As American as exploding fireworks on July 4′
No rural delivery mail box was safe from a teenager shotgunning when the Head Groundskeeper was growing up (if he ever did) in the 1950s. The highlight of every Fixer Upper home improvement show is Chip Gaines going all kung foolish on a non-load-bearing wall. The villain “Vincent Ludwig” getting flattened by a steam roller outside Dodger Stadium at the end of Naked Gun was justice served. (So was O.J. Simpson getting pushed down the steps of the stadium, in retrospect.) The Air Force pilot who shot down that Chinese meteorological balloon over Myrtle Beach SC now enjoys Top Gun hero status with the American public, although we were hoping for more fireworks.
Smashing pumpkins is the proper method of after-Halloween disposal. It's also a musical group.
In the cult classic Office Space, the three protagonists take out the frustrations of their soul-deadening job on a chronically recalcitrant copy machine. Peter Fonda’s chopper motorcycle detonating at the end of Easy Rider was a tragic but fitting ending as Roger McGuinn sang “All we wanted/ Was to be free …” But Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up was a scam; nothing actually blows up.
“She blowed up real good,” is how Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok closed off their “Farm Film Celebrity Blow-up” segment of SCTV. Here they blow up “Meryl Streep:”
A news story ignored by most of the mainstream media but featured on Page One of the Wall Street Journal details a capitalist who earns big bucks the American Way: by fulfilling a need. The entrepreneur uploads videos of toys, cellphones, candy, and WhatHaveYou being fed into a belt sander until ground into powder:
Across the world, aficionados, from students to scrapyard workers, are recording industrial machines crushing, shredding and grinding everyday objects such as pumpkins and wheelbarrows. The phenomenon has made celebrities of machine operators and in some cases their equipment, such as a shredder affixed with a single googly eye that watches impassively as computer keyboards and foam flip-flops sink into its rotating metal teeth.
—”Enjoy Smashing Things to Bits?“
Well, what red-blooded American doesn’t! Throwing bowling balls into a working washing machine is its own sub-genre. This enterprising entertainer threw a heavy cast iron ThingaMaJig into his front loader, which sent the doughty machine into delightful paroxysms of distress.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Bring back the county fair automotive demo derby! Commemorate Bill Veeck’s disco demolition night! Be creative, my Platinum+ subscribers:
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
The Biden Pentagon is crowing that the shoot-down of the Chinese “weather balloon” was the very first aircraft shot down by an F-22. The most technologically advanced aircraft in the US Air Force’s fleet. Against a balloon. I am guessing that the very highly trained F-22 pilots who were scrambled to shoot down the low-tech “aircraft” are embarrassed by the Biden Administration’s lavish praise making them out to be heroic Fighter Aces when they just did what they were trained to do. Plus, they are probably wondering “WTF???!!!” as to why this wasn’t down over the middle of Nowhere, Montana days earlier…
Scotty
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” ‘WTF???!!!’ as to why this wasn’t down over the middle of Nowhere, Montana days earlier…”
It had to deliver Hunty’s new laptop first…
The Gotch
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Did the Pentagon actually call the balloon an “aircraft”? Considering how low military standards have fallen under the reign of Thoroughly Modern Milley (famous for agonizing over his white privilege), I’m surprised that they didn’t send up a disabled black lesbian in a bi-plane to shoot it down.
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You neglected to mention one of the favorite pastime of brainwashed college students and self-styled “activists” (formerly known as the unemployed): destroying public monuments and throwing cans of soup on artworks. The only difference between them and Big Jim & Billy is that the latter offered no self-serving pretensions about their destructive tendencies.
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IMO deserving mention would be Kevin Bacon’s character in the seminal Animal House (Chip Diller) GETTING FLATTENED by the crowd who refused his order to…um…remain calm.
A The Gotch Blow Up Bucket List item would be Wall Street’s lame @$$ FEARLESS GIRL.
“No rural delivery mail box was safe”
This remains a concern in Iron County WESconsin, where nearly every rural mail box has been in some way, shape, or form…er…fortified.
The Gotch
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How about Tom Hanks vs actual volcano?
Meryl Streep vs Jet Engine also sounds promising.
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Is blowing up stuff fun?
[video src="https://knottlane.com/WeeklySummaryPages/1999/1999PumpkinExploSlow.mp4" /]
Yes, yes it is/was.
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Two of our favorites in a West side Chicago neighborhood were dropping M-80s into the sewers to see if you could make a water spout, or alternatively, when the Sewer Street Patrol was in full force, dropping an M-80 into a 55 gallon drum filled with water. From memory, it would completely evacuate the barrel.
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I miss the demo derby with the big cars from the 60’s and 70’s especially the station wagons. We used to buy cheap( under$25 ) cars and bet on how long it would take to blowup the engine with a brick on the accelerator.
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