Biff Rambles On About … R.I.P. (van Winkle Style), Hot Potatoes, and Fiddling Around

Biff Hiking #4

You’d think I have lots of things to talk about after being away from blogging for about 2 weeks.  Surely lots of interesting things happened that are worthy of being written about.

And, yes, lots of interesting things happened during those two weeks.

But those two weeks also exhausted me utterly and completely.

To give you an example of how I know this, last night I involuntarily went to bed at around 7 PM.  I say “involuntarily”, because I hardly remember going into the bedroom and laying down.  Since I usually go to bed at around midnight, this was five hours early for me.

I then proceeded to sleep like a log for nearly 12 hours.  I remember nothing.  I did have a few funky dreams which I will spare you the recounting of.

I’d like to be able to say that, after 12 hours of deep sleep, I bounded out of bed this morning full of vim and vigor and rearing to go.

But I’d be lying.

I woke up very reluctantly.  And even more than reluctantly, I woke up in a fog of confusion and bewilderment.   I knew where I was, but that was about it.  I stumbled through my morning ablutions and somehow ended up at work.  I feel that I probably could have slept another 8 or 10 hours easily.

Hot Times In the City

As I drove home from work this evening, the temperature readout in my car hit 109 degrees (42.8 C).

I don’t care where you’re from.  That’s dang hot!

I’d like to be able to sort of airily wave it away by saying, “But it was a dry heat.”

But I don’t think 55% humidity is a dry anything.

As I was driving along in my air conditioned car, I passed a house that had several men up on the roof, replacing shingles.  How in the world is that humanly possible?  If I were to get up there and help them, I would be dead within 30 minutes.  Chef Ramsy would declare, “This moron is overcooked!  And these potatoes are burnt!

Out of Thin Air

Speaking of fiddling around up on a roof, I was flipping through the channels on TV the other night and stumbled across a blast from the past.  I gave up cable many months ago and now have a surprisingly large selection of local HD channels I get over the air for free.  One never knows what one will find while flipping around these channels.

Well, the other night I found “Fiddler On the Roof” playing.  It was the 1971 movie starring Chaim Topol.  I think I saw it in 1971 in the theater, but don’t remember much about it other than the famous, “If I Were a Rich Man” song sung by Mr. Topol.

As luck would have it, I tuned into it about 15 minutes before that song came on.  It was every bit as good as I remember it.

Is there a more iconic song than that?

I, alas, did not get to watch the entire movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed the 30 minutes or so of it that I saw.  I think I will buy the DVD next time I’m at Half Priced Books.

I was shocked when the character Perchik made his appearance.  I recognized him instantly as none other than Paul Michael Glaser, of Starsky and Hutch fame in the 1970s (he was Starsky).

You just never know who you’ll run into when you’re fiddling around up on the roof with an HD antenna, trying to get free HD broadcast channels.

Of course, I’d have cable …. if I were a rich man.






  1. Ok let’s review:

    1. Paul Michael Glaser, that guy was the $%!! in his day! And one of the more violent shows of the 70s. Get the S&H box set at half priced books too,

    2. 109 degrees. Stop Biff. Stop.

    3. 12 hour sleep. Wow. WOW! I had a sleep like that after eating ‘tainted’ muffins. Tainted with THC, unbeknownst to me. Even if I am profoundly exhausted, I seldom sleep longer than 8. It just makes more sense to be awake and do everything sort of half-assed.

    4. 1971. I remember being mad because Dog Day Afternoon was in the theatre round that time, pushing out kids’ movies. Then I saw that film thirty years later and it blew my socks off.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Hiya, Wilt! It’s always a pleasure when you stop by.

      1. I didn’t get to watch S&H very much back then, but always enjoyed it when I did. I think I’ll definitely keep an eye out for some of their DVDs at HPB. (As an unrelated aside … remember S&H green stamps?)

      2. You should read my blog from today. Ha ha!

      3. Yeah, I’m not much of a long sleeper, either. If left to my own devices, I’m usually fine with 6 or 7 hours sleep. However, I always feel like warmed-over death when I wake up, no matter how much or how little sleep I’ve gotten.

      4. I vaguely remember watching bits and pieces of DDA, but it was rated R and I kept getting run out of the theater by the theater Gestapo. I saw it decades later and thought that it held up really well.

      5. Thanks for dropping by! It’s always a pleasure to talk to you.

      Liked by 1 person

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