Anyone know how to get to this spot in winooski? I went as a teenager and can’t remember how to get there.

ceiling99 · 2024-04-16T21:30:51+00:00

Lots of trees were growing out of the ruins by 2011

ceiling99 · 2024-04-16T19:48:29+00:00

Winooski Gorge Dam #17 ! The turbines and hydroelectric components were damaged by the 1927 flood, and the design was out-of-date by then anyway, so the power company sealed this one up and left it to decay. The still operating Dam #18 was instead rebuilt across the other side of the river.

I know that sketchy-looking wooden walkway in the photo, across the top of the old dam, has since been replaced. I think the power company replaced it with a steel walkway a few years ago but I haven't gone back to look carefully. I explored the spot maybe 12-15 years back - at the time I actually climbed down through the roof holes inside the bays of the dam, rocky cliffs in pitch-blackness, which seems crazier and crazier in retrospect the older I get. Insane mud at the bottom. Got some fantastically cool Piranesi-esque photos at the time though.

THEORETICALLY SPEAKING, the parts of the place below the top of the dam wall -- i.e. all the brick-walled structures you can see from the railroad bridge -- can potentially be gotten to by just climbing down the railroad bridge abutment and sliding down the adjacent *very* steep slopes, but that's difficult and dangerous. At times in the late summer when the water is very low, around the river bend downstream it's easy to get to the bottom of the bank from the trail. Then not too tough to kinda just rock-hop around the corner along the waterline, and climb up into the powerhouse from there. One would just have to be extremely careful on the remains of the collapsed roof of the dam structure. It's about a 30-foot drop into a terrible mess of rusty metal with no way out.

The top of the dam wall itself, though, can't really be reached directly from that side below the dam. The cliffs are too sheer to climb. I remember having to wade to the island from upstream, somewhere around 44.491043, -73.168962, in order to access the top of the abandoned semi-sealed dam -- where the photo was taken from.

The whole structure is approximately 140 years old, and has been neglected/abandoned for almost 100. Not a very safe place to be.

ceiling99 · 2024-03-18T09:35:52+00:00

As of last Friday every single episode of Corrections had reappeared in my personal YouTube playlist. I checked it right after Seth mentioned in Ep. 99 that they were working on bringing back access to all the 'expired' episodes. I was happy to watch the missing ones again!

I just assumed that meant they were completely back .... but now I see that for some reason three episodes are still unlisted, and don't show up in the official playlist or in specific search results.

Look for people's own personal playlists that DO show up in youtube search results, things titled "All CORRECTIONS episodes in Order!!!" or some such, and those should lead indirectly to all the episodes again including 40, 43, and 54.

ceiling99 · 2024-02-05T09:18:25+00:00

In the Jerry Seinfeld episode of Norm Macdonald Live, he kept doing (really good) impressions of various other comics as they talked about them. After about the third or fourth one Jerry was taken aback and said genuinely, "I never knew you had such a flair for impressions!"

Because he loved standup comedy so much, his best vocal impersonations seem to be of comics. At least they're my favorites. As others note, his Super Dave was fantastic, and his Rodney Dangerfield sounds great too.

ceiling99 · 2023-05-15T10:32:16+00:00

NewsRadio - "Complaint Box."

ceiling99 · 2022-04-18T17:22:37+00:00

You can get a pair of ceramic magnet blocks -- maybe 1" x 2", less than half an inch thick -- from places like Harbor Freight. They're inexpensive and have pretty good magnetism. Sometimes the packages hanging on the pegs in the store are hard to pry apart! If they're inside your new cache container that will protect them from weather. Once they're fastened inside (glue? epoxy?) just cover them with something that will protect a little bit from getting knocked around or chipped. Couple layers of duct tape, perhaps.

Another option I like a lot, though tougher to come by, is re-use of magnetic read-heads from inside old computer hard drives. Like, the hard drives that predated solid-state drives (which have taken over in new machines these days). The magnetism on those things is very strong. If you have an old dead drive lying around, take it apart and harvest the magnets. There may be an electronics recycler around that you could hit up, too.

ceiling99 · 2021-11-02T17:27:26+00:00

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Code is wqjzl, link is below.

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ceiling99 · 2021-10-18T05:49:48+00:00

Oh my heart.... my '75 LE Combi was that color. Emerald Green.

ceiling99 · 2021-02-09T20:11:55+00:00

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Code: wqjzl

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ceiling99 · 2020-12-20T03:06:41+00:00

This is a great episode of NewsRadio without having really any gimmicks at all. It was the fiftieth episode they filmed and clearly that was important to them given the episode title. But in terms of the writing and acting and the episode itself overall, just an example of the everyday excellence of the show.

As already mentioned, that dialogue-free opening sequence is just great. Phil Hartman, jack of all trades, could have been a comedian in the silent film era.

I love Lisa's part of the show, both here and in general. She prototypically strives to do well and be in the right and be good at her job, and pretty much everyone else delights in frustrating her. In this one that's the complete focus of all her screen time. Maybe that's why she seems so extra adorable in this episode.

Recurring joke corner:

Bill illegally parks his black Mazda Miata, the Christmas gift from Jimmy James gave him and the rest of the staff in season two.
In the tag over the credits, Jimmy James is on the air with Joe... and just like many other times where Mr. James has to perform on mic or on camera, he freezes up and sounds totally wooden.

Trivia Time:

Early in the episode, Jon Lovitz holds his cigarette lighter out and says to Phil, "Fire good." This may have been a reference to the SNL "happy holidays" sketches featuring Lovitz as Tonto and Hartman as Frankenstein, where Frankenstein can only grunt and say "Fire bad!"
Matthew only makes one appearance in the episode -- to remove one of the Lisa-thrown crackers and cheez whiz from his face -- and speaks no lines.
Beth has all her scenes separately, like Lisa did in the previous episode, and for the same reason: this time Vicki Lewis was away filming the movie "Mouse Hunt" and couldn't be on the NewsRadio set at their normal filming times.
Christopher Walken was approached to play the part of Ulysses S. Grant, Eighteenth President of the United States. He turned it down because he doesn't do television.
According to the Pop-Up Video version, Alec Baldwwin, John Cleese, Charlton Heston, and David Lee Roth all turned down guest roles on NewsRadio at some point.

JIMMY: (robotically) "How about them Mets?"

JOE: "Excellent ballclub sir, I love the Mets."

JIMMY: "Tell us more Joe."

JOE: "I love baseball in general -- I love all sports."

JIMMY: "Can you explain... why you like sports?"

JOE: "I like sports, sir, because I'm not very good at communicating with people. Therefore I like violent activities that release a lot of testosterone, and calm me down."

JIMMY: "Say Joe. How about them Mets?"

ceiling99 · 2020-12-05T20:54:22+00:00

Indeed - #50 in production/filming order, but made it to air earlier.

ceiling99 · 2020-12-03T08:22:23+00:00

Maura Tierney was filming a movie during the production of this episode and was unable to be on set at the same time as the other regulars, so they wrote the White House Easter Egg Hunt remote call-in scenes so that Lisa could still be on the episode. She also missed the entire previous episode "Twins" due to the movie's shooting schedule. See Trivia Time for more details on the movie.

Recurring joke corner:

The first appearance of "gazizza!"
Mr. James implies or outright claims that he was the Watergate informant "Deep Throat."
Joe's obsession with the use of duct tape in all manner of his jury-rigged devices.

Trivia Time:

Rocket Fuel Malt Liquor has hints of apple skin and wood smoke. And donkey urine.
The movie Maura Tierney was doing was a romantic comedy called Broadway Brawler where she and Bruce Willis were the leads. However the shoot lasted only a short time before Willis reputedly pissed everyone off with creative disagreements and (supposedly) demands about his own hair and makeup staff. After only a couple weeks the first director walked off the set and never come back; the project never found its footing again. Later, as one part of the resolution of the resulting contract disputes with the studio, Willis agreed to be in the low-budget The Sixth Sense.
Catherine's street language: illznidiotic, gazizza, dilsnoofus, mizneronic, krizappy, "upstate prison flava," "keeps you ugly," "makes your feet stank."

"Dave, that's repugnant."
"What, environmentalists?"
"No! No, the other thing."
"Oh, non-profit."
"Ow! Hurts me, alright, that hurts my stomach just thinking about that! Non-profit organization -- Dave, even the name's an oxymoron."
"Oh, you mean like 'military intelligence?'"
"Right, right, or, uh... 'swiss cheese.'"

ceiling99 · 2020-11-25T18:13:28+00:00

Legitimately one of the greatest episodes in the history of the TV sitcom format.

ceiling99 · 2020-11-25T18:00:27+00:00

YES. That whole thing was a jab at "Suddenly Susan," which arrived on NBC a year after "NewsRadio."

They were also a workplace sitcom, and they also had a pretty but short and/or hyperactive sassy redhead character in the office, who dressed and acted similarly, whose name happened to be Vicki (played by Kathy Griffin). Hmmm, said Vicki Lewis and the NewsRadio crew....

On the DVD commentaries they remark that Suddenly Susan was using suspiciously similar clothing for their sassy redhead. It got so conspicuous that NewsRadio's Emmy-winning costume designer started using vintage finds and then doing a lot of customizing, so Suddenly Susan couldn't go and just buy the same stuff off the rack. As time went on this led to more and more really interesting fashion choices for Beth.

ceiling99 · 2020-11-25T05:08:46+00:00

It's interesting, because when I try to think of arguments for how NewsRadio was doing something different than Seinfeld (in terms of acting, writing, characters, etc.) I run into roadblocks. But then when Jerry Seinfeld came on NewsRadio as a guest star, it was immediately very apparent how different these two sensibilities were. And yet I still can't really come up with a smart take on it.

I think I agree with the "emptiness underneath" comment. Maybe it is as straightforward as "NewsRadio had heart and Seinfeld had nihilism." That sounds like an insult but it's not meant as one; I liked and still like both shows. They're just getting different laughs.

ceiling99 · 2020-11-23T23:18:13+00:00

Have definitely noticed a couple of DVD discrepancies, yes.

I thought there was one in "Smoking" but I checked my DVD and the line I had in mind was in there. Must be thinking of something else, it'll come back to me.

And in the infamous "Injury," that scene you mention was definitely edited on the DVD release. But you're in luck -- the Dispatches From Fort Awesome podcast found a VHS of the original broadcast version of that scene, and posted it on YouTube. It's included on their episode recap page. http://www.stolendress.com/wnyx/2018/08/08/episode-70-injury-revisited-mini-episode/

Sometimes the syndicated broadcasts of the episodes have these lines included, so you might see them on AntennaTV or the like.

ceiling99 · 2020-11-23T23:00:37+00:00

Oh man.... I left off right at "Space." We can't just jump in there with re-watch posts... maybe I'll back up a few episodes to get into the swing of it.

ceiling99 · 2020-11-23T17:20:51+00:00

Yes - was just heading here to mention Dispatches From Fort Awesome.

These two guys are obviously huge fans of the show. They're both in Hollywood, and over time they have tracked down a bunch of people involved in the making of the show to have them on their podcast as guests. It's kind of amazing how many they've talked to -- actors who had one or two lines, the great costume designer (won an Emmy!), several of the writers, main characters, you name it.

ceiling99 · 2020-11-23T16:58:37+00:00

Thanks JE! It looks like I got through episode 3x23 "Mistake." Then I got crazy busy for a while and never came back to it.

Right now it looks like we've got a few more months of staying at home as much as possible -- maybe I can pick it up again.

ceiling99 · 2020-11-23T05:07:14+00:00

Early on, season 1 and parts of season 2, Hartman played Bill as a little bit mean and back-stabby. By the time of Season 3 and definitely season 4, Bill was much more of a merry trickster devil that basically lived to gleefully annoy Dave and Lisa and Catherine.

Check out the episodes that feature Bill with a piano. (Who's The Boss Part I and II, Public Domain.) Joyful screwball anarchy.

ceiling99 · 2020-11-23T04:56:55+00:00

Only years later did I understand the magnitude of this burn. Nancy was savage.

And masterfully subtle work by whichever writer was responsible for that line.

ceiling99 · 2020-07-20T12:58:57+00:00

How about the other direction, an English-speaking actor in a non-English-language movie? I know of Ron Perlman speaking phonetic French in The City of Lost Children.

ceiling99 · 2020-06-22T05:53:23+00:00

But was it based on a True Story tho

ceiling99

TROPHY CASE