Update on Green Energy

Around 2.6 million EV's were sold in the first half of 2021. For some perspective on this, the total number of EV's on the road in the world passed 2.6 million during 2016. At the end of 2019 there were about 7.5 million. That number has probably doubled since then. It's possible that the total sales for 2021 alone will exceed 7.5, although most predictions are closer to 6 million.

 

So, yes, graphs of EV's sales currently show a line going almost straight up. The numbers in the US are much smaller than in Europe and China -- approximately 350,000 in 2020 in the US and around 1.5 each in Europe and China -- but in all 3 regions, 2021 are expected to double the figures from 2020. 

Why are more EV's being sold in Europe and China than in the US? The answer is: the Republican Party and gas, coal and oil companies. There's no big mystery or debate about this: the numbers since 1990 speed up when Democrats are in charge and slow down when Republicans are in power. And the same, unsurprisingly, is true of solar and wind power: the US lead the world, by a large margin, several decades ago, and since then, the GOP, bought and paid for by Big Oil and Coal and Gas, have slowed down progress just as much as they can. The GOP, plus a few Democrats in places like West Virginia and Oklahoma.

Globally, however, there has been a lot a progress. Vote Democratic and help the US join in on this good stuff. 

Other regions which have been held back by the fossil fuel industry include Brasil and Australia.

Globally, we can see a lot of improvement, and a lot of room for improvement. The human race might just survive its habit of burning stuff. Wouldn't that be something.

Dream Log: Australian Uncertainty

I dreamed I was out in the countryside in Australia,  walking over green wooded hills, looking for some sign of other humans. Eventually I found a dirt road, which led to a paved road, which led to a bus stop. I boarded a bus which I thought was headed toward Brisbane, but I wasn't sure. There were two other passengers besides me, and they both were dressed as if they might be off-duty bus drivers. 

 

One of them said something I didn't understand, looked at me and asked, "Eh?" I said I didn't know, and walked to the back of the bus to get away from them. Gradually the bus began to fill up with passengers. A couple of times I saw what looked like it might be Brisbane's far-off skyline, but I wasn't sure if it was Brisbane. 

As the area we drove through became more and more urban, the bus got more and more full. As far as I could see, everyone on the bus was white. I was completely unsure whether the other people were left or right wing. I was completely alone and almost completely broke, and, generally speaking, left wing people would be more likely to help a stranger in need, because he needed help, and right wingers would be more likely to mistreat him, because he was a stranger. So I was unsure whether speaking up, drawing attention to myself, would improve my situation or make it worse. I felt my best bet was get to downtown Brisbane and take things from there.

We got downtown, and went into a place filled with buses. Everyone stood up. I assumed this was because they knew we were coming to the end of the line. I stood up, kept my mouth shut, tried to blend in. The bus stopped and everyone got out. 

I hadn't walked far when I saw a basset hound puppy standing still on the sidewalk amid all the hurrying people. It was obviously lost or abandoned. I picked it up and did my best to comfort it. I went to a store, found that I had enough Australian currency in my pocket to buy a half pint cartoon of milk, sat down on a curb and started to feed the puppy. It had been crying, but very soon, after a few gulps of milk, it was in a much better mood, wagging its tail and jumping around. 

Then, very suddenly, a large Australian woman was hugging me and crying, and the rest of her family was all around, jumping up and down and exclaiming. I couldn't make out more than one word in five, but, obviously, I had rescued their lost puppy. Suddenly my own problems didn't seem so insoluble. Then I woke up.

Mayo & Mustard

Mayonnaise is French or Spanish in origin. Mustard-based condiments may have originally been invented in ancient Rome, but since then, Germany has developed a lot of different kinds of mustard. 

 

They also have lots of different kinds of sausage. Often a sidewalk food truck will have just one or two kinds of sausage, maybe with just one or two kinds of mustard to put on it, and there are also regional specialties, but if you add up everything in Germany, it's an amazing variety of sausage. And mustard.

 

And of course, Germany has beer. Great beer. A small amount of bad beer compared to Murrka, but also huge amounts of amazing beer that doesn't cost much at all.

I used to tell people that beer was invented in Germany, but I was mistaken. (I used to tell people all sorts of things which were inaccurate, and you know what? I probably still do!) People in the Middle East were drinking beer 10,000 years ago, in the earliest towns built from stone. By 2000 BC there were huge beer festivals in Egypt, where everyone would get very very drunk and dance maniacally and have sex in public. The attitudes of ancient Egyptians about sex were very different than ours today. Don't get me started. 

 

Knowledge of beermaking doesn't appear to have gotten as far north as Germany until 800 BC.

But mead remained the most popular northern European drink well into the Middle Ages. Generally speaking, beer and wine moved north alongside the Latin language, reading and writing, and Christianity. And in some areas it didn't replace mead as the most popular booze for a long, long time after that. And, as you may know, there are still people who make mead and grow beards and sing wimpy folk songs.

 

I've never had mead. Unless I have, and I was so drunk that I don't remember it, which is possible.

Dream Log: Rich, Unpleasant Family

Last night, I dreamed that my extended family were completely different people than they are in real life, different names, different appearance, different people altogether, and that they were much more rich than my family. How rich? Well, some of them, I suspected they might be the dreaded b-word. 

 

I also dreamed that I didn't particularly like them, which is also different than reality. 

Also: in real life I and a few others of my extended family are very, very much interested in show biz, and have been in plays, in bands, on TV etc. But most of them aren't. In the dream, almost everyone in my extended family was very, very interested in show business, except for me and one of my uncles.

Almost the only thing I had in common with any of these dream-relatives was how much this uncle and I both loathed every aspect of show business, and how much we hated constatly being bothered about it by everyone else. It would be an exaggeration to say that this uncle and I bonded, but our hatred of show business brought us closer to bonding than anything else did -- a couple of seconds' worth of shared complaining now and then.

This particular uncle was even richer than the rest of us and was probably a b-word (billionaire). He was the patriarch of our particular neolithic tendency. We would gather several times a year at his huge mansion near Detroit.

In this dream, I was poorer than most of my extended family, but I was much richer than I am in real life. My relatives were always pestering me about why I didn't grub constantly for even more money, as they did (when they weren't doing show-biz stuff). They were appalled when they learned that I paid taxes, and tried to get me use the same crooked attorneys and lawyers they used. They kept trying to get me in on the investments they were cashing in on, in things like coal mines and arms trading.

I felt that I was happier than they were because I was not behaving as horribly as they were. But I knew they would not believe me that I could think I was happier than they were, Because they had more money than I did.  This is how crude and capitalistic their mindsets were.

One evening when we were gathered at my uncle's mansion, there was a huge, sudden downpour. We -- several dozens of us -- were in a huge courtyard at the time; we fled to colonnades at its circumference. Everyone else was across the courtyard from me. The heavy rain made the night so dark that I couldn't see any of them. I could only occasionally hear a snatch of one of their voices above the roar of the deluge. 

The next morning, we were all at a luxury hotel in downtown Detroit. We had several floors of the hotel all to ourselves. I woke up on the floor of the ballroom. Everyone else was dressed up a bit, but I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. 

We called such events "social occasions," but, it occurred to me as I shook off my sleep and stood up, nobody was here except family and hotel employees, so that it would make much more sense to call them "anti-social occasions." I thought that was fairly funny: "anti-socials occasions." But then I got sad again, as I reflected that probably none of my relatives had a strong enough command of English to understand the joke. 

Someone saw how I was dressed, and rushed me off to the hotel staff to get me dressed up. A pleasant, bright young man led me into a room packed with suits and accessories. I told the young man that I was putting myself into his expert hands, that all I needed was to blend in with that crowd out there, and that I'd like him to estimate my size and select a few items for me while I took a shower. 

It turned out, unsurprisingly, that there was a bathroom adjoining this room of suits, with a ridiculously large marble shower. This hotel was the sort of place where, if you saw something which looked like it might be marble, or granite -- or gold, for that matter -- there was no need to wonder whether it was genuine, or solid.

I was looking forward to a few minutes of luxurious solitude in that shower when I woke up.

Casios and Coolness

There's this YouTube channel called The Mad Watch Collector, which I recommend very highly. A nice and very talented British bloke hosts it. He knows a lot about watches, and he throws in a lot of wacky humor. Top-notch.

Which doesn't mean that I always agree with him. Take the Casio A100WE,

a recent release which The Mad Watch Collector just reviewed. Because he knows his stuff and because his reviews are very thorough, he explained to me in his latest video that this is a $10 watch which Casio is selling for $40 and up, depending on the trim, because it looks very much like the F100, the watch Sigourney Weaver wore in Alien, which Casio discontinued long ago, and which, according to The Mad Watch Collector, is now worth several hundred British pounds to collectors.

The Mad Watch Collector is not the only one who loves Casios from the 70's and 80's -- obviously, or the original Ripley watch (Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien was named Ripley), the F100, would not be selling for hundreds of dollars or pounds if you can find one, and the different Casio she wore in Aliens would not be hugely popular, but it is. 

Okay, I understand, the wrist wants what it wants.  But I really don't understand. There's another $10 Casio watch, the F91W, which Casio released in 1989 and which they're still making, and which, unlike the A100WE, actually sells for around $10, does about as much as the A100WE, and has the buttons on the sides, because they work better there, which is why Casio have sold tons of F91W's. Not only is The Mad Watch collector perfectly happy to pay $40 and up for what he knows is a $10 watch, because it has the buttons in front just like the one Sigourney wore in Alien -- not only that, he actually calls the A100WE "The best Casio Release of 2021." That's the name of the You Tube video where he reviews it. 

The best Casio release of 2021? I mean, I ask rhetorically, has he ever actually seen a G-Shock? I ask rhetorically, because he probably knows more about G-Shocks than I do. G-Shocks can actually do all sorts of things, not to mention being almost literally as tough as nails, and besides all of that, some of therm are also very, very sparkly and pretty in a completely up-to-date way. 

Ah, but then, I'm pretty sure that the most popular type of G-Shock these days are the 2100 line, first released in 2019 and better known as Casioaks, because their 8-sides cases mimic the look of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, a Swiss watch introduced in the early 1970's which is still very popular, and which retails for around $20,000 and up -- WAY up. Many of the Casioaks can be had for under $100. And although they are G-Shocks, I have still not begun to understand their appeal. 

No, that's not stating it nearly strongly enough; I find the popularity of the 2100's to be downright bizarre. Why? Because a G-Shock, like a genuine Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, is a classic, a watch which has no need to copy any other watch, and which, in my humble opinion, ought to concentrate on being itself and letting others copy it, if they don't happen to have come up with their own stone classic. Casio should take the attitude that, if a movie star wants to wear one of their watches in a movie, it makes the movie cooler. The watch already had it. The watch never need any help in the cool department.

Well, I have to remind myself that I'm still just a little bit new to watches and watch culture.  But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong.

Dream Log: Beautiful, Unsuccessful Hollywood Actress

I dreamed I was an actor in Hollywood. I was the same age and appearance as in real life, and just as poor, and I was writing this blog same as in real life, but I was living in Hollywood and auditioning. I knew many actors and actresses who were much more successful than I. 

 

It was afternoon, and Ryan Gosling and I and several other actors were hanging out at some tables on a sidewalk. Ryan was wearing a tuxedo. I was wearing a cheap suit. It was uncomfortable and I was self-conscious, worried that others could see how cheap it was. 

George Clooney showed up, also wearing a tuxedo. He asked me what I had been doing lately. I started to talk about the blog, and the conversation died. It didn't seem to me that George was being rude. Rather, it was extremely difficult for him to sustain an interest in something which, from his point of view, had so little to do with movies.

It became evening, and we went inside the theatre outside of which the tables had been the entire time. I felt miserable, and was at the free bar, searching for something with alcohol in it among the soft drinks and snacks, when a very beautiful actress approached me, wearing a man's-style white shirt, black skirt and black stockings. We had known each other for a long time, but had lost touch.

I don't know whether she was someone who exists in real life. She was a little under medium height, had green eyes and straight chestnut-brown down to her shoulders, was a little over 40 years old and looked essentially the same as she had when she was under 20. I was confused about why she wanted to talk to me. After a little while she said she had to go, but that she wanted to hang out with me some more, and, the way she touched my arm and looked into my eyes when she said it, it seemed like she meant it. 

Eventually I gave up my search for booze, concluding that this must be a health-conscious event. Many actors and actresses are extremely meticulous in choosing healthy refreshments. The incidence of veganism is very high in Hollywood. This is one of the reasons why some actors and actresses look very much the same over age 40 as they did under age 20.

Across the room I saw the beautiful actress talking with a man wearing a tuxedo. From their body language, he looked to me like a boyfriend or ex-boyfriend. 

I had conversations with several people similar to the one I'd had with George Clooney: they asked what I'd been up to, I answered honestly, describing the blog, they found it impossible to feign interest. 

Then I heard the voice of the seeming boyfriend over the PA. Somehow, although I hadn't heard his voice before, I knew it was the same guy. And now it was clear that he was her boss, because he was telling her to put on an apron and bus the area. And apparently the reason I hadn't heard anything about her recently, was that her acting career had not been going especially well. Earlier, she had easily supported herself by acting.

She went behind a curtain to the service area to get an apron. I took off my suit jacket and followed. Even though I really hate food service work, I was going to put on an apron and tell her I wanted to help her bus the area. But before I got there I woke up.

Have I Become a Watch Snob?

Sometimes, people who hate Rolex are referred to as as snobs.

I've never thought of myself as a watch snob -- for example, I completely agree with a lot of both the negative AND the positive things which are said about Invicta (negative: their marketing strategy of giving their watches MSRP's 4 times what they intend to sell the watch for, and then pretending that, TODAY ONLY, they're offering an incredible deal, when it's the everyday deal; and using way too much gold plating. 

 

Positive: making some watches which actually function pretty well, and drawing the attention of a lot of first-time watch owners to a wonderful hobby)  -- but it's very hard for me to imagine myself ever wearing a Rolex. I would much rather be seen wearing the garish Invicta in that photo. 

As loyal readers of this blog know, this represents a complete change from 5 years ago, when I lusted after the platinum Rolex Daytona. What happened in those 5 years? I've learned a lot about watches. I know Rolexes are good watches, but today, they're overpriced to the point where it seems to me that you either have not know very much about watches, or ignore a lot of what you know, in order to shell out that much for a Rolex, when you can always, ALWAYS get a far superior watch for the same money. I just can't separate my reaction to the marketing and the prices from my reaction to the actual watches.

If that means I'm a watch snob, well then, I supposed I've become a watch snob. Even though my annual income is less than the average selling price for an entry-level Rolex, which is much, much higher than the MSRP for that Rolex. 

I personally don't think it's snobbery, it's actually concern about people being ripped off, and people investing in a risky bubble -- assuming that the Rolex bubble actually will burst at some point. And of course, it's POSSIBLE that it actually will NEVER burst. Financial bubbles, by defintion, are built on irrationality, and irrationality has never run to a sensible timetable.

Wonderful, Wonderful Dancers

Jane's Addiction's video of "Jane Says" splices shots from several performances together. In addition to the band, there are several gorgeous and very talented female dancers onstage. Starting at around 3:49 there is a shot of some of the dancers, a couple of seconds which just overpowered me. After examining those two seconds of video over and over, I can see that they merely show some of the dancers lying on their backs, one in front of the other from the point of view of the camera, and raising their limbs up and down. But this simple thing is danced and photographed so well that it is truly magic.

Also after watching those two seconds' worth of video over and over, It struck me that the dancing seems somewhat similar to some of the dancing featured early on in the movie Ocean's Eleven, when Brad Pitt's character Rusty is in a nightclub trying to teach movie stars to play poker, and there are dancers, male and female, in a couple of glass cubicles visible over the bar, and also visible in the backroom where the movie stars are playing hopelessly bad poker. 

I only first noticed the "Jane Says" video a few months ago. I first saw Ocean's Eleven shortly after it was released in 2001. There's a scene where Rusty is at the bar in that club. The bartender, apparently aware that Rusty is hanging out with movie stars back there in the backroom, asks him how it's going, Rusty replies that it's very boring, the bartender asks him to repeat himself, and Rusty says, louder, "I'm running away with your wife." The silly grin on the bartender's face doesn't change, apparently he still hasn't heard what Rusty is saying. 

In that same short scene at the bar, the song "The Projects" by the group Handsome Boy Modeling School is heard, with someone rapping the words "My wife sleeps peacefully." And one of the dancers, who looks as if she might be Jennifer Anniston, but I can't tell for sure because her hair is hanging down over her face, is on screen for maybe less than two seconds, but she's shaking in a glorious way that Jennifer Anniston and very few other people can do, and that shot is followed by a shot of Rusty staring as if one or more of the dancers has his full attention. 

Ocean's Eleven was released in 2001. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston were married from 2000 to 2005. That "Jane says" video was released in 1997. So my questions are: are any of those dancers in both the music video and movie? If not, did any of the dancers and/or their choreographers influence each other? Was that really Jennifer Anniston in an uncredited cameo? And if so, was the word "wife" tossed in twice to give attentive viewers such as myself a hint that they might be right, that it was Anniston? Were Pitt and Anniston on their honeymoon at the time the nightclub scene was filmed? Am I the greatest, most subtle film critic of them all?

None of these dancers, neither in the music video nor in the movie, are in the credits. Kelly Adkins, who is in the credits as "Dancer," is the showgirl in a nurse's outfit who gives a security guard a private dance at the Bellagio in order to borrow his pass. It would be entirely unfair to Kelly Adkins to finish this post without mentioning her. 

And now, if you've read this entire post, you have a much better idea of what I think about all day every day than you did a few paragraphs ago.

Facing my Book

Facing my boo-ooook

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiim facing my book

Agaaaaa-aaaain

Hey won't you look

At the way that I'm facing my book?

It's the way that I'm facing my book

I invite you to all take a look

At the way that I'm facing

Myyyyyy Boooooooooooooook!

Before and After Freud: the Case of Nietzsche

Instead of succumbing to the anti-semitism of Schopenhauer, Wagner and his own sister and brother-in-law, Nietzsche regarded individual human beings who happened to be Jewish, and praised Spinoza as his great predecessor and brother-spirit, and Heine along with himself as the two greatest German poets. 

Instead of joining in in the great chorus of German nationalism with followed the unification of 1871, Nietzsche chose to live south of Germany, was an early advocate of a united Europe, and was much more meticulously critical of his native Germany than of any other land. 

When it came to sexism and militarism, however, Nietzsche did not free himself of the destructive prejudices of his time. 

 

Living just a little bit too early to benefit from the insights of Sigmund Freud, he projected his own life, where his father died when he was a young boy, leaving him dominated by his mother and older sister, into a senseless critique, in his philosophical writings, of the entire female gender, and in particular steadfastly denying that women had any place either in the ruling of a state, or in the creation of serious literature or philosophy. Making the mistake he had avoided when it came to ethnic groups, regarding people -- well, men, at least -- as individuals, he always writes of women as an homogeneous group, with no brilliant individuals worthy of his detailed attention. He does mention George Sand, but only long enough to insult her.

If you've read his books first, his letters come as a complete surprise: he's quite mild-mannered, and as polite to numerous female correspondents as can be. No hint of the sexist contempt in his books.

And when it comes to war, Nietzsche, who was too frail to be accepted as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and saw it only as an orderly in the military hospitals, is as jingoistic as only those can be who have never fought. As with his sexist projection, the overcompensation of his glorification of war is as clear as can be to us, who have had the benefit of Freudian insights. I think Nietzsche may make a good Exhibit A if one ever debates against those who minimize the effect Freud has had on the world's collective consciousness. 

Did I Learn Anything from New Atheism?

From about 2012 to 2014, I spent a lot of online time with New Atheists and the people they argue with. I've written quite a lot about it on this blog.

When I first heard that there was a group called the New Atheists, I assumed I was one, because I am an atheist, and the time was now. 

 

But very quickly I found that I had some serious differences with the New Atheists. At first I pointed out a few things, assuming that people would be enlightened, and would thank me for the info. But that didn't happen. It happened much more often that New Atheists would assume I was a Christian, because I disagreed with them, even though I disagreed about something other than existence of God. 

In retrospect, ironically, no doubt I too prematurely assumed this and that about a lot of people with whom I disagreed on this or that religious topic.

Then for a while I feuded with the new Atheists, and constantly attempted to point out that one could be an atheist, without being anything like these guys. 

Then, finally, I figured out that I didn't have to waste any more of my time on them. I just had to stop seeking them, stop joining their Facebook groups, essentially, and it would be almost as if I had never met any of them. They could be Wrong On the Internet, and I was capable of just letting it go. And none of them would hunt me down in order to continue our disagreements.

As soon as I found the New Atheists, I found other people, whom I assumed to be Christians, who claimed that New Atheism was a religion. This claim greatly irritated me at first. Then, after a while, I realized that New Atheists do share many traits with conservative evangelical Christians, which is unsurprising inasmuch as many or perhaps actually most of them were born and raised in conservative evangelical Christian families. 

But I still resisted thinking of any form of atheism as a religion. Now I don't know. I have come to accept that the term "religion" is defined very broadly by some people.Much more broadly than I ever have. And, as I have pointed out on this blog, words mean what people use them to mean, whether you or I like that those words are being used in those ways, or not.

It is hard to express how much of a shock and a disappointment the New Atheists were to me. But in retrospect, I have to admit that I had a lot in common with them in 2012. Now, I hope, I have shed at least a few of their bad habits. 

For example, like most New Atheists, I thought of monotheistic religion as the belief in the existence of an anthropomorphized creator of the universe. Polythesim, I believed, differed in that it had multiple anthropomorphized supernatural beings. The first time someone told me the Buddhists were atheists, I assumed that if there were any atheist Buddhists, they were Doin' It Wrong, and that the Buddha and other beings were worshiped as immortal beings, much as in Hinduism.

I was wrong. Buddhism is a whole different religion than Hinduism, and I basically knew doodly-squat about it, despite having read Nietzsche.

One particularly obnoxious tendency of the New Atheists, which they share with many fundamentalist Christians, is that they regard their viewpoint concerning religion to be the most important thing in the world, and they are always sharing it with people who never asked them to. 

So did I, before I met them. Now I don't. I think it was rude of me to do so. Over and over again, in my attempts to debate with the New Atheists, I pointed out that the question of whether or not there was a God or gods could be thoroughly answered in a few seconds, which left a Hell of a lot of other things to talk about. I finally took an obvious lesson from what I myself was saying. I have become somewhat less pushy and rude, I hope, when it comes to expressing my views on religion. Especially that one particular view, on the existence of a deity or deities. Which leaves a lot of other things having to do with religion which can be discussed. 

The New Atheists sometimes also refer to themselves as the Brights. They believe that they are smarter than believers. But a lot of them are just as stupid as can be. Hopefully, after the horrible experience of spending so much time with them, I am now less likely to prematurely judge people, based on that one theistic question, or on any other over-simplifying basis.

I'm Officially Predicting: Rivian and Lucid Will NEVER Deliver

For just a moment I thought Lucid had actually beat Rivian in getting one of their vehicles into the hands of an actual customer. I saw the partial headline: "CEO Peter Rawlinson Delivers Lucid Air..." And I thought: What? Lucid is making deliveries?! And Rawlinson himself dropped off the first one in person?! That's class! (Assuming that Rawlinson then actually left and let the customer have the vehicle to him- or herself.)  

But no: The entire headline reads: "CEO Peter Rawlinson Delivers Lucid Air Production Keynote Address." 

 

Actual customer ownership of a Rivian or a Lucid remains just a dream. It'll never happen. That's right: I said: NEVER. That is my official prediction concerning when both of these companies will deliver vehicles: never. But they'll continue to make big splashy headlines on every other conceivable topic, of course... 

PS, Sep 2023: I was wrong, of course. Rivian is closing in on 6 figures of light trucks and SUV's plus who know how many bread trucks sold to Amazon and others, and Lucid makes AND SELLS very nice cars that'll do a standing 1/4 mile quicker than anything else that costs less than 7 figures.

Stop Saying "Iconic" All the Gosh-Darned Time, Watch Guys!

It's driving me up the friggin wall: watch guys saying "iconic" over and over and over and over. 

You use a word too often, it becomes meaningless. When it comes to "iconic" watches, we reached that point about 5 billion uses ago. It's time to wake up and smell the thesaurus.

Lots of people are overusing the word "iconic," but watch guys are among the worst offenders. Here are some synonyms for "iconic" : epochal. Exemplary. Quintessential. Classical. Seminal. Emblematic. Historic. Representative. Established. Esteemed. Admired. Dominant. Eminent. Acclaimed. Top-notch. Preeminent. Noteworthy. Reputable. Extolled. Big-league. Imposing. Highly regarded. Heavyweight. Premier. Glorious. Lionized. Remarkable.

You don't have to keep saying "iconic" every third sentence. You're welcome. And when you start over-using these, just do what I did: a Google search for synonyms.