16 Comments
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Tim Hurlocker's avatar

Their silence showed their fear, Steve, especially of Mr. Eastman.

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George Hall's avatar

The label on the wine bottle!!! Don't forget the label!

There is a big difference between Yellow Tail Cabernet and a Pahlmeyer Cab...for instance

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Alex Hernandez's avatar

I'm dismayed that it wasn't a whiskey bottle!

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George Hall's avatar

Agreed

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Erich Sielaff's avatar

Excellent Monday morning read. Making liberals heads explode might be your second super power. Your first is meme posting. No offense to your successor at PL in that department, but you make it an art form.

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Steve Larbig's avatar

Great to see your writing about prog rock again! I always enjoyed your posts on that topic. Might be a minority opinion but please continue to post on this.

BTW, Gabriel's outfit in that clip looks like something from Dr Who.

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Lafe Harris's avatar

Not enough memes!

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BP Mills's avatar

I love the Kamala knee pads! Nice touch!

My family and I live in the house that I grew up in, just 10 miles north of Boulder, Colorado. My parents built the house in 1971, sold it in 1983 and my wife and I and kids bought it 12 years ago. So I grew up within spitting distance of Boulder.

Boulder used to be our one escape in high school. We go there and dance at 3.2 beer club called “Pogo’s” (if you don’t know what 3.2 beer is, ask an elder).

We used to sit outside Folsom stadium, and listen to the Dead when they came through on their regular stop in Boulder.

So I’ve been living near the People’s Republic of Boulder my whole life, and it’s like an infection: it continues to spread outward from the epicenter. Colorado has completely changed in just 20 years. I joke that if grandparents came back today, they would never stop throwing up.

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Orest's avatar

You are an absolute hoot, professor.

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The One's avatar

I thought Bill Russell played basketball.

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Educational Questions's avatar

What was your favorite Dead show? Favorite song? I always loved Going Down the Road Feeling Bad and Eyes of the World.

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Alex Hernandez's avatar

That's my favorite Genesis era, I knew both of those songs very well

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MtkaMoose's avatar

Let me guess why someone might forget how many Grateful Dead concerts they attended…

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TonyP173's avatar

Steve, I'm happy to help you in your Space Cowboy quest.

A pompatus was a special victim of the Vesuvius earth-shattering eruption in 79 AD. These unfortunates, who -- as a male residents of Pompeii -- were so intensely focused on achieving happy endings while engaged in intimate relationships, that they mistook the massive explosion of the mountain for rapturous releases.

The understandable mistake took their lives and the poisonous ash covered up the evidence of this phenomena for nearly 1700 years MOL. If you visit Pompeii, you can see the casts from the discovered remains, but you have ask for a special viewing. They're kept in the Steve Miller Wing.

Remember, this event occurred almost a millennia before the internet. The folks in Pompeii were mostly Italian. So...... it's really not too hard to understand their focus.

23 and Me claims two of my grandparents were from Naples, and I have a rich history from that region. I may, in fact, be a descendant from folks like these poor souls.

There's also a 1996 film which discusses the definition of pompatus, but they didn't do a serious dive into the historical record. It was a comedy, after all.

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MICHAEL CROGNALE's avatar

"the prophetus of love.

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Craig Kisciras's avatar

So happy to hear that you survived Boulder. I have traveled there and to other Front Range towns and yes, it is like a different world.

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