NPR: America Online to discontinue dial-up internet service which is still miraculously still available in the year 2025
Frankly, I’m astonished that AOL is even still in existence, much less their very specific dial-up internet service. After Instant Messenger had the plug pulled from it back in like 2017, I wouldn’t have imagined that AOL had any product or asset at all remotely capable of keeping them afloat as a business, but here we are in the year 2025 where they’re not only still alive, but about to pull the plug on the very thing that put them on the map in the first place.
I mean, who among my general age range, didn’t ever have AOL? It’s basically a rite of passage for elder xennials like myself, and probably most everyone could probably remember their very first @aol.com screen name slash email address. And everyone was innately aware of the free trial CDs that were just about everywhere, and looking back at it, it worked in the sense that they saturated the playing field so heavily that for a while, internet access = America Online, much like soda became synonymous with Coca-Cola.
But before I can go down the rabbit hole of nostalgia and wax poetic all day about stories involving AOL, I’m just going to get back to the point of this whole post, and finally wrap up the title of this post because I don’t write as often as I want to lately and I can’t get myself sucked into my own vortexes of words instead of getting to the point of the things that I actually do want to write about.
But anyway, wouldn’t it be funny if, with the elimination of AOL dial-up service, it completely turns the tide of the political battlefield in America? With the obvious implication that GOP supporters are mostly a bunch of antiquated olds who only have their internet access via AOL dial-up, and when the service is taken away from them, they lose their umbilical cord to the modern world, and either shrivel up and die sooner from boredom, or without the bullshit they currently imbibe on, on the regular, their minds actually clear up and break free from the brainwashing they’ve all been subject to over the span of the last few decades.
Like I kind of write this partially in jest, but at the same time, there’s a shred of hope of believing that this might actually come into play in the future. The numbers (well maybe not necessarily) don’t lie, GOP voters are on average 726 years old, and short of having shitty brainwashed tech-savvier children setting up their internet, I have to make the assumption that there’s a tremendous overlap between Republican voters and AOL dial-up users.
And since neglecting the elderly knows no political affiliation, there’s no guarantee that when AOL dial-up goes offline in September, there’s actually going to be people readily available to swap these geriatrics onto any form of higher-speed internet, and thus begins the prophetic disconnection with the modern world for these demographics, and it lowers their chances to be auto-right voters come the next election.
Yes, there are a ton of holes in this logic, but all I’m saying is that it would be real humorous to me that come 2028, the next election is seemingly way less dramatic and there’s a surreptitiously noticeable reduction in Republican voters, from a very specific demographic, and I for one will immediately point to this specific news story about how AOL killed their dial-up, and inadvertently changed the fate of the entire country in the process.
When people are in high school or college, when they think about kindergarteners, they probably think about kids that are babies, barely out of diapers, a stone’s throw from being out of the womb. When people become parents, and realize that from the day a kid is born, there’s still around five years before kindergarten comes into play, and it feels like a lifetime before the kid is walking, then is out of diapers and if you’re like my kids, navigating through three years of preschool before entering elementary school.
My firstborn is now a kindergartener, and is going to freaking elementary school now.
I still remember with crystal clarity, the days and nights spent at the hospital with #1 when she was born and was kept at the NICU on account of being premature. I remember the hospital being closed off to visitors shortly after #1’s birth because the first COVID-19 death had occurred within a day, and began ravaging its way across the entire planet.
I still remember the diapers, the apnea monitor, the first time meetings with grandparents. I remember the first solid food, the first crawl, the first steps. The introduction of #2 into the mix. The revolving door of shitty nannies, feeling like life was nothing but one big shit show trying to raise two kids in a fucked up society.
I also remember all of the extraordinary things, like all the glimpses of intelligence and emotional growth. Traveling and watching my kids experience the world and new things. Going into preschool, and meeting new kids for the first time and learning from peers, and seeing the breakneck speed in which she began her educational journey.
And now, kindergarten. Elementary school. Five years later, in elementary school. Five years more, and it’ll be middle school. By then, she’ll probably be 11 going on 24, thinking she has all the answers to the world. Three more years, and then comes high school where she’ll inevitably think she has life figured out, and I used to make jokes about how with each life’s milestone achieved, that she should go out and get a job next, but at this rate, such remark will become a reality sooner rather than later.
Similarly recently, I saw some memes about how now is the introduction of the 2020 COVID babies into the school system, and varying remarks about how teachers should be ready, but I can’t really imagine what it is there’s any need for concern over. Responsible parents kept their kids safe through the worst of the pandemic, and by the time #1 entered preschool, coronavirus was way less a threat than it was initially. She never had to wear a mask during the height of masking up, and she started preschool at the appropriate time and age, and I don’t think her interpersonal growth was really stunted at all by the pandemic.
Frankly, such a COVID-related designation to be watched and observed really should be the classes of 2032-2035, where those were the kids, already grown, who had to completely alter their school experience, starting school in-school, getting pulled, adjusting to remote learning, and then heading back. But not my kids, either of them, as far as I’m concerned, they’re as normal as things were pre-COVID.
The point is that it’s absolutely bonkers to me that my oldest child has just started elementary school. She is now going to school with mythical wife, as she’s a teacher there, and has conveniently placed her where she works, giving our child the ultimate in safety nets knowing that mom is in the building with her, every day.
Which is good, because #1 has expressed nerve of moving onto the next level, because she’s spent the last three years of preschool with widely the same kids every day, and now there’s not a single one of them going to be in the same class with her now. I’ve reminded her that most of her classmates will also be going through the same thing, and it’s also exciting to be in a situation where there’s going to be so much new-ness across the board.
And it’s not just for #1 too, because of this one step for her life’s journey, is a change for pretty much everyone in my household. I’m now having to get up even earlier in the mornings to make sure #1 is out of bed earlier and fed, because she now goes to school with mythical wife at the teacher’s schedule, and I’m basically having to make breakfast twice, since #2 is now going to preschool by herself, on a completely different schedule.
Inevitably, that’s what life is, constant change and adapting to it, but in spite of my occasional gripes of having to be the earliest riser and on point with my parenting, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my children, and I’m not mad or grumpy about having to alter my schedule. It’s more exciting to witness the growth of my kids and seeing what comes next in their life’s journeys.
Every time I come across posts or articles about the general downward trends of Las Vegas tourism, I just scoff and remind myself to hold my tongue and save it for the brog, because I think I’m in the minority now about my feelings and attitude about Las Vegas.
But as the subject of this post says, Las Vegas sucks now, and is a far cry from the place that I used to go to multiple times a year, and it makes me sad to see just how much it’s changed and how I just now have absolutely no desire to go back any time soon. And like I said, I think I’m in the minority here, especially among my friends who all seem to think the place is still good, regardless of if they acknowledge the changes or not, and as to not be the Debbie Downer, I more often than not, keep my feelings unspoken since I don’t want to be accused of peeing in the pool.
But yeah, Las Vegas sucks now, and I fully understand why their tourism and revenues are trending downwards, and feel little opinion other than the euphemism that this is the bed they made, and they have to lay in it.
Sure, COVID had a lot to do with their state of collapse, as a city so reliant on tourism was absolutely decimated when the whole world was encouraged to stay put, but the whole city didn’t do themselves any favors once things started to return to normalcy. It’s like the whole place went into this determined recoup-mode, and decided to up the cost of just about everything in sight in order to make up for lost dollars from the pandemic, and as often the case whenever any business raises costs to justify something, once that something has been justified, they grow so used the revenues that they make no attempt to revert or reduce, and as is the case with Vegas, they actually doubled down and kept increasing the cost of everything to further push people to see how much they can get away with.
See, the Vegas I remember and loved, it wasn’t $Fuck you.99 per night to stay anywhere on the Strip, and there weren’t Ticketmaster-amounts of resort fees every night. Parking was often free, which justified getting a rental car so we didn’t have to get taxis everywhere, and could occasionally explore the city beyond the Strip. Food, sure, had its upscale joints where you could feel like a baller, but there were also plenty of options where you could get a cheap meal or just enough to satiate hunger, and it not be an automatic $100+ bill.
Every resort had a buffet, and I can say that I’d been to almost all of them at various points of my life, from the Riviera’s, Aladdin’s, MGM’s, Mandalay Bay’s, and my guiltiest of pleasures was the Rio’s Carnival World Buffet, where on two different times, separated by years, I managed to get the same server who had this creepy, Igor-like demeanor, but was still nice and did his job well. But, they’re all gone now, with to my knowledge, the only ones truly left and worth a damn, being like Caesar’s Palace, Bellagio and Cosmopolitan.
Drinks were plentiful, and thankfully is still the case, free as long as you’re gambling, but for when you weren’t blowing all your money away, a domestic beer didn’t cost $20 plus a tip.
Which brings us to gambling, where across the board, the cost to play has risen to where the last two times I went to Vegas, I was basically done after a single day’s gambling. I used to be able to bring $500 in cash, and manage to have a pretty fun long weekend; I could be lucky enough to play with some house case from time to time, and when the trips were over, be able to come back with a little left. Now, $500 can’t get me through a single day, which was almost literal when my last trip was just 24-hours, with gambling time being less than four of those hours.
Casinos hardly bother with fluctuating table minimums anymore, and the lowest on the Strip is like $15, which is a perfectly uneven number to where anyone who wants to play a hundo, has almost no possibly way of playing an exact amount at $15 a hand or spin of anything without having an embarrassing remainder, or need to buy back in, and it makes me think of the New York MTA and how their fares are mathematically strategized so that it’s almost impossible to zero out a fare card, and the city rakes in millions a year on forfeited remainders.
The bottom line is that Las Vegas has completely abandoned even remotely trying to cater to anyone that isn’t at the very least, upper class, or can at least pretend to be for the duration of a trip. Middle-class and lower schmucks like me can no longer afford to go there comfortably, much less have a good time, when we’re being gauged left and right, having the city wishing they could charge us to breathe.
I’m of the belief that there’s way more money to be made in catering to everyone, and my favorite stories in business are always ones where companies have embarked on such strategies and have found immense amounts of success in doing such, like sports teams that lower their tickets, concessions and accessibility and then they make record profits. Apps that are released for free, but then rake in millions on ad revenue and in-game micro-transactions. Look at Wal-Mart, whose last time I checked was #1 on the Fortune 500 for the last 30 years, because they cater to the lower class, and they make fuck numbers of profits every year in doing so.
And Las Vegas turning their back to those under the upper class line, screams of elitism, catering to the wealthy and those arrogant enough to demand exclusivity, I enjoy reading and seeing things about how their numbers aren’t doing as hot as they probably wish they were doing. I love reading comments full of shade and criticisms from people who feel similarly to how I do, abandoned and resentful, and pining for a Las Vegas that they once loved so much, they used to “joke” with their friends about exploring looking for a rental property.
Like I said, this is the bed that they made, and it’s what they have to lay in, and I hope that one day, Las Vegas can get back to closer to being the city I once loved and hopefully in time for me to have some more memorable trips with my friends and my family.
Meeting the Hulkster in 2005 at a car show, coincidentally wearing this shirt. He greeted me “nice shirt, brother”
Countless sauces: “Hulk Hogan” Terry Bollea passes away at the age of 71
Long ago, one of my closest friends and I were bullshitting about the random things that bros do, and at one point we talked about, how would we feel when Hulk Hogan inevitably dies? Nobody lives forever, and although we weren’t really so much die-hard Hulkamaniacs so much as we more or less liked him in this ironic manner because he was just so over-the-top and often larger than life, we still were fans of the guy that basically embodied professional wrestling.
We knew that his time would eventually come, and although we’ve witnessed countless professional wrestlers from our childhood pass away from various reasons, there weren’t many who were going to be at the tier, that of someone on the echelon of the industry as Hulk Hogan was, and we pondered on what would happen around the business, and how we might possibly feel when it inevitably happens.
Over the span of the last week, the world saw the passing of Malcolm-Jamal Warner AKA Theo Huxtable, and days later, Ozzy Osbourne, the so-called Prince of Darkness. And is often popularly murmured upon hearing the deaths of celebrities, it always comes in threes.
In one of the group chats I share with many of my closest friends, I specifically mentioned that a probable high likelihood name to be the third, was Hulk Hogan. Leading up to today, it was known that he had gone to the hospital, but it was very ambiguous and this kind of gross game of information being spread on his condition, where some parties were spreading that he was on his death bed and didn’t have long to live, while others proclaimed that all was well and that recovery was oncoming; but when a 71-year old former professional wrestler of the rockin’ 80’s era goes to the hospital, there’s always the possibility that things are going to go tits up.
Unfortunately for me, wrestling fans, and all those whom might be interested, I just so happened to be right in this case. And as much as I often extol the wondrous feeling of being right, this is one of those cases where I don’t feel any sense of satisfaction at it because in the end, the world lost an icon, whether people were a fan of him or not.
As is often times the case whenever someone of a degree of celebrity passes away, I become fairly judgmental towards the parties that spout their condolences and keep them in their thoughts and prayers, primarily when I know that at some point(s), they’ve turned their backs on the departed. To me, their sudden returns to grace come off as disingenuous and attempts to piggy back sympathy and attention to themselves and it often disgusts me when I see people pulling 180s on guys like Hulk Hogan, just because they passed away.
I understand why a lot of people cancelled Hulk Hogan over the years; him getting caught dropping the hard-R on a recording was enough for many. His absolute shitshow lawsuit against Gawker Media, revolving around the fact that he was involved in some bizarre cuckolding scenario with a Tampa shock-jock and a sex tape “leaked” didn’t really help his general public image. And of course, who could forget him pledging his allegiance to the orange turd in the 2024 election, complete with him showing up to the RNC, cutting a pro-turd promo, and ripping his shirt off on stage.
I get it, man hasn’t been remotely close to the bastion of a paragon that prime 80’s Hulk Hogan was, encouraging children to take their vitamins and say their prayers, since his retirement, and I wouldn’t challenge or argue with anyone who decided to cancel post-career Hulk Hogan.
Yeah, I don’t dig the hard-R, and his over-the-top alignment to the right. The Gawker trial was personally endlessly amusing, and I probably made no less than 13 posts about it during its lifespan. Honestly, Hulk Hogan, or Terry Bollea, or whatever you want to call him, clearly wasn’t a perfect human being, but quite frankly neither are any of us.
If I decided to cancel every single celebrity that had done something offensive, then I probably wouldn’t be a fan of anyone. If I decided to cancel any random people that I know, friends, colleagues or otherwise, for something that they’ve done that’s slighted me, I’d probably become a bigger island of a man than I already feel like sometimes. And if I held myself to the same criteria as those I should be cancelling, I’d have cancelled myself probably 168 times.
The point is, yes some of the shit that Terry Bollea has done has been less than socially acceptable to people like minded to me, but there’s always been this part of me that always gave Hulk Hogan, as well as lots of other people a little more leeway and resistance to cancellation than others might, because I often think about people in the aggregate, and if I cancel a Hulk Hogan, then I probably ought to cancel 58 other guys that might have similar rap sheets.
I’m not saying what bad discretions that Hulk Hogan may have done are okay or acceptable, but I’m just not going to crucify and cancel everyone who conducts themselves in manners that I disagree with, because we’re all imperfect human beings and frankly I don’t want to expend the energy to consciously cancel other people.
Furthermore, a guy like Hulk Hogan, he’s built some equity with me personally, in the sense that he was basically the living embodiment of the professional wrestling industry. Yeah, the whole business used to be something that I kept my fandom about under wraps, but it’s something that has outlasted countless other interests in my life, and I take some joy in how much more acceptable and mainstream it is these days, and the whole carny shitshow of an industry never would have gotten to where it did without the contributions of Hulk Hogan.
So yeah, I’m not going to turn my back on him for discretions that I think a lot more people might have in common than they’d care to admit, and it did punch me in the gut when I found out about it, and it has been living rent-free in my head all fucking day, to where I was itching to be able to sit down and get to write this in real time, and not a post where I write it as retroactively as I can.
I’m not going to say that I was the biggest Hulkamaniac in the world, but I was still a fan. As a kid, I ate his shit up, believing that he was getting his ass beat by Andre the Giant, Earthquake, Sgt. Slaughter and everyone else he ever feuded with, and was always blindsided when he kicked out of their finishers, Hulked up and ended the match three punches, a big boot and a leg drop later.
Even as I grew and learned, I was still amused by his whole schtick, and even though it was kind of lame, there was a comfort in familiarity in seeing him do it again and again throughout the years.
The nWo and the birth of Hollywood Hogan was pretty groundbreaking for me to digest, and it really was something of a renaissance, as he worked evil for the first time in history, but by then, I was older and wiser and more cynical, and well, Hulk Hogan was older then too. His whole sinking with WCW was an ironically hilarious ride, as he reverted back to yellow and red Hulkamania, FUNB Hogan, and back to nWo for sporadic stints.
His later years in wrestling were pretty awful, but there was still something to be said about a man who kept lacing up his boots and getting in the ring and taking F5s from Brock Lesnar, or giving an extremely rare tapout L to Kurt Angle. As much as he was accused of gatekeeping and being selfish, man did give back to those who were the most worthy of getting his rubs.
I didn’t really follow his TNA career into ultimately true retirement, and by then, shit like his hard-R scandal, and then Gawker overshadowed his wrestling legacy. But I was always amazed at how the man simply knew how to stay relevant and not stray from the spotlight for ever too long, and even up to his passing, the man always managed to popup somewhere, every few months, and kept reminding the world of who he was and that he still existed. Whether it was his clown show at the RNC, the debut of Real American Beer, or his hilarious bomb at the Netflix premiere of RAW, if there was one absolute truth, it was that Hulk Hogan always knew how to remain relevant.
In the end, you didn’t really have to like the guy, but I do believe that it was pretty undeniable that he was a force of nature when it came to his footprints on wrestling, pop-culture, and celebrity status. The man was truly larger than life, and especially in the professional wrestling industry, I would say, is one of the most monumental passings of an icon there could be, for at least three different generations.
Rest in peace, Terry Bollea. Hulkamania will live forever. Brother.
AP: Actor Jonathan Joss, shot and killed at the age of 59
Although falling through the ceiling of my attic really sucked, in retrospect it was nothing compared to finding out that Jonathan Joss was tragically shot and murdered.
And it’s not just because of the freshness of the incident that I say this, but the man was legitimately part of two shows that I hold in the highest esteem, in Parks and Recreation as well as King of the Hill, with the latter being where I knew him from the best, but then being super stoked when I got into Parks and Rec, and finding out that the guy behind Ken Hotate was John Redcorn.
Needless to say, my sadness is legitimate sadness, and not just sad that someone in showbusiness I liked is gone kind of way. I didn’t need a refresher on the roles he played when I saw his name in the news as being a murder victim, and it’s all just really sad and tragic and fucked up in a variety of ways, and it boils down to the fact that guns in America are long past out of control, and shit like this happens way too frequently.
Frankly, I didn’t even know that Joss was gay, not that it matters at all to me, but seeing as how it’s Pride Month, and learning that the shooter was using homophobic slurs just adds to the infuriating tragedy of the whole scenario. He was clearly a proud representative of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the oft-overlooked indigenous community, both of which take a sad hit in the loss of Jonathan Joss.
At this point, I don’t really have anything much else to say. It’s just he was a guy whose work I loved so much, making me a fan of his by proxy, and I felt like I had to at least put some words down to express my grief at this senseless and tragic passing.
The whole John Redcorn joke was pretty much my favorite subplot on King of the Hill, and it was always a treat to see whenever he appeared on Parks and Rec, playing white people like a fiddle. It’s all just a fucking shame that the world will never get to see him pop up anything else anymore, because aside from being such a strong advocate, man was just such an iconic talent.
I blinked a few times, and now my eldest daughter has graduated pre-K, and is en route to starting kindergarten the next school year. I still have a hard time digesting that, considering that the last five years have soared by, where my kids were born the generation of COVID babies, and the world has gone through a whole lot of hoopla to get to where we are today.
Like, it didn’t feel that surreal when #1 began 2K and went onto 3K while #2 started a year later, but more recently, it dawned on me when I went to the last Friday sing-along of the year, that this was also the final Friday sing-along for #1 outright. Very soon, the school year was going to come to a close, and all the classmates she’s mostly had over the last three years, almost all of them are going their separate ways, since being a private pre-K, kids are from all over the place, and despite the fact that this school is zoned for a specific elementary school, almost none of them will actually be going there.
Obviously, #1 doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that she’s not going to be seeing a lot of her classmates again with any regularity very soon, and instead it’s me the parent that feels sentimental for her that she’s not going to be seeing her friends, some of whom she’s grown quite close with over the years, and we as the parents can all tell each other that this doesn’t have to be the end, but much like our own adult relationships, it basically is.
Such is the relentless passage of time and the journey of life, and my first kid has completed one of the first stages of life, being preschool. She’s a whip-sharp, intelligent and observant kid, that has a beautiful imagination, loves to draw and paint, and I’m often floored at the academic development she’s shown over the last three years of preschool, and it’s going to be all sorts of emo-dad emotions in the future to see what she does next, starting elementary school.
As most parents aside from myself probably opine at similar circumstances, I just can’t believe that time has flown so fast, and I’ve already got a kindergartener on deck. Aside from the financial alleviation of having one less kid in a private pre-K, it’s going to be exciting to see what lies ahead in the future as #1 takes the step into the next stage of life, entering contemporary education.
I could easily say that probably for half my life, I’ve always wanted to visit Astoria, Oregon, most prominently known as the prime filming location for one of my all-time favorite films ever, The Goonies. But seeing as how I live in the southeastern United States, and Astoria is about as far northwestern as they come save for the state of Washington, such has always been somewhat of a logistical challenge.
Adding to the difficulty is the fact that frankly among the people in my life, nobody else has been interested in making this trip. Mythical wife, nobody in my family, or any of my friends, really has had any desire to go to Oregon, much less Astoria, the small coastal town that’s 90 minutes away from Portland, the closest major airport to get there. I almost managed to talk several of my friends into it a long time ago when a brother of mine got married in Olympia, Washington, but most of us got so smashed at the reception that we were too hung over to make the daytrip the following day.
So I decided that for my birthday this year, I was going to stop hoping other people would try and wow me with things that I don’t even know would do the job, and to just do something for myself, instead of having another birthday where I end up feeling droll and melancholy when the day winds down. I decided to make the trip I’ve wanted to make basically my entire adult life, by myself. I wouldn’t have to inconvenience anyone to make a trip they’re not fully in on with me, and I wouldn’t have to feel bad about any traveling companions’ feelings or preferences that might alter my own.
Months ago, I began my planning, and started making bookings in Oregon; where I was staying, a rental car, and booking an actual flight instead of trying to play the standby game for a trip that I really had my heart set on. Originally, I had the idea of making the trip on my actual birthday weekend, but it just so happened that my birthday collided with Wrestlemania, and of all the things that could make me want to postpone, that was adequate enough.
It was kind of surreal when my actual birthday came and went, and I was suddenly closing in on the trip that was definitely a bucket list trip for me. It was finally happening, I was finally going to get to go to Astoria, and do the whole Goonies thing; see the Walsh home, which I had innately watched throughout the years go from being owned by a tyrant who hated Goonies fans, tarping up the whole place, to being flipped to a Goonies fan, who not only welcomed the fandom, has apparently made it a mission to restore the house to its 1985 camera-ready 80’s-tastic aesthetic.
Go to the Astoria County Jail which is now the Oregon Film Museum, see the ORV that was always parked out front, and make the journey down to Cannon Beach, to see Haystack Rock, where the opening and closing scenes of the film took place. And of course, while I’d be there, do some other, non-Goonies/film things like see the Astoria Column, the Astoria-Megler Bridge, and seek out new food and try local beers.
So I’m writing this while sitting in the terminal at PDX waiting for my redeye flight back to Atlanta, and I can say that by and large, the trip was a great success. I got to do and see all the things that I had wanted to see, and although the weather was a bit on the nippy side while I was here, I planned for it adequately enough and it did not have much bearing on my experience. I saw pretty much all of Astoria, which isn’t saying a tremendous amount as it is not a very large town by any stretch of the imagination, and there were times where I was like, well what now? because I had accomplished all of the few things I had wanted to accomplish, so I found solace in coffee, beer, relaxation in my hotel room with an entertaining book.
