It all goes by so fast.

Soccer to ME?

Google keeps trying to make me care about the Women's World Cup. 

C'mon, c'mon...

Oh, dear!

I don't wish to be mean. Well, maybe I do, but not for the reasons it may seem. Let's go to the videotape and sort it out.

⚽ I don't have anything against women's sports. I like watching the women's events in the Olympics just fine, and not out of prurient interest. Women + sports = no problem.

⚽ And I don't want to burst the soccer ball even though I don't happen to like soccer. Soccer was considered a poor sport when I was a kid, something you might fall back on when all you had was a ball you couldn't throw. Even stickball required more equipment (i.e.: stick). And if you had a throwing ball and nothing else, you might play monkey in the middle. I'm saying, we never saw soccer on TV, our dads had no respect for the game, and it looked really boring.

⚽ Plus the clock moves in the wrong direction and the rules encourage faking injuries.

⚽ But I can appreciate that others may enjoy it. I've worked on some kids' books about Pelé and the World Cup, and I think it's fine. Go enjoy it. Many people enjoy many things that I don't understand, like wine tasting and rock climbing and Kabuki theater, and that's fine too. There are things I do understand but don't want to participate in, like gardening and chess and building intricate model train sets. And there are things that just leave me cold. Soccer is one such.

⚽ (I would like to add that it has been almost five years since I introduced my plan to fix all of soccer's problems, and FIFA has completed ignored me. Sad!)

⚽ And I understand that Google thinks everyone should be cool on World Cup because so many people love the game that billions of human beings will literally pull every hair out of their heads if their national team loses a squeaker.

⚽ And Google thinks women everything is great because Women!

⚽ And not out of prurient interest, Stiiv.

⚽ But Google doesn't address what's going to happen to women's sports when their progressive agenda leads to FIFA and the International Olympic Committee recognizing trans athletes -- men who play dressed as women -- who go on to wipe the floor with the actual women playing, as is happening in NCAA-sanctioned events now. However sincere these men are about becoming women, they've opened the door to future women's events being played entirely by men who couldn't make the cut in the men's events. So everyone who ever made fun of women's sports as being a crappy (rather than just different) version of men's sports will be justified in the end, because that's all it will be.

⚽ But that last point doesn't have anything to do with this year's Women's World Cup. I just don't like soccer. Still: USA! USA! USA! (Assuming they're in it.)

Okay, that's all the caring I have for today. I have to go lie down.

Star of stars.

Today is this guy's 81st birthday, or would have been if he were still with us. 

Jack Horkheimer was the director of Miami Space Transit Planetarium, but was known to most of us who saw him on PBS as the Star Gazer. Actually, I used to watch him when the show was Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler back in the eighties.

Where we lived in New York City, which was late to adopt cable TV in our borough, I could get three PBS stations: WNET in the city, WLIW in Long Island, and WNJN out of Montclair, New Jersey. The latter two showed episodes of Dr. Who, mostly from the Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker/Peter Davidson seasons, although we also got Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. They were all rather fuzzy, because those two PBS stations came over UHF. Anyway, Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler was a five-minute show used as a bumper, and what better place to show it than between episodes of a science-fiction series?

I always enjoyed Horkheimer's enthusiasm for the subject. He'd tell us what was visible and where as the year progressed, and discuss any cool events like comets or eclipses or meteor showers. The episodes I saw he always wore that windbreaker, standing against the universe, like we were out there and it was a little chilly.

Much of what he was talking about was lost on me, though. Living in the city, the night sky was usually obscured with light pollution and plain ol' pollution pollution; we were lucky to see the moon. To this day there are only a handful of constellations I can identify with confidence, including the Dippers and Orion. I certainly can't blame my ignorance on Jack. He tried.

Here's an episode from 1991.

As far as I know, he always ended the show with the same tagline: "Keep looking up!"

A year or so ago I thought of his show and looked him up; I was sad to see that he had passed away, but hardly surprised. I was very happy to see what he'd requested on his tombstone:

"Keep Looking Up" was my life's admonition
I can do little else in my present position

Thanks, Jack Horkheimer; you certainly were an astronomical star in your own right.

Exo-Man.

This is pretty great:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued clearance for the ReStore Exo-Suit, a device invented to help rehabilitate stroke victims.

The ReStore system is comprised of a soft, garment-like design which connects to a lightweight waist pack and mechanical cables that help lift the patient's affected leg in synchronized timing with their natural walking pattern. The system provides targeted assistance to the patient during forward propulsion (plantarflexion) and ground clearance (dorsiflexion), two key phases of the gait cycle. The device also provides the physical therapists with extensive data during gait training with ReStore to inform strategies to optimize a patient's treatment and progress using real-time analytics.

Now, in one way this is much better than the idea of the exo-suit as we comic book dorks know it; on the other hand it is worse. It is better because it is an actual rehabilitation device -- it helps retrain the patient to walk unassisted. If you've ever seen a family member struggle with the aftereffects of a stroke, or have done so yourself, you know how frustrating it is. Well, this suit can help.

On the other hand, this exo-suit doesn't give the wearer super strength, ray blasters, armor, or the ability to fly, so it's no Tony Stark special.

Then again, fictional exo-suits weren't always that awesome.

In the 1970s, when everything sucked because America had lost faith in itself and in capitalism, there were a couple of superhero-related bright spots on TV. One was Wonder Woman, although it should be admitted that most men would have tuned in to watch Lynda Carter do anything. Lynda Carter Knits a Sweater could have run three seasons. Another popular show was Bill Bixby's The Incredible Hulk, a superhero version of The Fugitive.

The success of these inspired the networks to try other superheroes on prime-time TV. And they were awful. Spider-Man in 1977; Dr. Strange in 1978. There were also a few original heroes, such as... Exo-Man!

In color!

Exo-Man starred soap star David Ackroyd as a scientist who builds a super-scientific suit of armor and fights crime. You may have seen clips on some of those compilations that pretend to show the Avengers in the seventies, using scenes from this, Hulk, and other sources, like the cheesy Captain America TV film from 1979. This pastiche was my favorite:

Exo-Man takes the place of Iron Man. One difference between the characters is that Exo-Man doesn't have a bum heart; he has useless legs, thanks to an attack by criminals. But with the suit he invents, he can walk again. And he is virtually invulnerable. And he is really strong. And he is BORING BORING BOOOOORING. Solid cast members including José Ferrer and Kevin McCarthy couldn't save this slow-paced TV movie.

I saw it when I was a kid, and I thought they hardly have done a better job of ruining the idea if they'd tried. If I recall correctly, we don't even see Exo-Man take action until the very end of the film, and he can barely move. Seriously, it's amazing that a paralyzed man can walk at all, but in the armor Exo-Man moves slower than your grandpa on sleeping pills through molasses with his shoelaces tied together dragging a Radio Flyer full of cinder blocks. The nondescript bad guys can't hurt him, but they could easily escape him. Toddlers and caterpillars could easily escape him.

So while the movie got good ratings, no one really wanted to see the series that the network had hoped would follow.

If there's a lesson from this, it's that real life is not as exciting as the movies, but sometimes movies are not as exciting as real life. Congratulations to ReWalk for the development of the ReStore. I hope it will be available to those who need it without costing Tony Stark-level money.

Bee!

Bee! I’m expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due—

The Frogs got Home last Week—
Are settled, and at work—
Birds, mostly back—
The Clover warm and thick—

You’ll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me—
Yours, Fly.

--Emily Dickinson

Thanks to the Belle of Amherst for the poem, one of my favorites. You all know that nature and I don't always see eye to eye, and stinging bugs are a particular problem. If nothing else, though, spring gives us so much to look at. It's more intriguing than winter, which is cruel. And summer can settle into a dull vapidity, like the proverbial blonde: pretty, but nothing much going on up there. Spring is busy. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my video and photos. And enjoy your day!

Sing!

Men, do not be shy singing in church. God gave you that voice; you give it right back.

It's Robot Fightin' Time!

Dog week is over! The Friday night fights are back. It's ROBOT FIGHTIN' TIME!

The new season of BattleBots premieres tonight on Discovery, and I am amped. Sixty-seven teams will be sending robots to do battle in the arena, but only one can win the prestigious Giant Nut. People of all ages from more than 150 countries will be following the season. It's the World Cup for geeks.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. I don't care if you're not a geek or dork, if you hate robots, hate sports, whatever; it's rock-'em, sock-'em entertainment.

The robots are built with a few commonsense restrictions -- no explosives, no bullets, things like that -- and are sent into the area to beat the mechanical snot out of each other. It completely satisfies the gladitorial desire to see someone get mauled for our amusement, but no one gets hurt. Well, maybe their feelings. And their wallets (to buy parts). The robots fight with various types of weapons, like hammers, spinning blades, drum spinners, flamethrowers, flippers, spikes, anything that can hurt each other without posing a risk to the spectators. Some break into smaller robots; some use drones as air support; some try crazy stuff you could only dream about when you imagined science fair being fun. All of them have awesome names, like Tombstone and Minotaur and Scorpion and Battle Royale with Cheese.

Eventually the field is narrowed down to a bracket, and the competition is on to eliminate the others and become the champion. As far as I know, no one wins any money; this is all done for the awesomeness of it.

Each match lasts three minutes, and if there is no knockout, Evil Otto comes into the arena to destroy everyone.

No, no, there are three judges on hand to score the fights and determine a winner if there's no knockout. But knockouts -- when a robot loses the ability to move or fight -- happen quite a lot. 

So I'll be planted in front of the tube tonight, because It. Is. On. And Saturday I'll be tinkering with a Roomba, seeing if I can make a monstrous hybrid with my circular saw.....