is a lot like Nazi Germany (I understand that it was like that in real life, too). Rivers becomes involved in an espionage plot and, with the help of the French Underground (yes, it's silly), escapes and helps defeat the Nazis' evil plans. Or the Commies' evil plans. Whatever. 

The movie is made in the joke-a-minute style of Airplane but stands out on its own. For some reason the marketing behind the movie wasn't very good (a cow in boots was the central image of its promotion) and it kind of bombed at the box office. It spoofs spy movies and war movies and The Blue Lagoon. Yes, really.

According to Google, you can watch Top Secret at Pluto TV for free (probably with ads) or YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play Movie, and Fandango at Home all for less than $4. You should watch it.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

Car Opinions

I like cars. I read about them and, on this blog, I write about them.

I have some opinions about cars. Some of this is based on feelings, some based on facts. I'll leave it up to you to decide.

1) Top Tier gasoline is better. AAA did a study on this and it shows that Top Tier gas is better for your car engine. Top Tier gas tends to cost more. 

2) Unless your car requires it, there is no need to use premium gasoline. Regular Top Tier gas is good enough for most cars. Premium is more expensive; sometimes a lot more. You can do more for your car by using Top Tier regular then off-brand premium.

3) The best Top Tier gas is Shell. I base this on that Car and Driver used to exclusively use it for their testing. Plus there's a sticker on the gas cap of my car saying it recommends Shell V-Power which is its premium gas. The next best Top Tier gas is Chevron. I have no basis for this other than their claims.

4) Car and Driver is the best car magazine ever. Although the quality of the writing has diminished a bit in recent years, it's still worth reading. The magazine was amazing when Csaba Csere was the Editor-in-Chief.

5) Michelin Tires are the best. Goodyear are the worst. Two of my cars came with Goodyear OEM (original equipment) tires. They lost air quickly and wore out very fast. I got 11,000 miles on a sedan and 5,000 miles on my Corvette. When I replaced them with Michelin tires, I got more miles and they didn't lose air as fast. The Corvette had more grip in the corners, too. There's lots of tire brands I haven't tried, yet. I used to put Continentals on a sedan I owned and they worked fine. I have no opinion on Firestone, Hankook, and lots of other tire brands.

6) German cars are better engineered than American cars. And Audis are better than BMWs. I have no experience with Porsche or Mercedes. Although my wife's VW GTI had some weird engineering.

7) The best place to buy tires and wheels is Tire Rack. They are often cheaper than your local tire shop and they have a vast selection. If you buy wheels and tires combination, they will mount and balance them for free. The only issue I've ever had with Tire Rack is when I wanted to look up the details of wheels I bought from them ten years after, they no longer had the order information.

8) Blizzaks are the best winter/snow tires in my experience. According to Car and Driver, the Nokian Hakkapelitta is the best winter/snow tire but good luck finding them in your size. And, yes, if you live where it snows, put on winter tires.

9) Studded tires are evil. They damage roads and give no better traction in most situations and worse traction in dry or wet conditions. 

10) Electric cars aren't quite ready for prime time. They need to develop batteries that aren't affected by cold or hot. And hold more energy. And recharge faster. 

11) And of course: more horsepower is better.

Do you have any car opinions or disagree with mine? Let me know in the comments below.

Book of Mormon

This last weekend I went to Spokane to see Book of Mormon in the theater there. I've wanted to see this musical since I first heard about it ages ago. It premiered on Broadway in 2011 so that's probably been a while. 

This is the fourth Broadway musical I've seen. I saw Miss Saigon in Portland (and hated it; someone needed to warn me it was an opera). I saw The Producers (which was hilarious) on Broadway. And I saw Young Frankenstein in its "out-off-town tryout" run in Seattle. It was pretty good but the first act needed to be shorter.

I grew up in Southeast Idaho, an area with a great deal of Mormons. I remember hearing that the small town I lived in was 80 - 90 percent Mormon (I understand Mormons don't like that word "Mormon" any more and prefer to be called "LDS" which stands for "Latter-Day Saints" as the official name for the church is "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints"). Over many attempts to recruit me into their religion, I learned a lot about their... interesting theology. 

The Book of Mormon follows two Mormon missionaries from their training in Utah to a small village in Uganda. There the locals suffer with AIDS and there's a warlord going around killing people and mutilating female genitals. Yes, this is a musical comedy.

There are some quick vignettes explaining Mormon theology as necessary background to the story. 

And, yes, the musical is funny. The two main characters are an over-confident missionary and his "companion" for the two-year mission, a guy who over-compensates for his lack of confidence. The main female character is an Ugandan villager named Nabulungi. The over-compensating missionary keeps calling her by the wrong name such as "Neutrogena" and "Ozempic." While trying to convert the villagers, the over-compensating missionary starts to embellish the Book of Mormon to make it more interesting. This leads to a funny scene where the villagers put on a play about Joesph Smith for a Mormon leader and, of course, it is all wrong.

I couldn't complain about the musical much. The villagers did tend to drop F-bombs a lot. Even the songs were fun, though. I enjoyed it a lot and am glad I saw it.

If you're interested or care, you can learn more here (from the Mormon perspective). The Mormons claim that Jesus Christ came to North America after he was resurrected. They also say that a lost tribe of Israel somehow made it to North America. This is all told about in their "third testament" of The Book of Mormon.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

(I don't have a "Broadway Musical" label so I used "Movies and Television.")

Politics and Philosophy in Fiction

Federation President

I was watching Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country a while back and I remembered something that has always bothered me. And, no, it's not the lavender Klingon blood. I'm sure they did that to avoid an "R" rating.

I generally like Star Trek VI as it's one of the better Star Trek movies. And, it's way better than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. But then again, so is a root canal.

In Star Trek VI, the President of the Federation (played by Kirkwood Smith) is giving a speech. And in that speech he says, "Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily mean that we must do that thing." Which has nothing to do with the plot, story, or theme of the movie. It was, apparently just inserted by the filmmakers to make a political or philosophical point. According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the movie had five writers: Leonard Nimoy, Lawrence Konner, and Mark Rosenthal for "story" and Nicholas Meyer (who also directed) and Denny Martin Flinn for the screenplay. Which one of them inserted that gratuitous line, I don't know.

In Jurassic Park, for example, Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum) says "[Y]our scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

Which is a similar sentiment to what the Federation President said. But that was part of the theme of Jurassic Park. The movie was a cautionary tale about mucking around with science. Star Trek VI is not.

Now, when I write, sometimes (okay, maybe a lot), my politics and philosophy seep into the story. But I try not to make it gratuitous. At least make it part of the plot.

Have you noticed gratuitous politics inserted in movies or books? Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

The Curse

Mario Andretti

This last Memorial Day weekend I watched the Indianapolis 500 race. This has been my favorite car race since I was a kid. I try to watch it every year (although some years, something-usually family-interferes). 

In 1969 when I was 8years old I heard that Mario Andretti had won the Indy 500. I'm pretty sure I didn't watch it because, according to Wikipedia, it was only shown as highlights on ABC Wide World of Sports (the show that gave us the phrase "the agony of defeat"). I decided to go with a winner and decided that Mario Andretti was my favorite Indy 500 driver. Spoiler alert: Mario never won another Indy 500.

The race wasn't shown as its own program until 1971 according to Wikipedia and even then it was tape delayed to be shown in prime time and was edited to fit the time slot. They also would put in little featurettes about drivers or cars or whatever. It got worse every year. I just wanted to see the race.

In 1986, the Indy 500 was first shown live "flag to flag" (green to checkered) and it's been that way ever since which I liked a whole lot better than the edited, tape-delayed shows.

So, here I was rooting for Mario Andretti to win the Indianapolis 500 every year he raced. And he never won another Indy 500. His son, Michael, never won an Indy 500 (he's been more successful as a team owner), and his grandson Marco who is still driving has yet to win an Indy 500. This last race he crashed very early, I believe on the third lap!

But every year Mario raced, it seemed something would go wrong. Usually that meant someone would run into him or spin out in front of him or something would break on the car. It became known as the "Andretti Curse." There's even a Wikipedia page about it. My wife and I would sit down to watch the race and say "Who's going to spin out in front of Mario this year?"

Don't get me wrong, Mario was a great driver. He won Grand Prix and IndyCar championships. He retired in 1994. He even got to drive an Indy 500 with his son, Michael. 

But he seemed cursed and also seems to have passed the curse down to his progeny. 

These days I'm rooting for Pato O'Ward, a Mexican with an Irish name. But I still, in my heart, hope an Andretti can win at Indy.

Blog Post Views versus Age of Post

 I'm such a nerd.

I was looking at my blog post views and I noticed that the older the post, the more views it has. The views seem to accumulate as the post ages. So, being a nerd, I charted that in Excel. Here's the results for 20 weeks:

As you can see, it rises sharply then levels out eventually. I don't know why this happens. I don't promote the blog post after the first week, so I'm not sure where all these blog views are coming from. And I wonder if they are legitimate. Or if it's something like the Referrer Scam. (That referrer scam post has over a million views, but it is almost 12 years old.) 

I guess I won't worry about it. But it is strange.

The "Doctor Killer"

1978 Porsche 911 Turbo

Speaking of cars with turbos. 

There was one car in the 1970s that got a reputation as the "doctor killer" because doctors (who could afford them) would buy the car and then wreak them. 

It was 1974 and Porsche brought to market the 911 Turbo. 

The 911 was an old design even in 1974. The engine was in the back behind the rear wheels. It has an air-cooled flat (also called boxer) 6-cylinder engine with a turbocharger added. That gave it 261 horsepower which for 1974 was impressive (the Corvette had 210 hp). But it has a flaw. As Car and Driver put it:

[T]urbo lag as long as a coffee break. Mash the throttle at 3000 rpm, and the boost gauge plays dead until the tach reaches 4000. Then you enjoy a chiropractic neck adjustment until the wham peters out at 6000 rpm.

So why did it kill doctors? First of all, it cost $34,150 MSRP. That's $171,260 in today's dollars. So it wasn't exactly available to the average car driver. You needed the income of, say, a doctor.

The unskilled or unexperienced driver would go into a corner slow and upon exit mash the gas pedal. And here comes that turbo lag (the time it takes the turbo to spool up and start adding boost). Then, with the front wheels still steering through the corner (or pointing any direction other than straight), the engine would hit 4,000 rpm, the turbo boost would kick in causing the rear tires to break loose and, with the engine hanging out the back like a pendulum, make the car oversteer harshly. The driver would lose control and slide, often into a tree or rock or barrier or some other solid object. It's a small car, no airbags in those days (people didn't tend to wear seatbelts, either) and so it would kill its driver.

Now days, the Porsche 911 Turbo (which costs $200,000 plus), makes 572 horsepower (or, if you pay more, 640) has all wheel drive and electronic nannies to keep you on the road. It doesn't even have a manual transmission option.

But for a while there, the 911 Turbo had a bad reputation for killing its well-off drivers.