With the current events affecting the American car industry these photos showing (in my opinion) the best-looking American cars ever made are even more bittersweet.

And lastly:

Try this in your Smart Car.
Note: I try to use local photos, I am sure there are better ones to be found in other locations.

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Over my years here I discovered that some Americans shy away from tasty foods because they may seem exotic and unknown. I am not advocating eating anything weird here and I have my limits too . Snakes, turtles, coffee crapped out by monkeys, and other strange things are not normally found in my menu. However, as a public service, I always try to introduce my co-workers and anyone who would listen (I don’t have any friends) to some foods that are truly good but may not be well-known for one reason or another.
Today I would like to talk about persimmons. Persimmons are apparently very popular in Asia but I’ve known and loved them since I was a child. There are two kinds of persimmon – astringent (which means it will pucker up your mouth so bad, you will curse me when you can start talking again) and non-astringent which you can eat like a crunchy apple. The astringent kind seems to taste more sophisticated while the other kind is sweet,juicy and tasty. If you purchase astringent kind which is actually called hachiya make sure you let it ripen until soft before eating it. You can also freeze it overnight and the let it thaw to get rid of mouth-puckering tannins. Hachiya persimmons have pointy shape and are easy to spot.
The other kind of persimmons is called fuyu.They are flattened on the top and bottom. These are bright orange when ripe and I eat them with skin just like an apple.

Locally you can buy persimmons at Chinese and Vietnamese stores around City Market, any other Asian store and for little more money at your grocery store and Costco.
They are currently in season and about 99 cents for a pound. Try to get some without blemishes and visible soft spots.
Read more about persimmons and enjoy.

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February 23rd has a special meaning for people who grew up in the Soviet Union. Originally started in 1918 as the Red Army Day, then renamed “The Soviet Army and Navy Day” and now “Defender of the Motherland Day” this holiday became a de facto Men’s Day when all men were celebrated even if they never served in the military. Starting at the young age it was a day of anticipation for boys, when girls would bring them small presents and souvenirs to school just so the boys could brag, compare and play with them for the rest of the day (the favor was returned on March the 8th). For those who served it was a highly anticipated day off, with delicacies such as two boiled eggs and buckwheat for breakfast and maybe a rare day on the town (if you happened to serve near one). For the rest of the people it was another reason to have a drink.

Over the years my opinion about my military service has changed from a wasted years of my life, two years of missed opportunity and needless sacrifice, to a fun and careless time when all I had to worry about was escaping any semblance of work and exercise at all costs. Although I was one of the most worthless soldiers the Soviet Army had ever seen, they got exactly what they paid for with their 7 rubles a month, which was just enough for a lunch and a few packs of cheap cigarettes. I made sure of that.

Even though the Soviet Army is long gone, I still get a few messages from friends and relatives on this day. Mostly it’s a connection to the innocent days of our childhood when a simple souvenir and a card made us feel like men (slide show of old holiday cards below).

Much has changed since the days of my military service. In the video below the Choir Of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs performs with the duo Ottawan, something that couldn’t have happened 25 years ago, when people from the same ministry were busy banning Western music.

httpvh://youtu.be/XkoHoAPTzdM

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Not that long ago a person’s love for technology required substantial physical strength. Nowadays anyone can show up on a date carrying a laptop or an iPod. Here is what it would have looked like about 25 years ago.

It was so long ago that this guy

still looked like this:

More old cutting edge technology can be seen here (ignore the Russian text).

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After a popular post about the sorority girls of KU I searched the Life photo archives for something about the University of Missouri. There weren’t too many photographs but they led me to this interesting story.

In 1959 the Life Magazine published an article Famous Cartoonists Share a Silver Jubilee. One of the cartoonists was the future Hall-of-Famer Milton Caniff – creator of the famous comic strip Steve Canyon.

(Canyon) is so famous that Colorado changed the name of Squirrel Gulch to Steve Canyon. Columbia, Mo., home of “Old Mizzou” (student name for the University of Missouri), would have named a street after Caniff except the conservative citizens protested. They suspected Miss Mizzou, a Canyon dame, wears no clothes under her trench coat

Infamous Miss Mizzou appears among other “ever-luscious ladies” who frequently graced the comic strip (sorry for the quality, I had to splice this from two sides of the magazine).

Some sources report that Miss Mizzou, who was introduced in 1952, was patterned after Marilyn Monroe, others mention a model named Bek Stiner.

Update: JB Winter of Mid-Missouri Comics Collective emailed me the following information:

“For some time I had been mulling over a girl character who would be what a Marilyn Monroe type might be like if she had not hit the jackpot in Hollywood,” Caniff explained in a 1954 letter. “Every college town has girls who live and work on the edge of the campus and who are very much a part of the life of the school, but who who do not get invited to fraternity formals. Usually they come up from small towns and often become as loyal to the school as the best-heeled alumnae. I decided my gal wold be from the University of Missouri, if not of it.”

But he did also base the character off of Bek Stiner (born Bek Nelson) too. He would often model new characters off of real people with the intention of having the photos of the model in the paper to publicize the strip.

Even though Miss Mizzou was fictional, the street-naming fiasco mentioned in Life was real, warranting a humorous article in the 1958 Time Magazine:

Faintly but distinctly, the mesmeric boomlay-boom of publicity drums on Manhattan’s Madison Ave. is heard 980 miles away in Columbia (pop. 43,000), site of the University of Missouri. Stout-souled citizens wonder what is wrong. Chamber of Commerce members writhe to the beat and get the message. It is so nonsensical that at first it seems to be garbled: name the new boulevard (boom-lay boom) after Milton Caniff.

In the end, the name Providence Road won.

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