Pet Groomer. This episode starts with a pet groomer, which gets into all sorts of dirty, mostly due to the expression of the anal glands. Please tell me you don’t need a map. Just think of the poo.
May 1st, 2006 Archives
Dirty Jobs Recap: Micro-Algae Man
Dirty Jobs · Season 1 · Episode 12 · Aired November 1, 2005
Mythbusters Recap: Escape Slide Parachute
Mythbusters · Season 3 · Episode 13 · Aired August 10, 2005
Escape Slide Parachute. Ever since Indiana Jones jumped out of the plane with nothing but the escape slide and then used it as a parachute on his way down and eventually slid down the mountain below, you know you’ve wondered if it would really work. I know that I sure have. Unfortunately, the first problem is the biggie - it just isn’t logistically possible to get the raft out the door in such a manner that you could use it in a way that they did in the movie. It’s still really cool to watch.
Mythbusters Recap: Chinese Invasion Alarm
Mythbusters · Season 3 · Episode 15 · Aired October 19, 2005
Chinese Invasion Alarm. As the story goes, the ancient Chinese would maintain these large pots deep underground, and as armies approached, they would listen for the footsteps to set off a drum-like beat on these pots, so they knew that someone was coming. The team assembles their own version, and what do you know - it looks like Kari seemed to be able to detect the sounds of an approaching army. Plausible.
Mythbusters Recap: Penny Drop, Deadly Microwaves, Radio Tooth Fillings
Mythbusters · Season 1 · Episode 4 · Aired October 17, 2003
Penny Drop. Everyone knows that you’re not supposed to drop a penny from a tall building because it will kill someone when it hits the ground. Is that really true? The first problem is that those tall buildings almost always have lots of wind, so if you drop something, then whatever you drop usually ends up hitting the building again a few floors down.
But that doesn’t stop our build team, who creates a gun to fire pennies at (or near) their calculated terminal velocity, and it turns out that they can’t even penetrate the ballistics gel head - so they start shooting them at each other’s hands, and that doesn’t work either. Busted.
Mythbusters Recap: Jet-Assisted Chevy, Pop Rocks and Soda
Mythbusters · Season Unknown · Episode Pilot 1 · Aired January 23, 2003
JATO Car. The first part of the episode deals with the jet car myth, where some moron is rumored to have strapped a rocket (or rockets) to his car, lit them, jumped up to 300 or so miles per hour, slammed into a mountain, and then just completely obliterated himself. It turns out that it’s not only possible to attach rockets to your car, but a lot of people have done so. They haven’t gone that fast though - usually only about 150 to 180 miles per hour. And there’s no evidence that anyone has actually run into a mountain. That part seems to be strictly myth. Busted.
The Twilight Zone Recap: The Man in the Bottle
The Twilight Zone · Season 2 · Episode 2 · Aired October 7, 1960
Arthur and Edna Castle have had enough of the junk business. Their display case is cracked and they can’t make ends meet. But one day their ship has come in, for they have a genie at their disposal, who will grant them four wishes.
Scarcely believing their luck, they ask for the simplest of wishes - to have the display case fixed. And once it is, they go in the other direction, asking for a million dollars! The next thing they know, there is a pile of money on the floor and they are passing it out to everyone. Unfortunately the next person through the door is from the Office of Internal Revenue and they owe $942,000. Whoops.
Carefully planning their next wish, Arthur decides on power - that he wants to be the ruler of a foreign country who cannot be voted out of office, so that he may rule for many years to come, and thinking he has devised a way to beat the genie at his own game, he asks to rule over a foreign country that is in the current century, so as not to be stuck in some ancient world. Easy enough, it would seem, until he realizes that he has become Hitler.
The last wish, alas, is to become himself again, which makes him realize that the worst wish, as with The Chaser from Season 1, is the one that comes true and gives us just what we want the most. Even the fixed display case is lost as they hit it with a broom when cleaning up the broken bottle. Still a very good episode.
The Twilight Zone Recap: King Nine Will Not Return
The Twilight Zone · Season 2 · Episode 1 · Aired September 30, 1960
Capt. James Embry normally flew as the commander of King Nine, but when he didn’t make it and the flight never returned, he never recovered. Today, he’s reliving the crash as if he were there, because they finally found the plane in the middle of the desert. When the doctors collect his clothes after examining him, they feel that he’s made a breakthrough, it’s as if he’s finally coming to grips with the issue - but they can’t explain how he got sand in his shoes!
The Twilight Zone Recap: A World of His Own
The Twilight Zone · Season 1 · Episode 36 · Aired July 1, 1960
This is one of my favorite episodes of the series (of course, at this writing, I’ve probably only seen half of them, so take that with a grain of salt). It’s perhaps fitting that it ended the first season of the run, which may be the best of them all.
As it turns out, playwright Gregory West has a good thing going that he doesn’t want his wife to know about. His typewriter has allowed him to create a virtually guilt-free affair with a wonderful woman just by writing about her. When his wife comes home, he simply tosses her into the fireplace and with a small “poof” she is gone.
Unfortunately, it seems that Mr. West wrote his wife as well, and when she really gets on his nerves, into the fire she goes, so that his mistress can become even more real. And in perhaps the best twist that I’ve seen, even our beloved narrator, Rod Serling, finds that he is not immune, and he too finds his way to the fire and disappears just before the end of the episode.
The Twilight Zone Recap: The Mighty Casey
The Twilight Zone · Season 1 · Episode 35 · Aired June 17, 1960
Casey isn’t just another pitcher, he’s a robot pitcher. That’s only a problem when the league commissioner finds out, which is too bad for the Hoboken Zephyrs, led by Mouth McGarry (Jack Warden, also in The Lonely). The doctor who put Casey together gives him a heart, but that only means he doesn’t want to strike anyone out, making him a bit of a liability for a big-league pitcher. A well-written episode.
