"Just Throw the Thumb!"

Remember the classic TV comedy "Happy Days?" It was very highly rated in the 1970s, and generated its share of popular lexicon of the day: "Ayyyyyyyyee," courtesy of "The Fonz," "Sit on it," courtesy of Potsie Weber, and "Pinky Tuscadero" (one of the Fonz's many girls).

But there's one that lives on today and has outlasted the rest: "jumping the shark." According to jumptheshark.com, it means: "It's a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on ... it's all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it "Jumping the Shark." From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same."

What does all of this have to do with Happy Days? According to Wikipedia.com, "The most famous of these plots involved Fonzie performing a water ski jump over a shark in an episode aired on September 20, 1977, during the show's fifth season. In later years, this episode has often been cited as the point where the series had passed its peak of quality and popularity. The phrase jumping the shark was later applied to popular culture phenomena in general."

Jumping the shark came immediately to mind while viewing the second of two parts of A&E Network's remake of the motion picture thriller "The Andromeda Strain." Part one, airing Memorial Day 2008, was an edge-of-the-seat thriller that drew upon the multiple themes of extraterrestrial attacks, germ warfare, group intelligence by cell-sized entities, government-military conspiracies and terrorist threats.

A group of doctors and scientists stationed several stories underground in a super-secure facility feverishly tried to understand how to defeat an unknown spore that killed humans almost instantly, and other life forms a bit more slowly. It was all sailing along to what promised to be a thrilling end when, with about 30 minutes left, the show jumped the shark.

As a sequence to destroy the underground research facility counted down, two of the scientists were climbing piping of the building's inner core to reach a cut-off level where they would be able to disarm the device together: one with a key card, and one with his distinct thumbprint, in sequence.

So the guy whose unique thumbprint was needed to disarm the device slips and falls several stories into a concrete-bottomed pool of water, where he is killed instantly. Another of the scientists, understanding the urgency of the situation, climbed down to his fallen, deceased colleague and amputates his thumb. Then, with the clock ticking down, said scientist throws the severed thumb up several stories, where the remaining scientist catches it. And, of course, after he is nearly blinded by a scalding flow of steam and nearly killed after falling through a ceiling grate, he manages to insert the key card and blindly press the severed digit against the computer screen, saving the day with seven seconds to spare.

Until the hero scientist severed his colleague's thumb, the plot and movie promised a sensational climax. But there was something about a scientist accurately hurling a severed digit several stories in the air to a winded, afraid-of-heights colleague who makes the catch that reminded this viewer of something at Sea World. Or maybe of a Happy Days scene:

"Hey, Fonzie, go to the tree, take four steps left, and take off running for the goal line, and I'll hit you on the fly with my grandmother's right foot!"

Why Gas Will Never Hit $10 Per Gallon in the U.S.

News item: Gas Prices in the United States May Someday Hit $10 Per Gallon.

Spot sez: You'll never see it happen, and here's why. The day when this blog entry was published, May 4, 2008, gas prices in the U.S. were hovering at around $3.50 per gallon. Everyone who drives a car is feeling the impact, but some more than others. Over-the-road truckers are paying several hundred dollars more per fill-up thanks to the skyrocketing price of diesel fuel.

Meanwhile, every Tom, Dick and Fido are complaining about the price of gasoline, but let's look at the true impact. The top-selling car in the U.S. is the Toyota Camry, which has a fuel tank capacity of 17.2 gallons. At $2.50 per gallon, it cost $43 to fill the tank. At $3.50 per tank, it costs $60.20, or about $17.20 more. Fill your tank three times a month, and you're paying $51.60 per month more than you were about a year ago. Yeah, that hurts, but most of us are going to grin and bear it. Most people will cut costs somewhere else to make ends meet. It's not going to radically change the way we live. And, for the upper middle class and very wealthy, an additional $51.60 per month is really not that big of a deal.

Now, let's look at those scenarios at $10 per gallon: It would cost $172 to fill the tank of a Camry, compared to $43 at $2.50 per gallon -- a difference of $129 per fill-up, and $387 per month based on three fill-ups. All of a sudden, you're talking about a monthly jump in prices that the average middle class, credit-card-debt-ridden family is just not going to be able to bear. And, $10 per gallon gas prices will even get the attention of the super-rich, many of whom are driving gas-guzzling SUVs and luxury cars. The impact on these folks might be as much as twice the average, or about $774 per month.

When we've reached that point, all socioeconomic classes of our society will be demanding alternate forms of transportation -- mass transit, electric cars, hydrogen-powered cars, etc. The demand for change that has been needed for really the past 30 years will become so pervasive that there will be no turning back. And if there is anything that can lead to the downfall of the major U.S. oil companies, it is that. For the past several years, all of the major oil companies are reporting huge profits. As the price of crude oil continues to increase due to new demand overseas, these profits will continue to grow.

There will come a price point, and it will be before $10 per gallon, at which the oil companies will know they cannot continue to pass along all of their rising costs to their customers. With billions of dollars of profit per quarter, there is room for the oil companies to eat some of the increase from the oil producers and settle for, let's say, hundreds of millions of dollars in profit rather than billions. The oil companies are all aware that the only event that can lead to their downfall, at least in the short term, is to allow prices to escalate to the point where both John Q. Public and Bill Gates are having trouble coping. They're not going to make that mistake.

Patches the Miracle Dog Survives 100-foot Plunge

Meet Patches the Miracle Dog. In Smith County, Texas, this pooch slipped and fell down a 100-foot well at his owners' home. The amazing part? After a death-defying plunge, Patches was apparently none the worse for wear.

Let's put 100 feet into some context. In Major League Baseball, it's the distance from home plate to first base, plus 10 more feet. It's 40 to 50 normal human walking steps. Think about how far that is.

A guy in California wasn't as lucky as Patches, showing the kind of results you'd expect from a freefall.

Spot sez: Patches won't be a media star, but his story is truly amazing. Every pooch, hound, mutt, canine and pup should be envious of Patches' good fortune.