Weekend Open Thread: Invasion Interruptus Edition

Hey There Sports Fans. It’s Friday, which means that it is Weekend Open Thread Time. The week has been crazy, Press Day for the August issue is next Wednesday, but the fam and I are headed up to Cleveland in the morning for the 4th and for my mom’s birthday. So I have been trying to get my Knife News column written ahead of time. Partial success. Two of four are turned in (new Spartan folder and Ocaso Seaton) and the material gathered and high res photos obtained for the other 2 (White River/Liong Mah collab and Vosteed Mayhem). Each knife news item usually involves 4-5 emails or calls back and forth to the individual point of contact. To make a long story short, I realize I sucked with the news feed this week. Apologies.

Like last week, we have a theme, and unlike the submersible implosion from last week, there is less squeamishness about sharing memes about it.

 

 

What is kind of funny is I had the news on on Friday night last week, and began to hear the grumblings that something was happening in Russia/Ukraine. I didn’t think too much of it as I went to bed, but when I woke up there were mercenaries marching on Moscow. By the end of the day it had all fizzled out, with nothing left but the memes…

I was worried that someone might take offense, so I was really pleased to discover the contrary…it led to a really great discussion about submarines and Hocky’s experiences aboard them.  If anyone wants my two cents…I think Hocky should have a pair of submariner’s dolphins (or replicas if that would be blasphemy) embedded in acrylic handle scales, rather than try to make the handle submarine shaped. I do think it is a cool project piece regardless of what choice is made.

I figure the best way to break things up this week is to hit all the Russia Coup memes, then the Event Calendar, Submersible memes, Giveaway Drawing, and then finish with all the non-theme memes.

In case you missed it, the Wagner founder is an ex-con who once ran a food cart. He did well for himself if you ignore the international arrest warrants and all.

The coup ended with a whimper…

 

Not even a dull thud…

That happens when Putin gets his revenge.

Changing gears, We are still in a lull with regards to knife shows. Especially this Independence day weekend. Next show isn’t until the middle of August.

The New England ABS Hammer in is still the next thing Mark has listed.

ABS New England Hammer-In

 

Be sure to keep an eye on the Knife Magazine Events Calendar to stay abreast of what is going on.

There are still a few submersible memes that are not in too poor of taste to share here.

Don’t laugh, the toy looks like the only thing that survived…

Y’all actually discussed this…

If you don’t understand this, google “Marvin Heemeyer” or “Killdozer”…

 

Heemeyer was actually a douche-canoe. I will put my libertarian credentials against anyone, but he is undeserving of his folk-hero status. He brought most of his problems on himself.

Speaking of our submarine conversation, I just discovered the old “Silent Service” tv show episodes on YouTube. I have been binge watching all of them, though the Cod episode was particularly cool since it is in Cleveland as a museum ship and I have been on it several times.

Cool series. My father in law said he used to watch it as a kid with his WWII Navy vet father.

Moving on to this week’s drawing…The large Browning Sage Creek fixed blade goes to Mark R. who is our winner.

 

Our next drawing is going to be for one of a pair of Ocaso Knives Strategy flipper. Ocaso, for those who don’t know, was founded by Ric Valdez, a former VP at Cold Steel, who, like the Demkos, left when the company was sold to GSM Outdoors. Andrew Demko, in addition to being a long time friend and work associate, is one of Ocaso’s stable of designers.

The Strategy is a Mike Wallace design. I believe that Mike also worked at Cold Steel, though I am not 100% on that fact. He now works for the Demko brothers, but they allowed him to work with Ric on this design. It is a D2 liner lock flipper, and is available in 5 styles. I will be testing and writing a full review of the Carbon Fiber, and Katie and Vince are each taking one to contribute a paragraph a piece to my review. It should be fun.

I don’t know which one Vince will pick, I haven’t seen him this week. Katie snagged the smooth black aluminum handled one. The remaining two will make up the drawing.

This will be a multi-week drawing, where you need to be drawn twice to win. The knives MSRP for is $150+. They are made in Taiwan (free China), and are nicer than I feel comfortable giving away so capriciously.  5 comments or replies are your entries, the first time you are drawn, you get a “token”, the first person to be drawn first gets their pick of the pair, and we will keep drawing in subsequent weeks until another person gets their second token and wins the other knife.

I hope that made sense. Good luck everyone.

 

Dear lord that is a monstrosity.

See Mike Run.

Analysis: True

That is the best meme of the week imho.

That explains a lot.

She isn’t wrong.

Pardon the profanity on this one, but it wouldn’t work without it…

I like grammar memes.

Sounds terrifying.

This should have been…

That one was good, this one is better…

 

Bonus points if you can name them…

Even more points if you can name their weapons.

Someone needs to teach her OpSec.

Pass.

(*rimshot)

Only 1 DnD meme this week. Mmm…musky.

Beef Wellington is a few steps away from a PopTart.

That’s harsh.

Well…duh.

Have you heard about the Orca attacks off Gibraltar? Yowza.

Indeed.

I have questions.

Seems like they missed an obvious one.

Could be a toddler too.

Holy Toledo.

Nice try Skynet.

Good advice is hard to come by.

 

My local tire store and oil change place has one.

And with that, I’m off to bed. Have a wonderful Independence Day everybody.

My feet are the only part of me I need covered.