Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 08/16/24
Alpha and Omego edition
The bunker is having a somewhat schizophrenic day, this being both the anniversary of the death of Patron Saint of the Bunker, Elvis Aron Presley (1935-1977) and the birth of one Janice Elaine Schange (“Jes” to the bunker staff) on this day in 1968. For a compromise, we ordered a birthday cake, but it’s frosted in black, and also in the shape of a toilet. To all of you who reached out via social media to wish Bunker Ops a happy one, I thank you. She feels very warm and fuzzy right now.
New Outlet for the N.T.A.B.
There’s this new platform called “Tumblr” that’s kind of interesting, it having been described to me as “a zine, for online.” I don’t know if that’s even a thing that can be anymore, but it seems like a perfect place to store some stray pictures, comics, random thoughts, and so on.
Okay, what really happened was that Tumblr sent me a notification, and my first thought was, “is my Tumblr account still active?” Not only was it still active and as-yet-unhacked by foreign interests, I did a quick re-branding and now it’s my digital annex for the N.T.A.B. Seek it out, if you dare, at @northtexasapocalypsebunker. There’s not a lot on it yet, but I’m trying to put something on every week. If I get over a hundred followers, I may do one of those AMA. things that the pop stars are always going on about.
Health and Wellness Update
The jaw pain has subsided down to a dull ache. I can eat food again, but I can’t chew very hard, and I can’t crunch anything still. If I take Tylenol about 30 minutes before I eat, we’re in the clear. Hopefully I’m in good enough shape to eat an apple or some celery by Sunday.
I’d intended to feel good enough for a long digression into my new bathroom ritual. However, it’s Friday, Janice’s birthday, and I’m just now starting to feel well enough to eat solid food, so I will table it for another day.
Instead, here’s a picture of a drunken monkey tiki mug. I’d forgotten I’d pre-ordered this, so when it showed up, it was like a present from my former self.
I also made an interesting discovery: not only is the venerable hobby of stamp collecting is not only alive and well, but there are a number of rather rabid Philatelists living in North Texas. I know this because I needed some stamps and remembered a number of weeks ago seeing that Jeopardy! stamps honoring Alex Trebek would be out soon. The stamps are the trivia questions, and the sheet featured Trebek at the podium in a classic image. Very cool and novel idea!
So I asked about them at the post office and got a rueful head shake. “Naw, they went quick,” he said. I wasn’t surprised. They were quite cool. What do you got, I asked, because you never know when dinosaurs or jazz musicians are going to show up. He held up a sheet of Dungeons & Dragons 50th Anniversary commemorative stamps and said, “I got one sheet of these left.”
I asked him why, wondering if they maybe just didn’t send a lot, and his answer surprised me. “I think with during the Pandemic a lot of people rediscovered stamp collecting and got back into it.” Makes perfect sense. Coin collecting, too, I would imagine.
My plan was to put this in a frame (since that is obviously what the Post Office is making these for—collector display), but upon looking at the artwork used on the stamps, I’m going to pass and just mail things with them instead. There’s a lot of new artwork, not so much the vintage era. Eh. No big deal. I needed the stamps anyway.
Stamp collectors. Here. Will wonders never cease?
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Guest editorial by the Administrator of the bunker and former breakdancer, Mark Finn
I’ve always wanted to like the Olympics. As a kid, one of the most popular commercials at the time was Caitlyn Jenner hawking Wheaties cereal as being instrumental to winning the 1976 Summer Olympics Decathlon. This was later brilliantly parodied, but we will move on.
That idea of a Decathlon such as the sailors on the Argonaut competed for spots on Jason’s crew stuck with me. Not enough to actually want to try track and field, you understand. I don’t run unless I’m being chased. However, I can certainly appreciate the tests of endurance, speed, strength, and agility and also the amount of work that goes into something like that.
Then, probably in middle school, I found out about fencing AT THE OLYMPICS. Sword fighting? Why the hell wasn’t that on TV for us to see? It’s people fighting with swords. Why wouldn’t someone want to watch that?
Yeah, that’s not on. I guess swinging a saber overhead to actually strike someone’s chest isn’t, what’s the word? Competitive enough? Violent enough? Have you ever watched Olympic fencing? Holy shit, it’s cool. There was a time in the late 90s when NBC (I think) was touting their all-access coverage of the Olypmics, a 24-hour feed on the higher-cable numbers. You know when Fencing was on? Around 2:30 AM. And with zero of the durm and strang of some of the other events like swimming and soccer.
I’m not a Winter Olympics guy, at all. My fear of skiing is well-documented, thanks to the opening for ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Bonus! There’s a barrel jumper that eats it, as well. Snow, ice, blades, a mountain. What could go wrong?
And if you’re not into that, there’s always...figure skating. Look, I’m not impugning the athleticism here, not in the least. I just don’t personally see the appeal of ice dancing. I’ve always considered the subjective approach to grading to be highly unsatisfactory. Especially since they always had to drop the highest score (always Poland) and the lowest score (always France) and average it all together for some semblance of objectivity. Mind you, I feel the same way about the floor routines on gymnastics, even as I am marveling at the tremendous spins, flips and acrobatics that go on. I mean, I sure as hell can’t do it.
But you know what I can do? Breakdance.
Yeah, go ahead, cue it up, be my guest. But in 1984, I was able to spin, pop and lock, do the helicopter and the worm, moonwalk, robot...I could break dance. It was the 8th grade, and there wasn’t anything to do but hang out, watch the movie Breakin’, and listen to early Prince albums. It’s hard to imagine, but I put in a lot of time and effort into figuring out moves.
One thing’s for certain: at no time during all of that practice, larking about with friends, and trying to find the slickest parachute pants I could, did I ever, once, look at myself in the mirror and think, “One day, this will be an Olympic sport.”
I feel the same way about the trampoline, too, while we’re at it. If there’s not a way to definitively keep score, or a way to measure time, distance, weight, or speed, then I don’t think it should be in the Olympics. Those events are there to tart up the track and field coverage, presumably because not enough people are watching the pole vault. Well, they are now, because evidently, there’s a new unit of measurement to describe the distance by which you don’t clear the pole called the “ding-a-ling,” and I can’t wait for 2028 for that redemption story.
This isn’t naiveté on my part; I know (and you should know) that everything you don’t see is money. It’s payouts and bribes and sponsorships, and fundraising and tax write-offs, and tourism dollars and endorsement deals. But sports is singular in its ability to be a business and also appeal to our hearts, our minds, our better selves, and even be a narrative for overcoming adversity and hardship. The Olympics, for us, is that, on eleven. We all pretend to care about Curling and Flonkerten and all of that because we hear the stories of these kids who have been training for twelve years, doing nothing but that, and then getting to represent the United States in one of the few remaining positive ways that still appeal to our internalized societal identity.
But for the last decade or so, ever since social media, the Olympics has thrived on scandal, controversy, and cringe, whipped into a froth by people you don’t even know online, to get you to make a few memes, like, retweet, and repost the completely inaccurate rumor someone spread, or watch a car crash in slow motion as someone does something stupid. Yeah, the Opening ceremonies were a hot mess, but what do you expect from FRANCE? COME ON! As for the pistol-shooting guy...yeah, I got nothing. It’s more of a human-interest story, but I don’t think it was more than a curiosity, and he is on the fourteenth minute of his fifteen minutes of fame.
I love that the woman’s boxer is suing people for defamation of character. I hate that the French guy lost by a dick (though, as someone who lives with a Tumescent Scrotum, ™ I’m pretty sure his cred only went up afterwards and I don’t begrudge him any residuals from his performance, if you know what I mean and I think you do). Game respects game.
Most of all, I hate hate hate that Breakdancing was part of the Olympics and that it was also a joke that captured the world and strangled all of the actual good stories of their oxygen. And this is something about which I do know and can speak with some authority. Breakdancing ain’t a sport. The Team USA women’s fencers should have been front and center, not an Australian professor of Breakdancing.
It’s all the more galling when you consider that most of the people passing this bullshit around aren’t even watching the Olympics. Why are you listening to randos on the Internet to begin with? What did you gain by re-posting that meme, other than having to engage with everyone on your feed who dropped articles dismissing the false narrative. Was that fun for you? Because it was not fun to see on so many other people’s walls. Especially because of how fundamentally wrong it was to begin with. Especially when we had athletes winning medals in events that have been a part of the games for over a hundred years or more. Check this list out for yourself; it’s amazing, and the fact that I’m still looking at “RayGun” superimposed into the Michael Jackson Thriller video is just pissing me off.
They are using these moments to further divide us. Remember when the Olympics used to bring us together? Go look at Jenner’s Decathlon highlights. That was a human drama that everyone could get behind. And we did. I ate a box of Wheaties, for Christ’s sake. No prize inside. That’s how into the Olympics I was.
The fact that we have athletes continuing to train all over the country is a testament to the idea of the Olympics. We still like the Olympics, or at least, we want to like them. The people filming these games are old hands at framing narratives around people getting up at 6 AM to train on the pond out back and doing team fundraising by grooming three-legged dogs. Man, I’m even on board with Flav a Flav sponsoring Team USA in Water Polo (it’s goofy, but it’s got scoring, so have at it). It’s still stirring to watch a medal ceremony. I want that. I need that in my life. But I’m not going to stay up until 3 AM waiting for the stuff I really want to see. Not in my 20s and damn sure not now. We need to expect better from the people who charge us for the privilege of showing us only what they think we want to see.
Most nations are understandably biased towards their area of origination, and sometimes that's bad. But the Olympics were good to us up in Canada, for the most part...
47 years later, and still nothing has changed: 50,000 registered Elvis impersonators in Las Vegas, and you can’t find a GG Allin impersonator for a quickie wedding to save your life.