S. Evan Townsend's Blog

Sting Ray Robb

IndyCarThis year, Fox Sports is showing IndyCar racing, which is fun to watch. I like IndyCar because it's not boring like NASCAR, not confusing like IMSA, and not quite as precise as Formula 1. Plus the same people/teams don't win the races all the time like in F1. Although Alex Palou won over half this year's IndyCar races and won the championship with two races left in the season. He might be moving to F1.

There's an 23-year-old IndyCar driver named Sting Ray Robb (yes, that's his real name; his parents were Chevrolet fans and named him after the Corvette Sting Ray) and when they introduce him, he says he's from Payette, Idaho. That amazed me because Payette is a small town (about 8,000 souls) near the Oregon border northwest of Boise. It's not too far north of Interstate 84.

And I wondered how someone from such a small town could end up being an IndyCar driver. Payette is about the same size as the small town in Idaho where I mostly grew up. So I googled him. Wikipedia said he started kart racing at age 5. Which means when I decided I wanted to be a race car driver at age 8, I was already too late. 

But where did Robb race karts. Boise is the nearest town of any size and about an hour drive away for Payette. And, yes, there's a kart racing facility in Eagle, ID which is a suburb of Boise. So, probably on weekends his parents would drive the hour plus to get to the kart racing facility where he could learn racing. 

I grew up on the other side of the state, about 250 miles from Boise. Plus, when I was five (or eight), I doubt that kart racing facility was there. So I didn't have the opportunities Robb did. (Plus, I had no idea how to become a race car driver.) This makes me extremely envious of him. 

According to Wikipedia, "Robb started running nationally at age eight, entering Cadet division events from 2010 to 2013. During his first season in the Junior ranks, he finished second in America and raced in Valencia, Spain. Robb won a national championship in Rotax Junior Max karting in 2015." So he had some success in karting.

Robb is not one of the usual winners of IndyCar races. He starts somewhere back in the pack and ends up there. At the end of the season he was in 25th place. But still, to be an IndyCar driver must be a dream come true for him. It would be for me.

Washington Huskies College Football Season Preview

My beloved University of Washington Huskies football team starts their 2025 season this coming Saturday, August 30th. The game against Colorado State is at the horrible time of 8:00pm PDT. It'll be shown on B1G Network.

The Huskies didn't do too great in 2024 with a 6-6 regular season record under new coach Jedd Fisch. They also lost their bowl game against Louisville (by one point). It was a let-down after the 2023 season when the team went 14-1. The best part of that season was beating Oregon twice.

This season is up in the air. Fisch has a good quarterback, a good running back, a good wide receiver, and other impressive players. He's still trying to rebuild the team after almost every starter left after the 2023 season.

We have some tough games ahead of us. On September 27th, we play Ohio State at home. Ohio State is a leading team in the Big 10. While we beat Michigan at home last year, this season we play them in Ann Arbor on their home turf. Again, a tough game. And on November 29th, we play Oregon at home. Oregon is a consistently tough team thanks to Phil Knight's millions of dollars for top-of-the line coaches and NIL money for good players. Oregon is basically a pro team in the NCAA.

We might, if we're lucky, end up with a 8-4 record. (I saw one sports commentator say 9-2 before the Oregon game.) But we'd have to beat Washington State in Pullman and win other tough games on the road. We'll have to see how much progress Fisch has made in building the Huskies back up again. 

Guilty Pleasures

There are some movies that I just enjoy despite the fact they aren't really great movies. They are my guilty pleasures, I guess.

For example, Smokey and the Bandit. It's number 83 on my Top 105 favorite movies. (It used to be 103 until I added Oppenheimer and Dunkirk.) As I said in my Internet Movie Database review: "America needed a hero and Ronald Reagan was three years away. We found it in Burt Reynolds and his black Trans Am." This was the second highest grossing film of 1977 (behind Star Wars). The operative word on this movie was "fun." There's nothing serious or deep. Just fun. There is some cringe, but not a lot. I have this on Blu-Ray in case I want to watch it. It's available on Amazon Prime for $3.79.

Then there's Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. It's number 89 on my Top 105 favorite movies. Again, this is just a fun movie but with some cringe built in. It mostly just goes for the laughs but it also has a sports element that makes you cheer for the heroes. Parts haven't aged well (Lance Armstrong?) but that's easy to ignore. A group of misfits enters a dodgeball tournament to win money to save their gym. The tournament is supposedly shown on ESPN 8 (The Ocho!). The movie is on television a lot but look for it unedited on Hulu or Amazon Prime Video ($3.79).

And finally, there's xXx. (I was surprised anyone would name a mainstream movie "xXx" when "XXX" means porn.) This movie didn't make my 105 favorite movies but whenever it's on TV, I end up watching it. I recently watched it unedited and without commercials. I don't remember where but I'm sure I didn't pay extra as I would on Amazon Prime. The plot is pretty thin and the "audition" part lasts too long. It's about an extreme sports enthusiast recruited by a government agency to figure out what a group of ex-Soviet military men are doing. The dialogue is cheesy and the action borders on unbelievable. Or, is actually unbelievable. But it's so over the top in almost every way, it's hard to not watch. 

Do you have any guilty pleasure movies? What do you think of my guilty pleasures. Let me know in the comments below. 

Creativity

Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." 

I'm in the "imagination business." I use my imagination to write fiction books. 

I used to host the Speculative Fiction Cantina on BlogTalkRadio (which I understand is now defunct). On that program, I would ask authors to describe and read from their works. I was often blown away by the creativity and imagination shown. They would have ideas that I would have never thought of. I can't remember any now (the last show was on February 16, 2018) but I do remember the feeling of amazement.

These days I'm playing an online game called Heardle. It's a music guessing game where you try to name the song as quickly as possible. I don't play every game but I plays the ones I think I have a chance of knowing (even so, some of the songs are very esoteric). And the ads get annoying. I still play it every day on my phone, usually while my wife is in the shower. Again, however, I am amazed by the creativity of the people who write music, the instruments and the tunes and everything that goes into a song. Even in the first 2 seconds the differences between songs are staggering. (Of course, musicians have thousands of instruments to choose from, writers only have 26 letters).

My point? Human imagination and creativity are limitless. I don't know the first thing about writing a song but I do know how to write a book. And using creativity and imagination, I can build worlds.

Do you use imagination and creativity in your work or hobby? If so, let me know how in the comments below.

Looney Tunes

From What's Opera DocWhen I was a kid in the 60s (yes, I'm that old), Saturday morning cartoons were a ritual. And my favorite cartoon show was The Bugs Bunny Show (it had several name changes over the years). You know, The Bugs Bunny Show that started with this. 

According to the autobiography of Chuck Jones (Chuck Amuck), the minimum length of a "short" for theaters was six minutes. So the Loony Tunes shorts were exactly six minutes to the frame. Because each frame cost money. When they were shown in the Bugs Bunny Show, they cut off the title cards and the credits so they were shorter then six minutes. (However, according to Wikipedia, What's Opera Doc is 6:53).

Looney Tunes cartoons were initially produced by Leon Schlesinger, who, according to Jones, had no sense of humor. Later, Schlesinger sold out to Warner Bros. studios.

Not all the Looney Tunes are great. Most are funny but some are only amusing. Some of my favorites are (in no particular order): What's Opera Doc, The Rabbit of Seville, Duck Amuck, Duck Dodgers is the 24th 1/2 Century (which has teleportation a decade before Star Trek did), Bully for Bugs, and pretty much any Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon. There's others I'm probably not remembering. Some of the "rabbit season/duck season" cartoons were hilarious but I don't remember their names.

I am a huge fan of hand-drawn animation, an art form that is going away thanks to computer animation. Chuck Jones called it the only truly American art form.

I don't think there's anywhere to see those cartoons online. I have four DVD sets of four DVDs each with a lot of cartoons on them. Unfortunately, they mixed in the mediocre ones with the brilliant ones. I still watch them occasionally.

I still like animation. I watched the animated movie Mars Express not too long ago. It looked hand-animated. I watched The Simpsons for twenty years. When I'm bored, I'll watch reruns of Family Guy. I have to warn you away from The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Loony Tunes Movie. It was okay, but unless you really like Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, it's not really worth your time.

Do you like hand-drawn animation? Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

Driving by Feel

Maybe this isn't true where you live, but it seems to me that a lot of drivers around here in Washington State pick their speed by feel.

Let me explain.

There's a road here that's two lanes (one in each direction) but with occasional passing lanes. It needs to be a four lane road but that's another subject.

People will drive less than the speed limit on the two-lane parts and then, when another lane opens up such as a passing lane, they'll speed up making it harder for you to pass them. My only thought is, now they feel more comfortable with an extra lane. When the road goes back to only two lanes, they slow down again. Apparently they don't know how to use cruise control, either.

Or, even during the best weather, the Washington State DOT lowers the speed limit on Snoqualmie Pass

by 5 mph (65 versus 70). (There's "variable speed limits" on Snoqualmie Pass. The lowest I've seen is 35 mph on a very snowy night.) So, when the speed limit is 65, I'll slow down by 5 mph (from 75 to 70). And people I passed going 75 mph will start passing me at 70 mph. Because they aren't paying attention to the speed limit. They are driving by feel.

(I used to think they lowered the speed limit on Snoqualmie Pass because the road was narrow and windy. But they widened and straightened a long section and the speed limit is still 65 on that part.)

Now I follow the speed limit (at least) if conditions permit. This means I have to be aware of the speed limit. But I think a lot of drivers (at least around here) drive by feel. They'll be perfectly happy doing 45 mph in a 50 mph zone blissfully unaware of the line of cars behind them.

And this is in a way dangerous because it may cause someone to pass unsafely. I know it makes me see red mist. I always try to pass legally and safely. But not everyone does. I wrote about how driving too slow is dangerous here.

Driving by feel might be a common occurrence in the U.S. The Federal Highway Administration Research and Technology (part of the Federal Highway Administration) did a study and found that, despite the speed limit, people drive as fast or slow as they want to.

Do you have people who drive by feel where you live? Do they annoy you as much as they annoy me? Let me know in the comments below.

Horsepower

 I like cars and I like fast cars.

The first fast car I owned was a 1985 Ford Mustang GT. That car had a 5.0 V8 engine that made (wait for it) 210 horsepower. It's 0-60 time was 6.4 seconds. It's the first car I went over 100 mph in.

By comparison, the 2025 Honda Odyssey minivan has 280 horsepower and goes 0-60 in the same 6.4 seconds. It's a lot heavier than my Mustang was.

I've always wanted more horsepower in my cars. But what is too much horsepower?

I am still browsing cars on the internet, looking at ones with manual transmissions. I was very much tempted by this car, except I thought the price was outrageous (and the dealership only came down $1,000 off that price). So I kept looking. Then I came across this car and I thought the price was really high for a used 2019 Mustang GT. But I looked at the further and it turns out it's a Roush stage 3 aftermarket upgrade of a Mustang GT and has 710 horsepower and 610 pound-feet of torque. And that actually scares me. 

My Corvette had 505 horsepower and that car scared me. I never floored the gas except when I was pointed straight and had nothing in front of me. I did get it up to 155 mph on the racetrack consistently because the track had a half-mile-long front straight and I would floor the gas. 

A Mustang with 710 hp just scares me. I think I would put it in the ditch. Or run into something. You'd never floor the gas. And I mean never.

Do you like high-horsepower cars? How much horsepower do you think is too much? Let me know in the comments below.

Does One "Fire" Arrows?

Recently I watched the Lord of the Rings movies all in one weekend (extended editions of course; it pretty much took all weekend). And something occurred to me for the first time after having watched the movies several times.

In the battle at Helms Deep, Aragon tells the elves to "prepare to fire" their arrows. And the orcs laying siege to Minas Tirith, when the the 6,000 Rohirrim ride toward the orcs, the head orc tells the archers to "fire at will."

And I thought "fire" is a weird term for shooting arrows. Mostly "fire" is reserved for things involving gun powder (or its modern equivalents). 

Then I wondered what would be the proper term. So I googled it. And the command to get ready to shoot arrows should be "nock" or "draw" as in nock an arrow or draw the string back. And the command to shoot arrows would be "loose arrows" or "release arrows."

It's been a long time since I read The Lord of the Rings books so I don't know if this is a mistake Tolkien made or the filmmakers made. My opinion is it's probably not Tolkien. Besides, in the books, there weren't elves at Helms Deep.

I do think that the worst parts of the LOTR movies is when they strayed from Tolkien. That's why I suspect this was an error by the screenwriters: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson. 

The one scene I can't stand is in The Two Towers when Legolas and Gimli are counting how many orcs they kill and Legolas, being one short, shoots the orc Gimli is sitting on, saying he was twitching. And Gimli says "That's because my axe was in his nervous system!" I really don't think in the society of Middle Earth, they knew anatomy that well. (That scene may only be in the extended editions.) The whole counting of how many orcs killed isn't in the books, I'm pretty sure. Here is that scene.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

Eyeglasses

My eyes have always been a source of frustration for me. In 2006 I got LASIK and it was wonderful for a couple of years until I developed kerataconus (read all about it here). And since then, I've had to wear eyeglasses again.

Currently I have three pair of eyeglasses. My regular glasses that are progressive bifocals, my prescription sunglasses for driving and being outdoors (like, I go outdoors a lot), and my "computer glasses" that block blue light.

Prescription sunglasses are a luxury, I'll admit. But I need my regular glasses, obviously. And the computer glasses also became a necessity. 

I was having migraines. Not often, maybe once or twice a month. So I saw a neurologist (had to drive 70 miles to see him). He prescribed some medicine to take when I feel a migraine coming on. But we both noted that migraines tended to be worse on days when I spend time on the computer. So he suggested getting blue-blocker glasses. I went to my eye doctor for a routine checkup and he and wrote a prescription for blue-blocker glasses, based on my computer monitor being two feet from my eyes. Since I didn't plan to wear the blue blockers outside my house, I found the cheapest frames I could. 

Since I got the blue blockers, I haven't had migraines except recently after my wisdom teeth were pulled a week and a half ago. Some days I forget to put the blue-blockers on and I get headaches, but not migraines. Perhaps it takes a few days of no blue blockers to give me migraines. I try to set them on my keyboard so I won't forget to put them on. 

Unfortunately, my insurance only pays for the regular glasses, and then not much and not often. So getting three pair of eyeglasses was expensive. But so worth it.

Do you need eyeglasses? If so, do you have more than one pair? Let me know in the comments below. 

Paddington Bear

I have now watched all three of the Paddington Bear live-action movies and I enjoyed each one and without hesitation recommend them. 

The Paddington Bear movies are based on a children's book series written by Micheal Bond that has 29 books published from 1958 to 2018. So sixty years. The last book has published posthumously.

So, you might be saying, if the movies are based on a children's book series, wouldn't the films be for children. Yes, the movies are aimed at children But Paddington is such a refreshing, guileless, polite character, it is fun for adults too. 

In the first movie, Paddington moves from Peru (there's bears in Peru? Google AI says "Peru is home to the Andean bear, also known as the spectacled bear.") to London to find the explorer that found him in Peru. Instead, he is found by the Brown family in Paddington Station and they adopt him. They name him "Paddington" because his bear name is too hard for humans to pronounce. While in Peru, Paddington developed a love of orange marmalade. And pretty much everywhere he goes, he sings the praises of orange marmalade. It's gently funny. No one is made fun of or put down. 

The second movie is the best of the three. If you only want to watch one Paddington movie, make it Paddington 2. But you'll want to watch Paddington so you understand the background. Paddington 2 even got a call out in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent movie starring Nicolas Cage. 

The third movie, Paddington in Peru, is enjoyable. But with a director change and a recasting of Mrs. Brown, seemed to have lost some of its charm. It's still a good movie and worth watching. And you'll laugh. Some of it is implausible, but that's okay.

Watch the Paddington movies. You won't regret it. And apparently, there will be a fourth one.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.