Monthly Archives: August 2020

From the Archives, sorta

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My love for the comedy troupe The State is well documented, but somehow I never saw this piece in Details back in 1996 about their ill-fated and almost-never-seen network debut, a Halloween special on CBS on a random Friday night that year.

Nothing went well, obviously, or the group would’ve gotten bigger instead of staying a cult favorite. Lots of the alums went on to bigger success — several in Reno 911!, Wet Hot American Summer, and obviously Joe Lo Truglio in Brooklyn Nine-Nine — but this mostly marked the end of The State as a going concern, which is sad.

Anyway, this article — written by a comedy writer who worked with them for the special — is a great time capsule, and it includes a laugh-out-loud treat for modern readers. Hint: watch out for the name of a particular day player, then essentially unknown with a single credit, now hugely famous & festooned with awards.

Throwback Friday: The Model 100

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This is a double throwback, since I’ve apparently had this tab open for over a year, but feast your eyes on this sales training video for Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Model 100, a sort of proto-laptop introduced in the early 1980s.

My pal Rob actually had one of these in high school, which was astounding (later, Rob had the first Mac I ever saw, purchased the summer before he left for Rice). For the era, it was really amazingly capable — and as such, found a quick market with anyone who needed to write on the go, such as journalists. Remember, at the time, the alternative was to phone in copy.

Oh, the cheek!

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Years ago when I was doing more travel, I signed up for a State Department notification list. I get mails about whether or not State thinks it’s a good idea to go to country X or whatever.

There isn’t much activity on the list, so I forgot about it until this morning, when I noticed a message saying I maybe shouldn’t go to the UAE.

Well, first, thanks. Wasn’t planning on it, but good to know.

And second, it’s goddamn hilarious that State is telling us where not to go, because at this point the US is basically already on everybody’s no-go list due to our abject failure in containing COVID-19, so it’s cute they’re saying “don’t go to place X” when most places at this point are safer than staying in the good ol’ USA.

Sigh.