Randy’s Blog

This year, May was Mental Health Awareness Month. To help celebrate it, the company I work for ran a "Mood Boost Playlist" program, where they asked us to submit one song that always improves our mood whenever we hear it. They collected all the suggestions and released a company-wide playlist on Spotify.

I thought for a while about what song to recommend, and I considered the John Denver song I wrote about in this blog post. I don't often hear it, though, so it wasn't my top choice. Finally, I chose The Logical Song by Supertramp.

All of this reminded me that years ago, back when people used iTunes to store their digital music collection, I created a small playlist called r-money (as in: Randy's money songs). There weren't many songs on it, maybe half a dozen, but they were all sure-fire mood-boosting ones. The only problem is the playlist somehow got deleted! I don't remember what happened, but I was bummed when I realized it. I knew The Logical Song was on the list, but not what else.

Every so often I thought about r-money and wondered what other songs were on it. After submitting my song for the May-mood-boost-playlist program, I suddenly remembered I had an external hard drive sitting in the closet that I used years ago to store backups of our computers. Was it possible I had the playlist backed up on it?

I dug it out, connected it to my laptop, and started clicking through directory structures. I had to do some web searching to figure out where and how iTunes stored its playlist information. Finally, I found it: an XML file, which is just plain text. I opened it in a text editor, searched for "r-money", and found this:

It looked promising! The r-money playlist was listed with 8 "Track ID" keys, each of which had a number assigned to it. I suspected these were the identifiers for each song. When I searched the file for one of those numbers, such as 6967, I found this:

Success! That's one of the songs! I then searched for each of the Track ID numbers, and managed to recover the entire playlist.

Here are all the songs, with links to listen:

• The Air That I Breathe, The Hollies
• The Logical Song, Supertramp
• Shadows of the Night, Pat Benatar
• All of Me, Crying in Public Places
• You Got It, Roy Orbison
• I Love Rock & Roll, Joan Jett
• Love Walks In, Van Halen
• Give A Little Bit, Goo Goo Dolls (originally by Supertramp, but I like this version better)

I was so happy to finally recover r-money! It lives up to its name, in my opinion.

There were a few things I learned from this whole experience:

1. Make backups of your data!
2. Text versions of backups are ideal. If iTunes had stored its library in a binary format, it would have been much harder to recover these songs.
3. Don't forget that you have backups! Seriously, I could have recovered this playlist years ago if I'd just remembered about the backups.

If you had to submit one mood-boosting song, what would it be?

Last weekend, I noticed the Criterion Channel (a movie streaming service) was highlighting a 1974 movie called The Cars That Ate Paris. The description said it was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite movies. That surprised me; I had never heard that before. So I searched online to find a source for that nugget. What I found was an article from 2013 titled "Stanley Kubrick, cinephile":

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/stanley-kubrick-cinephile

Over the years, the author curated a list of movies Kubrick liked, based on verifiable evidence. I can't believe I have never encountered this until now!

There are a bunch of movies in the article. Here are some noteworthy ones, with quotes from Kubrick, or people who knew him.

Pacific 231 (1949)

Stanley said Pacific 231 was one of the most perfectly edited, if not the most perfectly edited films, he had ever seen.

This is a short film that's available on YouTube. In 1923, a Swiss composer created a dramatic orchestral piece inspired by locomotives. Then in 1949, a director created this movie with scenes of a steam locomotive set to the music. It's only 10 minutes long and worth a watch, especially if you like trains.

Bob le flambeur (1956)

Kubrick described it as "The perfect crime film." It's about an aging gambler who plans a daring casino heist. Sounds good to me! It's currently streaming on Kanopy, which many local libraries offer free access to.

The Battle of Algiers (1966)

[Kubrick] told me that I couldn’t really understand what cinema was capable of without seeing The Battle of Algiers.

Apparently it shows the 1950s Algerian revolution from both sides, made to look like a documentary. It sounds intense: the Criterion Channel describes it as "a case study in modern warfare, with its terrorist attacks and the brutal techniques used to combat them."

Peppermint Frappé (1967)

Kubrick said he got home late one night, turned on the TV, and this movie was playing. He'd missed the first half hour and didn't know what it was called, but he was so captivated he watched the rest of it. It's available on the Criterion Channel, which describes it as a "darkly comic psychological thriller". It had me at "darkly comic". Now I really want to watch it.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

I remember Stanley remarked: "How clever that the Japanese speak Japanese – what a difference it makes."

I don't know for sure what that quote means, but I was curious enough to look up the movie. IMDb describes it as: "The story of the 1941 Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor, and the series of preceding American blunders that aggravated its effectiveness." It's not streaming on any place I can find, but it is available on DVD at my local library.

The Godfather (1972)

[Kubrick] watched The Godfather again… and was reluctantly suggesting for the 10th time that it was possibly the greatest movie ever made and certainly the best cast.

I'm sure everyone has seen this movie, but I thought it was an interesting comment.

Danton (1974)

Stanley thought Danton was very nearly beyond criticism and "perhaps the finest historical film ever made".

Danton was a figure in the French Revolution, which I know almost nothing about. It's available on the Criterion Channel.

Heimat (1984)

Stanley was completely taken by Heimat. The idea of telling such an ‘impossible to tell story’ through the eyes of a bunch of simple villagers he considered completely new and brilliant. To show ‘heaven’ convincingly and without special effects on the top floor of a country inn and have the dead people observe ‘us’ – he was deeply moved.

This was a German TV mini-series, chronicling a fictional German village from 1919 to 1982. I can't find it streaming, but it is available on DVD in the library system in my area.

The Vanishing (1988)

Kubrick watched it three times and told Sluizer (the movie's director) that it was “the most horrifying film I’ve ever seen”. Sluizer asked: “even moreso than The Shining?”. Kubrick replied that he thought it was.

I've never seen it, and I've heard it's better if you know almost nothing about it before watching. I'm already scared to see it at this point.

Henry V (Kenneth Branagh version, 1989)

In 1963, Kubrick listed Lawrence Olivier's version of Henry V as one of his favorite films. However: “Stanley liked Branagh’s version much better than the old and old-fashioned Olivier version which he had on his 1963 list. He thought it was far superior.” I've never seen it, but it's available on Blu-ray in our library system.

There are lots more movies listed in that article, these were just a few that caught my attention. I did watch The Cars That Ate Paris last weekend, and it was very weird, but good. That's an excellent combination, in my opinion.

Thanks to Abby for pointing out yet another commercial featuring a Randy. This time it's for Little Caesars and features a very animated Uncle Randy. It's awesome. Check it out here:

According to ispot.tv, the commercial was released a little over three weeks ago. This makes a total of five relatively recent Randy commercials! See my previous blog post for the others. The name Randy is certainly having a moment!

Somewhere around late 2024/early 2025, I almost wrote a blog post about seeing a number of commercials with a character named Randy. There were 3 different ones airing at the time, from 3 different companies, which seemed unusual. I never got around to writing it, though.

Just recently, I noticed yet another commercial with a Randy! Apparently 4 is the magic number to get me to blog about this. Here they are:

GEICO

First up is a GEICO Caveman commercial. I never really cared for any of the Caveman commercials, but at the end of this one, after losing a party game, he says, rather sarcastically, "That's helpful, Randy".

O'Keeffe's Working Hands

In this commercial, a landscaper by the name of "Randy T." tells us it's important to take care of our hands, and O'Keeffe's hand cream is the way to go. "If it works for these hands, it will work for yours," says Randy.

SERVPRO

If you listen closely to this SERVPRO commercial, the main character says "Let it rain, Randy!" as Randy fires a bazooka that bursts a giant balloon full of water hovering over a house. If you would like to see more of SERVPRO's Randy (I know I did), you can watch a different version of the commercial here.

Progressive

The newest addition to this list is a Progressive Dr. Rick commercial. I've enjoyed watching all the Dr. Rick-related episodes. At the end of this commercial, a man turning into his parents calls the cable company and says "Randy! It's Tom. Yes, I know, we spoke earlier." We don't actually see or hear Randy, but we can imagine his reaction to speaking to Tom yet again.

I don't know why Randy has become a relatively popular name in commercials lately. According to the Social Security Administration's name popularity ranking, Randy's popularity peaked in 1956 and seems to have declined dramatically over the last 5 years:

If you notice any other commercials with a Randy, let me know!

Update (2026-10-06): See this post for a fifth commercial!

If you drive through central Illinois, you'll quickly notice giant windmills in the distance. Drive by them often enough, and they'll become familiar landmarks that you almost look forward to seeing. I'm sure they're enormous, but I've never been close enough to one to really put it in perspective.

I thought it was neat to see them from above.

I've mentioned J.M. DeMatteis on this blog a handful of times before: from (re-)discovering his work in my post about Moonshadow, to him inspiring me to read Dostoyevsky, to meeting him in person last year in St. Louis (which basically made my year). Now I get to mention him again.

On Friday he wrote about how much he loves, and has been influenced by, the work of Ray Bradbury, and that Saturday would be Bradbury's birthday. At one point he said that Dandelion Wine is "one of the most glorious and magical books ever written." For some reason that struck a chord, and I decided to read the book now. As far as I remembered, Fahrenheit 451 was the only Bradbury book I'd ever read, and that was decades ago in school.

So I went to the library Saturday morning and checked out a copy. As I wandered around the aisles, I noticed a display on an endcap celebrating Bradbury's birthday:

I started reading it after I got home, and I finished it the next day. Wow, Bradbury has a way with words! And a way of finding the magic in everything. It was excellent. In a way, though, it wasn't quite what I expected based on the little I knew about it. I thought it was the carefree summer adventures of a 12-year-old boy. It is that, partly, but it's also a bittersweet slice of life of people in his small town. There were, to me, a surprising number of elderly characters, all reflecting on their lives.

Bradbury grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, which is not far from us. The book is semi-autobiographical. Although the town in the book is called "Green Town, Illinois," it's really based on Waukegan, and it was funny to see references to nearby towns that are real. I'm reminded of the time, years ago, when I saw the movie Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock, in a theater. At one point her character says she's from Lake Zurich, Illinois, and everyone in the theater laughed because we were all sitting about 10 miles north of Lake Zurich!

So Dandelion Wine is great, and I'm happy I read it. After finishing it, I looked through librarything.com, which I use to keep track of the books we own, to see what Bradbury books we have on our shelves. I noticed we own The Martian Chronicles, another of Bradbury's books that DeMatteis recommended, and, to my great surprise, I discovered I've already read it! I had flagged it in LibraryThing as having been read in 2018. I must have really liked it, too, because I rated it 5 stars! I had completely forgotten this.

And, to make matters even worse, I dug a bit further and discovered I wrote a blog post about reading it! The post is called Mars, and in it, I wrote about learning that a Leonard Cohen song was actually based on a Lord Byron poem, which Bradbury quoted in The Martian Chronicles. Boy, the things you forget as the years go by!

The other Bradbury books we own, which I have NOT read are:

• I Sing the Body Electric! And Other Stories
• Farewell Summer: A Novel (which is a sequel to Dandelion Wine)
  
• Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

As you can see, I've got plenty more to read!

You probably remember our previous cat, Gordon:

While he was with us, I created a Google Photos album called Gordon and shared it with Wendy. I turned on a setting in Google Photos to automatically add pictures to the album whenever it detected a new picture of him. It worked surprisingly well. When I took a picture with Gordon in it, a few minutes later I received a notification that it was automatically added to the shared album.

Once, when we were vacationing in St. Augustine, FL, with family, I took a picture of a black cat that kept wandering around our rental house:

A few minutes later, Google auto-added the photo to the Gordon album! It wasn't Gordon, of course, but the algorithm identified it as him. I found that funny, so I left the picture there.

Gordon eventually passed away in 2021 (see this post).

Several months ago, I took Chili to the vet. It was at the very end of his health saga that I documented here. He seems to be doing fine since those surgeries, thankfully (and knock on wood). While Chili and I were sitting in the reception area, a mostly black cat wandered over to me for some attention. He belonged to the vet's office and lived there. I gave him some pets and took a picture of him:

You can probably tell where this is going. A little bit later, I was stunned to see a new picture was added to the Gordon album. When I saw it was the photo I'd just taken, I suddenly remembered about the album's auto-add setting. Google thought it was a picture of Gordon, so it dutifully added it to the album, which previously had no activity for over 5 years.

The funny thing about this is that the vet's cat was also named Gordon! So it was doubly appropriate that it was added to the Gordon album.

Sadly, a few weeks after this particular visit, the vet sent out an email to customers announcing that their Gordon, who was quite old and had numerous health issues, had passed away. It was a sweet email. The vet referred to Gordon as her supervisor and her friend she shared lunches with. "No solo shift was ever lonely with him on the job," it said.

This seemed like a fitting end to my Gordon photo album, so I went into Google Photos and turned off the auto-add feature.

A few weeks later, the vet sent out another email saying they have a new office cat, a white cat named Mobey.

I was reminded of all this while driving home this morning from a ride on a bike trail. I saw a black cat suddenly dart across the road. It easily avoided the car in front of me, but I was afraid for its life as it ran into the left lane. An oncoming car was almost certainly going to hit it, but the car braked just in time for the cat to make it safely across. Whew!

I never knew what sound a possum made until I found this video on my trail cam. Be sure to watch it all, as there's a special surprise guest at the end!

This trail cam video was kind of fun, too. It recorded 15+ ducks just taking a stroll through our backyard. Were they having a convention or something back there?

Finally, about a month ago, we took a short trip to Madison, WI and, among other places, visited the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. While we were on a tram tour, the guide mentioned that they had discovered baby owls in the gardens the day before, and we got to see them! The babies had their backs to us, so this was the best picture I could get:

There was an adult owl on a nearby branch, though, that posed for a much better picture:

Monday night, the Oklahoma Sooners baseball team won the national championship, in what is, without a doubt, and without any exaggeration, one of the most improbable runs in the history of college baseball!

OU started the regular season red hot, winning a bunch of games, and jumping into the top 10 nationally. But they quickly cooled off, and struggled throughout the middle and end of the season. They finished the regular season unranked, and in 11th place in their own conference!

Prior to the NCAA tournament, OU lost 7 of its last 9 games. They didn't pitch well, giving up 9 or more runs in 8 straight games. They didn't hit well, scoring 4 or fewer runs in 8 of their last 13 games. If you don't pitch well or hit well, you're not going to win many games. In their first and only game of the SEC conference tournament, OU lost to a bad LSU team.

So, naturally, once the NCAA tournament started, OU went on a heater and won the national title.

It makes no sense. But it happened!

And OU went through the most difficult path any team has ever faced in winning a national title, going back to 1999 when the current playoff format was adopted. To win the title, OU had to:

• Beat the #2 seed twice (Georgia Tech -- and this was the best Georgia Tech team of all time!)
• Beat the #3 seed twice (Georgia)
• Beat the #5 seed twice (North Carolina)
• Beat the #7 seed (Alabama)
• Beat the #15 seed twice (Kansas -- also the best Kansas team of all time!)

The wild thing is that many of those games weren't even close. That's because OU suddenly started bashing home runs left and right, and used freshman starting pitchers who suddenly dominated opponents!

OU hit 95 home runs during the season. A ridiculous 30 of those home runs came in the final 3 weeks!

As a USA Today writer says:

There's getting hot at the right time, and there's going full-on supernova. That's what Oklahoma baseball just did, and it'll be remembered forever.

A Louisiana Sports article also provided some good perspective:

• Last season, in college football, 11th place in the SEC was a tie between Florida and Kentucky. Both of them immediately fired their coach.
• Last season, in college basketball, 11th place in the SEC was a tie between Oklahoma and Auburn. Both teams missed the 68-team NCAA tournament. Auburn went to the NIT tournament and won it all, becoming the 69th best team in the country. Oklahoma went to the Crown tournament, which is a notch below the NIT.
• And yet, this year, in college baseball, 11th place in the SEC was good enough to win the national title.

That seems to indicate there's something different about baseball from other sports. Here's an excerpt from an outstanding article in Baseball America driving home that point:

“I don’t know what it is about the game,” [OU's coach Skip Johnson] said. “It’s the spirit of the game. It protects those guys who continue to work at it and attack it, and it exploits the guys that are afraid of it and they’re timid.”

That is the heart of Oklahoma’s championship—and maybe the heart of the sport. Baseball is ruthless enough to expose everything, but patient enough to pay back the teams that keep coming. The season is long enough to reveal flaws, and the tournament is volatile enough to reveal growth. There is time to be ordinary, time to be doubted, time to be wrong about yourself, and then, if the talent and timing and guts line up, there is still time to become unforgettable.

The final score in Monday night's game was 13-2. It was Oklahoma's first national championship in a "big 3" sport (baseball, basketball, football) since the football team's title in 2000, which also had a final score of 13-2! Talk about a weird coincidence.

Boomer Sooner!

Last night, I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At one point, there was a scene where strange lights appeared outside a house. I paused the movie there and went upstairs to make some popcorn. When I looked out the window, I saw an eerie glow! We went outside and took some pictures:

There was nothing paranormal about it, however. We'd had storms earlier in the day; the sky was still overcast, and this was right around sunset. We were seeing light from the sunset diffused through the clouds. It definitely looked weird, though, and was very appropriate given the movie I was watching.

I'd never seen Close Encounters before. I thought it had some really good moments but was a little boring. I'm sure it was mind-blowing when it came out, though. Wendy was quick to point out that the main character was a terrible husband and father. He completely abandons his family to go chase UFOs, and he gets rewarded at the end with all the glory!

The main reason I watched the movie is because we have tickets to see Disclosure Day this weekend. Both movies are directed by Spielberg, and I thought it would be interesting to compare them. I'm both looking forward to and dreading Disclosure Day. On the one hand, it's Spielberg, so it will surely be an entertaining movie. On the other hand, it might help popularize UFO narratives that have long since been discredited. But we'll see.

Lately, I've been learning a lot about NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena). It was a fairly popular UFO organization created in the late 1950s that ran for several decades. One thing I've learned is just how little things have changed since then. The belief that "disclosure day" (the day the government announces UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft) will be "any day now" has been around for over 60 years!

I can hear my high school history teacher, Mrs. Stubblefield, even now, saying, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."