It's the final Sunday of the first half of the last year of the first half of the second decade of the first century of the third millennium. What better time to empty the columnist's notebook with the topics du jour?
Let's roll . . .
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Of all the things I like about living where I live – the weather, the diversity, the proximity to the Bay Area and Sacramento, the opportunity to live near Tony Wade – there's perhaps nothing as great as this: The proximity to the train tracks.
Sure, it's a stereotype. But don't you love the sound of the train – whether it's an Amtrak passenger train or a freight train – as it goes past? When Mrs. Brad and I moved into our house in the early 1990s, a passing train rocked the house the first night. The doors rattled. The TV was drowned out.
It was awesome.
There are times when it's not: When it makes it impossible for me to hear the announcers while I watch "Wipeout" or "The Bachelorette." When the engineer hits the horn for several seconds in the middle of the night. When I'm stuck in Folsom Prison and time keeps draggin' on.
But the rest of the time, the 99 percent of the times the train goes through central Solano County? Fantastic.
• • •
Top five: My favorite sports seasons:
5. Warriors 2006-07. The "We Believe" team was the opposite if this year's club – a veteran, surly, cocky team with a chip on its shoulder. They made the playoffs for the first time in 13 years and stunned the top-seeded Mavericks in the first round.
4. Giants 2014. The third championship in five seasons for the Giants had the greatest postseason performance I've ever seen: Madison Bumgarner's unbelievable World Series pitching.
3. 49ers 1989-90. The second of their back-to-back titles and fourth of the decade was special because of that – and I got to cover Super Bowl XXIV in New Orleans.
2. Giants 2010. No Giants fan will forget the year they finally broke through. As late as September, it seemed unlikely they'd make the postseason. Then they won. Unbelievable.
1. Warriors 2014-15. A year where a team that struggled for decades emerged as the best, most entertaining team in the sport. The Warriors were the best team in each month of the season. They were the best offensive team. They were the best defensive team. They were unselfish. They capped it with a title.
• • •
If "Shaft," "Superfly" and "Black Caesar" are prime examples of "blaxploitation" films, are TV shows like "Downton Abbey" examples of "whitesploitation?"
Just wondering.
• • •
Whatever happened to motel beds that vibrated?
When I was a kid, every cheap roadside motel where my family stayed on our vacations had a "massage" bed. You put in a quarter (or two, if the first one didn't work) and the bed started vibrating and making a grinding noise. Not a massage by any means.
Like every family that wasted a quarter in those beds, we had the same experience every time. The kids would talk our parents into putting in money, then get bored and go swimming or to play with the ice machine. Our parents were left in the room with the noisy, bouncing bed that drowned out the TV while they tried to watch the local news.
I guess I know why those beds are gone. They were stupid.
Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.
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