NASCAR's Natalie Decker & Her Mom Hop In The Pool To Respect Summer, Ohtani's Dog Can't Throw & Elk On The Run
Screencaps Tour 2024: Omaha, Let's get together on a weeknight in September
Who's going to be around September 24? It's a Tuesday. I'm going to be in town with Canoe Kirk who has some business to attend to in your great city, and I figured it would be nice to meet with some of the great people of Nebraska who love Screencaps and Thursday Night Mowing League.
Save the date. We'll find a place to hang. If nobody can make it, fine. If 10 of you show up, great.
We might even get my old podcast partner Paul80 to show up. He lives in Omaha. Some of you might remember the WILD podcasts we used to do back in the day with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
SAVE THE DATE!
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com
Speaking of Nebraska, Homebrew Bill in Nebraska loves Summer
- Homebrew Bill checks in:
Every year when this beer comes out two thoughts come to mind.
1. It's not conference football season yet.
2. The best way to enjoy a pumpkin beer is to pour it down the drain.
#RespectSummer
Kinsey:
I'm hoping to meet Bill on this visit. He's one of the greats of this column and I know he'll have a special brew for Canoe Kirk and I to sample. That's why we make these trips.
The Screencaps Facebook Group page is starting to pop again
Wednesday was another great day in the group. People are requesting group access at a record pace. I think Wednesday was even better than Tuesday.
Get in there. Be a resource. Ask questions. Answer questions.
There's currently a discussion on using rebar for deck railing. That's how Screencaps operates. You just never know what's going to pop up.
JOIN THE SCREENCAPS FACEBOOK GROUP!
The birthday gift bags must stop
On Wednesday, I wrote about the state of gift bags at birthdays and how I'm calling on Americans to just stop with this practice. I'm currently in a battle with Mrs. Screencaps over this one.
- Joe M. writes:
Gift bags are for women. When I realized that Jr. was a 12-year-old boy, I rolled my eyes and cursed under my breath. Any 12-year-old boy doesn’t want any of the crap an adult woman is going to pick out for them. Girls are going to do stuff like give each other nail polishes and lip gloss and whatever, because they’re girls.
The Mrs. should poll your son’s moms and ask them, if not for the candy, did anything else in the bag get touched?
He’s 12, his armpits are about to start stinking, he’s about to start blushing at girls and not know why, etc. I get it, women love to shop for anything, but spinners and pens? Are they even allowed to write in pen in 6/7th grade?
We will be hard-pressed to win wars in the future.
Kinsey:
I will send that response over to Mrs. Screencaps. That should get the day off to a fast start. Trust me, I say the same thing. I just need her to see the light, but I also have to pick my battles and I have multiple ‘Joe time’ activities coming up, so this isn't a hill I'm going to die on.
At least she doesn't start bringing out pumpkin crap until October, so that's good. There are ebbs and flows to this marriage.
- Jake in Charlottesville, VA emails:
My twins turned 7 this past summer. We both said NO to the gift bags. We hate when we bring them home and immediately just throw them in the trash, so we weren't about to go along to get along. No one seemed to mind. Now, we did have a pinata, so everyone went home with a bag of candy that they collected after said pinata broke open, so I think that was a good compromise.
The Softening of America: Where do we stand?
This feels like the logical next step after birthday gift bags.
- Eric in Kansas says:
Love the Screencaps column and the entire community you have created. Keep up the great work! In regards to the "softening of America" I am reminded of the following quote, which I just learned comes from a novel by Michael Hopf.
"Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create hard times
Hard times create strong men"
I believe we are somewhere in the latter part of this cycle where weak men are about to create hard times. Because America has so much debt, government spending is out of control, the government has printed money like crazy, and many other factors, it’s possible we are headed for another depression within the next 5 to 6 years.
I hope I’m wrong, but it doesn’t look that way.
We have had a long period where we had very good times, and society has created a culture where they don’t want strong men. It’s sad, but that’s where we are right now. Men have been forced to be weak (no one wants to "Do hard things") and that is about to create hard times. I can see that the Screencaps community has many strong men doing hard things, which is one of the reasons I love being a part of it. Let’s keep encouraging each other and building one another up. Iron sharpens iron!
- Mark T. in Florida says:
No question parents are softer these days leading to kids / students being softer as well; there just isn't a level of toughness anymore in society. Your stepfather is spot on wondering about if the country could win any war now; much less a world war....sorry to hear about the Mrs. Screencaps defeat on the birthday bags; the answer for those to go away is the 9th birthday is the end.
Easy to explain to the youngster as when he hits double digits the birthday bags are over.
- Tony writes:
I'm not from the Midwest, I grew up in Kingsport, TN, right down the road from the Johnson City crowd – JC, Kingsport, and Bristol are the Tri-Cities. We didn't have AC in the schools, but they would occasionally turn the lights off in the classroom "to help cool things off"... I guess they were going for the placebo effect? Due to growing class sizes, they opened a couple of new high schools while I was in Middle School, and that was the first time I had AC in school.
Truth be told, when I started at UT in September of 87, my dorm didn't have AC and had steam heat in the winter. We kept the windows open, cracked the door a little for some airflow, and usually had a couple of box fans to boot and just made do until the temps dropped in the fall.
And if we're going to pull that thread a little more, it was north of 120 when I was in Afghanistan; and we were humping 50+ pounds of body armor and weapons/ammo to boot...
Also, when I was a kid, unless you had a bone sticking through your leg, we didn't go to the doctor. I had a bike wreck around a mile from home that took a good bit of hide off my left leg (just above my knee to where my shorts started) and my left elbow. It looked like someone had taken a belt sander to me. I walked my bike the rest of the way home then picked the gravel out of my leg in the shower (cussed a good bit, not going to lie) once I got home. My mom just put Neosporin on it and covered it in gauze and sent me off to school the next day.
I guess every generation thinks the one(s) behind them are soft, but I do have to give props to "The Greatest Generation" for all they went through – that was some serious shit in those days.
How the boys in far northern North Dakota buy rounds at the bars
It's been too long since I've heard from the crew in Crosby, North Dakota, the town of 1,058 along the Canadian border where the locals have a golf course they cherish and a love of Screencaps.
- Nate writes:
Hey Joe, just wanted to send a quick e-mail about the etiquette of buying a round of drinks in our area. You need to make sure you buy a round for a group you are a part of fairly often, or you will quickly get the reputation as a freeloader.
When I get to the bar and am ready to join a table of guys I'll go to the bartender and have them bring a round of drinks to the table, even if they just got one.
This gives you some time before you need to buy another. Some guys will drink their beers/drinks much quicker than others, hence they are the ones usually ordering, and paying, for more rounds.
I've even been at the bar before where someone orders a round and says, "Bring everyone at this table one except So and So." If that happens that person has been officially called out for being a freeloader. The gauntlet has been thrown down. If you are unable to get round in and have to leave, you can always pay your tab and ask the bartender to bring a round to the table you were at.
If you do this, you must tell the bartender not to bring the round until after you have left in order to prevent being sucked into more rounds. Its a tricky situation that calls for a lot of pre-planning and next level strategy at times.
A good rule of thumb is to always buy more rounds than you think is fair just to maintain your reputation.
Speaking of North Dakota
- Mark P. in Bismarck, ND shares this one that makes me sick:
And some people think Halloween candy is jumping the gun.
This might be the first cheerleader in the history of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders to come from NW Ohio
I know this isn't the typical content you guys see up top, but I had to give a little shout out to Abby, who went to Sylvania Northview, for becoming a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
Let this be a lesson for all the cheerleaders in the Northern Lakes League that you, too, can also become a Cowboys cheerleader with enough hard work. Sylvania is right up the highway from us.
I beat the local news channels to this one because they're too busy arguing over "corn sweat" and a bunch of other stories that aren't going to move the needle.
Give me a month picking stories for the local news channels and they'd be ratings juggernauts.
Finding your healing waters after visiting San Francisco
- Nate S. shares:
Good morning Joe, after reading about the school closings in Ohio, it reminded me of our trip to California in July. We were in Richmond, California just North of San Fran / Oakland area and I received a weather alert for excessive heat. Needless to say, being born and raised in Central Florida I was shocked to see a weather alert for a high temperature of 72 DEGREES??
That’s a cool summer night for us in Florida in the summer time. Anyways, we made the trip driving from Napa Valley wine county all the way down to my son’s house in Oceanside.
I was surprised that San Fran was not as frightening as I assumed it would be. But we did leave downtown right at sunset so we didn’t stick around long enough to see the nightlife festivities. Driving the PCH was beautiful country as we made stops at Big Sir, Monterey, Carmel, Santa Barbara, and Laguna Beach.
I highly recommend anyone in the Big Sir area to get dinner at "Nepanthe". It has the most incredible dinner views of the coast I have ever seen. I’ll include some pics and you can share if you like. Thanks for all you do and let’s go Who Dey. (And fire David Bell already).
Kinsey:
I have to congratulate Nate on visiting S.F. and not finding himself in some situations. I spent six nights at the Beresford Arms during Super Bowl 50 and let me tell you, there weren't many times when I wasn't on guard while walking around with my buddies.
Between people taking dumps in the middle of the sidewalk and the one degenerate lady pulling a knife from under her coat and announcing, "I'll cut you motherf--ker" and the Tenderloin zombies, I saw enough of S.F. to last me a lifetime.
Trust me, I needed healing waters after that trip.
Bassets with human names
Meet Dolly Jean.
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That's it. I'm out of time. Let's go have a great day. Go give 110%.
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com