Tony Rollo Blog
Flying Time …
Time flies when you’re working your *ss off … Coffee brews rather quickly … Hours seem like minutes … …while doing what you love to do.
Burgergazm … An Amazing Experience in Nashville
Today we made a day’s trek all over town in a regular dash for provisions … First it was to McKay’s books … then to the best Asian Grocery anywhere to get basic ingredients for the month, Then to our favorite restaurant supply facility housed in an old WWII bomb factory building to get some […]
Yes, Chicken Little – The Sky IS Falling …
Comets, meteors and pretty much anything going on in the sky has always been fascinating to me. Seeing a full moon during the day when I was 5 years old or so left an impression. Up to then I thought it only came out at night. That hooked me. I remember Kohoutek When I was […]
Seeing Red
What is funny ? It depends on the person. You know what’s funny to you when you see it or hear it. Just as beauty – … comedy is in the eye of the beholder. Yet – clever humor is universal. Clever humor takes thought and intellect … There is a place in comedy for […]
This is what happens in Nashville when the weatherman predicts it might snow …
… bread … milk … and beer disappears from all the stores.
The Persistence of Verbal Decay
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” “Political chaos is connected with the decay of language… … one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.” “Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want […]
The Fabulous Phasmatrope and the day a circle was made to be a square by law
There is a lot to being the first to do something. On this date today, In Philadelphia on February 5th in the year 1870, a theater audience saw the very first motion picture projection. This was what some people allowed the inventor to claim. 1870 was quite a long time before George Melies made his […]
Get that Aston Martin off me !!!
Apparently there is quite an exciting archeological find in England under a common automobile parking lot in Leicester. Leicester is a major manufacturing area for the UK. King Richard III and his story was immortalized by William Shakespeare and his burial location was lost to history thanks to Henry VIII having all the monasteries dismantled […]
Generation Gap VS Generation Bridge
There have been a lot of folks I am very pleased to have crossed paths with. One of the heights for me was Steve Allen laughing at a joke I told him … running into folks while doing regular life stuff can be quite interesting – like realizing I was sitting one evening quite a […]
Nashville Brand of Humor ~ Our Music City Personality
There is a running gag line in Nashville … “You’re so Nashville, …” It’s sort of like the old Joke that Johnny Carson liked to tell – “Today, it was so hot … “ To which the audience would all chant in unison: “HOW HOT WAS IT?” Johnny would react every time like it was […]
In this fast paced world ~ try rediscovering Chess
I am constantly bombarded these days with Skylanders, and more blasting video games via my teenage daughter’s Wii console … I have to confess that I also have a past life with various fast paced computer games such as Doom, Wolfenstein, Vice City and the like. I have always gravitated toward cockpit racing games and […]
We are only visiting this planet …
As the late, great musician Larry Norman once sang: “I’m only visiting this planet.” As it led me to think – he’s right. We are all just visiting. I am like an anthropologist creeping in to some lost village to observe and record … and then to return with my findings. And if I were […]
Another Example of the Destruction of Our Language
Yes – I like the cooking shows on those cooking networks … I am a big fan of “The Pioneer Woman” and Alton Brown’s “Good Eats”. Something that is driving me crazy with that network (which has two different channels now) is the overuse and misuse of the term “decadent” and “decadence”. Even the ad […]
I’m Fascinated by Shipping Containers
Ever admire something from afar? Like seeing a travel show about Tahiti and wanting to go there – but never get the time or can justify the cost of a trip there. I’ve been that way for a long time with adapted shipping containers. I’ve seen pictures from time to time. I’ve looked at web […]
January 21st 2013 ~ Happy Squirrel Appreciation Day !!!
It’s a big day in America … It’s National Squirrel Appreciation Day Most of us celebrated by looking for and gathering nuts in an attempt to survive the winter. American Squirrels are more important than most folks think – they are a nuisance to a lot of people but a great food source for many […]
The Challenge: Be Entertaining without Lying about it
__________________ Could Grover Cleveland be the greatest US President we ever had ? __________________ The most boring and unmemorable Presidents of the United States were the best Presidents we ever had. They should be the most remembered, but are not. This is simply a symptom of how we are taught and perceive reality – in […]
The Dog and the Shadow / Let Him Who Has Ears; Hear
– from Aesop A Dog, crossing a bridge over a stream with a fresh bone in his mouth, … saw his own shadow in the water and thought it was another dog, with a tasty looking bone that looked double his own bone in size. The dog immediately let go of his own bone, and […]
Tesla and his Amazing Energy Machines will Enable New Engergy Sources to Actually Work
Tesla is the perfect example of how better ideas can become a problem … A problem to established industries that would become obsolete if a better idea is made available to the public to use. If it was up to Edison, we would never had AC power. I believe the modern solar energy industry is […]
Watching Another Fall – In Real Time
According to British Historian Dr Adrian Goldsworthy, who specializes in ancient Rome, the fall of the Roman Empire was … … government failure. At a basic level the emperors and government officials of the Late Roman Empire had forgotten what the empire was for. The wider interests of the state were secondary to their own […]
S.A.S.E
A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.” “How can you write if you can’t cry?” – Ring Lardner
A Time Will Come …
A time will come … … when the whole world will go mad. And to anyone who is not mad they will say: ‘You are mad, for you are not like us.’ – Saint Anthony the Great ___________________ Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – Albert […]
No More Movie Film ~ Drive In Movies are In Trouble
Well, it’s finally here … 35mm film prints are finally being phased out completely ! The problem is for the theaters still hanging on to their film projectors. Especially the Drive-In theaters … Bloomberg has a very interesting article about the transition to digital. Yep ! There’s still quite a few of those around the […]
2012 = A Year of Transition / 2013 = Some Still Don’t
Why are a lot of broadcasters and film makers still confused over HD standards ??? Take some of the cable/satellite networks for example … Taking a 4×3 standard definition source and stretching out the sides to fill in a 16×9 aspect ration is NOT HD ! All it does is make everything short and fat. […]
Goodnight Patti ~
Patti Page – One of the great voices of the 20th century. Ironic that “Tennessee Waltz” was the B-side of “Boogie-Woogie Santa Claus” in 1950…
Happy New Laws ~ Don’t be Ignorant !
While I completely understand the concept of law enforcement and how it protects freedom in a civilized nation … That said – Every year it seems to become harder and harder to be “a law abiding citizen” … You may be a criminal and not know it ! It’s not law enforcement’s fault – it’s […]
Whatever happened to …
Remember the famous line – “NT would destroy Unix” ? Whatever happened to that? I think it was uttered by the same guy that said computers would never need more than 640Kbytes of ram … Now, it’s all about flavors of the generic LINUX OS – because Unix is a trademarked flavor. Of course, there […]
The Dragon Year Comes to a Close / Hello Snake
A working holiday. Whenever I have the opportunity to work, that’s like a vacation to me. So, it’s been a nice vacations indeed. Like LT Cmdr Scott in the original Star Trek series who relaxes by reading technical journals in the ship’s recreation room while others waste time with card games – I can dig […]
Yes – it IS a wonderful life …
My favorite director of all time … Frank Capra ! He was a very young kid when his family sent his oldest brother to America from Italy to establish a “base camp” for the entire family to immigrate to America. They told him to not stop when he got to America – but get on […]
The Future of Science Enhanced Entertainment
First – there was Alice Cooper – Then KISS – Then Marylin Manson – Now Lady GAGA – What’s next ? Introducing the genetically engineered rock guitarist …
First Film to Primiere on Both Sides of the Iron Curtain
On this day in 1958 – A historical day in the Motion Picture Industry … “On The Beach” is the first movie to premiere on both sides of the “Iron Curtain”. That means it was shown on movie screens in the “free world” as well as on screens in communist Russia (USSR). The subject matter […]
I Tip my Hat to the Youth …
… for they carry a heavy burden being forced onto them. (editorial cartoon from the 1930s)
Happy Birthday Henry with the Magnetic Personality
What is the opposite of “resistance” ? Inductance … which we measure in “henrys”. And if Joseph Henry had been quicker on the draw and published first – then maybe we would be measuring capacitance in “josephs” rather than “farads” after Michael Faraday … the guy who published his findings first. Henry was the first […]
Who’s the biggest bully of all ?
I’m getting pretty tired of these new anti-bully campaigns … It’s just the new “flavor of the month” money raiser and book selling sensation. Bullies are not new – they are the subject of classic television and even classic literature. There is one way to deal with a bully head on. We all know what […]
Around the World in 1986
Imagine taking off with a little over 7000 pounds of fuel in a craft, flying around the world without stopping and having only 108 pounds of fuel upon landing after several days … That’s pretty good figurin’ to me ! Considering both wing tips fell off during the trip … Two pilots in this craft […]
Big Bad John’s Anniversary
Jimmy Dean had the first “Country song” to make gold in 1961 … “Big Bad John” 1961 !?! That’s not a pile of sausage either ;-)
Happy Birthday ~ The State of Alabama
Providing America with pretty things to see and hear since December 14th, 1819
Peter Jackson at 48 fps
48 frames per second ?!? That’s supposed to make the new version of 3D look more “realistic” … Gimmicks … Passing fads … Like YOYOs / MySpace / Facebook / transfat / stuffing phonebooths / granola / tree hugging / Disco / Marxism / Etc … Hollywood should try making actual STORIES like used to […]
Happy Birthday Aunt Pitty-Pat
December 12, 1879 Laura Hope Crews – a magnificent actress who played many unforgettable supporting roles in movies of the 1930s. Primarily a character actor – she came from a family of actors and people involved in the theatrical arts. Quite the looker when young and on the stage live before motion pictures. I wonder […]
Chuck at Mach 2.43 in 1953
It happened on this day in 1953 … US pilot Chuck Yeager took the experimental X-1A to Mach 2.43 and reached 90,000 feet ! All did not go smoothly – Inertial coupling caused Yeager to loose control – as the craft pitched, yawed and rolled, it fell 51,000 feet in 51 seconds until Yeager pulled […]
Tex Avery and the Cars Of Tomorrow
Using the current trends of the late 1950s and very early 1960s, Animation Director Tex Avery gives his vision of what cars would be like in the near future … Tex Avery is my favorite Animation Director of all time. He’s the one who gave the world of pop animation many gimics such as the […]