Nerd Pride Radio

Unkillable Thread Royale, with cheese.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #52:
Rocky, directed by John G. Avildsen, 1976

Thrilling.

[Actually: ask Flame about his first roommate in college and his relationship with "Rocky."

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #51:
Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorsese, 1980

Trees, ranked. 57. Sassafras

This is a cool and unique tree with a three-pronged leaf. Beyond that I don't know it well and it suffers in the ranking for that, but it is less full and beautiful than other shade trees on the way and less interesting than others. At this point we're ranking great stuff so it's tricky.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #50:
Marathon Man, directed by John Schlesinger, 1976

Good morning!

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #49:
Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler, 1959

Good morning!

Good morning!

And good afternoon to you!

Tahlvin wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 10:24 am AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #49:
Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler, 1959

Fun fact: I have been within a foot of the Oscar that William Wyler won for Ben-Hur. No, it was not behind glass. I was eating salmon at the time.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #48:
Dial M for Murder, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1954

Great movie.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #47:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel, 1956

Mhmm.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #46:
Carrie, directed by Brian De Palma, 1976

Remember when he was an acclaimed director?

Eliahad wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 12:20 pm Fun fact: I have been within a foot of the Oscar that William Wyler won for Ben-Hur. No, it was not behind glass. I was eating salmon at the time.

Was it... In the salmon?!

One of the major patrons of one of the festivals I perform for has some relation to Mr. Wyler.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #45:
Saving Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg, 1998

Steven who?

Segal.

YAS!

Seagull.

Jason Seagull?

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #44:
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, directed by Steven Spielberg, 1982

Trees, ranked. 56. Cedar

I'm having a heckuva time trying to rank these trees in the middling portion of the list. We have some special favorites further down but for a lengthy period it's just one good tree after another, all of them roughly the same amount of good. While some of these trees may have drawbacks and weaknesses, for the most part they're all awesome trees and so it's difficult to put them here or there relative to one another. The Cedar is one such tree, difficult to rank here at what seems like a low rank, yet many of its best varieties live in other parts of the world and some of its nicer cousins will be found further along as well.

Perhaps a word about tree taxonomy is in order here. Among the Spermatophytes, generally, we have two big groups of Gymnosperms and Angiosperms, where the latter have seeds in some sort of fruit. They make up an enormous number of tree species - the trees are grouped in with other plants such that there is no broad genus of "trees" or even "evergreens vs. deciduous" when it comes to biological taxonomy. Flowers and grasses and other things might be thrown into these categories along with different trees, and unusual relationships can be observed in this manner.

When we dig into the families where trees are found, we find on the one hand (angiosperms) the Eudicots (sooooo many trees), Magnolids (we just saw the Sassafras, which is a type of Magnolid among the Laurales), and Monocots (palms are here), and on the other hand (gymnosperms), the Conifers (many to come soon!) and the glorious Ginkgo (you can imagine we won't see it again for QUITE SOME TIME on this list). Different kinds of trees among the seven conifer families might be termed "cedars", but you find a bit of messy confusion when you hunt up pictures and trees for purchase and such, between cedar pines and junipers and red cedars and so on. Not all of these are really "cedars" - and then, among cedars, there are also many different kinds!

For purposes of the ranking, I'll point for this #56 to the Lebanon Cedar, one of the finest. Behold its beauty here, popping out on top among these other tree friends. Of course we like this type of tree!

Good evening!

Good week.

Tahlvin wrote: ↑Fri Apr 15, 2022 2:38 pm AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #44:
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, directed by Steven Spielberg, 1982

Fun fact: This is the opening night movie of the Turner Classic Movie Festival this year.

Wow. 40 years old. A movie released in an age when a popular movie could stay in theaters for a year, and repeatedly be the number one film in the country.

Trees, ranked. 55. Smoke Tree

These are usually small trees (or even shrubs) but some types grow much larger. They come in several colors and take their name from the "smoky" appearance of their finely-divided foliage. In autumn you will sometimes see brilliant purples or reds on a smoketree and they look awesome. Very cool and unusual but outclassed by more impressive and important kinds to come.

Smoooooke

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #43:
The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming, 1939


Between ET and this, I feel like they're trolling us.

Speak for yourself - I thought it was terrifying and exciting for many years. They were young years but still! She's having conflict with this mean woman, fearing for the health and safety of her dog as a result. She's falling in with the pigs and could have died, a tornado takes her damn house, she murders someone in the process, all kinds of people and critters show up, singing and doing crazy stuff, she has to follow a path beset by dangers and terrors and nearly loses her dog to monsters and her own life to an evil witch, or to accidentally ingested drugs, confronts the irrational kafka-esque power of the state, exposes it as fraudulent in a manner that leaves her bereft of hope and options, tries to escape only to have the heartbreak of potentially losing her dog! Chooses dog above all and then loses all hope for about the third or fourth time completely! It's a crazy roller coaster of danger.

Thrillllllls!

Trees, ranked. 54. Shagbark Hickory

This variety of hickory deserves special mention because of its glorious flaky bark! It also makes a lovely fall color. One of the best nut trees, if we must have nut trees, and it has a lovely wood.

Checkpoint

Trees, ranked. 53. Cinnamon

Another tree ranked highly due to its amazing bark. It's a little tree. I have never seen one in person.

AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, #42:
The Terminator, directed by James Cameron, 1984

Good morning!

Trees, ranked. 52. Osage Orange

This tree also may be known to you as the hedge apple because of the strange little green fruits they produce. [Edited: I have removed false claim about the value of the hedge apple - upon looking up a link to explain this I discovered that it's a myth! I have been believing myths about the value of the hedge apple! Maybe I would have ranked the tree lower if I had known but maybe the tree is just so powerful that it has managed to fool us all these years. If people are telling you that this tree product is good for animals to eat, or that it is a natural insect repellent, they are mistaken! However, it does have a good and non-warping wood, although I have just read that it is very sparky when you burn it so requires caution.] The trees have interesting growth patterns and can last a very long time, so they are cool for how they appear as a tree generally.

Trees, ranked. 51. Apple

Feeling a little burned by the sly old hedge Apple up there, I'll just go straight into a tree we know has a valuable product: the Apple. All of the next few trees are located in this place on the list because of the cool things they produce as opposed to the way they look per se, but when a tree combines good looks and a good product I rated it more highly. I'm not terribly impressed by the looks of apple trees, although I do like the fact that they are extremely attractive to bees. And they are so impressive for their size! My neighbor has a little apple tree that produces many huge apples despite being barely taller than me! Apple orchards when they are all planted together are also quite lovely. So indeed this tree has a lot to recommend it, and it's no lie that apples are an absolutely delightful food. One of the best! I'm starting to talk myself into ranking this tree more highly but then I remember that it can be a funny looking and unattractive little tree despite the tremendous production of apples, so here we are. I don't think you need a picture to know what an apple or apple tree looks like right?

Trees, ranked. 50. Olive

One of the best gifts of the Greek gods (Athena) to humans (Athens), this tree obviously has a profoundly valuable product. They come in an unbelievable array of varieties and are influenced in their end result by all sorts of factors. They don't fruit out every year. The trees themselves can be really interesting looking - it's a good tree even without making olives. But it is generally classed in this part of the list along with other trees that make good products.

This list could have included so many trees if I added all the citrus trees! I was debating whether to go to a hundred total trees in order to put in a huge section of all these different types of fruits like lemon, orange, avocado, lime, plum, persimmon, etc. But it became overwhelming and more about rating the fruits than the trees themselves - not to mention that dilemmas arose like whether to pair up the avocado and the lime in the rankings much like the world has permitted us to pair up peanut butter and chocolate, except way better than that - so I'm sticking to trees I have experience with in the landscape, or other encounters in the wild that permit me to determine how the tree is experienced. If I lived in a place where I had citrus trees and could understand the differences between them better, I would add a ranking, and I would be interested to hear if others have this information. However, I hope never to live in a place where being able to own such a tree is a possibility because I'm trying to go to a colder climate rather than a warmer one! It's interesting information though.

I have included a few more trees on the list below that are known for their products. In these cases it's because the tree also has a beautiful display of leaves or branches or flowers or something that makes it an interesting tree to me in its own right beyond the fruit.

No. 1 - The Larch.

Eliahad wrote: ↑Sun Apr 17, 2022 8:57 am No. 1 - The Larch.

I approve of your choice - there's a reason we haven't seen it on the ranking yet!

Hello?

Kyle wrote: ↑Sun Apr 17, 2022 11:37 amHello?

Is it me you're looking for?

Yes, actually. Here, smell this.