If you have seen the "Jay Walking" segments on The Tonight Show, you know that when you stick a TV camera in a person's face they say some pretty stupid things.
This video is one of the scarier and more depressing things I have seen.
HOWEVER... The people on this video were not expecting to be asked questions. They never claimed to have any kind of knowledge of world geography and politics, and the video is edited so that we only see the wrong answers. This type of editing is VERY deceptive, and is the same thing that made David Blaine and "Miss Cleo" look so impressive on TV.
It is tempting to say that the producers could have talked to 1000 Americans to find 40 stupid ones. But the truth is that they didn't have to find stupid people, just people with one or more stupid answers.
Notice the one guy in the video who answered correctly (if inarticulately) that Al-Qaeda was a group of suicide bombers, before slipping to say that their leader was Yasser Arafat. (There are those who might argue for partial credit on that point, too!) Now, ask yourself: How many questions did they ask him? Did they also ask all of those other questions, like "A country that starts with 'U'?", or "How many sides does a triangle have?", or "What's the currency of the United Kingdom?" did he answer 90 or more percent of them right, before slipping ONCE?
Also notice how bewildered these people look, as they are accosted on the street with a camera and quizzed about foreign affairs. Notice that some of them are on the lookout for "Trick Questions", which makes them more hesitant to answer the "obvious". And in fact there are Trick Questions. To help them look stupid, they are given fake maps, with the continent of Australia intentionally mislabeled. (Yes, they should have recognized Australia anyway, but The point that I am making is that the deck was stacked against these unwitting participants from the start)
Now take a look at another video, of some "superior" European intellects in action. If Americans are so dumb, why are you copying our television shows, then?
Now my question is this: Is Copernicus spinning in his Grave, or is his Grave spinning around Him?
Actually, I think the culprit here may not be American Culture or European Culture, but Television Culture. Maybe what your momma told you was true, and TV does rot your brain!
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
The Sprite Incident - Part 1 of 3: Opryland
This is (eventually) the story of the second time I was ever Fired from a job. It is a very long story, so I have broken it up into three posts. I hope it amuses you.
The Sprite Incident: Chapter One
Opryland USA Theme Park, August 1997
I was employed at the (now sadly non-existent) Opryland, USA amusement park in the Summer of 1997, the last year that the park was open before they built a big mall where it had been. My siblings and I all worked there that summer, and some of my extended family used to joke that we were the reason the park closed down. My sister, Anna, started there first, and got a referral bonus for referring my brother, and my brother, Jeremy, got the bonus for referring me. Anna worked in the "Games" division taking money from suckers who wanted to try their luck at games that generally involved hitting something with a projectile, and handing out gigantic stuffed animals to the few who succeeded. Jeremy worked in the "Food" division making funnel cakes,and turning his clothing into paper mache, and his shoes into Flour Bricks. I had the most glamorous job of all, in the "Rides" division, working on the rollercoaster tracks all the live-long day. My job was the coolest because, hey, let's face it; people don't go to the amusement park just to spend too much money on funnel cakes and not winning a 6-foot-tall stuffed Tweety Bird. They go for the rides!
All three of our jobs were in the excruciating Nashville Summer Heat, though. Opryland knew that they were exposing their employees to potentially dangerous dehydration, and so mandated each station have a water cooler and cups available. So even though my job was in the heat, I was not without the crisp cool refreshing hydration that water provides.
Except when my co-workers got clever.
The ride I worked at most during my time at the park was CHAOS, a science fiction themed indoor rollercoaster featuring various levels of multimedia effects. The long hallway that housed the line for the ride had a concession stand at the entrance. When the ride station was set up early in the morning, some of the employees discovered that instead of going down to the spigot to fill the 5-gallon cooler with water, they could go raid the concession stand before it opened, and snag 5 gallons of free soda! And, of course, so that the bosses would be none the wiser, they got the soda that most closely resembled water - Sprite. They thought themselves Fiendishly Clever.
The only problem with this plan was that when it is August in Tennessee, and you've been working all day in a non-air-conditioned enclosed space with 90 bodies and a 44-car rollercoaster train constantly making it even hotter, and you really really want some water, and you don't KNOW that the stuff in the water cooler isn't water, and you take a big swig, you really do not appreciate getting sickly-sweet, corn-syrupy, carbonated, citrus-flavored goo instead. It is quite enough to turn you off of Sprite forever. Which it did. As a matter of fact I just relived the experience a bit more than I would have liked while typing this paragraph.
Chapter Two:
My career: From the Literal Rollercoaster to the Metaphorical one.
The Sprite Incident: Chapter One
Opryland USA Theme Park, August 1997
I was employed at the (now sadly non-existent) Opryland, USA amusement park in the Summer of 1997, the last year that the park was open before they built a big mall where it had been. My siblings and I all worked there that summer, and some of my extended family used to joke that we were the reason the park closed down. My sister, Anna, started there first, and got a referral bonus for referring my brother, and my brother, Jeremy, got the bonus for referring me. Anna worked in the "Games" division taking money from suckers who wanted to try their luck at games that generally involved hitting something with a projectile, and handing out gigantic stuffed animals to the few who succeeded. Jeremy worked in the "Food" division making funnel cakes,and turning his clothing into paper mache, and his shoes into Flour Bricks. I had the most glamorous job of all, in the "Rides" division, working on the rollercoaster tracks all the live-long day. My job was the coolest because, hey, let's face it; people don't go to the amusement park just to spend too much money on funnel cakes and not winning a 6-foot-tall stuffed Tweety Bird. They go for the rides!
All three of our jobs were in the excruciating Nashville Summer Heat, though. Opryland knew that they were exposing their employees to potentially dangerous dehydration, and so mandated each station have a water cooler and cups available. So even though my job was in the heat, I was not without the crisp cool refreshing hydration that water provides.
Except when my co-workers got clever.
The ride I worked at most during my time at the park was CHAOS, a science fiction themed indoor rollercoaster featuring various levels of multimedia effects. The long hallway that housed the line for the ride had a concession stand at the entrance. When the ride station was set up early in the morning, some of the employees discovered that instead of going down to the spigot to fill the 5-gallon cooler with water, they could go raid the concession stand before it opened, and snag 5 gallons of free soda! And, of course, so that the bosses would be none the wiser, they got the soda that most closely resembled water - Sprite. They thought themselves Fiendishly Clever.
The only problem with this plan was that when it is August in Tennessee, and you've been working all day in a non-air-conditioned enclosed space with 90 bodies and a 44-car rollercoaster train constantly making it even hotter, and you really really want some water, and you don't KNOW that the stuff in the water cooler isn't water, and you take a big swig, you really do not appreciate getting sickly-sweet, corn-syrupy, carbonated, citrus-flavored goo instead. It is quite enough to turn you off of Sprite forever. Which it did. As a matter of fact I just relived the experience a bit more than I would have liked while typing this paragraph.
Chapter Two:
My career: From the Literal Rollercoaster to the Metaphorical one.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Movie Tuesday: Goodfellas
OK, kids, it's that special Day of the week again, When I share my movie experiences with you.
Goodfellas - 5 stars
In this space I have already reviewed 2 Martin Scorsese Films. The Departed(his 2006 film, which rocked) and Taxi Driver (his 1976 film, which stunk). What would I think of Goodfellas, his 1990 film?
Wow.
"Wow", is what I think, on two levels. Wow, it is a really great film, and one deserving of its place in cinema history. (At the time of this posting, it is #16 on IMDB.com's Top 250, just above Fellowship Of The Ring, and just below Raiders Of The Lost Ark.) But also, Wow, this movie really does glamorize violent, criminal, sleazoid behavior.
Before I finish that line of thought, a few things about the fim for those of you who haven't seen it, or heard too terribly much about it. Goodfellas is based on a Book, which is based on the True Story of the character we know in the movie as Henry Hill. The movie is narrated in the past tense by Henry, and occasionally co-narrated by his wife. From this, we can tell two things if we really think about it. One: neither Henry nor his wife is gonna get "Whacked" in this movie, or else they wouldn't be able to write a book. Two: Henry is gonna have to give up the life of crime and get some kind of immunity from prosecution, or else he wouldn't be publishing a book full of details of his heinous crimes. (And the crimes of a lot of other, powerful people that could have him "Whacked")
So, knowing that, you can watch Goodfellas secure in the knowledge that even though some really rough stuff might happen along the way, and even though you don't like the direction his life is going, morally, that he's gonna clean up his act, and "go straight" in the end. But there's a twist, and if you don't want to know what it is stop reading now, go watch the movie, and come back. ...Go on, I 'll wait.... The twist is, when he does change his ways, when he finally "rats out" the murderous thugs who would have killed him, he hates it. He despises "Going Straight". The movie makes clear that he did it only to save his life, and even though he has gone legally straight, and avoided actual criminal acts, morally he is still as crooked as Lombard Street.
The "No Regrets Whatsoever" theme is woven throughout the film. The Narrator's first line in the movie, while we see a bound victim in a car trunk murdered, is "As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a Gangster". As an Animaniacs fan, I have trouble not substituting "Goodfeather" for that last word. Even the title, "Goodfellas", tells you who the "heroes" are in this film.
All that said, it is an awesome movie, wonderfully written, edited, acted and directed, and a real piece of art. This movie defined Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci for my generation, and Pesci's "Funny how? Am I a Clown, I'm Here to amuse, you, What? How am I funny?" routine has become a staple of pop culture. Here is the movie's synopsis in limerick form.
A Filmerick™ by Frank Gibson
Henry Wanted To Be In The Mob,
To Help Score on Some Really Big Job,
But He Changed his Direction,
Got Witness Protection,
And Is Now Just A Regular Slob
RIYL: Casino, The Departed, Blow
Goodfellas - 5 stars
In this space I have already reviewed 2 Martin Scorsese Films. The Departed(his 2006 film, which rocked) and Taxi Driver (his 1976 film, which stunk). What would I think of Goodfellas, his 1990 film?
Wow.
"Wow", is what I think, on two levels. Wow, it is a really great film, and one deserving of its place in cinema history. (At the time of this posting, it is #16 on IMDB.com's Top 250, just above Fellowship Of The Ring, and just below Raiders Of The Lost Ark.) But also, Wow, this movie really does glamorize violent, criminal, sleazoid behavior.
Before I finish that line of thought, a few things about the fim for those of you who haven't seen it, or heard too terribly much about it. Goodfellas is based on a Book, which is based on the True Story of the character we know in the movie as Henry Hill. The movie is narrated in the past tense by Henry, and occasionally co-narrated by his wife. From this, we can tell two things if we really think about it. One: neither Henry nor his wife is gonna get "Whacked" in this movie, or else they wouldn't be able to write a book. Two: Henry is gonna have to give up the life of crime and get some kind of immunity from prosecution, or else he wouldn't be publishing a book full of details of his heinous crimes. (And the crimes of a lot of other, powerful people that could have him "Whacked")
So, knowing that, you can watch Goodfellas secure in the knowledge that even though some really rough stuff might happen along the way, and even though you don't like the direction his life is going, morally, that he's gonna clean up his act, and "go straight" in the end. But there's a twist, and if you don't want to know what it is stop reading now, go watch the movie, and come back. ...Go on, I 'll wait.... The twist is, when he does change his ways, when he finally "rats out" the murderous thugs who would have killed him, he hates it. He despises "Going Straight". The movie makes clear that he did it only to save his life, and even though he has gone legally straight, and avoided actual criminal acts, morally he is still as crooked as Lombard Street.
The "No Regrets Whatsoever" theme is woven throughout the film. The Narrator's first line in the movie, while we see a bound victim in a car trunk murdered, is "As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a Gangster". As an Animaniacs fan, I have trouble not substituting "Goodfeather" for that last word. Even the title, "Goodfellas", tells you who the "heroes" are in this film.
All that said, it is an awesome movie, wonderfully written, edited, acted and directed, and a real piece of art. This movie defined Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci for my generation, and Pesci's "Funny how? Am I a Clown, I'm Here to amuse, you, What? How am I funny?" routine has become a staple of pop culture. Here is the movie's synopsis in limerick form.
A Filmerick™ by Frank Gibson
Henry Wanted To Be In The Mob,
To Help Score on Some Really Big Job,
But He Changed his Direction,
Got Witness Protection,
And Is Now Just A Regular Slob
RIYL: Casino, The Departed, Blow
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Things I've Never Done
- Been to New York
- Ridden a Segway Human Transporter
- Been Divorced
- Directed a Play, or Film
- Smoked Pot
- Gotten Drunk
- Skydived
- Forgotten My Wedding Anniversary
- Completed the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Sunday 16X16 sudoku puzzle
- Been Arrested
- Been Shot or Stabbed
- Been Surfing or Water-Skiing
- Been Snowboarding or Snow Skiing
- Been to the Grand Canyon
- Been off a Diving Board
- Cheated on a Test
- Been to Canada
- Been Overseas
- Lived outside of Tennessee
- Won a fistfight
- Been down a Manhole
- Considered Joining the Military
- Watched a NASCAR race
- Been to a Tractor Pull
- Bought a Microwave, Refrigerator, or DVD player
- Seen a Bear in the Woods
- Had Poison Ivy
- Served on a Jury
- Been Injured on-the-Job
- Skinny-Dipped
- Been in a Hurricane, Tornado, Earthquake, or Forest Fire.
- Been to Las Vegas
- Eaten Frog Legs
- Been Robbed, Mugged, or Burgled
- Played Soccer
- Been to Bonnaroo
- Been on a Cruise
- Owned a Reptile
- Gotten a Tattoo
- Been Scuba Diving or Snorkeling
Things I've Done
- Been an Award Winning Magician
- Won a Spelling Bee
- Bungee Jumped
- Met the Philly Phanatic (and a dozen other baseball and hockey Mascots)
- Flown in an Ultralight Aircraft
- Stood on the edge of a hang gliding ramp
- Driven from Nashville, Tennessee to Grand Forks, North Dakota in 23 hours
- Had a Job Selling Guns
- Fired a Shotgun
- Fired a Handgun
- Flown in a Hot Air Balloon
- Sat "On The Glass" at a Nashville Predators Game
- Worked For The Nashville Predators
- Gone Squirrel Hunting (never actually saw a squirrel)
- Caught a Bass
- Ridden in a Speedboat
- Partied on a Houseboat
- Been in a "Rollover" car accident while driving (not seatbelted)
- Been in a "Rollover" car accident while my brother drove (seatbelted)
- Wrecked a Motorscooter
- Been in the back of an ambulance (twice)
- Been in a coma (twice)
- Been knocked unconcious due to a head injury (twice)
- Been rescued from near-drowning (twice)
- Been bitten on the face by a guard dog (only once!)
- Been in the Dome of the U.S. Capitol Building
- Been to Bourbon Street
- Been to the St. Louis Arch
- Been to Hollywood
- Been To Alcatraz
- Been To the Muir Redwood Forest
- Been camping in the Smoky Mountains for a week
- Been a Boy Scout
- Been a Professional Actor
- Eaten a watermelon I grew myself
- Built my own computer from parts
- Danced with the devil in the pale moonlight
- Okay, that last one one was a joke just to see if you were still reading
- Been in an elevator with Vince Gill and Amy Grant
- Been shot across a hockey rink by a giant slingshot in front of thousands of people
- Watched from above as "Gnash" rappelled out of the Nashville Arena's rafters
- Been to an Olympic-Level target-shooting tournament
- Sat at the WSMV Channel 4 News Anchor Desk
- Been Fired For throwing A Sprite Bottle
- Received a Below-Zero grade on a school project in 4th Grade. (negative 7, I think)
- Ran Away From Kindergarten
- Been next in line to be strip searched by my 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Lyle
- Sat in the place where "We Shall Overcome" was written.
- Unwittingly driven a Little Old Lady to her crack dealer, and then back to her hotel
- Helped Castrate a Horse
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Odds, Ends, and Assorted Miscellany
Assorted Miscellany
-for your consideration-
- It Rained in Southeastern Tennessee Last night. YAY! I have a rain collection cistern that sits below my gutter. It has been completely empty for over a week. Last night it refilled, almost all the way to the top! There was thunder and lightning and a little wind, and the temperature fell down to the 70's for the first time in recent memory. I laid out on my front porch for about an hour in order to experience it better
- Yes, Jeremy; frank gibson is going to be posting about this in his daily blog of the day.
- I biked from the Airport all the way home this morning. Nearly 5 miles. A big step up from when I posted this only 27 days ago. I live in the freaking MOUNTAINS, people! They're STEEP!
- I just sent a reader, who shared my love of The Princess Bride, my top ten most frequent spontaneously occurring Princess Bride quotes. Here they are, not in any particular order:
- Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?
- Vizzini: Inconthievable!!
- Montoya: You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.
- Montoya:I know something you don't know; I'm not left-handed!
- Miracle Max: And you shouldn't go swimming for, what, an hour.. At least an hour!
- Miracle Max's wife: LIAR!!
- Westley: No... To the PAIN!
- Westley(falling down slope): AAAS YOOU WIIISH!
- Vizzini: Wait 'til I get going!
- Miracle Max's wife: I'm not a witch, I'm your wife!
- You can go here for more great quotes from the film.
- My wife and I got new phones. They've got 1.3 Megapixels. That's 1.3 more Megapixels than my last phone had. It also has a video camera. Practically the same day I got the camera, Blogger added a Video Podcast mode. A lot of the people this blog is targeted at have either a really slow dial up connection, or are "teck-muh-lah jik-ly" challenged, so let me reassure you folks, that I will be primarily sticking to text-based communication, for the most part, but I might add a video once a week, if I can work out the technical aspect of things from my side.
- Here's a test video, mostly of my dog Longjohn, with a brief cameo appearance by his "sister", Pepper (the Dalmatian) and his "foster sister" Jelly (the puppy). This is old video, and Jelly (along with her sister, Peanut Butter) has now gone on to find a "forever home" thanks to the Franklin County Humane Society
- I am seriously considering adding advertisements to my blog. Google keeps taunting me with their little gizmo to put ads on my blog. I resisted at first, but I have room over in the sidebar, underneath all the old polls. So my question to you dear readers is: If I want to make a dollar or so extra a week by letting Google sell you stuff, does that make me a bad person?
- My blog's traffic is increasing ever so incrementally. here is what my Traffic-tracker graph looks like as of this afternoon:
- That Great big peak in the middle is from the day that my loving wife sent an email out to every professional, personal, and family contact in her entire address book with a link to my post about flying in an ultralight aircraft. If you take that big peak in the middle out, then it starts to look like steady progress. So, if you know someone who would appreciate one of my witty articles, then you can spam th... I mean, send them a link, so they can find my site with its incredibly long, redundant, hard to type name. Just click on the picture of the little envelope below the post you would like to share. Then add a little note saying "Hey, you should read this, Frank said all sorts of horrible nasty things about you!", or whatever other reason you could think of that they should want to read it.
- Also, those of you who have Digg, Del.icio.us, or Stumbleupon accounts, don't forget to give a "digg" or a bookmark or a "thumbs up" to your old pal Frank! You can use the little buttons at the bottom of each post to do it.
- Thanks again to my loyal readers. Be sure and vote for Smurfette or Betty Boop before tomorrow morning, if you were going to - polls close after tonight. Oh, and I haven't gotten around to using the word Juxtaplode yet, so: JUXTAPLODE!
- I will leave you with this question... What happens when you combine four kittens with a twelve pack of fully caffeinated Coca-Cola? This happens. (I am unsure of whether or not the kittens actually consumed all the drinks, but it sure would explain a lot. Enjoy!)
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Tales of Clerkdom: The Lost Dishman
Hello, Blogophiles!
Today I bring you "Tales of Clerkdom", and the Customer of the Week. Enjoy!
One of the things I missed about my job at the Gallon while I was gone was getting to talk to the local cops. While I worked night shift, the cops and newspaper carriers from all the surrounding districts and jurisdictions would be a large portion of the people I would interact with. I was on friendly terms with all of them, and their visits helped pass the time during the long nights.
Well, while I was away, the newspapers all got consolidated, so that the one guy who used to bring me the Nashville Tennessean, now delivers all three of the daily papers. Also while I was away, My Fair City got a New Chief of Police, and the night-shift cops I had known so well got promoted to day-shift, and a couple of new, young, cops got put on nights. The new guys are odd characters, and I am not sure what to think about them. I will probably have more to say about them in a later post, but for we will call them Officer Doug* and Officer Jerry*.
Officer Doug was hanging around the store, talking to me about something or other, when he looked out the window and interrupted me, saying, "I think I'm about to get talked to".
Three people then walked through the door. A young, good looking black couple, and an elderly man who, sure enough, wanted to talk to Officer Doug. He approached with a small card in his hand.
"Excuse me, do you know how to get to..." He looked down at the card, reading, "..Ool -teh- wah?"
To those of you to whom that sounded like baby talk, Ooltewah is the actual name of an actual city just outside of Chattanooga, which, If you think about it, has just as silly-sounding a name. Anyway the word is Cherokee for "Owl's Nest", but the locals usually pronounce it more like "Ootle-wah", or "oodewa" depending on how strong their accent is.
Officer Doug knew something was wrong. He had been observing the man's approach to the building, and had noticed the man was acting erratically. He decided to answer the question with a question.
"What are you heading to Ootlewah for?" Officer Doug said, giving the word the correct local mispronunciation.
"I live there."
Officer Doug and I shared a look. That was creepy, The man couldn't find or correctly pronounce the name of the place where he lived? I then realized the card in his hand was his Driver's License. He had had to check his own ID to find his address!
His story was, he had gotten off work at midnight, taken a wrong turn, and had been lost for the last two and a half hours. His wife was freaking out, he said, because he was so late, but he just gets lost real easy, and if we could just point him the right direction to Ooltewah, he would be really grateful.
I knew where Ooltewah was. It was just a bit northeast of Chattanooga on interstate 75. I started to help this obviously troubled man, but Officer Doug cut me off with a sharp look, and continued his friendly, conversational, interrogation.
"Where do you work?"
"At the T.G.I. Thursday's*, in Hixson. I'm a Dishman, there." he said, a little too loudly.
Hixson is an area in northern Chattanooga. Ooltewah is, as previously mentioned, just slighty north and east of Chattanooga. He was talking to me about fifty miles west of Chattanooga. He had gotten really, badly, lost. After a few more questions along the lines of"Are you OK?" and "Are you sure everything's all right?" Officer Doug retreated into a calculating silence, and I broke the directions down as simply as I could for this poor guy, who had just turned a 30-minute commute into a five-hour drive by getting on the interstate going the wrong direction. He repeated the directions back to me, making sure he had it, and they seemed to be ringing the right bells, so he left, shuffling back out to his car, which was parked on the far end of the parking lot.
The young couple who had come in at the same time as him approached the counter to pay for their stuff. Officer Doug was still chewing over the situation. He asked the young lady what the old man had asked her in the parking lot. Apparently the man had shared his predicament with her much the same as he had with us, only she was not from the area and had no idea where anything was.
After she paid for her stuff and left, Doug and I were still mulling over the situation. Doug didn't like to just let the guy go, in the state he was in, but didn't feel quite justified in arresting him just for being lost. Because the old-timer had parked so far away, and because he moved so slow, he was just leaving the parking lot after the young couple had already taken off. He turned left out of the parking lot, toward the interstate exit, but as we watched, we noticed that he hadn't crossed the median when he turned and was now headed east in the westbound lanes of the divided highway! Officer Doug let out a curse, jumped out the door into his car, and, with quite a bit more tire squealing than I though was strictly necessary, sped off after the Lost Dishman of Ooltewah.
A couple of days later, I saw Officer Doug again, and asked him what had become of the Lost Dishman. Turns out, he had suffered that night from "Sudden-Onset" Alzheimer's Disease. Before he left work that night, he hadn't had a single syptom, according to his wife. But somewhere on the road it struck, and two hours later he had to check his own ID to find out where he lived.
These are the sorts of things you see, in my line of work, as a gas station clerk.
* This is a true story, only the names have been changed to protect the itinerant.
Today I bring you "Tales of Clerkdom", and the Customer of the Week. Enjoy!
One of the things I missed about my job at the Gallon while I was gone was getting to talk to the local cops. While I worked night shift, the cops and newspaper carriers from all the surrounding districts and jurisdictions would be a large portion of the people I would interact with. I was on friendly terms with all of them, and their visits helped pass the time during the long nights.
Well, while I was away, the newspapers all got consolidated, so that the one guy who used to bring me the Nashville Tennessean, now delivers all three of the daily papers. Also while I was away, My Fair City got a New Chief of Police, and the night-shift cops I had known so well got promoted to day-shift, and a couple of new, young, cops got put on nights. The new guys are odd characters, and I am not sure what to think about them. I will probably have more to say about them in a later post, but for we will call them Officer Doug* and Officer Jerry*.
Officer Doug was hanging around the store, talking to me about something or other, when he looked out the window and interrupted me, saying, "I think I'm about to get talked to".
Three people then walked through the door. A young, good looking black couple, and an elderly man who, sure enough, wanted to talk to Officer Doug. He approached with a small card in his hand.
"Excuse me, do you know how to get to..." He looked down at the card, reading, "..Ool -teh- wah?"
To those of you to whom that sounded like baby talk, Ooltewah is the actual name of an actual city just outside of Chattanooga, which, If you think about it, has just as silly-sounding a name. Anyway the word is Cherokee for "Owl's Nest", but the locals usually pronounce it more like "Ootle-wah", or "oodewa" depending on how strong their accent is.
Officer Doug knew something was wrong. He had been observing the man's approach to the building, and had noticed the man was acting erratically. He decided to answer the question with a question.
"What are you heading to Ootlewah for?" Officer Doug said, giving the word the correct local mispronunciation.
"I live there."
Officer Doug and I shared a look. That was creepy, The man couldn't find or correctly pronounce the name of the place where he lived? I then realized the card in his hand was his Driver's License. He had had to check his own ID to find his address!
His story was, he had gotten off work at midnight, taken a wrong turn, and had been lost for the last two and a half hours. His wife was freaking out, he said, because he was so late, but he just gets lost real easy, and if we could just point him the right direction to Ooltewah, he would be really grateful.
I knew where Ooltewah was. It was just a bit northeast of Chattanooga on interstate 75. I started to help this obviously troubled man, but Officer Doug cut me off with a sharp look, and continued his friendly, conversational, interrogation.
"Where do you work?"
"At the T.G.I. Thursday's*, in Hixson. I'm a Dishman, there." he said, a little too loudly.
Hixson is an area in northern Chattanooga. Ooltewah is, as previously mentioned, just slighty north and east of Chattanooga. He was talking to me about fifty miles west of Chattanooga. He had gotten really, badly, lost. After a few more questions along the lines of"Are you OK?" and "Are you sure everything's all right?" Officer Doug retreated into a calculating silence, and I broke the directions down as simply as I could for this poor guy, who had just turned a 30-minute commute into a five-hour drive by getting on the interstate going the wrong direction. He repeated the directions back to me, making sure he had it, and they seemed to be ringing the right bells, so he left, shuffling back out to his car, which was parked on the far end of the parking lot.
The young couple who had come in at the same time as him approached the counter to pay for their stuff. Officer Doug was still chewing over the situation. He asked the young lady what the old man had asked her in the parking lot. Apparently the man had shared his predicament with her much the same as he had with us, only she was not from the area and had no idea where anything was.
After she paid for her stuff and left, Doug and I were still mulling over the situation. Doug didn't like to just let the guy go, in the state he was in, but didn't feel quite justified in arresting him just for being lost. Because the old-timer had parked so far away, and because he moved so slow, he was just leaving the parking lot after the young couple had already taken off. He turned left out of the parking lot, toward the interstate exit, but as we watched, we noticed that he hadn't crossed the median when he turned and was now headed east in the westbound lanes of the divided highway! Officer Doug let out a curse, jumped out the door into his car, and, with quite a bit more tire squealing than I though was strictly necessary, sped off after the Lost Dishman of Ooltewah.
A couple of days later, I saw Officer Doug again, and asked him what had become of the Lost Dishman. Turns out, he had suffered that night from "Sudden-Onset" Alzheimer's Disease. Before he left work that night, he hadn't had a single syptom, according to his wife. But somewhere on the road it struck, and two hours later he had to check his own ID to find out where he lived.
These are the sorts of things you see, in my line of work, as a gas station clerk.
* This is a true story, only the names have been changed to protect the itinerant.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Movie Tuesday - My Favorites
I didn't really watch any movies this week, so I can't report on any. I figure I will use the space today to list some of my favorite movies of all time, in no particular order.
The Shawshank Redemption - I got to re-watch a large portion of this movie on my Texan Vacation. I knew it was a classic, but had forgotten why. it is terrific. Tim Robbins is wonderful, the supporting cast is wonderful, this script is gritty enough to make you cringe but not realistic enough to send you running away screaming, and best of all, in my book, the Ending is perfectly executed.
The Princess Bride - This movie occupies a special place in my heart. It is intentionally cheesy, cleverly written, perfectly paced, and highly, highly quotable (at least by nerds like me). Cary Elwes has been in several other memorable roles, but to me, he will always be Westley/the Dread Pirate Roberts to me.
The Green Mile - From the same folks that brought you the Shawshank Redemption, an equally thoughtful, equally gritty, look at a different prison from a different angle. This one, however, throws in an odd supernatural element. Part of this movie was filmed at College Grove United Methodist Church, where my Dad is currently the pastor.
The Jungle Book (live action version) - Much of this movie was filmed at Fall Creek Falls, where my family used to go at least once a Summer when we lived in McMinnville, TN. Add a few tropical plants, and some monkeys, and the Tennesseean woods becomes the Indian Jungle! I really liked the way they blended the animal sounds into Mowgli's speech. Also, this movie stars Cary "Dread Pirate Westley" Elwes as the villain.
John Q. - One of the only movies to ever make me cry. Nuff Said.
I Am Sam - The Other Movie that made me cry.
Twister - I saw this movie in the Theater at least six times. Looking back, I have no Idea why. The movie's special effects were good for its time, but the ending bugged me even at the time. I think the giant crush I had on Helen Hunt probably had something to do with it. Also, this movie stars Cary "Dread Pirate Westley" Elwes as the villain.
Mystery Men - This movie is about as awesome as a movie can get. Superhero Comedies are really few and far between, and until they make "The Tick" into a Major Motion Picture, This will probably top the Genre. Mr Furious reminded me of one or two people I know, and the fate of Greg Kinnear's "Captain Amazing", nearly unprecedented in film, is the best part of the movie.
Batman Begins - I have mentioned in other places on this site the fact that I think Christopher Nolan and M. Knight Shyamalan are the two best directors in the universe. And of course, when one of the best directors on earth (Nolan) takes on one of the best characters on earth (Batman), then you get movie magic. Can't wait for the Sequel.
Unbreakable - This one was not so loved by the masses, mostly because it came right on the heels of "The Sixth Sense", but I thought that this movie was the movie that I would have made If I made movies. I like all of Shyamalan's films, and there is no doubt that "The Sixth Sense" is still his best, but my predilection for superheroes made me like "Unbreakable" more than most.
The Negotiator - Samuel L. Jackson vs. Kevin Spacey with a supporting cast of the highest quality character actors around. I need to see this one again, because I don't remember enough about it, but I do remember that I really loved it.
Office Space - A piece of modern day satire so scathingly honest you have to laugh tokeep form crying. This film has contributed a whole load of catchphrases and cliches into the modern vocabulary. As a matter of fact, I have made reference to this movie twice in my last few posts! ("a case of the Mondays", "pieces of flair")
Napoleon Dynamite - As frequently quoted as Office Space, but tackling High School and Family, rather than the Workplace.
Howard The Duck - Just kidding... Just making sure you were still paying attention. I did actually see this one in the theater, way back when I was a young kid in Nashville.
The Game - Creepy, Creepy, Movie. You leave the theater halfway relieved, halfway wanting to hurt somebody. Guaranteed to mess with you.
A River Runs Through It - this is another one like "The Negotiator" that I should see again, because I don't remember enough about it, But I remember thinking that it was pretty much a masterpiece of a movie.
Fight Club - I'm not allowed to talk about Fight Club. It's Rule number one. Oops, I may already have said too much!
The One - The most unique plot ever in a Sci-fi Film. Cool stunts/effects, nifty ending.
The Matrix - The second most unique plot ever in a Sci-fi Film. Even Cooler Effects. Too bad about the sequels, though.
The Opposite of Sex - A terrific movie with a great cast of characters, narrated by the greatest one of all.
The Lord Of The Rings trilogy - How could I not include the movie franchise on which I have spent more hours and money than any other? I have a resin-cast staue of Gollum and Minas Tirith in my house. Peter Jackson now has an amazing reputation, only very slightly tarnished by putting Jack Black and face eating slugs in King Kong.
Well, that is all for this week, Beloved Readers... Join Me next Tuesday for a fun-packed, info-cational review or two.
The Shawshank Redemption - I got to re-watch a large portion of this movie on my Texan Vacation. I knew it was a classic, but had forgotten why. it is terrific. Tim Robbins is wonderful, the supporting cast is wonderful, this script is gritty enough to make you cringe but not realistic enough to send you running away screaming, and best of all, in my book, the Ending is perfectly executed.
The Princess Bride - This movie occupies a special place in my heart. It is intentionally cheesy, cleverly written, perfectly paced, and highly, highly quotable (at least by nerds like me). Cary Elwes has been in several other memorable roles, but to me, he will always be Westley/the Dread Pirate Roberts to me.
The Green Mile - From the same folks that brought you the Shawshank Redemption, an equally thoughtful, equally gritty, look at a different prison from a different angle. This one, however, throws in an odd supernatural element. Part of this movie was filmed at College Grove United Methodist Church, where my Dad is currently the pastor.
The Jungle Book (live action version) - Much of this movie was filmed at Fall Creek Falls, where my family used to go at least once a Summer when we lived in McMinnville, TN. Add a few tropical plants, and some monkeys, and the Tennesseean woods becomes the Indian Jungle! I really liked the way they blended the animal sounds into Mowgli's speech. Also, this movie stars Cary "Dread Pirate Westley" Elwes as the villain.
John Q. - One of the only movies to ever make me cry. Nuff Said.
I Am Sam - The Other Movie that made me cry.
Twister - I saw this movie in the Theater at least six times. Looking back, I have no Idea why. The movie's special effects were good for its time, but the ending bugged me even at the time. I think the giant crush I had on Helen Hunt probably had something to do with it. Also, this movie stars Cary "Dread Pirate Westley" Elwes as the villain.
Mystery Men - This movie is about as awesome as a movie can get. Superhero Comedies are really few and far between, and until they make "The Tick" into a Major Motion Picture, This will probably top the Genre. Mr Furious reminded me of one or two people I know, and the fate of Greg Kinnear's "Captain Amazing", nearly unprecedented in film, is the best part of the movie.
Batman Begins - I have mentioned in other places on this site the fact that I think Christopher Nolan and M. Knight Shyamalan are the two best directors in the universe. And of course, when one of the best directors on earth (Nolan) takes on one of the best characters on earth (Batman), then you get movie magic. Can't wait for the Sequel.
Unbreakable - This one was not so loved by the masses, mostly because it came right on the heels of "The Sixth Sense", but I thought that this movie was the movie that I would have made If I made movies. I like all of Shyamalan's films, and there is no doubt that "The Sixth Sense" is still his best, but my predilection for superheroes made me like "Unbreakable" more than most.
The Negotiator - Samuel L. Jackson vs. Kevin Spacey with a supporting cast of the highest quality character actors around. I need to see this one again, because I don't remember enough about it, but I do remember that I really loved it.
Office Space - A piece of modern day satire so scathingly honest you have to laugh tokeep form crying. This film has contributed a whole load of catchphrases and cliches into the modern vocabulary. As a matter of fact, I have made reference to this movie twice in my last few posts! ("a case of the Mondays", "pieces of flair")
Napoleon Dynamite - As frequently quoted as Office Space, but tackling High School and Family, rather than the Workplace.
Howard The Duck - Just kidding... Just making sure you were still paying attention. I did actually see this one in the theater, way back when I was a young kid in Nashville.
The Game - Creepy, Creepy, Movie. You leave the theater halfway relieved, halfway wanting to hurt somebody. Guaranteed to mess with you.
A River Runs Through It - this is another one like "The Negotiator" that I should see again, because I don't remember enough about it, But I remember thinking that it was pretty much a masterpiece of a movie.
Fight Club - I'm not allowed to talk about Fight Club. It's Rule number one. Oops, I may already have said too much!
The One - The most unique plot ever in a Sci-fi Film. Cool stunts/effects, nifty ending.
The Matrix - The second most unique plot ever in a Sci-fi Film. Even Cooler Effects. Too bad about the sequels, though.
The Opposite of Sex - A terrific movie with a great cast of characters, narrated by the greatest one of all.
The Lord Of The Rings trilogy - How could I not include the movie franchise on which I have spent more hours and money than any other? I have a resin-cast staue of Gollum and Minas Tirith in my house. Peter Jackson now has an amazing reputation, only very slightly tarnished by putting Jack Black and face eating slugs in King Kong.
Well, that is all for this week, Beloved Readers... Join Me next Tuesday for a fun-packed, info-cational review or two.
Monday, August 20, 2007
A case of the mondays...
I am posting today to apologize for not posting today....
lots more info in the morning.
Thanks to all my readers.
lots more info in the morning.
Thanks to all my readers.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Thanks, Dave!
Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers was nearly the first place I ever worked. The First was Taco Bell, where I made $4.25/hr, and hated the food. Then one day a manager at the local Wendy's was dining at Taco Bell, and, no doubt impressed with my unflappable manner and smiling face, asked if I would consider putting in an application down the street at Wendy's, where they could use someone like me. I did, and at Wendy's I made $4.50/hr, and I liked the food! This was in the Summer of my Junior year of High School, and my parents forced me to quit when my grades fell, but I still have some really fond memories of the place. Last time I was in McMinnville, it was still there, same as ever. Actually, it had a Salad Bar when I worked there, but other than that, same as ever.
A couple of days ago, I had been working on the blog all morning with no breakfast, and I needed to take my car in for an oil change (I had put 2000 miles on it the previous weekend, on my amazing Texan Adventure).
"On The Mountain", where I live, there are three fast-food places. Subway, Hardee's, and McDonalds. I look forward to eating "Off The Mountain" when I get the chance. I contemplated where I would dine while my belly growled at me for the thirteen mile trek down into the flatlands. I realized I hadn't been to Wendy's in a long time, and whenever I had, I had been noshing off the 99-cent menu, which is not really exemplary of the high quality burgers you can get there. I hadn't had a "Real" Wendy's Burger in a long, long time!
Well, I Fixed that. It turns out that Wendy's has a new burger called "The Baconator". Now, I love me some Bacon, and I appreciate a cute name and a good advertising campaign.("Order It, Before It Orders You!" and "Careful, It Can Sense Fear!" were on some of the signage around the store) I quickly determined that I wanted one. It was good. It was exactly as good as you would expect a sandwich called "The Baconator" to be. But as I sat in the dining room stuffing my face full of meat, I realized how nice it was to be in a restaurant that was just like I remembered.
I used to love to go to Pizza Hut as a kid. The building would have the big, familiarly shaped roof, there would be a jukebox and a couple of outdated video games by the entrance, a waiter or waitress would greet you at the sign that said "Please Wait to be Seated", and seat you at a table, or a booth with a stained-glass shaded lamp hanging over the table, and back in the day, they served beer there too, and there would quite frequently be a baseball team or other group of guys with a few pitchers and a few pizzas having a good time after the big game.
That was back when Pizza Hut was directly owned by Pepsico. In the nineties, though, they "Spun Off" their restaurant brands, (Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, at the time) into a company called "Tricon Global Restaurants". Really, Tricon Global, how charming is that? This began the downward spiral of Pizza Hut, as Fast-Food style Pizza Huts started popping up, frequently combined with a KFC or a Taco Bell. I don't want to order a Quesadilla in a Pizza Hut. I don't want my pizza served to me in a paper tray. I don't want your chicken sandwich, either. I don't want a "personal" sized pizza, which is 70% dry crust, with the 2 square inches in the center pre-topped with one of only 3 topping choices, which was delivered to the store frozen, microwaved back to life, and has been sitting under a heat lamp for 20 minutes before I ordered it!
I want a seat in a booth, with a stained-glass lamp over the table, and I want to stick a dollar in the jukebox and pick three songs to listen to while I wait for my pizza to be made for me by a person who lives in the same state as me. I want a friendly server to bring it to me, and I want peppermints delivered with the bill! If I can't have that, then you are not a Pizza Hut! Tricon Global is also the company that decided that Lazy Stupid Americans couldn't handle a big fancy name like "Kentucky Fried Chicken" and changed it to just KFC. So maybe they should change the fake "Pizza Huts" to just PH. Of course Taco Bell Might have problems... "Honey I'm running into town for some TB, you want any?"
Well Tricon Global eventually figured out what anybody could have told them (their name stunk), and changed their name to YUM! Brands (they also changed their stock ticker symbol to YUM). Since March of 2002, they now operate, in addition to PH, TB, and KFC, Long John Silver's which they also initialized for the American 3-second attention span, to "LJS", and A&W All-American Food, which came pre-initialized as A&W. (Does anybody know what the "A" and the "W" used to stand for?)
I can't help it, but when I see YUM! Brands' logo, with its stupid attached exclamation point, which tries to force me to be excited about it, I resist. Can you imagine working in the offices of YUM! and having to type the name of your company in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, with an exclamation point!, every time, in every report, for the rest of your career? And the poor kids working for YUM! restaurants must hate getting visited by corporate flacks who try and rigidly enforce rules about smiling and such, because we are a HAPPY company Dog-gone it, and SMILE while you empty the grease vats! And WHERE is your name tag!? How do I know who to report to the YUMMY SMILE! POLICE if you don't have on your name tag? We don't want people with just the minimum number of pieces of Flair, we want people like Brian, he has on thirty-seven pieces of Flair. Okay?
I mean seriously... The only way a fast food chain could be any more ridiculously cutesy,
would be if they had a full-fledged Clown with big red shoes as their corporate mascot! (YUM! Brands is the second largest fast food chain in the country, by the way. I'll give you one guess who is #1.)
Anyway, Dave Thomas never made anybody wear any pieces of flair. And he didn't remodel his stores into unrecognizability, either. You know what he did do? He did make use of the world's first drive-thru window, and he invented the 99-cent "Super Value" menu. And the restaurant he left behind makes a pretty darn good "Baconator", too. So Thanks, Dave for bringing us your great, low-key style of restaurant, and thank YOU, Wendy's Board of Directors, for not (yet) selling Dave's soul to a giant food Conglomo-Corp.
A couple of days ago, I had been working on the blog all morning with no breakfast, and I needed to take my car in for an oil change (I had put 2000 miles on it the previous weekend, on my amazing Texan Adventure).
"On The Mountain", where I live, there are three fast-food places. Subway, Hardee's, and McDonalds. I look forward to eating "Off The Mountain" when I get the chance. I contemplated where I would dine while my belly growled at me for the thirteen mile trek down into the flatlands. I realized I hadn't been to Wendy's in a long time, and whenever I had, I had been noshing off the 99-cent menu, which is not really exemplary of the high quality burgers you can get there. I hadn't had a "Real" Wendy's Burger in a long, long time!
Well, I Fixed that. It turns out that Wendy's has a new burger called "The Baconator". Now, I love me some Bacon, and I appreciate a cute name and a good advertising campaign.("Order It, Before It Orders You!" and "Careful, It Can Sense Fear!" were on some of the signage around the store) I quickly determined that I wanted one. It was good. It was exactly as good as you would expect a sandwich called "The Baconator" to be. But as I sat in the dining room stuffing my face full of meat, I realized how nice it was to be in a restaurant that was just like I remembered.
I used to love to go to Pizza Hut as a kid. The building would have the big, familiarly shaped roof, there would be a jukebox and a couple of outdated video games by the entrance, a waiter or waitress would greet you at the sign that said "Please Wait to be Seated", and seat you at a table, or a booth with a stained-glass shaded lamp hanging over the table, and back in the day, they served beer there too, and there would quite frequently be a baseball team or other group of guys with a few pitchers and a few pizzas having a good time after the big game.
That was back when Pizza Hut was directly owned by Pepsico. In the nineties, though, they "Spun Off" their restaurant brands, (Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, at the time) into a company called "Tricon Global Restaurants". Really, Tricon Global, how charming is that? This began the downward spiral of Pizza Hut, as Fast-Food style Pizza Huts started popping up, frequently combined with a KFC or a Taco Bell. I don't want to order a Quesadilla in a Pizza Hut. I don't want my pizza served to me in a paper tray. I don't want your chicken sandwich, either. I don't want a "personal" sized pizza, which is 70% dry crust, with the 2 square inches in the center pre-topped with one of only 3 topping choices, which was delivered to the store frozen, microwaved back to life, and has been sitting under a heat lamp for 20 minutes before I ordered it!
I want a seat in a booth, with a stained-glass lamp over the table, and I want to stick a dollar in the jukebox and pick three songs to listen to while I wait for my pizza to be made for me by a person who lives in the same state as me. I want a friendly server to bring it to me, and I want peppermints delivered with the bill! If I can't have that, then you are not a Pizza Hut! Tricon Global is also the company that decided that Lazy Stupid Americans couldn't handle a big fancy name like "Kentucky Fried Chicken" and changed it to just KFC. So maybe they should change the fake "Pizza Huts" to just PH. Of course Taco Bell Might have problems... "Honey I'm running into town for some TB, you want any?"
Well Tricon Global eventually figured out what anybody could have told them (their name stunk), and changed their name to YUM! Brands (they also changed their stock ticker symbol to YUM). Since March of 2002, they now operate, in addition to PH, TB, and KFC, Long John Silver's which they also initialized for the American 3-second attention span, to "LJS", and A&W All-American Food, which came pre-initialized as A&W. (Does anybody know what the "A" and the "W" used to stand for?)
I can't help it, but when I see YUM! Brands' logo, with its stupid attached exclamation point, which tries to force me to be excited about it, I resist. Can you imagine working in the offices of YUM! and having to type the name of your company in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, with an exclamation point!, every time, in every report, for the rest of your career? And the poor kids working for YUM! restaurants must hate getting visited by corporate flacks who try and rigidly enforce rules about smiling and such, because we are a HAPPY company Dog-gone it, and SMILE while you empty the grease vats! And WHERE is your name tag!? How do I know who to report to the YUMMY SMILE! POLICE if you don't have on your name tag? We don't want people with just the minimum number of pieces of Flair, we want people like Brian, he has on thirty-seven pieces of Flair. Okay?
I mean seriously... The only way a fast food chain could be any more ridiculously cutesy,
would be if they had a full-fledged Clown with big red shoes as their corporate mascot! (YUM! Brands is the second largest fast food chain in the country, by the way. I'll give you one guess who is #1.)
Anyway, Dave Thomas never made anybody wear any pieces of flair. And he didn't remodel his stores into unrecognizability, either. You know what he did do? He did make use of the world's first drive-thru window, and he invented the 99-cent "Super Value" menu. And the restaurant he left behind makes a pretty darn good "Baconator", too. So Thanks, Dave for bringing us your great, low-key style of restaurant, and thank YOU, Wendy's Board of Directors, for not (yet) selling Dave's soul to a giant food Conglomo-Corp.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Special Update: Protest Demonstration
There is a protest demonstration happening outside my workplace right now. about twenty to thirty people are standing around with signs and banners with slogans like "End Iraq Occupation" and "Impeach Bush + Cheney" and "2 Billion a Week - Your Taxes".
There is a local police officer standing watch over the event, making sure things don't get too rowdy. I happen to know that the particular cop served in Iraq in the early days of the occupation. I bet they have a lot to talk about.
I, being the intrepid reporter I am, stepped outside to ask what all the hullabaloo was about.
This is apparently part of an effort to organize people in cities all over America, on the Third Friday of each month, starting in September. This group decided to get a head start.
I try to stay away from politics and religion on this blog, but since this is literally going on right outside my door, I figured I would bring it to your attention. For those of you who are interested in this sort of thing, you can find out more at http://www.iraqmoratorium.org/
Frankly Speaking - Signing off.
Good Night and Good Luck.
There is a local police officer standing watch over the event, making sure things don't get too rowdy. I happen to know that the particular cop served in Iraq in the early days of the occupation. I bet they have a lot to talk about.
I, being the intrepid reporter I am, stepped outside to ask what all the hullabaloo was about.
This is apparently part of an effort to organize people in cities all over America, on the Third Friday of each month, starting in September. This group decided to get a head start.
I try to stay away from politics and religion on this blog, but since this is literally going on right outside my door, I figured I would bring it to your attention. For those of you who are interested in this sort of thing, you can find out more at http://www.iraqmoratorium.org/
Frankly Speaking - Signing off.
Good Night and Good Luck.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Search Engine Wrong Numbers for Early August
Well Boys and girls out there in Cyberspace, It's time to check the Great Big Internet Answering Machine to see who has drunk-dialed the little patch of cyberspace we call home.
The most-visited post from the last two weeks was by far my Re-post about the SleepyBear Room at the Knoxville Travelodge. This post was viewed more than any other, because it got linked to from the Site Knoxnews.com, where a guy named Jack Lail is paid good money to, among other things, search the Blogosphere for anybody blogging about the Fair City of Knoxville. If you write about any building within 15 miles of Neyland Stadium, The Knoxville News-Sentinel wants to know about it. So every week or so, Mr. Lail, the Multimedia Managing Editor for the News-Sentinel, compiles a list of links to the various blog posts he has found mentioning Knoxville.
I made that list last week, and the morning after I put that piece on the interweb, it had been viewed more than any other post on my site. By "it had been viewed more", I mean that its own page, on which it appears alone, had been viewed more. If you visit my "Front Page", you can read the last week's worth of posts by simply scrolling down. This is the way most of my readers view my blog, and I intentionally chose to "syndicate" the full text of each of my posts rather than a snippet, so that my readers don't have to click back and forth all the time.
But if you want to view the post all by itself, along with any comments people may have made, click on the article's title. If you don't click on the title, then even though you read the post, you haven't affected the official reader count, according to my traffic tracker. Consequently, the reader count tends to reflect articles hat have been linked to from outside of the site, either through e-mail links, or in this case a link from the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
Anyway, 27 people followed that link from Knoxnews, making it my "most popular" page literally overnight. My next most popular was part one of my two-part post about Clowns and the Creative Promotion of the upcoming Batman movie. This one was looked for by 5 people, using
Well, that's all for today...
P.S. - The Greatest Cartoon of All Time "Toonament" should be ready to go tomorrow, after days of research, and grueling decision-making. I hope everyone enjoys it.
The most-visited post from the last two weeks was by far my Re-post about the SleepyBear Room at the Knoxville Travelodge. This post was viewed more than any other, because it got linked to from the Site Knoxnews.com, where a guy named Jack Lail is paid good money to, among other things, search the Blogosphere for anybody blogging about the Fair City of Knoxville. If you write about any building within 15 miles of Neyland Stadium, The Knoxville News-Sentinel wants to know about it. So every week or so, Mr. Lail, the Multimedia Managing Editor for the News-Sentinel, compiles a list of links to the various blog posts he has found mentioning Knoxville.
I made that list last week, and the morning after I put that piece on the interweb, it had been viewed more than any other post on my site. By "it had been viewed more", I mean that its own page, on which it appears alone, had been viewed more. If you visit my "Front Page", you can read the last week's worth of posts by simply scrolling down. This is the way most of my readers view my blog, and I intentionally chose to "syndicate" the full text of each of my posts rather than a snippet, so that my readers don't have to click back and forth all the time.
But if you want to view the post all by itself, along with any comments people may have made, click on the article's title. If you don't click on the title, then even though you read the post, you haven't affected the official reader count, according to my traffic tracker. Consequently, the reader count tends to reflect articles hat have been linked to from outside of the site, either through e-mail links, or in this case a link from the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
Anyway, 27 people followed that link from Knoxnews, making it my "most popular" page literally overnight. My next most popular was part one of my two-part post about Clowns and the Creative Promotion of the upcoming Batman movie. This one was looked for by 5 people, using
- "whysoserious"
- "i believe in harvey dent too.com"
- "dark knight rent-a-clown viral campaign"
- "i believe in harvey dent, find secret message"
- One person got to my page by searching for the terms "Papa Johns Pizza". I am relatively sure he wasn't looking for this page, but I hope he learned something while he was there.
- One person found me by Googling "children play trombone". I am likewise sure she wasn't looking for my post on Magic Tricks and CCG's.
Well, that's all for today...
P.S. - The Greatest Cartoon of All Time "Toonament" should be ready to go tomorrow, after days of research, and grueling decision-making. I hope everyone enjoys it.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Movie Tuesday - Aquatic Creatures
Alrighty, Cinemaphiles, it's Movie Tuesday, and today's is a Doozy!
The first movie stars Adam Sandler, and the second stars a giant, slimy, fish-lizard mutant thing. They are both hilarious! If you watch them in English. Curious? Read on.
50 First Dates - 5 stars
If you haven't seen this one, it is worth a rental. If your stomach isn't turned by the idea of an Adam Sandler comedy, or Romantic Comedy in general, this is a terrific rental.
Adam Sandler plays a Marine Biologist/Veterinarian who works for a zoo-like tourist attraction in Hawai'i with some very funny walrus co-stars. (that's the "Aquatic Creatures" connection, get it?) He fiercely resists getting "tied down" in a romantic relationship, to the point where he only dates tourists, so that he won't have to see them more than once. When he meets a girl who gets to meet him for the first time every day all over again, it seems a match made in heaven.
The comedy is funny, the romance is believable, the plot is full of interesting twists, and the drama is engaging all the way through. I had seen "Memento" (the awesome Christopher Nolan film) and "Clean Slate" (the dreadful Dana Carvey film), which both deal with short term memory loss, and I had serious doubts as to whether a slapstick Adam Sandler film would handle the topic well.
(Info-cational point: the more accurate term for the condition is "Anterograde Amnesia", but I don't think that's as catchy, so I won't use it.)
Anyway, the short answer is - Yes, the film does handle the topic well. I won't spend much more time on this one, because I want to move on to The Host, but I do need to add one more note. Sean "I made a promise, Mr Frodo" Astin is in this movie, in a role I never saw coming for him. I didn't realize it was him at first, and when I did, it made his every second on screen that much funnier.
The Host - 4, possibly 5 stars...
I still don't know what to think of this movie. They say "You never get a second chance to make a first impression", and unfortunately for this film it seems to be true.
The movie is Korean, and if you watch it in Korean, with English subtitles, I am pretty sure it is a good film. It is a movie about Family, about Corrupt Government, about International Relations, about Loss, and Redemption, and Greed and Valor, but mostly it is a movie about a Big Scary Fish-Lizard Monster that lives in the Han River (There's the "Aquatic Creatures" connection again...) which goes around killing people and eating them. Viewed with its Original Korean-Language Soundtrack, it is better than the Jurassic Park Sequels, and maybe even as good as the original.
It is a Monster movie, but not a Horror movie. It is more of a Disaster movie, like War of The Worlds, or Independence Day. There is a lot of fear and confusion, but not a lot of Hack-and-Slash Gore. The real Bad Guys in the film are humans: friends, family members, and public officials, who react in various negative ways to the threat of the rampaging Mutant Beast.
The Cinematography is outstanding in this picture, and the special effects are so realistic you don't even notice them most of the time. The plot is good, and the acting is mostly good, but the dialogue is a little stupid at times(even in the subtitled version), as if there is a lot getting lost in the translation. There is one scene in a gymnasium, toward the beginning of the film, that is really, really irritating and completely unnecessary, but when you get past that the movie is thoroughly enjoyable, all the way to the end. Especially at the end.
I read another review of this film, which noted that the Sci-Fi monster movie typically falls prey to the "I can guess who's gonna get killed right at the beginning" complex. This movie is not so formulaic, and doesn't have the predictability that Hollywood so frequently dishes out. I also learned from reading other reviews of this movie that the opening scene, in which gallons upon gallons of formaldehyde are dumped into the Han River, is actually based on a real event.
Now, those are my feelings about the movie in Korean, with Subtitles. If you just pop this DVD into your player and press play, you will begin watching the Dubbed English version, which may very well be acted by the cast of Sailor Moon, or Speed Racer. The voice actors are doing cartoony parodies of real people, and are concentrating more on trying to make the lip motions match the words than on trying to speak coherent sentences that convey a thought. If you watch this version first, you may have difficulty appreciating the good version - First Impressons, remember? So Do yourself a favor and watch the film with the Korean Soundtrack, and English Subtitles first. Then watch the English Dubbed version in the spirit of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and laugh your head off. If you still have the movie sitting around later, you can do a third pass with the English vocals AND subtitles simultaneously, so you can appreciate more fully just how bad the translation truly is.
here are my favorite snippets, for your amusement.
Subtitled:
The first movie stars Adam Sandler, and the second stars a giant, slimy, fish-lizard mutant thing. They are both hilarious! If you watch them in English. Curious? Read on.
50 First Dates - 5 stars
If you haven't seen this one, it is worth a rental. If your stomach isn't turned by the idea of an Adam Sandler comedy, or Romantic Comedy in general, this is a terrific rental.
Adam Sandler plays a Marine Biologist/Veterinarian who works for a zoo-like tourist attraction in Hawai'i with some very funny walrus co-stars. (that's the "Aquatic Creatures" connection, get it?) He fiercely resists getting "tied down" in a romantic relationship, to the point where he only dates tourists, so that he won't have to see them more than once. When he meets a girl who gets to meet him for the first time every day all over again, it seems a match made in heaven.
The comedy is funny, the romance is believable, the plot is full of interesting twists, and the drama is engaging all the way through. I had seen "Memento" (the awesome Christopher Nolan film) and "Clean Slate" (the dreadful Dana Carvey film), which both deal with short term memory loss, and I had serious doubts as to whether a slapstick Adam Sandler film would handle the topic well.
(Info-cational point: the more accurate term for the condition is "Anterograde Amnesia", but I don't think that's as catchy, so I won't use it.)
Anyway, the short answer is - Yes, the film does handle the topic well. I won't spend much more time on this one, because I want to move on to The Host, but I do need to add one more note. Sean "I made a promise, Mr Frodo" Astin is in this movie, in a role I never saw coming for him. I didn't realize it was him at first, and when I did, it made his every second on screen that much funnier.
The Host - 4, possibly 5 stars...
I still don't know what to think of this movie. They say "You never get a second chance to make a first impression", and unfortunately for this film it seems to be true.
The movie is Korean, and if you watch it in Korean, with English subtitles, I am pretty sure it is a good film. It is a movie about Family, about Corrupt Government, about International Relations, about Loss, and Redemption, and Greed and Valor, but mostly it is a movie about a Big Scary Fish-Lizard Monster that lives in the Han River (There's the "Aquatic Creatures" connection again...) which goes around killing people and eating them. Viewed with its Original Korean-Language Soundtrack, it is better than the Jurassic Park Sequels, and maybe even as good as the original.
It is a Monster movie, but not a Horror movie. It is more of a Disaster movie, like War of The Worlds, or Independence Day. There is a lot of fear and confusion, but not a lot of Hack-and-Slash Gore. The real Bad Guys in the film are humans: friends, family members, and public officials, who react in various negative ways to the threat of the rampaging Mutant Beast.
The Cinematography is outstanding in this picture, and the special effects are so realistic you don't even notice them most of the time. The plot is good, and the acting is mostly good, but the dialogue is a little stupid at times(even in the subtitled version), as if there is a lot getting lost in the translation. There is one scene in a gymnasium, toward the beginning of the film, that is really, really irritating and completely unnecessary, but when you get past that the movie is thoroughly enjoyable, all the way to the end. Especially at the end.
I read another review of this film, which noted that the Sci-Fi monster movie typically falls prey to the "I can guess who's gonna get killed right at the beginning" complex. This movie is not so formulaic, and doesn't have the predictability that Hollywood so frequently dishes out. I also learned from reading other reviews of this movie that the opening scene, in which gallons upon gallons of formaldehyde are dumped into the Han River, is actually based on a real event.
Now, those are my feelings about the movie in Korean, with Subtitles. If you just pop this DVD into your player and press play, you will begin watching the Dubbed English version, which may very well be acted by the cast of Sailor Moon, or Speed Racer. The voice actors are doing cartoony parodies of real people, and are concentrating more on trying to make the lip motions match the words than on trying to speak coherent sentences that convey a thought. If you watch this version first, you may have difficulty appreciating the good version - First Impressons, remember? So Do yourself a favor and watch the film with the Korean Soundtrack, and English Subtitles first. Then watch the English Dubbed version in the spirit of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and laugh your head off. If you still have the movie sitting around later, you can do a third pass with the English vocals AND subtitles simultaneously, so you can appreciate more fully just how bad the translation truly is.
here are my favorite snippets, for your amusement.
- Suicidal Businessman's Final Words to his Associates, before Jumping off the Han River Bridge....
"Have a good life."Dubbed:
"I'll see you in Hell."
- Watching their Sister/Aunt in Archery Match on TV while Grandpa Cooks Outside.
Subtitled:
Hyun-Seo:(threatening to tattle)"I'll tell Grandpa."Dubbed:
Gang-Du:"Go Head, tell the Geezer.
...
Hyun-Seo:(excited that her aunt's turn is coming up)"Grandpa!"
Gang-Du:"The old man has to run the shop, let's watch it ourselves"
Hyun-Seo:"What do you mean? We've all got to support her! Grandpa!!
Gang-Du:(silencing her)"Let the Geezer roast some squid."
Hyun-Seo:(threatening to tattle)"I'm gonna' tell Grandpa."
Gang-Du:"Hush, don't tell that old Slowpoke.
...
Hyun-Seo:(excited that her aunt's turn is coming up)"Grandpa!"
Gang-Du:"Don't worry about that, he's gotta be working all day."
Hyun-Seo:"What are you talking about? We've got to send all the Force we can! Grandpa!!
Gang-Du:(silencing her)"Hey, let's just leave that alone."
- Police Officer, Stubbornly Denying the Family's Belief that Hyun-Seo is Still Alive...
Officer:"Your daughter ... She's on the Deceased List."Dubbed:
Gang-Du:(slightly delirious)"She's Deceased...But she's still alive"
Officer:"Now you're talking in circles."
Grandfather: (offering bribe) "Please, Officer..."
Officer: (to Gang-Du)"Your daughter never called you in the first place, okay?
(to Grandfather) "Your son just had a dream... but it was so real that..(interrupted)Officer:(to nearby Doctor)"He's received psychological treatment?"
Doctor:"He's not a bad man.. but he's in shock. We should understand."
Officer:"Your daughter ... She's officially passed on, huh?"
Gang-Du:(slightly delirious)"She's Deceased...But she's still alive"
Officer:"Now you are talking in multiple circles."
Grandfather: (offering bribe)"Mr Police, sir..."
Officer: (to Gang-Du)"Anyway...To begin with...I mean, did she really make a phone call?
(to Grandfather)"Y'know, I reckon that this guy here just had a dream early in the morning, and...(interrupted)Officer:(to nearby Doctor)"Does he have a mental illness?"
Doctor:"No, but Severe shock could lead to...temporary schizophrenia?"
Monday, August 13, 2007
The most under-appreciated band from the 1980's
Doing extensive research for the Greatest Toon of all time tournament, I came across this. If you are within a few years of my age, this might re-ignite a few memories that you didn't even know you had.
Also, note the Red Honda Scooter. I was brainwashed by childhood cartoons into buying it, and I didn't even know.
Watch the Video
Also, note the Red Honda Scooter. I was brainwashed by childhood cartoons into buying it, and I didn't even know.
Watch the Video
Customers of the Week - Preggers and ClEtUS
One of the sadder things I've seen -
An abundantly pregnant woman and a very, very slow moving elderly man came in to the Gas Station last night. The old man was coming back from the cooler with a 12 pack of beer, and said to the young Preggers, "Is a twelve pack enough?"
The Womb-on-legs gave her approval, and continued to browse the store. She was wearing shorts, and a brown tank-top shirt which had the word "VINDICTIVE" in relatively small white letters across the chest.
Now, according to Tennessee Code Annotated, section 57-5-301(A)(1), which states that ALL purchasers of alcohol for "off premises" consumption have to present Proof-of-age identification, I had to card this guy, who looked like he needed to be in a nursing home, for his beer. (Actually, since they had indicated that the beer was for her, I should have carded her too, but I had no reason to believe she was under 21, and one ID would be enough to satisfy the State Law.) He wasn't too happy about being carded, and muttered something to that effect. With shaky hands, he reached into his back pocket, s-l-o-w-l-y produced his wallet, and extracted his ID. Born in 1947, Cletus* was exactly 60 years old,which was 10 years younger than he looked, and 40 years younger than he moved.
As I was dealing with him, his Great-With-Child companion was checking out the sunglasses rack. "Ain't anybody got the round sunglasses anymore?", she complained. Drinking while she was 12 months pregnant had already gotten under my skin, and I was growing more irritated with this lady by the second.
"I don't know whether or not anybody has them, but we apparently don't," I called back to her.
She continued searching the rack, not comprehending my witty riposte. "Well, where are they then?" she responded. The word "Apparently" must have thrown her off. Time to try a different approach.
"We ain't got 'em!" I called back in her own language.
She must not have been too disappointed with our lack of "round" sunglasses, because she grabbed a pair of non-round ones and approached the counter. Slowpoke had just finished putting his wallet's contents back together. She told him to get her a pack of Marlboros too, while she plunked the glasses down on the counter. I pulled down the appropriate pack of smokes, and rang everything up.
"That'll be $33.17" I told the old guy, biting back all the comments about cigarettes and pregnancy that were springing to my mind. Geez, Lady, why not shoot up some heroin and snort a few lines of coke while you're at it? Then your kid will will have the coolest looking Dorsal Fin in his whole class!
"Did you already run the card? I just gave you my card."
"No, sir; you gave me your ID."
Back into the pocket for the wallet went , fast as a bullet. Not a bullet that has been fired, but a bullet duct-taped to the back of a turtle, which is trying to climb a steep and slippery hill.
His slothlike movement gave her roving gaze more time to work on spending his money. But not quite enough time, for right as I was swiping his credit card through the machine, finalizing the sale, she said "Gimme two of these, too", and plopped down two 4 dollar cigarette lighters that said "Princess" and "Drama Queen" respectively.
I have never been sure about this trend of advertising your Faults, like being a spoiled, problem-causing gossip, but there are a lot of T-shirts and other products out there that do just that. You don't see me wearing a T-shirt that says "I Fart a lot and have poor Dental Hygiene", do you? I guess I'm just too classy for that.
Anyhow, she was just a second too late to include those lighters on the tab, and I told her so, but I must've used the word "apparently" again, because she was holding them as though she had purchased them, and intended to take them with her when she left. I told her again that the lighters had not been paid for, while "ClEtUS SimPSoN JR"* signed his name in lettering that indicated that his name was the only thing that ClEtUS SR ever "learnt" him how to write.
This time I got through that the lighters hadn't been paid for, and she told me to go ahead and ring them up along with a Pack of Marlboros.
I already rang those, I explained.
"No, Marlboro Lights"
OK, I switched the regulars for lights.
"No, ANOTHER pack of lights"
Did I mention this woman's pregnant belly is about 30% of her body weight? She looks like she's about to give birth to a whole Football team. Everything she has gotten has been Smoking or drinking related, except the sunglasses. Oh well, at least she won't get Eyeball cancer along with her liver cirrhosis and emphysema. Something tells me her little uterine passenger isn't going to have a lot going on in the nature OR nurture department.
Anyway, she also wants to buy a cigarette case, so I point her to the appropriate shelves. She comes back with, not one, but two little cigarette "purses" at 6 bucks a piece. What the hey, she's spending ClEtUS's money anyway, right?
I ring the second purchase up, and in goes ClEtUS for his wallet, a third time. Muttering. It's something along the lines of " Gotta go through this all over again", and the back of my mind is screaming NO, you don't!! You don't have to pull your card out again, just tell this irresponsible woman-child with you that you won't buy her every single thing she comes across so she can amuse herself and poison her child!
I keep it all on the inside, though, and we swipe his card again. all-told, he's spent $59.44 on her beer, smokes, and trinkets.
So, if this tale has made you feel bad, look on the bright side... then tell me what it is.
* This story is true, only the names have been changed to protect the ignorant.
An abundantly pregnant woman and a very, very slow moving elderly man came in to the Gas Station last night. The old man was coming back from the cooler with a 12 pack of beer, and said to the young Preggers, "Is a twelve pack enough?"
The Womb-on-legs gave her approval, and continued to browse the store. She was wearing shorts, and a brown tank-top shirt which had the word "VINDICTIVE" in relatively small white letters across the chest.
Now, according to Tennessee Code Annotated, section 57-5-301(A)(1), which states that ALL purchasers of alcohol for "off premises" consumption have to present Proof-of-age identification, I had to card this guy, who looked like he needed to be in a nursing home, for his beer. (Actually, since they had indicated that the beer was for her, I should have carded her too, but I had no reason to believe she was under 21, and one ID would be enough to satisfy the State Law.) He wasn't too happy about being carded, and muttered something to that effect. With shaky hands, he reached into his back pocket, s-l-o-w-l-y produced his wallet, and extracted his ID. Born in 1947, Cletus* was exactly 60 years old,which was 10 years younger than he looked, and 40 years younger than he moved.
As I was dealing with him, his Great-With-Child companion was checking out the sunglasses rack. "Ain't anybody got the round sunglasses anymore?", she complained. Drinking while she was 12 months pregnant had already gotten under my skin, and I was growing more irritated with this lady by the second.
"I don't know whether or not anybody has them, but we apparently don't," I called back to her.
She continued searching the rack, not comprehending my witty riposte. "Well, where are they then?" she responded. The word "Apparently" must have thrown her off. Time to try a different approach.
"We ain't got 'em!" I called back in her own language.
She must not have been too disappointed with our lack of "round" sunglasses, because she grabbed a pair of non-round ones and approached the counter. Slowpoke had just finished putting his wallet's contents back together. She told him to get her a pack of Marlboros too, while she plunked the glasses down on the counter. I pulled down the appropriate pack of smokes, and rang everything up.
"That'll be $33.17" I told the old guy, biting back all the comments about cigarettes and pregnancy that were springing to my mind. Geez, Lady, why not shoot up some heroin and snort a few lines of coke while you're at it? Then your kid will will have the coolest looking Dorsal Fin in his whole class!
"Did you already run the card? I just gave you my card."
"No, sir; you gave me your ID."
Back into the pocket for the wallet went , fast as a bullet. Not a bullet that has been fired, but a bullet duct-taped to the back of a turtle, which is trying to climb a steep and slippery hill.
His slothlike movement gave her roving gaze more time to work on spending his money. But not quite enough time, for right as I was swiping his credit card through the machine, finalizing the sale, she said "Gimme two of these, too", and plopped down two 4 dollar cigarette lighters that said "Princess" and "Drama Queen" respectively.
I have never been sure about this trend of advertising your Faults, like being a spoiled, problem-causing gossip, but there are a lot of T-shirts and other products out there that do just that. You don't see me wearing a T-shirt that says "I Fart a lot and have poor Dental Hygiene", do you? I guess I'm just too classy for that.
Anyhow, she was just a second too late to include those lighters on the tab, and I told her so, but I must've used the word "apparently" again, because she was holding them as though she had purchased them, and intended to take them with her when she left. I told her again that the lighters had not been paid for, while "ClEtUS SimPSoN JR"* signed his name in lettering that indicated that his name was the only thing that ClEtUS SR ever "learnt" him how to write.
This time I got through that the lighters hadn't been paid for, and she told me to go ahead and ring them up along with a Pack of Marlboros.
I already rang those, I explained.
"No, Marlboro Lights"
OK, I switched the regulars for lights.
"No, ANOTHER pack of lights"
Did I mention this woman's pregnant belly is about 30% of her body weight? She looks like she's about to give birth to a whole Football team. Everything she has gotten has been Smoking or drinking related, except the sunglasses. Oh well, at least she won't get Eyeball cancer along with her liver cirrhosis and emphysema. Something tells me her little uterine passenger isn't going to have a lot going on in the nature OR nurture department.
Anyway, she also wants to buy a cigarette case, so I point her to the appropriate shelves. She comes back with, not one, but two little cigarette "purses" at 6 bucks a piece. What the hey, she's spending ClEtUS's money anyway, right?
I ring the second purchase up, and in goes ClEtUS for his wallet, a third time. Muttering. It's something along the lines of " Gotta go through this all over again", and the back of my mind is screaming NO, you don't!! You don't have to pull your card out again, just tell this irresponsible woman-child with you that you won't buy her every single thing she comes across so she can amuse herself and poison her child!
I keep it all on the inside, though, and we swipe his card again. all-told, he's spent $59.44 on her beer, smokes, and trinkets.
So, if this tale has made you feel bad, look on the bright side... then tell me what it is.
* This story is true, only the names have been changed to protect the ignorant.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
What do YOU call a soft drink where you live?
This was too cool not to share with my readers. And some of you claim that I have too much free time!
Soft Drink Map
Soft Drink Map
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Keyword University
Do you sometimes feel like you are just not "in the know" about pop culture? Do you want to have a broad, sweeping, knowledge of what people Really care about around the world? Do you just want to be ready to answer the trivia question that the Radio DJ asks tonight , so you can win the free passes to the new Ashton Kutcher movie?
Well, Folks, the Daily Blog of the Day is here to Info-cate and Edu-tain you, but if you need more random knowledge than one gas station clerk can dish out at you, then Might I recommend:
The first step in learning more stuff than you could ever want to know is this: get the Google Toolbar add-on, and install it. Actually if you have Firefox 2, you can skip this step, but I don't know about the other browsers. If you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, please switch right now. go ahead. I'll wait.
OK, now here's the fun part. Type the letter "A" into the little Google search bar, and look at the "search suggestions" that pop up below. you should have "Amazon", "Apple", "AOL", and "American Airlines" as search suggestions, as well as something called "Argos". Now I know that Argos is a city in the Mediterranean, but I doubt the city is interesting enough to be the second most searched for item starting with the letter A. So select "Argos" from the drop-down list and let's learn together.
Turns out Argos.co.uk is a sort of English equivalent of Amazon.com. It is a big-time catalog/online sales outfit. Now I am that much more culturally savvy if I happen to find myself "Across The Pond" over in Jolly Old England. Now type in "B". What the heck is a "Bebo"? well, follow the link to find out. Oh, it's another MySpace-style social networking site, like Facebook, and friendster, and Hi5, and orkut, and possibly a dozen others. Wow, now we've learned two things.
If you go through the alphabet like that (although I recommend skipping the letter "X", especially if you are using your work computer), and follow the trail of any search term you come across, you will be that much smarter and culturally savvy, instantly!
In just one pass, I learned who Kim Kardashian and Zac Efron were, several different businesses that operate in the UK, and what "Club Penguin" is. (It's another MySpace-style social networking site, like Facebook, and friendster, and Hi5, and orkut, only it is aimed at 8-14 year olds with protective parents)
If you were the last one on your block to know what the heck a Yu-Gi-Oh! card or a Pokemon was, or if you were to too embarrassed at your last dinner party to ask what the heck "American Idol" was, or if you don't know why your coworkers are talking about people named "Meatwad" and "Frylock", then Keyword University may be what you need. You wont get a diploma, but you won't get charged tuition, either.
Well, Folks, the Daily Blog of the Day is here to Info-cate and Edu-tain you, but if you need more random knowledge than one gas station clerk can dish out at you, then Might I recommend:
Keyword University!
The first step in learning more stuff than you could ever want to know is this: get the Google Toolbar add-on, and install it. Actually if you have Firefox 2, you can skip this step, but I don't know about the other browsers. If you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, please switch right now. go ahead. I'll wait.
OK, now here's the fun part. Type the letter "A" into the little Google search bar, and look at the "search suggestions" that pop up below. you should have "Amazon", "Apple", "AOL", and "American Airlines" as search suggestions, as well as something called "Argos". Now I know that Argos is a city in the Mediterranean, but I doubt the city is interesting enough to be the second most searched for item starting with the letter A. So select "Argos" from the drop-down list and let's learn together.
Turns out Argos.co.uk is a sort of English equivalent of Amazon.com. It is a big-time catalog/online sales outfit. Now I am that much more culturally savvy if I happen to find myself "Across The Pond" over in Jolly Old England. Now type in "B". What the heck is a "Bebo"? well, follow the link to find out. Oh, it's another MySpace-style social networking site, like Facebook, and friendster, and Hi5, and orkut, and possibly a dozen others. Wow, now we've learned two things.
If you go through the alphabet like that (although I recommend skipping the letter "X", especially if you are using your work computer), and follow the trail of any search term you come across, you will be that much smarter and culturally savvy, instantly!
In just one pass, I learned who Kim Kardashian and Zac Efron were, several different businesses that operate in the UK, and what "Club Penguin" is. (It's another MySpace-style social networking site, like Facebook, and friendster, and Hi5, and orkut, only it is aimed at 8-14 year olds with protective parents)
If you were the last one on your block to know what the heck a Yu-Gi-Oh! card or a Pokemon was, or if you were to too embarrassed at your last dinner party to ask what the heck "American Idol" was, or if you don't know why your coworkers are talking about people named "Meatwad" and "Frylock", then Keyword University may be what you need. You wont get a diploma, but you won't get charged tuition, either.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Analysts in Wonderland.
A Gallon of milk at the market across the street from me is, after the TN Sales Tax, $6.05 , Unless it has gone up again in the last few days. 2 years ago, people were complaining that it was over $3. Milk prices have always been different in different places, but in the last four years they have gone way, way, up. Also, when I started out working at the convenience store where I currently work, a small cup of coffee was 79 cents! A "Small" coffee nowadays is the size of what a medium used to be, and costs $1.39! And don't Even get me started on Gasoline! It was not "The Good Old Days" when gas was HALF the price it is now, it was 4 or 5 years ago! 69 cent candy bars are now 99 cents, and the list goes on and on...
Sounds a lot like that thing I learned about in Mrs. Glasper's 5th grade class, Inflation. However, according to most really super-smart, doctorate-wielding, professional financial analyst types, there is no inflation occurring. Or at least very, very little. Check it out, from today's headlines.
This has long puzzled me. I am no economic genius, but I don't see good things coming from our nation's finances being based on something other than reality. When prices are doubling within four years of "1 to 2 percent" inflation, something is badly out of whack. And when things are out of whack for too long, it is usually a catastrophe when they "Adjust" back to where they belong. Enron, anybody? Housing Bubble? Silicon Valley Meltdown?
Just filing this away so I can say "I told you so" someday.
Sounds a lot like that thing I learned about in Mrs. Glasper's 5th grade class, Inflation. However, according to most really super-smart, doctorate-wielding, professional financial analyst types, there is no inflation occurring. Or at least very, very little. Check it out, from today's headlines.
Core consumer inflation increased 0.1% for the fourth consecutive month in June, pushing the yearly gain down to 1.9% in the past year, the lowest inflation since early 2004, and just within the Federal Reserve's unofficial comfort zone of 1% to 2% for core inflation. Core inflation excludes volatile food and energy prices.Did you get that last sentence? Core inflation excludes food and energy prices. That's your milk, coffee and gas, right there. What do people have to buy every single day? Clothes? Toys? Jewelry? Electronics? No... Food. And Energy. Those prices affect people every single day, yet they somehow don't count?
This has long puzzled me. I am no economic genius, but I don't see good things coming from our nation's finances being based on something other than reality. When prices are doubling within four years of "1 to 2 percent" inflation, something is badly out of whack. And when things are out of whack for too long, it is usually a catastrophe when they "Adjust" back to where they belong. Enron, anybody? Housing Bubble? Silicon Valley Meltdown?
Just filing this away so I can say "I told you so" someday.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
What kind of energy?
The guy who does the "underwriting spots" (because we can't call them "Advertisements") for NPR annoys the heck out of me, not only because he does a commercial every fifteen minutes for an organization that then twice a year asks me for my money to "Keep NPR Commercial Free", but because he can't quite pronounce the letter "N" if it comes in the middle of a multisyllabic word.
You may know the guy I mean, he's the one that tells you that "All Things Considered is made possible by..."
This particular little Speech Impediment had long been a pet peeve of mine, and I had pretty much gotten used to it, but the other day I heard one that made me laugh out loud. Honda Motors is an occasional underwriter of the fine programming on NPR, and they are touting their environmental record, to appeal to the "Green" NPR listener base. One of their environmentally responsible programs is increased research into "Alternative Fuels".
Replace the "N" sound with a "D" sound in that phrase and you will see why I was busting a gut.
You may know the guy I mean, he's the one that tells you that "All Things Considered is made possible by..."
"The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Committed to achieving surplus understanding in a positive community leadership role in the Third World. On The Web at: Bill And Melinda Sitting in a Tree dot O-R-G."Anyway, one or two of these foundations have something in their mission statement about "communities" and he never quite pronounces the "N". Instead it comes out as a "D" sound, so it sounds like he is saying "Commudities". The worst one is the foundation that is "Dedicated to providing Commudities with Job Opportudities" It is annoying, and during a two hour commute you might hear it Four Times or more.
"The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; committed to motivating Key Contributions to world understanding and combating the leading causes of failing indicators worldwide. On the Web at: J-W-R-F-L-M-N-O-P dot O-R-G"
"The Isaac Asimov Foundation; Committed to preserving knowledge for the Future through the use of Psychohistorical findings and the Encyclopaedia Galactica. On the Web at: Hari Seldon dot com"
This particular little Speech Impediment had long been a pet peeve of mine, and I had pretty much gotten used to it, but the other day I heard one that made me laugh out loud. Honda Motors is an occasional underwriter of the fine programming on NPR, and they are touting their environmental record, to appeal to the "Green" NPR listener base. One of their environmentally responsible programs is increased research into "Alternative Fuels".
Replace the "N" sound with a "D" sound in that phrase and you will see why I was busting a gut.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Movie Tuesday - Subtitular Spectacular!
Ok, Faithful Readers, I realize that this is actually Wednesday, Not Tuesday, But I'm allowed to fudge a little if I want to.
Last week I promised reviews of the movies A Very Long Engagement and Everything Is Illuminated. I watched them both in a hurry, which is the wrong way to watch these films, so my reviews may be a little skewed by that fact.
A Very Long Engagement - 3 stars
If you had asked me to rate this movie immediately after watching it, I would have given it a three star rating at best. But I have a feeling that if I watched it a couple more times, I would find it to be a masterpiece of cinema on par with The Green Mile or A River Runs Through It. So I have inflated my original opinion of this French film. The Movie is set in France in the aftermath of World War One, although most of the movie is flashbacks to during and before the War.
Audrey Tatou, of Amelie and DaVinci Code fame, stars as Mathilde, a Polio-afflicted but well-to-do orphan who stubbornly refuses to believe that her presumed-dead Fiancé has perished in the war. There is a standard amount of sitting around weeping and pining (Boy is there ever pining! This woman can pine with the best of 'em!), but she also gets up off of her butt (no easy feat; polio, remember?) and goes in search of leads like a French version of Erin Brockovitch. She doggedly pursues the trail that will lead her to her man, Dead or Alive, and uncovers a lot of disturbing and personal information about a lot of other people on the way.
The fast pace, complicated plot, and large cast of characters made the movie (completely in French, with English subtitles) maddeningly hard to understand. I pride myself on not being afraid of subtitled foreign films, like so many other people I have met, but this one kept me struggling to keep up. I think though, that the more you know about this movie going in, the more you will get out of it. There is no doubt in my mind that if I spoke fluent French, I would have thought this movie one of the greatest movies ever. But on the first viewing, for an English speaker, it is too much.
A Filmerick™, by Frank Gibson
They made love once before the War,
She thought that he'd be back for more;
Now she's trying to cope,
While still holding out hope,
That he'll somehow come knock on her door.
RIYL: Amelie, French Movies in General.
Everything is Illuminated - 3 stars
The first half of this movie was very funny. Very Funny. But then they had to go and bring up the Holocaust.
What a Buzzkill!
Actually, the first fifteen minutes of the movie are confusing as all get-out, as we see Frodo... Sorry, as we see Elijah Wood (who is Not really a hobbit, Frank!) receive a photograph from his dying Grandmother, of his dead Grandfather, for whom he is named. We then see some random wierdness that made me very unsure of whether I was supposed to like this character. The only other non-hobbit role I have seen Mr. Wood play recently was the thoroughly disgusting little animal-thing in Sin City. So, to my mind, going into this movie, Frodo without eyeglasses = good guy; Frodo with Eyeglasses = Creepy Bad Guy. Frodo had his glasses on in this movie.
Anyway, we are supposed to like Frod...Johnathon in this movie, and we quickly grow to, as he sets off to the far off nation of Ukraine to track down the woman in the photograph. We also like his Ukranian Translator, Alex, who dresses like Ali G, but talks like Borat. His quirky use of English adjectives is pretty much worth renting the movie for alone. As a comic character, you don't get much better than Alexander Perchov.
Anyway, after the initial fifteen minutes or so, the movie is a hilarious road trip almost as good as Little Miss Sunshine. But alas, they are not headed to a children's Beauty Pageant, but to the site of a Nazi Desecration and Massacre. Like I said, Real Buzzkill. after that the movie gets real slow and thoughtful, and basically heads downhill as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, if you are Jewish, this movie probably means a lot more, but I am no more Jewish than I am French, so I wasn't of the optimum ethnicity for either film on this week's slate. Both movies in this week's pile were "films" to be studied and analyzed as works of literature, rather than "flicks" to be viewed for two hours of entertainment. I wasn't able (or particularly willing) to give them that treatment, so 3 stars is all I can muster for Everything is Illuminated.
Rather than take the time to compose a poetic take on this movie (see the comment about fudging at the top of this post), I will leave you with these lines from the film. Keep in mind that this movie came right on the heels of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
That silly Frodo, Always chasing his Precious Rings!
RIYL: Little Miss Sunshine, With Honors
Til Next time, Folks, Adieu and Shalom. And for the intensely geeky, Gára Mesta
Last week I promised reviews of the movies A Very Long Engagement and Everything Is Illuminated. I watched them both in a hurry, which is the wrong way to watch these films, so my reviews may be a little skewed by that fact.
A Very Long Engagement - 3 stars
If you had asked me to rate this movie immediately after watching it, I would have given it a three star rating at best. But I have a feeling that if I watched it a couple more times, I would find it to be a masterpiece of cinema on par with The Green Mile or A River Runs Through It. So I have inflated my original opinion of this French film. The Movie is set in France in the aftermath of World War One, although most of the movie is flashbacks to during and before the War.
Audrey Tatou, of Amelie and DaVinci Code fame, stars as Mathilde, a Polio-afflicted but well-to-do orphan who stubbornly refuses to believe that her presumed-dead Fiancé has perished in the war. There is a standard amount of sitting around weeping and pining (Boy is there ever pining! This woman can pine with the best of 'em!), but she also gets up off of her butt (no easy feat; polio, remember?) and goes in search of leads like a French version of Erin Brockovitch. She doggedly pursues the trail that will lead her to her man, Dead or Alive, and uncovers a lot of disturbing and personal information about a lot of other people on the way.
The fast pace, complicated plot, and large cast of characters made the movie (completely in French, with English subtitles) maddeningly hard to understand. I pride myself on not being afraid of subtitled foreign films, like so many other people I have met, but this one kept me struggling to keep up. I think though, that the more you know about this movie going in, the more you will get out of it. There is no doubt in my mind that if I spoke fluent French, I would have thought this movie one of the greatest movies ever. But on the first viewing, for an English speaker, it is too much.
A Filmerick™, by Frank Gibson
They made love once before the War,
She thought that he'd be back for more;
Now she's trying to cope,
While still holding out hope,
That he'll somehow come knock on her door.
RIYL: Amelie, French Movies in General.
Everything is Illuminated - 3 stars
The first half of this movie was very funny. Very Funny. But then they had to go and bring up the Holocaust.
What a Buzzkill!
Actually, the first fifteen minutes of the movie are confusing as all get-out, as we see Frodo... Sorry, as we see Elijah Wood (who is Not really a hobbit, Frank!) receive a photograph from his dying Grandmother, of his dead Grandfather, for whom he is named. We then see some random wierdness that made me very unsure of whether I was supposed to like this character. The only other non-hobbit role I have seen Mr. Wood play recently was the thoroughly disgusting little animal-thing in Sin City. So, to my mind, going into this movie, Frodo without eyeglasses = good guy; Frodo with Eyeglasses = Creepy Bad Guy. Frodo had his glasses on in this movie.
Anyway, we are supposed to like Frod...Johnathon in this movie, and we quickly grow to, as he sets off to the far off nation of Ukraine to track down the woman in the photograph. We also like his Ukranian Translator, Alex, who dresses like Ali G, but talks like Borat. His quirky use of English adjectives is pretty much worth renting the movie for alone. As a comic character, you don't get much better than Alexander Perchov.
Anyway, after the initial fifteen minutes or so, the movie is a hilarious road trip almost as good as Little Miss Sunshine. But alas, they are not headed to a children's Beauty Pageant, but to the site of a Nazi Desecration and Massacre. Like I said, Real Buzzkill. after that the movie gets real slow and thoughtful, and basically heads downhill as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, if you are Jewish, this movie probably means a lot more, but I am no more Jewish than I am French, so I wasn't of the optimum ethnicity for either film on this week's slate. Both movies in this week's pile were "films" to be studied and analyzed as works of literature, rather than "flicks" to be viewed for two hours of entertainment. I wasn't able (or particularly willing) to give them that treatment, so 3 stars is all I can muster for Everything is Illuminated.
Rather than take the time to compose a poetic take on this movie (see the comment about fudging at the top of this post), I will leave you with these lines from the film. Keep in mind that this movie came right on the heels of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
HeHeHe!She wants to know why Augustine buried her wedding ring...
...when she thought she would be killed.
So there'd be proof that she existed?
To remember her.
No. I don't think so.
In case...
In case someone should come searching one day.
So they would have something to find.
No, it does not exist for you.
You exist for it.
You have come because it exists.
She says the ring is not here because of us.
We are here because of the ring.
That silly Frodo, Always chasing his Precious Rings!
RIYL: Little Miss Sunshine, With Honors
Til Next time, Folks, Adieu and Shalom. And for the intensely geeky, Gára Mesta
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Starship Pontiac, Captain's Log.
Now I'm back from my Texas Trip, and I can do the final analysis. So here, incorporating all my mobile updates along the way, is "What I did on my summer Vacation"
My first mobile post was made from the Kangaroo Gas station in Manchester TN, about 20 minutes later.
8:17 am, mile 20-Cap'n's log, stardate 58055 - stopped for gas on way to airport.
We passed up the airport, picked up Becca's parents, and returned to the airport to drop Becca off. She would have to wait a while for the plane, but those of us in lesser transportation wanted to hit the road as early as possible.
10:36 am, mile 136 - Cap'n's log, stardate 58171 - dropped Becca at airport. Now hitting the road with the inlaws
Several miles East of Jackson, TN, we were ready for lunch. We stopped at a Subway sandwich shop located inside a tiny gas station much too small for a Subway sandwich shop. The employees left three cigarettes smoldering in an ash tray right inside the entrance. I inhaled more of their cigarettes than they did. Kathy took the initiative and relocated the cigarettes outside the door until such a time as the smokers could resume poisoning themselves and others.
12:35 am, mile 227 - Cap'n's log, stardate 58262 - lunch @ subway
2:40 pm, mile 357 - Cap'n's log, stardate 58392 - Hellooo, Arkansas!
Just across the Arkansas Line (aka The Mississippi River), in the confusingly named city of West Memphis, we stopped at a Pilot Travel Center for Fuel and restrooms. They Had a Subway sandwich shop. The Restrooms were typical of a high volume Truck Stop. Graffiti, filth, litter, etc.
4:45 pm, mile 488 - Cap'n's log, stardate 58523 - raining in Little Rock
On the southwestern side of Little Rock, We stopped for dinner at a Bojangle's Chicken franchise located in.... A Gas Station. Can't anybody build a restaurant without a gas station any more? The Restroom (which I was badly in need of) made me wish for the nicer one at the Pilot Station. They had one toilet, in a handicapped-accessible sized stall, the door to which.... didn't lock? no, worse. Didn't close all the way? Nope. The door to the one stall in the bathroom had been completely torn off the hinges! It was still in the restroom, though, sitting on the floor, so that if you wanted the barest modicum of privacy, you could haul the 4-foot by 5-foot hunk of sheet metal most of the way over the similarly sized opening, leaning it on the corner. Anybody over 5 feet tall could look right over it anyway, since it was sitting on the floor instead of the hinge about 18 inches off the floor, but at least it would cause someone to slow down a little. Maybe.
We stopped two more places that first day. Mt. Pleasant, TX, where we planned to take a Restroom and Fuel Pit Stop, but the fuel pump malfunctioned, and the Men's Room was so bad I decided that I would be better off just holding it. There was also a Subway sandwich shop inside.
Only a little ways down the road from there we tried again at a clean, comfortable, convenience store of relatively recent construction in Sulphur Springs, TX, where the facilities were much nicer.
At this point we were getting close to bedtime for the older generation of travelers, and a Hotel Stay was imminent. I didn't want to stay at the "Bargain" hotel at that exit, and we sure didn't want to spring for the really nice ones, so we decided to move on down the road, with the agreement that if we didn't find one we could all agree on by 10PM, we would settle for one nearby.
Not such a good Idea, in retrospect.
11:36 pm, Approx. mile 752 (no stardate given - Too frightened to go out to the car to check!) - Staying in scary "Dream Lodge" motel in Greenville, TX. Guy sitting in a lawnchair next to my door told me to let him know if I "need anything"
I have already posted in more depth on this, just follow the link.
2:47 pm, mile 901 Cap'n's log, stardate 58936 - Lunch @ Riscky's Barbeque in downtown Fort Worth with Becca's extended family.
7:22 pm, mile 932 Cap'n's log, stardate 58967 - At the wedding, being held in an art gallery in the beautiful museum/art district in Fort Worth.
11:14 am, mile 941 Cap'n's log, stardate 58976 - leaving the extended Family in Fort Worth, Going to dallas to see Jake and Becky.
12:56 am, mile 1,026 (Cap'n's log, stardate 59061) - Posting from Jake -n- Becky's fabulous tech-filled pad. Tried to post from Jake's iPhone, but couldn't make it work. Going to lunch now.
We took Jake's car to Plano for Lunch, so even though we spent ANOTHER hour on the road, It wasn't in our car, so it doesn't count.
3:06 pm, mile ? Cap'n's log, supplemental - lunch and "Cold Slab" ice cream @ "The Shops at Legacy" in Plano, TX with Jake and Becky
7:30 pm, mile 1,082 Cap'n's log, stardate 59117 - stopped for gas on way to the Blue Mesa Grill.
11:25 pm, mile 1,189 Cap'n's log, stardate 59224 - In Greenville again, this time in the Motel 6.
9:12 am, mile 1,312 Cap'n's log, stardate 59347 - Entering Texarkana, after passing the towns of Old Boston, Boston, and New Boston, TX.
11:22 am, mile 1,436 Cap'n's log, stardate 59471 - Snack and potty break in Benton, AK
1:23 pm, mile 1,526 Cap'n's log, stardate 59561 - Lunch break @ KFC in Brinkley, AK. Fracas broke out between diners, nearly escalated into a fistfight.
3:45 pm, mile 1,678 Cap'n's log, stardate 59713 - stopped for gas in Jackson on way to airport.
7:33 pm, mile 1,855 Cap'n's log, stardate 59890 - picked up Becca, dropped off the inlaws, headed home!!!
approx. 9:06 pm, approx mile 1,955 - pulled into driveway, fed cats+dogs, went to bed.
Our overall Gas Mileage was roughly 33 MPG.
Day 1 - August 3rd, 2007
We started out a little before 8am.My first mobile post was made from the Kangaroo Gas station in Manchester TN, about 20 minutes later.
8:17 am, mile 20-Cap'n's log, stardate 58055 - stopped for gas on way to airport.
We passed up the airport, picked up Becca's parents, and returned to the airport to drop Becca off. She would have to wait a while for the plane, but those of us in lesser transportation wanted to hit the road as early as possible.
10:36 am, mile 136 - Cap'n's log, stardate 58171 - dropped Becca at airport. Now hitting the road with the inlaws
Several miles East of Jackson, TN, we were ready for lunch. We stopped at a Subway sandwich shop located inside a tiny gas station much too small for a Subway sandwich shop. The employees left three cigarettes smoldering in an ash tray right inside the entrance. I inhaled more of their cigarettes than they did. Kathy took the initiative and relocated the cigarettes outside the door until such a time as the smokers could resume poisoning themselves and others.
12:35 am, mile 227 - Cap'n's log, stardate 58262 - lunch @ subway
2:40 pm, mile 357 - Cap'n's log, stardate 58392 - Hellooo, Arkansas!
Just across the Arkansas Line (aka The Mississippi River), in the confusingly named city of West Memphis, we stopped at a Pilot Travel Center for Fuel and restrooms. They Had a Subway sandwich shop. The Restrooms were typical of a high volume Truck Stop. Graffiti, filth, litter, etc.
4:45 pm, mile 488 - Cap'n's log, stardate 58523 - raining in Little Rock
On the southwestern side of Little Rock, We stopped for dinner at a Bojangle's Chicken franchise located in.... A Gas Station. Can't anybody build a restaurant without a gas station any more? The Restroom (which I was badly in need of) made me wish for the nicer one at the Pilot Station. They had one toilet, in a handicapped-accessible sized stall, the door to which.... didn't lock? no, worse. Didn't close all the way? Nope. The door to the one stall in the bathroom had been completely torn off the hinges! It was still in the restroom, though, sitting on the floor, so that if you wanted the barest modicum of privacy, you could haul the 4-foot by 5-foot hunk of sheet metal most of the way over the similarly sized opening, leaning it on the corner. Anybody over 5 feet tall could look right over it anyway, since it was sitting on the floor instead of the hinge about 18 inches off the floor, but at least it would cause someone to slow down a little. Maybe.
We stopped two more places that first day. Mt. Pleasant, TX, where we planned to take a Restroom and Fuel Pit Stop, but the fuel pump malfunctioned, and the Men's Room was so bad I decided that I would be better off just holding it. There was also a Subway sandwich shop inside.
Only a little ways down the road from there we tried again at a clean, comfortable, convenience store of relatively recent construction in Sulphur Springs, TX, where the facilities were much nicer.
At this point we were getting close to bedtime for the older generation of travelers, and a Hotel Stay was imminent. I didn't want to stay at the "Bargain" hotel at that exit, and we sure didn't want to spring for the really nice ones, so we decided to move on down the road, with the agreement that if we didn't find one we could all agree on by 10PM, we would settle for one nearby.
Not such a good Idea, in retrospect.
11:36 pm, Approx. mile 752 (no stardate given - Too frightened to go out to the car to check!) - Staying in scary "Dream Lodge" motel in Greenville, TX. Guy sitting in a lawnchair next to my door told me to let him know if I "need anything"
I have already posted in more depth on this, just follow the link.
Day 2 - August 4th, 2007
Saturday morning we got a bit of a late start, but made it to Dallas by late morning. After being completely confused by the directions for around 30 minutes, we determined that our destination wasn't actually in Dallas, but in Fort Worth. The directions were easy, once you got the right city.2:47 pm, mile 901 Cap'n's log, stardate 58936 - Lunch @ Riscky's Barbeque in downtown Fort Worth with Becca's extended family.
7:22 pm, mile 932 Cap'n's log, stardate 58967 - At the wedding, being held in an art gallery in the beautiful museum/art district in Fort Worth.
Day 3 - August 5th, 2007
11:14 am, mile 941 Cap'n's log, stardate 58976 - leaving the extended Family in Fort Worth, Going to dallas to see Jake and Becky.
12:56 am, mile 1,026 (Cap'n's log, stardate 59061) - Posting from Jake -n- Becky's fabulous tech-filled pad. Tried to post from Jake's iPhone, but couldn't make it work. Going to lunch now.
We took Jake's car to Plano for Lunch, so even though we spent ANOTHER hour on the road, It wasn't in our car, so it doesn't count.
3:06 pm, mile ? Cap'n's log, supplemental - lunch and "Cold Slab" ice cream @ "The Shops at Legacy" in Plano, TX with Jake and Becky
7:30 pm, mile 1,082 Cap'n's log, stardate 59117 - stopped for gas on way to the Blue Mesa Grill.
11:25 pm, mile 1,189 Cap'n's log, stardate 59224 - In Greenville again, this time in the Motel 6.
Day 4 - August 6th, 2007
9:12 am, mile 1,312 Cap'n's log, stardate 59347 - Entering Texarkana, after passing the towns of Old Boston, Boston, and New Boston, TX.
11:22 am, mile 1,436 Cap'n's log, stardate 59471 - Snack and potty break in Benton, AK
1:23 pm, mile 1,526 Cap'n's log, stardate 59561 - Lunch break @ KFC in Brinkley, AK. Fracas broke out between diners, nearly escalated into a fistfight.
3:45 pm, mile 1,678 Cap'n's log, stardate 59713 - stopped for gas in Jackson on way to airport.
7:33 pm, mile 1,855 Cap'n's log, stardate 59890 - picked up Becca, dropped off the inlaws, headed home!!!
approx. 9:06 pm, approx mile 1,955 - pulled into driveway, fed cats+dogs, went to bed.
Our overall Gas Mileage was roughly 33 MPG.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
I appreciate a good hotel.
I just got back from a wedding and am now comfortably ensconced in a big, comfortable, clean, modern hotel room, from which I can wirelessly connect to the internet. My wife and I are sharing the room with her parents, which is not Ideal, but, given my recent luck, I am counting my blessings. Anyway, depending on where you are in this great nation of ours, it may already be tomorrow, so before I turn into a pumpkin, Let me dredge up this blast from the past. This post is from May of 2006, and I thought it would be appropriate to do an encore for my non-MySpace Friends out there.
*************************************
May 6, 2006
*************************************
May 6, 2006
*************************************
Becca and I went to Knoxville this weekend to attend a Wedding. We had planned on going up on Saturday morning, returning on Sunday. But our mutual friend Q was flying in from Out West, and needed a ride toward Knoxville. Her Mama could drive her from the airport to Monteagle, if my wife and I could drive her the rest of the way to K-town. We could. She came up Friday night, saw my show at the Bear Hollow Jamboree, then (after shopping and packing and other dawdling) we departed for Knoxville.
Q had made reservations at the Holiday Inn Select for Friday and Saturday nights, but we had only made plans for Saturday. As we drew near town around 11:30 (12:30 EST), road-weary from the trip, RB said, "Hey you guys don't need to go get a room for tonight, you can just crash in my room. I'll take the floor and let you guys have the bed."
After a few minutes reflection on that, as we rolled into the parking lot, she decided that she would ask for a room with two beds. And that's what she got. So we crashed in Q's room. And we saw that the room was good, and there was evening and there was morning the first day.
The next day, after sleeping in late, watching Saturday morning PBS cartoons, eating Dunkin' Donuts, working out in the Hotel Fitness Room, swimming in the Hotel Pool, and soaking in the Hotel Hot Tub, we made our way to the Maple Grove Inn, the Bed & Breakfast where the Wedding was to be held. My wife and Q were 'honorary bridesmaids', so they needed to be there three hours before the ceremony for instructions, pictures, etc.
I didn't need to be there that early, so I dropped the ladies off, and went to go check in at the Knoxville Travelodge, at which my Wonderful Wife had made us reservations. Confirmation number, credit card, and directions in hand, I set out. Q's hotel was really nice, but a little privacy would also be nice after the wedding reception. Maybe the romance of the Happy Couple's Exchange Of Vows would rub off on us, and Becca and I would feel a little romantic ourselves.
Thinking thoughts like this, I realized I must have missed the hotel, because I was past the point (near the interstate) where any reasonable businessman would put a hotel, and heading off into the Boonies. I turned around, drove back past the Truck Stop, and the Porn Shop next door, and across the overpass to the other side of the interstate, and didn't see our hotel there either. Once again over the overpass, looking hard for any sign of a Travelodge Hotel, I found it. There was a little-bitty sign for the Travelodge under a great big sign for the...
Truck Stop.
Yes. Our hotel was part of the truck stop. At The "Front Desk", you could request fresh towels for your room, as well as buy lottery tickets, cigarettes, a can of Fix-a-flat, and a Slurpee. And right down the hall, you could get your CB radio repaired, or visit the men's restroom, where you could get the phone numbers of a half-dozen men whose only problem with Brokeback Mountain was that "They edited out most of the really hot parts". Oh, and did I mention the Adult Video Superstore across the street? Lovely.
But, Wait, It Gets Worse! We not only were in the worst hotel in the city, we were in the worst ROOM in the worst hotel in the city. The mascot for travelodge hotels is "Sleepy Bear", a cute lil' teddy bear who looks a lot like Shoney Bear, from the Shoney's restaurants, except that he wears an old- fashioned Nightcap and Sleeping Gown, and his eyes are only halfway open. Becca apparently picked "The Sleepy Bear Room" on purpose, because it was supposed to come with a microwave and a minifridge. It didn't come with those amenities, but it did come with Sleepy Bear. On every... surface... in... the... room!!
20-somethings; Remember the Gremlins/Rainbow Brite/Star Wars blanket you had on your bed in the 80's? Substitute Sleepy Bear for Chewbacca, and you get an idea of how godawfully ugly the decor in this room was. The stupid bear looked drowsily at you from both small beds, the curtains, several framed prints, and every $@*#!%; lampshade in the room! This was not a room that encouraged romance; this was a room that encouraged losing consciousness as quickly as possible, waking early, packing your stuff, and fleeing.
My wife never gets to book the hotel again. Ever.
*************************************Q had made reservations at the Holiday Inn Select for Friday and Saturday nights, but we had only made plans for Saturday. As we drew near town around 11:30 (12:30 EST), road-weary from the trip, RB said, "Hey you guys don't need to go get a room for tonight, you can just crash in my room. I'll take the floor and let you guys have the bed."
After a few minutes reflection on that, as we rolled into the parking lot, she decided that she would ask for a room with two beds. And that's what she got. So we crashed in Q's room. And we saw that the room was good, and there was evening and there was morning the first day.
The next day, after sleeping in late, watching Saturday morning PBS cartoons, eating Dunkin' Donuts, working out in the Hotel Fitness Room, swimming in the Hotel Pool, and soaking in the Hotel Hot Tub, we made our way to the Maple Grove Inn, the Bed & Breakfast where the Wedding was to be held. My wife and Q were 'honorary bridesmaids', so they needed to be there three hours before the ceremony for instructions, pictures, etc.
I didn't need to be there that early, so I dropped the ladies off, and went to go check in at the Knoxville Travelodge, at which my Wonderful Wife had made us reservations. Confirmation number, credit card, and directions in hand, I set out. Q's hotel was really nice, but a little privacy would also be nice after the wedding reception. Maybe the romance of the Happy Couple's Exchange Of Vows would rub off on us, and Becca and I would feel a little romantic ourselves.
Thinking thoughts like this, I realized I must have missed the hotel, because I was past the point (near the interstate) where any reasonable businessman would put a hotel, and heading off into the Boonies. I turned around, drove back past the Truck Stop, and the Porn Shop next door, and across the overpass to the other side of the interstate, and didn't see our hotel there either. Once again over the overpass, looking hard for any sign of a Travelodge Hotel, I found it. There was a little-bitty sign for the Travelodge under a great big sign for the...
Truck Stop.
Yes. Our hotel was part of the truck stop. At The "Front Desk", you could request fresh towels for your room, as well as buy lottery tickets, cigarettes, a can of Fix-a-flat, and a Slurpee. And right down the hall, you could get your CB radio repaired, or visit the men's restroom, where you could get the phone numbers of a half-dozen men whose only problem with Brokeback Mountain was that "They edited out most of the really hot parts". Oh, and did I mention the Adult Video Superstore across the street? Lovely.
But, Wait, It Gets Worse! We not only were in the worst hotel in the city, we were in the worst ROOM in the worst hotel in the city. The mascot for travelodge hotels is "Sleepy Bear", a cute lil' teddy bear who looks a lot like Shoney Bear, from the Shoney's restaurants, except that he wears an old- fashioned Nightcap and Sleeping Gown, and his eyes are only halfway open. Becca apparently picked "The Sleepy Bear Room" on purpose, because it was supposed to come with a microwave and a minifridge. It didn't come with those amenities, but it did come with Sleepy Bear. On every... surface... in... the... room!!
20-somethings; Remember the Gremlins/Rainbow Brite/Star Wars blanket you had on your bed in the 80's? Substitute Sleepy Bear for Chewbacca, and you get an idea of how godawfully ugly the decor in this room was. The stupid bear looked drowsily at you from both small beds, the curtains, several framed prints, and every $@*#!%; lampshade in the room! This was not a room that encouraged romance; this was a room that encouraged losing consciousness as quickly as possible, waking early, packing your stuff, and fleeing.
My wife never gets to book the hotel again. Ever.
We can now add my inlaws to the people who don't get to pick. Grandmother Carter and/or Jenny Murphy can pick though. They pick good hotels.
Staying in scary "Dream Lodge"
After Driving 782 miles yesterday, we stopped for the night about fifty miles outside of Dallas/Ft. Worth, just after 10:00 P.M. For those of you that didn't figure it out already, The "Stardate" in those "Cap'n's Log" entries is the Odometer reading in my Pontiac Vibe.
This is the post I composed on my laptop last night from the hotel room. I didn't get to post it at the time for reasons that should soon be obvious. Hope you enjoy it... I know I didn't!
I am sitting in my hotel room at the "Dream Lodge" in Greenville TX. They have a TV with bad reception and no remote control (channel Surfing from within arm's reach of the screen can give you a whopper of a headache, by the way), the bathroom is tiny and stained, with every surface in it having been "Repaired" at some point in the last 65 years by either applying More Paint, More Caulk or Both, and there are what appear to be cigarette burns in the polyester comforter on one of the beds. Free Wireless Internet? Not so much, Really.
The worst thing, though, is the shady cast of characters that are just outside my door, probably doing drug deals less than eight feet away from my head. I am in room 109. The guy in room 108 is sitting in a lawn chair outside at 12:30 at night, with his right elbow on his doorframe and his left elbow on mine. As I walked past him to enter my room, he told me to let him know if I "needed anything". I have never needed anything less. The guy is still Sitting right at the threshold of my door, and occasionally talking very briefly to different people who approach. After midnight. In the middle of nowhere, in the boonies of Texas.
The place looks, from the outside, like the hotel from the movie "Vacancy". The one where all the strangers stranded in the rainstorm get stuck at the hotel and killed off one by one? yeah, that one.
(late update: after finally calming down enough to fall asleep @ around 1:00 A.M., I was awakened by my room phone @ 3:00 A.M. - The voice on the other end was young, male, and quite likely high, and simply said "Whass goin on?" I told him he had the wrong room and rolled back over. I think he was looking for Jay and Silent Bob next door in 108.)
This is the post I composed on my laptop last night from the hotel room. I didn't get to post it at the time for reasons that should soon be obvious. Hope you enjoy it... I know I didn't!
*************************
I am sitting in my hotel room at the "Dream Lodge" in Greenville TX. They have a TV with bad reception and no remote control (channel Surfing from within arm's reach of the screen can give you a whopper of a headache, by the way), the bathroom is tiny and stained, with every surface in it having been "Repaired" at some point in the last 65 years by either applying More Paint, More Caulk or Both, and there are what appear to be cigarette burns in the polyester comforter on one of the beds. Free Wireless Internet? Not so much, Really.
The worst thing, though, is the shady cast of characters that are just outside my door, probably doing drug deals less than eight feet away from my head. I am in room 109. The guy in room 108 is sitting in a lawn chair outside at 12:30 at night, with his right elbow on his doorframe and his left elbow on mine. As I walked past him to enter my room, he told me to let him know if I "needed anything". I have never needed anything less. The guy is still Sitting right at the threshold of my door, and occasionally talking very briefly to different people who approach. After midnight. In the middle of nowhere, in the boonies of Texas.
The place looks, from the outside, like the hotel from the movie "Vacancy". The one where all the strangers stranded in the rainstorm get stuck at the hotel and killed off one by one? yeah, that one.
-------- Daily Haiku of the Day -------
Won't sleep much tonight
I so can't wait for daylight.
I want my mommy.....
--------------------------
***********************************
I so can't wait for daylight.
I want my mommy.....
--------------------------
***********************************
(late update: after finally calming down enough to fall asleep @ around 1:00 A.M., I was awakened by my room phone @ 3:00 A.M. - The voice on the other end was young, male, and quite likely high, and simply said "Whass goin on?" I told him he had the wrong room and rolled back over. I think he was looking for Jay and Silent Bob next door in 108.)
Friday, August 3, 2007
Search Engine "Wrong Numbers" for Late July
Welcome Once again to The Daily Blog of the Day's "Search Engine Wrong Numbers".
The real winner lately has been My Post on Competitive Drinking; The following searches all connected people to my site.
, (if you don't have it, go get it) and have had a few hits that way. One person looked for "Dogfighting" and got my post on doggies, another got my main page by looking up "Analysis" which was a rather pompous keyword I added to my site. If you are already a stumbler, don't forget to click the "I like it" button while you are looking at my pages, and maybe even add a review saying how awesome TDBotD is!
A Sad "Wrong Number" - Some poor person, probably seeking help with his spouse's internet addiction, did a search for "Blog Addicted Wife" which pulled up the misleadingly titled site, "My Wife Left Me", in which I mentioned that I was "Addicted" to the Dresden Files novels. He spent another four minutes reading various other posts, before searching the site (something I didn't know you could do) for "Blog Addicted Partner". He left after getting this page. How sad.
In other Keyword News, I was visited by one person each searching for "Ari Shaffir", "Vincent D'onofrio" and "Whysoserious".
A day after I invented the word, I was visited by someone looking for "Testosteriffic"!
The weirdest one was the guy who was looking for "Van Halen Method Blogspot" I Googled it myself to see what he was probably looking for, and found nothing of note. Who knows what that was about?
I almost didn't mention it but I also had someone find me using Google's Blogsearch site with the keywords "Movie Review". I had a hard time believing that I would be close to the top of any list of movie review blogs, so I went over to blogsearch.google.com and did my own "Movie review" Search. As I expected, I wasn't in the first page of results. So I tried "Haiku Movie Review". That would pop me right up, wouldn't it? I was fourth on the list! There were SEVERAL other sites doing the same thing as me, including one called Review in Haiku, which despite myself, I rather like! As a matter of fact, I just suscribed.
You try so hard to do something original.... Oh well.... Until next time, Blogophiles, Good Day!
The real winner lately has been My Post on Competitive Drinking; The following searches all connected people to my site.
- "wisest wizard drinking game" (2 searches)
- "wizard staff drinking game" (2 searches)
- "wizard staff beer" (1 search)
, (if you don't have it, go get it) and have had a few hits that way. One person looked for "Dogfighting" and got my post on doggies, another got my main page by looking up "Analysis" which was a rather pompous keyword I added to my site. If you are already a stumbler, don't forget to click the "I like it" button while you are looking at my pages, and maybe even add a review saying how awesome TDBotD is!A Sad "Wrong Number" - Some poor person, probably seeking help with his spouse's internet addiction, did a search for "Blog Addicted Wife" which pulled up the misleadingly titled site, "My Wife Left Me", in which I mentioned that I was "Addicted" to the Dresden Files novels. He spent another four minutes reading various other posts, before searching the site (something I didn't know you could do) for "Blog Addicted Partner". He left after getting this page. How sad.
In other Keyword News, I was visited by one person each searching for "Ari Shaffir", "Vincent D'onofrio" and "Whysoserious".
A day after I invented the word, I was visited by someone looking for "Testosteriffic"!
The weirdest one was the guy who was looking for "Van Halen Method Blogspot" I Googled it myself to see what he was probably looking for, and found nothing of note. Who knows what that was about?
I almost didn't mention it but I also had someone find me using Google's Blogsearch site with the keywords "Movie Review". I had a hard time believing that I would be close to the top of any list of movie review blogs, so I went over to blogsearch.google.com and did my own "Movie review" Search. As I expected, I wasn't in the first page of results. So I tried "Haiku Movie Review". That would pop me right up, wouldn't it? I was fourth on the list! There were SEVERAL other sites doing the same thing as me, including one called Review in Haiku, which despite myself, I rather like! As a matter of fact, I just suscribed.
You try so hard to do something original.... Oh well.... Until next time, Blogophiles, Good Day!
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Holy Viral Marketing, Batman!
I really like superheroes, but I am really picky about them, too, which is why I typically leave the theater after superhero movies mentally dissecting what worked, what could have been done better, and what should never have even been attempted. Rarely does a Superhero Movie get it *just right*. But Christopher Nolan got Batman Begins *just right*.
Christopher Nolan is, in my book, tied with M. Knight Shyamalan for best Film Director In The Whole Wide World. And when the Best Film Director In The Whole Wide World (Nolan) takes on the Best Film Subject In The Whole Wide World (Superheroes), you get Movie Magic. So I am elated that Mr. Nolan is going back to Gotham City for seconds.
The Dark Knight, a direct sequel to Batman Begins, will be hitting theaters a year from now. The movie is currently fiming in Chicago, but the guerrilla marketing has already been underway for weeks, if not months, and is some of the most clever stuff I have seen. I don't know who the geniuses behind this are, but as long as they don't put any suspicious "Lite-Brite" toys underneath Boston Bridges, they should go on to do great things for other movies as well.
It all began, as far as I can tell, with the website "ibelieveinharveydent.com", which got a whole internet domain name to display a single picture. The picture is a political campaign-style poster featuring Aaron Eckhart's good-looking face gazing thoughtfully out into the distance from in front of a Flag background, and the words "Harvey Dent for District Attorney", "I believe in Harvey Dent", and in smaller print, "Paid for by friends of Harvey Dent"
For the Batman-Impaired amongst you, Harvey Dent is the name of the good-looking, unbribable, straight-as-an-arrow, District Attorney who is a good friend to both Bruce Wayne (as another of Gotham's Most Eligible Bachelors) and a professional friend of Batman. Harvey eventually becomes disfigured along one half of his body, marring his once-famous good looks, and turning him into the tortured, half-good, half evil character known as Two-Face.
This little teaser tells us two things. That the Character of Harvey Dent will be in the movie, and that he will be played by Aaron Eckhart. What it doesn't tell us is whether we will get to see the emergence of Two-Face in the film. This is why they call it a "Teaser".
So a Few Weeks after "I Believe in Harvey Dent" pops up, Comic-Book Shops in California start finding playing cards stamped with "Ha!Ha!Ha!" and "ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com" I won't tell you which playing card it was, but I'll give you a hint: It rhymes with "Smoker" and "Midnight Toker" (and, yes, some people call him "Maurice")
A visit to this site revealed a mirror of the original Harvey Dent site. Just the same picture as before... but the picture was changing, excruciatingly slowly, pixel by pixel, to reveal the first image of actor Heath Ledger in makeup as The Clown Prince of Crime himself, The Joker. (Hey, "Joker" rhymes with those things from the last paragraph! Except "Maurice".. wonder what that was about?)
Then 48 hours or so later, just when some people were getting the emails from their friends telling them to go check out the picture, they pulled it, and visitors to the site were greeted with The words "Page Not Found" in red lettering on a black background. Those who left disappointed missed the site's new content. written in *Black* lettering on the black background,(visible only if you "click and Drag" across the screen) was "Ha HA ha hA Ha ha...." for a disturbingly long time. Check it out for yourself here, if you want to.
People looking for some meaning to the madness found it, if they scoured among the "Ha"s for the other letters, which apparently (I've not checked - I'm not THAT nerdy! (ok, ok, I checked)) spell out the message "See you in December". The Movie will be out in Summer, so what is going to happen in December? Ah.. Another Teaser.
Speaking of Teasers, that is also the name for the 10 to 30 second advertisement for a movie that comes out before the 2 minute long "Trailer" does. It is shown in movie theaters far in advance of the movie, to generate "Buzz" and whet fans' appetites. Well, some one "Bootlegged" a very low quality recording of the teaser for The Dark Knight before it was supposed to be released, and posted it on YouTube. I found out about this and visited You tube to watch it. I saw it, but I couldn't hear it very well over my laptop speakers, so I went to get my headphones and watch it again. Before I could return from the other room, Warner Brothers pulled the plug and the Video, and when I tried to play it again, I was greeted with "This video is no longer available due to a Copyright Claim by Warner Brothers". I had watched it less than five minutes before it was pulled.
Well last week the plot thickened. Geeks of every color, shape and size were in San Diego for Comic-con 2007. Another site pops up, called whysoserious.com, with a countdown clock running on it. The site is made to look like the Joker is recruiting people. At the appointed time, people who want to join "The Joker's" forces need to be at a certain place. The place is indicated by a aerial photo, with no directions or even any indication of where it is. If you recognize the place from the air, then be there at the time appointed.
When they got there, among lots of other promotional stuff, there was a contest of some sort -a follow the clues-scavenger hunt sort of thing from he look of it. All of the participants were wearing garish, Joker-style, Clown makeup (you can see the photo at the bottom of yesterday's post), and the winner got to be "Killed" and photographed as a "Joker" body double. The Whysoserious.com website then featured the Joker's "death notice", still photos of the day's events, and the official release of the "Teaser" that I had seen before. The phrase "See you in December" came up again in the death notice. Then a bit later, they pulled the site altogether, and it now forwards you straight to "rent-a-clown.com", which seems to have no purpose (so far), other than to highlight the "mugshots" taken of the contest participants in their Joker-makeup. The fans are given ridiculous aliases which are all combinations of the same dozen or so (all-male) first names, and a few descriptive phrases; you can check it out here. (WARNING - you will want to turn your speakers waaaay down.) If there is a secret message on this site, I don't know what it is. If you figure it out, let me know, otherwise....
"See you in December!" HaHA haHA hahaha HA ha HAhahahahahaha!!!!
Christopher Nolan is, in my book, tied with M. Knight Shyamalan for best Film Director In The Whole Wide World. And when the Best Film Director In The Whole Wide World (Nolan) takes on the Best Film Subject In The Whole Wide World (Superheroes), you get Movie Magic. So I am elated that Mr. Nolan is going back to Gotham City for seconds.
The Dark Knight, a direct sequel to Batman Begins, will be hitting theaters a year from now. The movie is currently fiming in Chicago, but the guerrilla marketing has already been underway for weeks, if not months, and is some of the most clever stuff I have seen. I don't know who the geniuses behind this are, but as long as they don't put any suspicious "Lite-Brite" toys underneath Boston Bridges, they should go on to do great things for other movies as well.
It all began, as far as I can tell, with the website "ibelieveinharveydent.com", which got a whole internet domain name to display a single picture. The picture is a political campaign-style poster featuring Aaron Eckhart's good-looking face gazing thoughtfully out into the distance from in front of a Flag background, and the words "Harvey Dent for District Attorney", "I believe in Harvey Dent", and in smaller print, "Paid for by friends of Harvey Dent"
For the Batman-Impaired amongst you, Harvey Dent is the name of the good-looking, unbribable, straight-as-an-arrow, District Attorney who is a good friend to both Bruce Wayne (as another of Gotham's Most Eligible Bachelors) and a professional friend of Batman. Harvey eventually becomes disfigured along one half of his body, marring his once-famous good looks, and turning him into the tortured, half-good, half evil character known as Two-Face.
This little teaser tells us two things. That the Character of Harvey Dent will be in the movie, and that he will be played by Aaron Eckhart. What it doesn't tell us is whether we will get to see the emergence of Two-Face in the film. This is why they call it a "Teaser".
So a Few Weeks after "I Believe in Harvey Dent" pops up, Comic-Book Shops in California start finding playing cards stamped with "Ha!Ha!Ha!" and "ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com" I won't tell you which playing card it was, but I'll give you a hint: It rhymes with "Smoker" and "Midnight Toker" (and, yes, some people call him "Maurice")
A visit to this site revealed a mirror of the original Harvey Dent site. Just the same picture as before... but the picture was changing, excruciatingly slowly, pixel by pixel, to reveal the first image of actor Heath Ledger in makeup as The Clown Prince of Crime himself, The Joker. (Hey, "Joker" rhymes with those things from the last paragraph! Except "Maurice".. wonder what that was about?)
Then 48 hours or so later, just when some people were getting the emails from their friends telling them to go check out the picture, they pulled it, and visitors to the site were greeted with The words "Page Not Found" in red lettering on a black background. Those who left disappointed missed the site's new content. written in *Black* lettering on the black background,(visible only if you "click and Drag" across the screen) was "Ha HA ha hA Ha ha...." for a disturbingly long time. Check it out for yourself here, if you want to.
People looking for some meaning to the madness found it, if they scoured among the "Ha"s for the other letters, which apparently (I've not checked - I'm not THAT nerdy! (ok, ok, I checked)) spell out the message "See you in December". The Movie will be out in Summer, so what is going to happen in December? Ah.. Another Teaser.
Speaking of Teasers, that is also the name for the 10 to 30 second advertisement for a movie that comes out before the 2 minute long "Trailer" does. It is shown in movie theaters far in advance of the movie, to generate "Buzz" and whet fans' appetites. Well, some one "Bootlegged" a very low quality recording of the teaser for The Dark Knight before it was supposed to be released, and posted it on YouTube. I found out about this and visited You tube to watch it. I saw it, but I couldn't hear it very well over my laptop speakers, so I went to get my headphones and watch it again. Before I could return from the other room, Warner Brothers pulled the plug and the Video, and when I tried to play it again, I was greeted with "This video is no longer available due to a Copyright Claim by Warner Brothers". I had watched it less than five minutes before it was pulled.
Well last week the plot thickened. Geeks of every color, shape and size were in San Diego for Comic-con 2007. Another site pops up, called whysoserious.com, with a countdown clock running on it. The site is made to look like the Joker is recruiting people. At the appointed time, people who want to join "The Joker's" forces need to be at a certain place. The place is indicated by a aerial photo, with no directions or even any indication of where it is. If you recognize the place from the air, then be there at the time appointed.
When they got there, among lots of other promotional stuff, there was a contest of some sort -a follow the clues-scavenger hunt sort of thing from he look of it. All of the participants were wearing garish, Joker-style, Clown makeup (you can see the photo at the bottom of yesterday's post), and the winner got to be "Killed" and photographed as a "Joker" body double. The Whysoserious.com website then featured the Joker's "death notice", still photos of the day's events, and the official release of the "Teaser" that I had seen before. The phrase "See you in December" came up again in the death notice. Then a bit later, they pulled the site altogether, and it now forwards you straight to "rent-a-clown.com", which seems to have no purpose (so far), other than to highlight the "mugshots" taken of the contest participants in their Joker-makeup. The fans are given ridiculous aliases which are all combinations of the same dozen or so (all-male) first names, and a few descriptive phrases; you can check it out here. (WARNING - you will want to turn your speakers waaaay down.) If there is a secret message on this site, I don't know what it is. If you figure it out, let me know, otherwise....
"See you in December!" HaHA haHA hahaha HA ha HAhahahahahaha!!!!
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