Mr Fengi

Let’s be real, Bluesky wrapped is just that website that tells you how many accounts are blocking you

187.
Challenge: choose cool cover versions of great songs. Only one per day, if not every day, for as long as one can.

Usually No explanations. No reviews, but this is a repost of one of my earliest posts with a video that got deleted. Now it's back and still relevant.

youtu.be/7GJOGZWhxxk?...

The Ghost Hunters franchise universe rivals Dick Wolf's with nothing happening.

But in terms of "long but never memorable" dramas / comedy, under 10 years is the usual.
Like Diagnosis Murder could only last as a void with Dick Van Dyke in it for 8 years. What was Selleck's secret?

I mean there's Heartland, but that is a Canadian show. Though even Canadians are mystified by its longevity.

I don't usually tag folks but @leonardpierce.bsky.social - struggling to think of a non-spinoff show besides Blue Bloods that ran so long being no ones first choice ever. Like there are shows like NCIS:LA that erase from memory as you watch it, but they coast off the original.

Most of the time, if a show gets past 5 years people may say "is that still on?" rather than "what is that?" Like Burn Notice, which ran 7 years & isn't even on Wikipedia's long running show entry (which starts at 7 years) & had that SNL skit about not being known.

Well this is about overall impression at the time and after, rather than if it mattered. M*A*S*H did leave a culture trace both in its 11 year broadcast & relentless syndication even if it was on fumes for most of it. This is about a long lived show that left almost no trace even while it was on.

This got me wondering about the longest running least essential TV drama / comedy. Not just lasting past initial relevance, but despite little impression on the larger culture from the start. It think Blue Bloods may be it - 14 years as top show for using network tv as background on a Friday evening

Like Avatar is still recognizable to the general populace & has a few memes. I have no idea what the fuck Blue Bloods is beyond a reason for Tom Selleck to paint his moustache.

Avatar is such a pure example of pop cuture inertia, maybe only exceeded by Grey's Anatomy, somehow being consumed enough to run in the black for over 20 years while leaving a minimal imprint on society. Both were exceeded by Blue Bloods in vaporous presence, but that only managed 14 years.

Sometimes wonder if the * next to "Current" means *in a more quaint era accessible by the time portal.

And, as I understand it from the East Troy Railroad Museum, at one time small towns were linked to Chicago by rail in a much different sense than what is left now. And imagine if it had lasted & expanded & density had been shaped accordingly & how, say, Jazz might have evolved with that.

Imagine if one could go from a stop near Mad Planet to, say, the Green Mill with very little time or walking between lines or no changing lines.

And the point is that a line with so many stops that connects to street car service on both ends had managed to survive and evolve...

Rather than the "downtown" Milwaukee station being basically near nothing save a long walk under the highway.

Pynchon's latest starts in Milwaukee near the end of Prohibition and the protagonist is remarkably mobile while apparently not having a car, and that's because it's assume one knows how feasible it was to make trips up and down the lakefront without one

Last week I learned the Yellow Line was once part of the North Shore Line an electric service between downtown Chicago and Milwaukee with many neighborhood stops along the way that ran until the 60s and imagine how different life could've been (it plays an unspoken role in Pynchon's latest novel).

Imagining a scenario in which there were shuttles to major trailheads in the area

Was looking at a suburban job & the only able to commute & have a life was keeping my car near a suburban metra stop & taking the train to & from it. Every drive from my home hit so many choke points it meant 12+ hour workdays.

Alas, 24 hour parking ended near the stop so that job was impossible.

Willow Springs, IL is potentially an amazing station for tourism: near bike trails & hikng & a six minute walk to a bike rental store.

But there's only six weekday stops at the station. Meaning it's limited to those who can take a weekday off. Absurd, right @ericallixrogers.com ?

A not so radical thought:

If all Metra train stops operated 7 days a week with weekend schedules that ensured someone who took the next to last train one way had 4 hours until the last one back, it would alter the culture of the region.

-Transit deserts inside and outside the city in which taking the train is no option or prohibitively longer - which tend to be populated by those least able to afford congestion pricing.

The issues are:
-Train frequencies so biased to rush hour that working outside that window means an unreasonably longer workday or no trains at all (especially on weekends).
-The "Kiss & Ride" assumption that most riders have someone to drive them to & from stations, which impacts parking.

Based on working in the building attached to Olgivie Station, trying to engineer a reverse commute for a suburban job & trying to use the Metra for bike trips, I think the use of trains instead of cars to commute downtown is limited more by infrustructure than desire.

So if you want pricing to reduce congestion rather than only make people poorer, there needs to be enough parking & train frequency for people to use trains to commute.

And trains are packed at peak rush hour times - people want to do this.

Also the issue is not just within the zone, but how people get into the zone if driving is not an option.

In NYC there's substantial points of entry into the transit system surrounding it.

In Chicagoland, parking is limited & being reduced around many metra stops & huge parts have no metra.

In 07 Chicago plan as part of a Urban Partnerships Congestion Initiative meter rates. Most US plans are limited to tolls for specific routes or meters.

NYC similarity to zones in other countries & was feasible - politically & logistically - cause Manhattan is an island.

And reviewer Leigh Haber has a habit of promoting such inner circle crap by wealthy ideologues - her book club's first pick was Klein's Abundance.

Leave it to the LAT to advocate giving l money & time to a wealthy facist collaborator & crap writer for her pesthole of a book using some consumer culture BS because she's part of their inner circle.

Agree - this here is straight up fascist collaboration in which Jeffries repeats Trumps "strong border" talking points both untrue & expressing support at a time the ethnic cleansing is escalating.
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Gobsmacking.
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