I made a new YouTube Channel trailer today since it’s been a couple of years since I made the previous one. Thanks for watching!
James Amos, MD (who prefers to be called Jim but his YouTube handle is @JamesAmosMD) is a retired psychiatrist who graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, did his residency, practiced and taught at University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC) in Iowa City, Iowa for about 24 years. Since retirement in 2020, he’s enjoyed bird-watching, taught himself to juggle, and plays cribbage. He co-edited and published a book with former UIHC psychiatry chair Bob Robinson, “Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry” in 2010 which is still available for purchase. Bob passed away in 2024 and all who knew and learned from him remember him fondly. Jim and his wife have made Iowa City their home for over 3 decades. Jim’s been blogging since about 2011 and you can read his current blog at Go Retire Psychiatrist. He’s mainly a humorist and has a certificate from Dad-joke University of Humour (DUH), even though he’s never been a dad and doesn’t really tell jokes per se.
OK, so because I didn’t want to miss the Iowa vs Wisconsin football game (Hawkeyes won 37-0!), I watched the hit science fiction movie, “Them!” on the Internet Archive.
This is a 1954 film directed by Gordon Douglas and which won an Oscar for best special effects! At the time, creature effects must have been considered pretty special.
I thought this film was great! I thought I would be bored, but there were a lot of reasons to enjoy it. We recognized a few actors who later became big stars. I’m not going to openly spill the beans, but I can give you a few hints. One of them is now immortalized as part of an exhibit called the Voyage Home Museum in Riverside, Iowa, which is a short drive from Iowa City. Another later became known as king of the wild frontier. Yet a third couldn’t stop telling certain persons to “Get outta Dodge!”
I guess I have to tell you that the third guy was James Arness, who played FBI agent Robert Graham. He has a pretty important role which consists of his not knowing what to do about the invasion of someplace in New Mexico by giant ants resulting from the atomic blast test in White Sands in 1945. He also never gets to first base with Dr. Edmund Gwenn’s daughter (Joan Weldon), see below.
There were other film heavies including Edmund Gwenn as Santa Claus, tasked with giving Christmas presents to the giant ants in order to coax them into the post office where drunken postal workers would immobilize them with brown wrapping paper and tape, stamping labels marked Santa Not Available Right Now; Please Leave a Message. No wait, that was a different movie. Actually, Gwenn played the scientist Dr. Harold Medford who was in charge of designing a huge ant farm to keep the insects away from picnics. His devotion to ants probably kept him from adapting to normal life. He was as resistant to learning how to use the helicopter military radio headset in this movie as Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) was resistant to living outside of prison in The Shawshank Redemption.
Speaking of James Whitmore, he played a cop named Sgt. Ben Peterson who partnered with FBI Agent Graham to teach the giant ants how to play cribbage just well enough to lose most of the time whenever Peterson or Graham played them in penny a point games.
After a big meeting to plan the strategy for conquering the ants in which everybody smoked cigarettes producing a big haze that made it hard to get visible closeups, there was a flurry of hilarious comic relief scenes about an hour into the film which had us laughing ourselves silly.
I was pretty impressed with the amount of information about ants, which was pretty convincing and likely accurate about how strong, ruthless, and persistent ants are as a species. If they ever did grow gigantic, humans would be extinct in no time—a message Dr. Gwenn seemed to enjoy giving every 10 minutes or so.
There are some dad jokes in this “review” but there are no spoilers because I highly recommend seeing this film. I give it a 5/5 Shrilling Chicken Rating.
I heard the Big Mo Blues Show last night and the Big Mo Pod Show today. The podcast song selection was part of the Lunch with Chuck portion of the show, which I don’t know a whole lot about. The Lunch with Chuck thing I’ve heard Big Mo talk about and I think it involves a real guy named Chuck who talks music with Big Mo sometimes, although I’ve not heard an actual live Lunch with Chuck program during the blues show. And it might be another Big Mo running joke.
The other thing I want to mention is that I heard Big Mo talk last night just before the Lunch with Chuck thing about something like a “fish psychic”. I think it’s a new comedy bit like MayRee’s Hand-Battered Catfish and Shorty’s Adult Diapers. I can’t remember the whole fish psychic bit, but I’m pretty sure he’ll do it again, maybe even next Friday. I think it’s another faux advertisement, and it might be about some kind of fish psychic who can help you catch lunker bass and the like.
Anyway, I learned something from the pod show today. I’d never heard of something called “race records” which is one term Lightnin Hopkins song “Mojo Hand” led to. Race records were 78-rpm phonograph records marketed to black people back in the days of the victrola, between the years of the 1920s to the 1940s, well before my time.
The other term new to me is the title of Hopkins’ song, “Mojo Hand.” The podcast discussion mentioned that mojo hand referred to African American voodoo charms, one of which happened to be a lucky charm, possibly a dried monkey’s paw. The song is actually about using voodoo to keep a lover from being unfaithful. The song means more now that I know that.
Another thing I learned today was that the song “Feel So Bad” (recorded in 1966) by Little Milton has a lyric in it, “feel like a ball game on a rainy day” that was repeated by boxer Muhammad Ali when he found out he had to wait 6 weeks before the Rumble in the Jungle match in 1974. That was because Foreman had to heal up first because he suffered a laceration above his right eye during a sparring match.
What I also didn’t know was that the Rumble in the Jungle had political overtones. There is an article entitled “Remembering the Rumble in the Jungle” subtitled “The 1974 Rumble in the Jungle was freighted with symbolism regarding American racial politics and the pan-African struggle in the context of the Cold War.”
One more thing I learned from the podcast is related to the song “Wine O’Clock” by Shemekia Copeland. He called this song a women’s support tune and, unlike my disagreement about this issue in last week’s podcast, I tend to agree with this song being about women supporting each other or at least understanding their burdens in a society marked by gender role disparity.
What helped me reach this understanding is an article entitled “What makes up wine o’clock…” published in 2022.
Wright CJC, Miller M, Kuntsche E, Kuntsche S. ‘What makes up wine o’clock? Understanding social practices involved in alcohol use among women aged 40-65 years in Australia. Int J Drug Policy. 2022 Mar;101:103560. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103560. Epub 2021 Dec 29. PMID: 34973490.
The abstract reminds me of the discomfort with the idea of women (or anyone regardless of gender) using alcohol to cope with socially designated roles.
“Think I’ll have another glass; the world can kiss my ass; tick tock, it’s Wine O’Clock.”
I sometimes learn a lot more than I expect from the Big Mo Pod Show.
OK, so last night I watched Don Wildman’s Van Meter Visitor (supposedly a mysterious Van Meter, Iowa cryptid) episode first seen over 100 years) from his show Beyond the Unknown. The season 3 episode first aired in October 9, 2021, and I’d never seen it before.
Wildman said that somebody investigated the history of this creature who was spotted in 1903 in Van Meter, Iowa and concluded that the 8-foot-tall monster with a huge shining beak was actually a great hornbill—a pretty big bird but hardly 8 foot tall (more like 3-4 foot).
Supposedly, according to some experts, this big bird escaped from an exotic pet enthusiast. It’s never seen in America and is native to India or Southeast Asia.
I can’t find anything on line that says anything about this explanation. By most accounts, the Van Meter Visitor is a cryptid that is unexplained to this day. I think there’s still an annual festival for it in Van Meter.
The cast of Expedition X (season 4, episode 2) also did a TV episode about the Van Meter Visitor on September 9, 2021. I might have seen it, but I don’t remember the conclusion. I’m pretty sure the team didn’t think it was just a big bird. I don’t know why the Expedition X episode appeared about the same time as the Beyond the Unknown episode. Maybe Don Wildman and Josh Gates joked about the Van Meter monster over lunch one day and decided they’d both do a show about it.
Hey, I’m open to the great hornbill explanation, but so far, I can’t find any links to web articles that agree with it. Heck, even AI says “There is no connection between the great hornbill and the Van Meter Visitor.” I didn’t ask AI; it just pipes up because I can’t block it.
If any readers know about the great hornbill explanation for the Van Meter Visitor, drop a comment!
Just like Sena talked me into letting her do a facial on me, I had to do the bath sponge thing. This product is called Scrubzz, a soap generating rinse-free bath sponge you can wash up advertised as “no rinse, no bathing, and no sticky residue.
I could beg to differ on the no sticky residue claim, but it might be just quibbling. If you don’t shave for a day or two, you might get something you could legally call “residue” because the polyester fibers will get caught in your stubble. Remember that if you try to shampoo your hair with it.
It has a lavender scent, which I could live without, but other than that the bath sponge works OK. You just add water to a single cloth and you’re bathing without the need to rinse. Towel dry and you’re done. You get 25 cloths to a pack.
We could have used these when our water heater went out a few years ago. Cold showers are no fun.
Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
This big broadcast is about the upcoming Svengoolie show movie, “Them!” on October 11, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. One problem I have with this schedule is that the Iowa Hawkeye vs. Wisconsin Badgers football game starts at 6:00 p.m. on the same day. This happened previously with another Svengoolie movie last month, “The Bad Seed,” and I got around it by watching the movie on the Internet Archive. I may have to do that again.
Anyway, “Them!” is a 1954 classic atomic bomb testing leading to giant creatures film (in this case ants) terrorizing the desert southwest countryside. James Arness (who plays FBI agent Robert Graham although Arness starred as Marshal Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke a year later) who has run afoul with then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and heads to a New Mexico field office because he wanted to investigate the Mafia but Hoover didn’t think that gang existed, leading to Dillon’s famous quote heard around the world in many languages, “I gotta get outta Dodge!” As happens repeatedly in the 1950s, radiation-exposed insects grow to gigantic size, in this case ants who beat the living daylights out of grasshoppers running a protection racket on them for food (so much for Hoover’s dismissal of organized crime!) and in their headlong search for Insectopia, where the streets are lined with picnic baskets, trample on a tiny guy in a weird suit who is incredibly strong who charges the once oppressed lower class ants huge sums of money to defend them against the superior race of ants who have larger mandibles and shake down the lower class ants (leading agent Graham to write a letter to J. Edgar Hoover saying “That is why you fail!” which is yet another famous quote parroted by middle schoolers everywhere).
OK, so that’s not exactly how the movie goes, but I’ve never seen it so how should I know?
Today, as usual, we had to interrupt our cribbage game so Sena could capture video of all the birds in our backyard, the fall colors, and whatnot.
She caught some shots of Northern Flickers, which she has not seen before although I can remember catching them on camera years ago. They’re really strikingly colored birds and you can easily distinguish female from male birds.
The males have a black mark next to their bills which is called a mustache, which the females don’t have. They don’t migrate and you can see them all year round.
Sena was slinging the camera around and hurrying from window to window to get the best shots. She accidentally caught me on camera. I threw a still shot of it in the video just for laughs.
We saw a bird we didn’t recognize at first mostly because it was small and preening with its back to us. It had a red breast, so it was probably a young robin. Our luck, it’ll try to attack our windows next spring, although Sena put up some window film which may prevent that—we hope.
The fall colors are relaxing. The squirrel reminded me of Dug the dog in the Disney Pixar movie Up. I would have stuck a picture of Dug in the video but it’s copyrighted.
By the way, I won the cribbage game today. It happens.
I’ll deal with the silly KOBWA acronym later. Sena bought some new kitchen utensils and she got these egg flippers (one red and one black). They’re supposed to make it easier to flip fried eggs. I think a regular person who knows how get around a kitchen would do better than I did this morning to handle this tool.
On the other hand, I think I have a legitimate point to make about the egg flipper. I usually break yolks when I try to flip eggs, so they end up not looking pretty.
The egg flipper is a combination of a spatula and tongs. The tong set is above the spatula and you just squeeze the flexible handle to close them over the egg when you’re ready to flip them over.
I’m not sure how to make sure the yolk is out of the way. I hope others besides me notice that unless you position this instrument just right, you’d end up with crushed yolks. This doesn’t make much of a difference to me because I usually find a way to crush the yolks anyhow.
Sena found an interesting article about the inventor of the spatula, although I didn’t actually see that one; she just mentioned it. I think I found it later, though. The writer often doesn’t get credit for the original article but wrote another article in which he says his first one is often misquoted and leaves out his byline. His name is George Billions. For what it’s worth, the line under his name on his blog says “writes fiction and other lies.” Just sayin’.
There was one comment on Billion’s’ original article who requested a reference to support what he wrote about John Spaduala. For complicated reasons, a reference is hard to come by, and I think I’ll just add a reference to Billions’ article out of respect:
“John Spaduala: Inventor of the Spatula.” Spatula Planet. Spatula Planet, 3 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
I don’t know why he calls himself Mike because the name of his blog is George Billions.
I don’t usually pay much attention to Artificial Intelligence (AI) from the internet, but sometimes they are too intrusive to ignore. AI essentially says there was no such person as John Spaduala and that the story is a recurring anecdote. It’s an urban legend.
What lends weight to the AI judgment is a web article purporting to be an interview with John Spaduala himself, even though the guy lived in the 19th century and the interview was conducted in 2017 by Jason Denness who entitled it “Fake Interview: John Spadula.” Denness thanks George Billions for being the “victim of this interview.” While Denness credits George Billions by saying “He is the creation of John Spaduala…” I suspect that’s a typo and maybe what he meant was that Billions is the “creator” of John Spaduala.
That said, the question is who invented the egg flipper? It wasn’t John Spaduala. Technically, even though I have no right to make any judgments about this, there might not be any specific person identified as the inventor of the egg flipper. As near as I can tell, a spatula can be a “turner,” (also called a flipper) but a turner isn’t necessarily a spatula.
The name or acronym applied is KOBWA, which I suspect is not the inventor’s name, but the name of the company that markets the egg flipper spatula. The only thing I found on my admittedly cursory search is the Komati Basin Water Authority, which has no connection to any kitchen utensil. You can find kitchen gadgets with the name Kobwa (or KOBWA), though. However, there are other weird trademark related names for the egg flipper as well. I don’t know why.
I’m pretty sure they weren’t invented by any descendants of John Spaduala—if he had any. You’re welcome.
I’m waiting for delivery of my case, protector screen, and holster clip for my new smartphone. It’s taking a while and I need a safe way to carry my phone. So, Sena got me a fanny pack.
I’ve never had to deal with a fanny pack strap, but since it’ll be a few weeks for my stuff to be delivered, I had to cope with the adjustable strap. Believe it or not there’s a couple of YouTube videos that show how to put things into the pouch—but no videos demonstrating how to adjust the strap.
I’ve never had to cope with a fanny pack strap, but I think I figured it out. I made a video. See what you think.
Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast.”
This coming Saturday, Svengoolie will show the 1966 comedy horror film “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.” I think it’s pretty good and Sena likes the movie too.
I’ve seen this film before at least once and I thought one of the times was on the Svengoolie show. But you’d think I’d have blogged about it. I can’t find any posts about it, though.
The gist of it is that Luther Heggs (Don Knotts) is a typesetter for a small-town newspaper and gets into a position in which he has to solve a murder mystery. It entails spending some time in a haunted house. He’s chicken-livered but perseveres (“Attaboy, Luther!”). He has to nip it in the bud.
If you ever watched The Andy Griffith Show, then you’ll recognize the comedy antics of Barney Fife in this movie (“These hands are like steel!”).
Go Retire Psychiatrist 