If It's Monday, it's the Day after a Giants Suck-fest

Back to virtual school today and we think probably for the week. We'll be avoiding the gym at Mrs. Stroock's request. None of these steps are unreasonable. We're about gym-fatigued anyway. Maybe we've just been blue-pilled.

This author feels no buzz, no ju-ju for anything other than World War 1990: Battle of the GIUK Gap. We must needs finish The Final Storm before we do that. One forward, one back. For that matter if we are to stick with the one forward one back plan we'd have to write another forward novel, wouldn't we? Of course there's no law saying we have to write them chronologically. Hmmm... The Final Storm, The Weser, TBD, GIUK Gap.

We think we should write something that isn't in the WW1990 universe and then remember we just wrote two novels outside the WW1990 universe. As soon as we publish this post we're going to get to work on The Final Storm's Aussie attack scenes. 

We look into the writer's abyss and see ourselves staring back at us. 

What Will's Watching, football. We didn't catch a single snap of the Giants game. Why bother? Bears 29, Giants 3. The Giants suck and have hit rock bottom of a ten-year slide. The Jets were beating the Buccaneers 24-20, when Tom Brady got the ball back with a little under two minutes to go. With no time outs he took the team 95 yards down the field for a game winning TD. LOL Jets. Mrs. Stroock's Eagles beat the Redskins in a close game. With Green Bay's win last night, the Igles are in the playoffs. The NFC looks a lot stronger than the AFC this year, no?

Some updates here in New Jersey's 7th Congressional District: 'State Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean Jr. now is favored to oust Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski in 2022 and New Jersey’s new congressional district boundaries are the reason why, according to the Cook Political Report.' Ten years ago, redistricting put us in a new district. We checked the map and Bridgewater is status quo. There is a GOP primary, and we intend to vote for the other guy. He lives around here someplace. 

Here's an article at Russia Today about Joe's latest phone call with Vladimir Putin. Looks like they made some progress. Or does it? Anyone who remembers the Cold War knows the Russians are clever. Our editor has sent us a war warning and told us to prepare to write Russian misinformation. We remain ready to serve the Kremlin. 

The Iranians hacked the Jerusalem Post. This blog jokes about the Jew being clever, for he is clever. As it is written. But remember Iranians aren't Arabs and therefore not incompetent losers when it comes to war. The coming existential conflict will be the greatest threat the Jews have faced since the Holocaust. Thousands of Israelis will die. Get a primer on Arab military loserdom in my own Israel at War, and her Enemies. Arabs can't fight. 

With the gym closed last winter we did a lot of walking and listened to a lot of Wolfmother. Below, your Monday Metal:

Various to Start the Week

Ah...ennui (you pronounce it on-wi. What the actual F?). There you are, my lovely. 

We're 2/5ths of the way through The Weser this late morning and things are fine. Though details must needs be sorted; 2-69th this and Air Control that, etc etc.

That Kentucky tornado touched down about 50 miles from our ancestral home of Livermore (our maternal grandparents are buried there). A cousin is helping with the cleanup. 

Dan McLaughlin* has a piece on what we always predicted would happen. Hispanic voters are basically becoming white people, electorally. Sometimes they vote D. Sometimes they vote R. It really depends. Class, not race, is the determinative factor. Dems are Marxists at heart. Why don't they understand this?

Over at Ace of Spades, CBD argues that the time of Trump has passed and has some hard truths for those of us in MAGA nation. Maybe Trump has learned. Maybe he's a tougher and leaner fighter. Look it up, the man has lost weight, BTW. But Trump 1.0 won't do.

Over at The American Conservative, Curt Mills writes about Christopher Hitchens ten years after the man's death. Has it been that long? Long time readers will recall that Hitch makes a TV cameo in World War 1990: Operation Arctic Storm, arguing with Pat Buchanan**. This blog has long been a fan of Mr. Hitchens. Of late we've been watching YouTube clips of Hitch at his best. His arguments against religion are devastating and damn near irrefutable. None of it makes any sense.

What Will's Watching, On Max Headroom, the most Misunderstood Joke on Television. Younger reader(s) this was really one of those you-had-to-be-there 80's moments. Definitely an 80's meta thing.  Either you get it, or you don't. We remember Max Headroom well, but couldn't say from where he came. We mostly recall him from Coke commercials. But was Max Headroom a TV guy of some kind? This was the genius of Max Headroom. Also, he wasn't a computer but a real-life actor. Who knew?

Monday Metal. Wolf Mother's new album, Rock Out. Very meh. Here's the best track:

*Yes, McLaughlin has some Cuckinista tendencies. But they're tendencies. 

**We like Pat more now than we did then. Anyone William Kristol hates can't be all bad. 

Bob Dole Moves on to the Great Legislative Chamber in the Sky

Bob Dole has died. It's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since he ran for president. Dole's been out of the spotlight since the 2000s, but he was a giant of late 20th century GOP politics. And he was a GOP, not a conservative. While running the senate GOP, Dole raised spending and taxes and publicly clashed with the conservative Newt Gingrich. Back in those days House Majority Leader Dick Armey said the enemy wasn't the Dems, it was the senate.

Dole was the default and dull candidate of a very dull and lackluster 1996 GOP primary in which Pat Bucanan scared the hell out of the GOP-e. Understand younger readers, there was never any chance Dole was gonna beat Bill Clinton. In 1996 America was fat, dumb, and contented. There was no reason to vote Willie out of office. 

Dole was 73, and in 1996 that was really old. He was a terrible candidate in 1996. But he was a terrible candidate in 1988 too, when he lost the GOP nomination to George Bush. Dole mumbled and sounded like he was in a perpetual bad mood. Having spent decades in Congress, Dole's world was one of Meet the Press interviews, legislative conference committees and whip counts. On the campaign trail he spoke legislationese. Dole actually declared, 'We're going to veto Clinton/Gore!' In 1976 President Ford picked him for veep. Bob Dole lost a presidential election in three different ways in three different decades. Impressive. 

He had a sense of humor, they said and Dole was a regular guest on the old Imus in the Morning program. Wife Elizabeth ran for president too. The GOP responded with a narcoleptic yawn. She was eventually a one term senator from North Carolina, replacing the great Jesse Helms. Dole is probably best remembered today as one of those World War Two generation politicians.  

Reader(s) will hear a lot of eulogizing today about Bob Dole. But don't be fooled. The Dems said he was a racist too. 

Did you people know the Dole/Kemp '96 website is still up? Click on through to see what the internet looked like in the mid-90s. Here's an old bumper sticker a few minutes from our house:

Your Combined NFL Wrap Not-Metal Monday Post

An interesting first round of the NFL playoffs, the kneeling bastards. Last night we watched the hapless by tradition Cleveland Browns jump out to a 28-0 lead over the perennially winning Pittsburgh Steelers. We remarked to Mrs. Stroock that if we were a Brown's fan we'd be terrified. The Browns had only one place to go.

It was 20 years ago that our own New York Giants won a trip to the big game by annihilating the Minnesota Vikings 41-0. It wasn't even that close. We were quite nervous throughout the second half. Literally almost nothing happened. It was a great day for the Giants.

The modern NFL is a game of momentum and indeed the Steelers mounted a comeback. But the Browns held on for the win. Congrats. Next week they play the Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs. 

Using the Chiefs as a springboard, there's a perfectly anodyne joke that we'd like to segway into about baseball's Cleveland Indians, but we're afraid to. You see, as threatened, Parler has been nuked. Our own Neighbors think its funny. Oh well.

During the commercials we like to flip to VH1 to see what old videos they're playing. I dunno. It's fun to try to guess what decade the video is from. There's a clean feel to late 80's vids. Mid to late 90's videos have a sheen to them, and the color schemes gives away the game. There's just a touch to them.  It gets tricky for us going into the 2000s. We weren't paying any attention to pop music by then and were even getting into country a bit. The digital cameras usually give it away. These days we find ourselves nostalgic for the time.

During one break we saw a clip of New Kids on the Block playing the O2 arena in London. The place was packed with middle aged mom-types, which was kind of hot. We can't say we NKOTB anymore. Still, we throw up a bit...Anyway, exit video, more Wolfmother:

From Wolfmother's second album, which is eleven years old now. We hate you time. We love the thump of that base drum leading into the solo singing. That's a very solid guitar riff. Just a great video, the play of the light and shadow and the inserted imagery.

The First Monday Metal of 2021

We're on a Wolfmother kick of late.  They've accompanied us on our increasingly long afternoon walks. How would we describe this band? Kind of like Deep Purple meets Led Zeppelin. Groove Metal? Acid Metal? We've followed them since the late 2000's. Six albums and counting. Feel that guitar solo:

Monday Metal

Wolfmother!

We discovered these guys a decade ago.

Suffering a bought of insomnia, we staggered downstairs and turned on the telly. There they were:

Sounds kind of like punk, then metal. Stick with it through the solo, which is awesome. I love playing it me self.

Overall we like to describe the band's sound as Acid Metal. They sound kind of like Deep Purple tinged with the very heaviest Black Sabbath.

Is it derivative? Absolutely. It's all derivative, mate.

Now they're sound is consistent. But they don't get stale. Here's Wolfmother with some groove:

They rock, and thankfully they've kept it going for a decade.