Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619

Got mine. A portentious announcement from Mr. Lapierre, saying he will be sending us an important letter.

Nice experiment. Hope it works for them. The data will be useful in any event.

They paid us for it, I suppose. So we should steal what they own? Every one of the jillions of American dollars that have gone to China has gone from us voluntarily to buy what they have produced. Those dollars are the same as the ones in my pocket, and just as good as the ones in my pocket. If theirs aren't good, mine aren't either.

I was only in Florida once, on a business trip 30 years ago. The business was in Orlando, nicely central, so I took a couple extra days. Went to Tampa and St. Pete one day and enjoyed it. Many large pelicans, and interesting cigar places. Went to St. Augustine the next day and thought it was a beautiful place. Coming back, I swam in the Atlantic at a state park just to see how warm it was and it was warm. It rained a couple of times while I was driving. The rain had nowhere to go, and the roadway suddenly was in deep water, so I had to pull off for awhile. There seemed to be no actual hills. I like the Travis McGee books. It was nice down there but I haven't been motivated to go back. But then, I'm on the west coast...

Interesting. On a related note, Jason Statham was good as Parker in "Parker", based on Flashfire, one of the later novels. It was fairly close to the novel, as such things go. Parker is one of those guys that would be hard to cast just right for the movies. He's not a good guy, but you still are rooting for him. Classic antihero in a way.

The Kris Kristofferson was the one in the movie. I'm a big Parker fan. Payback was one of two or three movies based on The Hunter. The first, Point Blank, with Lee Marvin, is really interesting. The hardest-boiled of the hard-boiled is Parker....

As OLG says, more complicated to make. Many tons of discussions over the years here about Scofields and the other S&W/clones top-break revolvers. I have an Uberti .44 Russian, which I really like. They are all cool to look at and fun to shoot. The Russian is very accurate. But for various reasons, concrete ones and intangible ones, they overall just aren't as easy and handy as a SAA. There's just a certain subtle awkwardness to them. That's just how I would put it personally.

Speaking of Tom Berenger, "Someone to Watch Over Me" (1987) is an old favorite of mine. A New York city crime drama, with a great villain, a glitzy Mimi Rodgers as the main role with Tom (the cop), and Lorraine Bracco in what I think was her first movie.

Shawshank Redemption had a modest box-office showing, but has gone on to be one of the biggest rental and cable moneymakers of all time, at least in proportion to its original budget.

Liked that....

I'm not interested myself. I don't own any guns with synthetic stocks; just don't like 'em is all.

Elliot Ness didn't use no stinkin' stick...

I think that's true; it won't work long for most, and in any event just might let someone keep the doors open, rather than make any real money.. The particular local pub I mentioned has a strong long-time neighborhood presence, and has 'take-out' type food: burgers and fish and chips and such, anyway. It has a physical setup that is conducive to takeout. When I ordered last week, they had lots of folks popping in to pick up telephoned orders. They told me that it was helping to keep the place alive, and that they were busier than they thought they'd be.

People actually look at these folks, or care?

Don't quite follow. Here they can open for takeout, and my favorite local pub with good food tells me they're doing a lot better with takeout than they thought they would be. An article in today's NYTimes business section showed that grocery sales in March were up about 80% from the same period last year. Not just the 'prep' buying-- but an indication of how much food was consumed in restaurants before.

Me, myself, and I concur to keep it.

I'm on a 'traditional outdoorsmanship' board that has a small national flag shown in each name and info entry that appears, as here, at the left column of every post. We have many nations, European, Brit, the Antipodes, Italy, on and on. It's a nice feature. People can opt out if they like.

They had them pinhole Brownies....or was it daguerrotypes?

No, with all respect, the idea of a sentence or phrase and then dropping in an hour-long video is outside a reasonable request on a forum like this. How about a summary of reasons why anybody should spend time on it? In short, why should anybody "watch it and form an opinion"? Is there a reason? Please explain. After all, you've watched it. Give us the benefit of your insights.

That is awesome. Made me think. I'se born in '48. For some reason, I was never a cowboy kid. With me and my boyhood crowd, it was Elliot Ness. We made wooden guns with plywood circles for drum mags, and machine-gunned each other up all over the place.... No pix from then, though.

I'm no Doc by a million miles, but I defended personal injury cases for decades, became friends with many an orthopedist, and just the passage of time and lots of friends with surgeries.... Of course all surgeries can have complications in individual cases. Hip replacement surgeries have a very high degree of satisfactory outcome. If you need them early in life, there will be more problems as the years go by, no doubt. Knee replacement surgeries came along more slowly. The hip mechanically is a ball-and-socket. The knee is a far more complicated joint; the surgery more radical. In earlier days of the surgeries, in the 1970s and '80s, things could be tough. In contemporary times, there is now a high rate of success. I know several people whose knee replacement surgeries restored their lives and function. It's almost a cliche', but as pards have said here: get more than one opinion, choose a conservative and highly-regarded surgeon. Take the time and the outcome is highly likely to be good.

Another contribution to the sum total of human knowledge, no doubt.

Diclofenac (Voltarin) can be a very effective painkiller. My wife used it successfully and I used it for serious back pain and it worked. However, with me it had a serious side effect which is down toward the bottom on the effects lists. I do a lot of hiking still. About 3 years ago, I started having episodes of serious fatigue and shortness of breath in the middle of what would be a normal hike or hill climb, as well as halfway through my lap swim routine. It went on a couple of months and I thought once of going to the emergency room with maybe a heart attack, but there was no pain, just serious shortness of breath. I thought about my meds and I looked further into Diclofenac. I usually check the side effects and I had with that one. I did deeper research and found "shortness of breath on exertion" way down the list; not on the main list. So I stopped it and the problem ended completely in a couple of days. I don't think it's a common effect but be alert to the possibility. Topically, though, it could probably not have that effect.

There may have been too much energy for the application.

I never intended that! I haven't changed my mind for years.