Kevin B.

@OaklandBallers @MikeHotDogMayor Lol, I came to the comments to ask about low profile… 😂😂😂

The B's aren't just a baseball team. We're a movement. There's a familiar nod or instant friendship when you see someone around town with a B's lid on. And no 2 hats have been bigger staples than the Forest and Kelly Green New Eras. They sell out quickly, but are now back! Get them while you can. f.mtr.cool/gtqsnjyaot

@gotrice2024 $39 for my son and me at CFA the other day. 4pc strips meal and spicy deluxe meal for us with a small nuggets to split. Upgraded his drink to a hibiscus thing. Very tasty food, but that's getting a little pricey for lunch.

This man is taking his 4 kids out to eat at Chik-fil-a while trying to save money single dad style. He developed a hack he wanted to try and see if it worked. The man orders a 30 piece nugget and 5 sandwich buns and 5 waters to drink. The man brings Mio’s so that the waters would be more appetizing. He takes a bun, puts on some of the sauce and 5 chicken nuggets, improvising a chicken sandwich for each of them with some nuggets to spare. Doing it this way with the cost of the Mio’s saved him about $11, would that be enough to make it worth it for you to try this hack or is this just to embarrassing to bother with?

@rodbrooksTV @vurnt22 Cult of Personality has one of the heaviest riffs of all time, and his solos in that song all sound like the end of the world. Such a great guitarist.

Tonight @ 8, it's a special episode of The Hang as we drop a special conversation with guitar hero and founder of Living Colour VERNON REID (@vurnt22)! Tap in! @qualityhang" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">YouTube.com/@qualityhang

We’ve been thinking… Oakland deserves something a little more elevated. Introducing the Oakland Blazers 🌿🔥 An alt identity inspired by The Town’s culture, creativity, and innovation. Come pack the Green Bowl section at Raimondi Park. … April Fools 😏 Or should we really do this?

@CowboyShepherd2 Hard to choose from this lineup, but let's go with the BUFF!

What next? The BUFF, the Vark, the Vulcan, or the Blackbird? Comment below. I’ll tally the votes on Friday and the top 2 will have a runoff🤠

@RSE_VB After seeing your recent post re: "pencil nose," which I agree looks odd on the Tomcat, I must say that this partial black streak is pretty damn sexy.

Chick-Magnet.

@MikeyDiMercurio He fitz, so he sitz.

How am I supposed to get any work done with THIS going on?

@CowboyShepherd2 The Widowmaker, please (F-104) 😊

Alright, friends. What do y’all want to see next on the bench? Hunter or Starfighter? Both are 1/48 scale. Starting a 3-day today, so I’ll count responses until Sunday night. 🤠

@RSE_VB There are mods out there to make this already wonderful set a little more accurate. You can even find instructions to make a little Surveyor 3 for minifig Pete Conrad to play with!

Latest build, Apollo 11 Lunar Lander.

@20th_Centurygal The String Cheese Incident. I've hit 50 shows but I don't know my exact number.

Which band or artist have you seen live the most?

@RSE_VB That's from our local news. The reporter who said the names on-air "retired" soon after. Also, the male anchor who apologized during that evening's broadcast, Frank Somerville, has had some drama of his own in the last few years, including being drunk on the air, allegedly.

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen on the interwebs! Bang Ding Ow just CRACKS ME UP!!!

@MikeHotDogMayor @CalBearsHistory RIP, Takagi-san.

As we prep for the Hawaii Bowl this Christmas Eve, lets take a moment to recognize University of California alumni Joseph Yoshinobu Takagi, Class of 1955 who was tragically killed in the Terrorist attack on Yakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve 1988. Forever a Golden Bear 🐻💙💛

@RSE_VB Wow, I was sweating when I reached the end of this one. Glad everyone was OK!

#TomcatTails Number 50 #TomcatTuesday “The Scariest Show On TV” From Google AI: “PLAT stands for Pilot's Landing Aid Television, a crucial closed-circuit video system that records all aircraft landings and takeoffs on the flight deck, providing vital visual feedback for pilots and deck crew to review and improve performance, safety, and procedures using a camera embedded in the flight deck.” The camera in the flight deck is positioned on centerline and looks up the glide path to capture approaches and landings in real-time. This is how you get all those sometimes cool, sometimes harrowing videos of aircraft landing day or night, in good weather or bad. The video is broadcast live on TVs positioned all over the ship in key areas like the bridge, CATCC (Carrier Air Traffic Control Center), and in the squadron Ready Rooms. In the Ready Rooms, it doesn’t gather much interest during the day as those landings can be pretty mundane (if that’s possible!) unless there’s a known emergency aircraft inbound. A single engine approach, someone landing with a refueling basket as shown here, or the famous one of an A-6 landing with the BN partially ejected and hanging out of the canopy. I’m sure someone can find that image and post it here! When the lights go out, things get a little more varsity. Even if the weather is decent, night landings can be “entertaining” to watch which is why those aircrew that weren’t on the night schedule would often spend time in the Ready Room watching the evening’s recoveries. At night, we typically called the PLAT TV in the ready room the “Scare-A-Vision”. Scare-A-Vision was always entertaining to watch, especially because we got to watch it from the comfort of our cozy Ready Room chairs vice experiencing it from the other side; in the cockpit. And yes, we always understood that we’d probably be the next night’s guest stars on the ship’s Must See TV. Having watched hundreds of night passes on the PLAT over the years, you can imagine we’ve seen all kinds of approaches. One of my CO’s was such a good ball flyer that you’d swear the PLAT was broken because he was frozen right in the cross hairs flying a rails pass. Other times you’d see a JO flailing away with lineup and glideslope and you knew he was battling multiple “snakes in the cockpit”, as we would call it. Of all the night passes I got to watch, a number of them stand out. Here’s a couple: We were transiting the Pacific onboard the USS NIMITZ (CVN 68) on my first cruise with the VF-24 Renegades in 1993. That’s a bit of a trek, taking over three weeks to get from San Diego to our first Liberty port in Hong Kong. Along the way there are PLENTY of nights for everyone to get experience with night traps, especially us Nuggets (new guys). One of our Pilots wasn’t specifically a Nugget because he had taken the “re-tread” pipeline where a RIO goes back to flight school to transition into the front seat and become a Pilot. Not many were selected for that program but it generally worked pretty well as far as I knew. We had a re-tread Pilot in our squadron, “BOF”. I learned that BOF stood for “Balls On Fence” and he got that callsign before I’d arrived in the squadron. Apparently he attempted to scale a 6-foot chain link fence and when he crossed over the top, one of the wires on top went through the crotch of his jeans and he was left hanging upside down from the top of the fence, ostensibly hanging from his balls. Hence “BOF”. Har-De-Har-Har™. This particular night, BOF was crewed up with “Rac”, a former Marine F-4 RIO that came to the dark side in a previous life. The weather was marginally bad and the sea state was slightly worse. Not too terrible, but the deck was definitely moving up and down about 8-10 feet. I had already trapped a little earlier and after the debrief sat down to watch the next recovery that BOF was landing with. Side note: in addition to the PLAT TV in the Ready Room there was also a smaller TV that displayed “Mr. Hands”. Mr. Hands was a simple narrow board with a vertical line on it and mileage tics along the line, the bottom representing the carrier. A Sailor would move little tiles of wood with aircraft side numbers on them down the board to indicate the order of the aircraft landing. 100 series were VF-211, 200 series were my squadron VF-24, 300 series were a Hornet squadron, etc., etc. Obviously we called it “Mr. Hands” because that’s all you saw, just this gloved hand moving tiles down the board. Sure enough, the next one is a 200 series jet and it’s BOF. There are probably 5 of us watching the pass, and we can see the lights of his jet at about 1 mile and a half. There are gyro stabilized cross hairs on the PLAT so you can tell the ship is moving because BOF’s jet is tracking up and down the screen somewhat. Not a ton, but still some, and you know it’s not because he’s changing his glide slope. At about a mile he’s looking lined up left some and correcting (you can see the wing dips by the lights cocking over). Just prior to the start, his jet drops down a bit as his RIO calls the ball and it looks like some of it is deck movement and some is him going low at the start. As I’m writing this, all the LSO’s are scoffing and calling me a “PLAT LSO”. I know, I know. Just lemme tell the story! So BOF starts correcting for the low start and immediately shoots up to a high position and getting higher just before the in-the-middle position, like way high. Then he does what all LSO’s fear, he sucks a bunch of power to correct a high in the middle, right when the deck starts coming up. We may be PLAT LSO’s but we can see what’s about to happen. From our Ready Room perspective, BOF shoots to way high in the middle and then sucks a ton of power off right when the deck starts to come up. He goes instantly from impossibly high to dangerously low and from our view seems to literally dip below the flight deck and disappear off the bottom of the PLAT. It goes silent in the Ready Room for a millisecond, then the deck starts coming down as BOF cobs on a bunch of power and THERE HE IS going from super low to again super high crossing the ramp. According to RAC they crossed the ramp nearly at idle with full DLC engaged as the deck is coming back up and they SLAM into the deck right on top of our Ready Room, Ready 8 near the 1-wire. BOOOOM!!!!! Taxi one-wire landing, meaning he landed so far back he had to roll forward just to get to the first wire. Knocked a picture off our RR wall too. Cheers erupt (because they were safely on deck). Huzzah!!!! Huzzah!!! Both BOF and RAC come off the roof. RAC was deathly pale and looked very mad. BOF looked sheepish as the LSO’s came in for the debrief. He tried to proffer his Lucky Buck, a one-time, get-out-of-jail-free slip of paper that Pilots can offer Paddles on an especially bad pass for a mulligan. Paddles says “Nah, CAG wants to see you.” RAC’s back hurt for a week and wouldn’t fly with BOF again. The jet, being a Tomcat, was fine. Fast forward about 6 years and I’m the Maintenance Officer in the VF-154 Black Knights on the USS Kitty Hawk and I have the “pleasure” of watching a brother Aviator suffer his “night in the barrel”, that night we all have where we just can’t seem to get it aboard. Rocco and Huey were a couple of Lieutenants on a standard night flight and night recovery. The conditions weren’t especially bad with moderate winds, a little deck movement, and dark but not “lights out” dark. But Naval Aviators know that the night in the barrel can sneak up on you in even the best conditions. So they’re coming down the chute in the conga line of jets on Mr. Hand’s board, and on the first pass they bolter. This means the tail hook misses all four wires and you take off flying to go around and try it again (that's why you go to full power on touch down; in case you miss the wires). These happen sometimes. Often it’s pilot error, not landing in the right place or with the right angle of attack, but it can also be a hook skip where it just bounces. Either way, Rocco and Huey have some extra training to do! They come around again and……bolter. Ok, that happens too. Two bolters isn’t a big deal. Happens to the best of ‘em. Nearly all of the airborne jets have trapped and there are only 3 or 4 more to go. Around come our intrepid duo and…….bolter. Three can happen, can’t it? I mean, it’s possible. Sure. But the air in the ready room where we’re all watching the Scare-A-Vision changes. Three bolts. Three. Now there’s only Rocco and a Tanker left (an S-3). The S-3 is holding over the ship at a couple thousand feet while Rocco and Huey make their way around for their fourth attempt. And the Black Knights in Ready One (all the way up forward and closest to the Dirty Shirt Wardroom) aren’t the only ones to notice what’s happening. Literally everyone with access to the PLAT knows what’s happening. And everyone is watching Rocco and Huey, hearing them call the ball with a moderately low fuel state, and…..bolter the fourth time. Sigh. At this point, the younger Pilots are cheering and ribbing which is normal. Us older guys are doing the same but also exchanging knowing glances about what is really happening. Will this work out in the end? Sure. Probably. Is it fraught with peril? Absolutely. Could it go very badly? I hope not. They come around for one more…..bolter, and their signal is Texaco; go get some gas. They find the S-3, grab a few thousand pounds of “give” (word for available fuel) and get back in the pattern. My recollection here on the numbers is a bit spotty but it winds up going something like this. Rocco and Huey come back for 3 more attempts, all bolters. Before you try and second guess this, realize that this is ENTIRELY mental at this point. Much like baseball players can get the yips and get in a slump, carrier pilots can have this happen. You can’t predict it, you can’t fight it, you just have to keep trying. They’re told “your signal is BINGO”, meaning fly to the nearest divert field and get fuel. Story goes they get to the nearest Japanese large airport but the Japanese workers won’t “hot fuel” them (give them gas while the jet’s running). But they can’t shut the jet down because there’s no gear there to start it back up. Huey has Rocco shut off the right motor and Huey climbs out the jet onto the right intake, down the back, and off the right horizontal stab where he meets the Japanese fuel workers. Huey, not a small man at 6’2”, shouts at them “If you don’t fuel this jet, there’s gonna be an INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT!!!”. I don’t think they really understood him but they were scared enough to just do it. They gassed up and came back to the boat. Yes, back to the boat. It’s where your stereo is. It’s where the food is. Get back in the pattern. They boltered 3 more times I think, for a total of 11 before they finally trapped, an actually decent pass with a little settle to a deuce (two wire) and the entire ship was watching. Much celebrations ensued in the Ready Room; good-natured ribbing with the undertone of heartfelt sympathy for a brother in extremis. There but for the grace of God (and Paddles) go we, right? The next day, despite his Oscar winning role on Scare-A-Vision the night previous, Rocco was on for an afternoon day flight and back on the night page that evening. In Fighters, this is the way.

Ovi’s played so long that other teams have throwback jerseys from his rookie year 🤯🐐

@Mikehomeseller Jimmy Chamberlin of The Smashing Pumpkins. @jccomplex

Who's the best drummer you've ever seen live? #mikesquestions

@byjoelanderson I remember grape jam was a thing. This would have been in the mid-80s. My family accidentally bought it once or twice and it was weird. It tasted like grape jelly, but it had the same texture as seedless raspberry jam.

Can they only make grapes into jelly? Why not grape jam?

RIP our wonderful brother Mani. The greatest bass player and friend we could ever have wished for. X

@aviationarchive Looks great! EA-6B?

Some great longer footage I've been working on of Tomcats and maybe an A-6 and Corsair II launching off the deck of the USS Nimitz(CVN-68) in May of 1980 stationed in the Indian Ocean helping with the Iran Hostage Crisis- not long after the filming of The Final Countdown.🤘😎

@Pj27271111 @RSE_VB Ghost Rider the whip?

I found an old video of @RSE_VB hot rodding his Tomcat after C/Q. See this Instagram post by @f14tomcatdemo instagram.com/reel/DQ23yLfjB…