{"id":190,"date":"2005-10-02T15:56:55","date_gmt":"2005-10-02T23:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=190"},"modified":"2008-06-22T11:00:13","modified_gmt":"2008-06-22T18:00:13","slug":"forty-minutes-ill-never-get-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"Forty Minutes I’ll Never Get Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because we did not yet have one (the chief justifcation for so many of my purchases), this weekend Margaret and I picked up a copy of Ghostbusters<\/a>, the high-larious 1984 film starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. We and Shawn watched it Saturday night. The film has held up extraordinarily well (far<\/em> better than, say, Caddyshack<\/a>); aside from the music\u2014which wasn’t any great shakes when the film was new, but really hasn’t stood the test of time (all those hard-stereo-panned syntho tom-toms!) it was as good a flick to watch today as it was when it was released.<\/p>\n

This weekend, however, watching it with an older and perhaps more critical eye, I picked up on something I had not the first time ’round. In the second half of the film, Aykroyd, Ramis and co-star Ernie Hudson are standing around in the basement of the Ghostbusters’ headquarters. Ramis’ character is expressing concern regarding the recent upswing in business for the company. He holds up a Twinkie:<\/p>\n

RAMIS: Well, let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. According to this morning’s sample it would be a Twinkie…[considers]…35 feet long weighing approximately six hundred pounds.<\/p>\n

AYKROYD: [Chokes on cigarette smoke, coughs]<\/p>\n

HUDSON: That’s a big Twinkie.<\/p>\n

RAMIS: [Takes bite out of Twinkie]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Great scene. However, the projected weight of six hundred pounds struck everyone watching that evening as sorely understated. Since I am the only one in this bunch to ever actually come in contact<\/em> with a Twinkie, I took it upon myself to obtain a sample for analysis.<\/p>\n

\"Twinkie<\/div>\n

As you can see above and below, a Twinkie measures approximately 4 inches in length, 1.5 inches in width and 1.25 inches in height.<\/p>\n

\"Twinkie<\/div>\n

Since a pack of two has a net weight of 3 ounces, one may deduce that a single Twinkie weighs 1.5 ounces.<\/p>\n

\"Twinkie<\/div>\n

If Ramis’ theoretical Twinkie was 35 feet in length, it was proportionately 105 times the size of a standard-issue Twinkie. This would make it 420 inches long, 157.5 inches wide and 131.25 inches tall, with a volume of 8,682,187.5 cubic inches. Divided by the 7.5 cubic inches in a regular Twinkie, this would make the theoretical Twinkie some 1,157,625 (105 cubed) times larger in volume.<\/p>\n

1.5 ounces multiplied by 1,157,625 is 1,736,437.5 ounces. Divide that by 16 and you get 108,525.34 pounds.<\/p>\n

Now that<\/em> is a big motherfucking Twinkie.<\/p>\n

(Many thanks to Margaret for providing a second opinion\u2014and calculation.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because we did not yet have one (the chief justifcation for so many of my purchases), this weekend Margaret and I picked up a copy of Ghostbusters, the high-larious 1984 film starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. We and Shawn watched it Saturday night. The film has held up extraordinarily well (far better […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roominations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}