President for a day

So Kim and I were watching news coverage of the inauguration today and the topic of your favorite inauguration memory came up. My immediate response was “David Rice Atchinson becoming president for one day because Zachary Taylor wouldn’t take the oath on a Sunday and since James K. Polk’s term ended at noon on Sunday technically the presidency fell to the President Pro Tempre of the Senate, which was David Rice Atchnison. On his one day as president he is best known for taking a nap. Either that or Reagan’s second inaugural when it was so cold out that they had to cancel the parade for fear that the marching bands instruments would freeze to their lips.”


Somehow I always expect to then see her look at me with admiration and awe. Not so much in reality. More like the look of one just saying “Seriously, this is what you have designated brain cells towards?”

I mean, how much can one say about an inauguration where there is no transfer of power or no real change at all? While a presidential inauguration is a rare and at times important event these second term inaugurations tend to fall more in the range of the press conference announcing a contract extension for a head coach, albeit one that involves a parade and marching bands. There is a major speech, of course, but we will have the State of the Union in a few weeks and then political gridlock for months on end. Yes, maybe I have gotten that cynical about politics over the past few years.

The other news of the day is that Atari has declared bankruptcy. For people my age this inspires nostalgia of video game consoles with faux wood paneling and joysticks that consisted of a stick and a button and that was the epitome of high tech. Why the wood paneling I will never know but it was a nice touch. Now with the near realism of video games and controllers with more buttons than one has fingers it goes to show just how far we have progressed.

Of course, Atari today has nothing today with the Atari of my youth other than naming rights. Atari essentially died after the disastrous release of E.T. the video game in which you, well, that was the problem. No one has ever quite figured out what the purpose of the game actually was. The assumption was that E.T. was popular so just stick a sticker of a kid with a bike on a cartridge and it would sell millions, despite the fact that the movie would be hard pressed to turn into a game of any form. That put the company out of business and it was then sold off and rebundled and repackaged into all that was left was a logo and a backlog of Combat cartridges.

Still, Atari was the first video game platform that I ever played. I still have it as well, or at least it is stored somewhere at my parents on the hope that I will one day figure out how to attach it to a modern television set. Even losing the brand will make you feel like you are getting old. That said, everything makes me feel like I am getting old.