Once again, my favorite online shop ThinkGeek comes through with an awesome product, just in time for summer! The Swashbuckling BBQ Sword. As the ad says:
Now you don’t have to choose between seeing your enemies flee before you, and roasting the perfect weenie.
Now that's a hot dog roaster!
Remember those old school public safety announcements, like the famous “duck and cover” campaign? And now, of course, when you watch those things (or even old T.V. shows for that matter) they seem so ridiculous and dated. Well, how would a saftey video for zombie attacks have looked? I’m glad you asked!
What I’m Reading:
I picked up a short story collection by Philip K. Dick.
It is not uncommon to repackage a short story collection after a movie is made out of one of the stories therein to try to capitalize on the success of the movie, even though the story is often quite different. I didn’t even know Philip K. Dick had written Minority Report. I knew he had written Blade Runner, which is awesome, and also A Scanner Darkly which I have not seen, but that was it. So after I finished the titular story of this, I was amazed to discover the second story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, was actually Total Recall, a movie that I have seen more times than I can count. Double my amazement when the next story was Paycheck! So, there were three sci-fi blockbusters in a row that I didn’t know he had written. That was a nice surprise. I was excited to see what huge movie might be next on the list, but neither of the remaining stories were movies, at least of the blockbuster variety. I will say that I thought one of those stories, Second Variety, was the best one in the book, even if the “twist ending” was painfully obvious. Looking up info on Philip K. Dick, I discovered that the movie Next is (very loosely) based on a story of his. So he’s got movies with Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Keanu Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ben Afleck and Nicholas Cage. That my friends is what I call not too shabby!
What I’m Watching:
Nora Robert’s Midnight Bayou, and on Lifetime to boot.
Oh yeah, just look at that cover baby. You may recognize Jerry O’Connel from such things as Sliders and as being the fat kid from Stand by Me:
Lauren Stamile took me a little longer to place, but she plays nurse Rose, Derek’s other woman on Grey’s Anatomy. Now why was I watching this piece of cinematic masterpiece you ask? Because it is filmed at Oak Alley Plantation in New Orleans, which I have toured.
I know after you saw that promo picture, you probably thought this was an awesome movie. It was not. After watching it, I am certainly not in a hurry to read a Nora Roberts’ book. Ever. However, I think this movie was to romance movies what Ice Spiders is to sci-fi movies and was enjoyable in much the same way. What can I say, there is something about the very poorly done, cheesy nature of these movies that appeals to me. But please don’t take that as a recommendation to watch the movie!
What I’m Listening To:
Better than Ezra is one of my all time favorite bands, and I think they don’t get nearly as much credit as they deserve. I remember one time they were playing at Purdue and we were pretty excited about it, but a lot of people were like, “Who are they? I’ve never heard of them.” Of course, once BTE took the stage and started reeling off the hits, those same people were like, “Oh yeah, I know that song. And that song. And that song…” Side note about that concert, BTE pulled a fan out of the crowd up on stage with them and gave him a guitar and actually let him play along with them…that was really awesome. I will also say that seeing BTE in New Orleans was one of the best concerts I have ever been to.
So lets go to the tape and check their record. Their first album, Deluxe, was released in 1993. Many would say this is the definitive BTE album, containing their biggest hit Good as well as Sara’s favorite, Rosealia. In ’97 they released Friction, Baby which contained some awesome songs like King of New Orleans and Desperately Wanting. Only a year later they released How does your garden grow? which has One More Murder and my personal favorite At the Stars. In 2001 they released Closer which contained the underrated Extra Ordinary as well as the original version of A Lifetime (later re-done on their next album). So that brings us to 2005, when they released Before the Robots, which is actually my favorite of their albums.
That is a decade long career of consistently good albums and I don’t think they get enough credit for it. They’ve just released a new album Paper Empire, which I haven’t heard yet and can’t comment on, but with that track record, I’m willing to bet it is good. So, without further ado:
Some bacon lover sent me a link to a product that combines two of my loves, bacon and clocks. Well, it turns out the baconation group over there on cafepress has tons and tons of bacon merchandise, including such fantastic slogans as “The power of bacon compells you” and “Love, Peace and Bacon Grease“.
And, to complete your wardrobe, why not buy some delicious looking bacon keds:
(Shoe link courtesy Sara)
On Saturday, we met a friend from college and went to the zoo. Going into it, Evie had some pretty high expectations: she wanted a lion to “roar at her” and to have a monkey “give her a stick”. 50% of those expectations were met.
The highlight of the trip for Evie was riding on the carousel, seeing the monkeys, and seeing a llama “pee-pee and poo-poo outside”. She was a little frightened on her first trip on the carousel, but by the 3rd rotation or so, she was loving it. “More music!” she demanded when the ride was stopping. She wanted to go right back on as soon as it stopped, but we did some other stuff and then came back. As we were nearing the carousel she was straining ahead so hard and bouncing with excitement, I was afraid she would hurt herself! As for the monkeys, I knew she was enjoying them at the time, but I didn’t realize how much until she was recounting to us what she had seen and every other thing was “More monkeys!” Like, “Monkeys, a lion, more monkeys, a carousel, more monkeys, etc.” As for Sara and I, we were just thrilled that a gorilla was sitting just a few feet away obviously enjoying a big piece of broccoli. Looks like we have a good tool to use to get her to eat her broccoli!
Now, the highlight of the zoo for me was the lion exhibit. Normally the lions just sit around doing nothing. You could easily replace them with a fake lion or at least an animatronic one and nobody would even notice. Well, not this time! As we watched, the male lion picked a fight with a female lion including rolling around on the ground and roaring. It was AWESOME! And Evie didn’t seem to care much, even though roaring was something she specifically wanted to see. She was more interested in sitting on a bench. I guess she’s not old enough to realize that seeing lions fighting isn’t something you see everyday. The tiger was pretty rad too as he ran and jumped all around and trying to fish his toy out of the water. On a whole, way more active than I have ever seen these big cats.
As far as the potty training, it has been going great. We were pretty worried about the zoo, since we would be gone from the house for so long, but she had NO accidents. This even included us running from the monkey house and searching for a bathroom, and she held it the entire time. We were very impressed.
Since then, however, we seemed to suffer a setback. She just doesn’t want to go on the potty. She knows she has to go, she asks to go, but when she gets there and sees the potty, she changes her mind. This is repeated over and over because she knows she has to go, so she keeps asking to go. After a while of not going, she will have an accident. She really can’t help it, she just has to go so bad. I’m not sure what happened to cause this backlash of her not wanting to sit on the potty and therefore I don’t really know what to do about it. I’m hoping we can just get through until we pass this phase and then it will get better. Any suggestions?
Shane Halbach 