I’ve been noticing that, for some crazy-ass reason, you’re making a comeback on that radio station that I hate to listen to but have to hear when I’m in the car with my wife and kids. You know who you are, you Def Leopards and you Whitesnakes and you Poisons. I’d even throw in Twisted Sister, since I keep hearing “We’re Not Gonna Take It” on that station and even on commercials. What’s up with this trend?

It’s probably some “our core demographic was in junior high or high school when these songs were originally popular, so to make them feel young again and increase revenue through advertising, let’s give them the songs that were cool when they were kids” thing. Like that whole Beatles Rock Band game and the “Oh God, Patrick Kennedy is quitting the House! What will we do without a Kennedy in government?” thing.

But man, I hate this music. Its corny factor, the lame “Eighties kids” being a demographic of buyers of this crap. Hair metal was silly in 1985, why would it be any different now? When you look at some of these bands’ websites you see that they’re just a bunch of old guys trying to hang on to whatever they had 20 years ago. They probably want the same things they got 20 years ago too: teenage girls and booze, which, if they were 20 years younger, wouldn’t seem so creepy and gross. Of course now they’re like Bad Blake from Crazy Heart, sleeping with middle age to early AARP aged women that used to be the teenage girls they slept with back in 1985 and playing in venues that 20 years ago they wouldn’t want to be anywhere near.

So all of you hair metal guys still trying to hang on (I’m also looking at you, Enuff Z’nuff). Man, get new lives. Reinvent yourselves. No one would fault you. Even David Lee Roth and Dee Snider tried radio gigs. There are othere things in this world besides your hit record on pop radio 20 years ago. Give it a shot, it could work.

It’s not a happy happy movie, but then again you can’t expect happy happy from Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity and About a Boy who is now writing this adapted screenplay from the book of the same name by Lynn Barber. The performances are good, especially Carey Mulligan who plays Jenny with style and class. Liked her. Peter Sarsgaard, who plays David, is equal parts mysterious, slimy and charismatic.

Good or Bad : Good.

And the people of the area were very nice and we always had a great time there. It was fun.

So fast-forward many years later. To a month or so ago.

I had seen the preview for Amores Perros at the Inwood Theater many years ago and remembered at the time that it had been said that it was a sort-of Mexican Pulp Fiction, so when I saw it was going to be on IFC a couple of weeks ago I set up the Tivo to tape it. It sat there for awhile, waiting for us, and we finally watched it.

Oh lord.

If you don’t know about the movie, Amores Perros follows several groups of people in Mexico City in a non-linear story. There is Octavio, who is in love with his brother’s wife and wants to help her leave him, so he starts putting his pet Rottweiler into dog fights. There’s also a guy who is cheating on his wife with a soap opera star and her dog falls down in this hole in the floor and then she falls into the hole and requires some sort of surgery and she can’t walk anymore. And there’s a homeless guy who’s a gun for hire, killing people for money, but all he really wants is to see his daughter again and tell her that he loves her, so he double-crosses two business partners and steals their money and then….

But that would give away the ending, which, like mostly everything in Amores Perros, is heart-wrenching and sad.

And what you see of Mexico City is horrifying. It’s actually worse than Man on Fire, which was also a film about a guy who’s seeking revenge for a kidnapped little girl in Mexico City. The only thing that Man on Fire has that Amores Perros doesn’t have is a guy gets his fingers chopped off. Or Denzel Washington. He’s in Man on Fire, which makes the cool quotient of Man on Fire rise dramatically.

But still, Amores Perros is terrifying. And I’m also glad I never paid to see it, unlike Trainspotting. I will never go to Mexico City after seeing this film. Do I want to fear for my life, or that I might be kidnapped, or a family member might be kidnapped and then held for ransom? What if I paid and that family member was killed by the kidnappers? Or caught in a car chase where someone is racing an injured dog to the hospital? Then again, the dog is a Rottweiler, so I wouldn’t feel too bad about it dying, but still, what if I was hit by those guys while driving? And then a crazy homeless hitman stole my wallet while he was pretending to help me? And what if a crazy homeless hitman killed me while I was there? How much would someone in Mexico City pay to have me killed if the Peso is so low to the dollar?

It boggles the mind. Give me a fake dreamy Mexico where the people are friendly and wonderful and no one will kill me if I decided to travel there. I’ll take Mexico in the late 1970’s for $1000, Alex.

What were some of Glenn Vance’s happiest memories of traveling as a child?

You know the answer.

“We wish you a Merry Christmas;
We wish you a Merry Christmas;
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!”

“Wow, thanks guys. Merry Christmas to you too.”

“Now bring us some figgy pudding.”

“Okay, have a good night. Stay warm!”

“No, bring us some figgy pudding.”

“Figgy pudding?”

“Yes. Figgy pudding. Now. We won’t go until we get some.”

“Stop it. Leave.”

“No.”

“I don’t have any figgy pudding. What the hell is figgy pudding?”

“We won’t go until we get some.”

“Why?”

“Because. We love figgy pudding.”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY DAMN FIGGY PUDDING.”

“What the hell, dude? We caroled for you. Now bring us some figgy pudding. Bring some right here.”

“Get it yourself. I don’t have any figgy pudding.”

“We won’t go until we get some.”

“People, leave! Now! No figgy pudding here! Not going to be any either!”

“We’re not leaving.”

“Get the hell out of here! I don’t have any figgy pudding.”

“Ok, bring us a figgy pudding and a cup of good cheer then.”

“Dude, I’m going to show you some good cheer in a few minutes. Let me get my .12 gauge of good cheer for you.”

Databank Keeper – “Okay, so what have we got so far?”
George Lucas – “Nothing. We have nothing.”
DK – “Alright…what is it? Human, creature of some sort….something…”
GL – “Not human. We have enough humans. Make it a creature.”
DK – “Sentient or not?”
GL – “Definitely sentient.”
DK – “Wise or not?”
GL – “Wise? Like Yoda?”
DK – “Yeah.”
GL -  “Hmm…not so wise. Just normal.”
DK – “Okay, a normal creature. What does it look like?”
GL – “Furry. Tall and furry.”
DK – “Like a Wookiee?”
GL – “Damnit…no, make it short.”
DK – “Like an Ewok?”
GL – *Sigh* “Scratch furry. Make it scaly. And green.”
DK – “Like Greedo?”
GL – “…Okay. Scaly, green, big beaver teeth.”
DK – “Like Walrus Man?”
GL – “Why is this shit so hard?”
DK – “I don’t know. You thought this stuff up.”
GL – “Short. Pigish…creature.”
DK – “Like an Ugnaught?”
*George hits his fist on the desk – repeatedly*
GL – “Okay, not scaly and green. Scaly and…orange.”
DK – “…Orange is good.”
GL – “Yes, orange is good. Don’t have many orange creatures.”
DK – “What do we call the orange creature’s species?”
GL – “How about a…Rith.”
DK – “No can do. Too close to ‘Bith’. And ‘Sith’.”
GL – “Toynarian! Vimbanite! Morax! Anything!”
DK – “Toydarian, Mimbanite, Gorax. Already done.”
GL – “Okay…Flangian.”
DK – “Flangian?”
GL – “Yes. A Flangian. He will be a Flangian.”
DK – “Where did you come up with that?”
GL – “I just…created…it.”
DK – “Fine. What’s the Flangian’s backstory?”
*Silence for 5 minutes*
GL – “The Flangian was recruited by criminal elements on his home world, Flangia, and eventually grew up on a crime boss’ ship, the Bardo’s Luck. He eventually bought his freedom from the crime boss and joined went to the Imperial Academy. He was a good pilot but he got kicked out for…some reason…so he got back into crime and smuggled…things…around the galaxy. And then for…some reason…he got caught up in the Rebellion.”
DK – “…That’s Han Solo.”
GL – “YYYYYYYAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!” He breaks a technical Oscar against the wall.
DK – “You know this isn’t easy, George! Remember how long it took you to come up with Yoda?”
GL – “Jar Jar was so much simpler.”
DK – “Yeah, but the whole ‘race’ thing with him…”
GL – “Yeah, that sucked.”
DK – “Yeah.”
GL – “Okay…he grew up privledged, but then was sent to a farm when his parents died. He moved to a swamp planet and then after being hunted down by Dark Jedi he fled there to go live with…Ewoks or something. And his best friend, he’s a Jedi too, and so his friend and he love the same girl but finally have a duel on a space platform -”
DK – “…You’re kidding…right?”
GL – “…What?”
DK – “That’s like everybody you’ve ever created in the whole saga, main-character-wise.”
GL – “Hey, who came up with this shit? Me? Yes, me! I’m detecting a more critical tone than usual, so don’t screw with me! Making this shit up is hard!”
DK – “Well exsqueeze me.”
GL – “Shut up, Jar Jar.”
DK – “Okay, easy one. What’s his name?”
GL – “How about…Fluke Bolo?”
DK – “Or Gorge Mucus? Come on, man! Are you kidding? Are you really out of ideas? Jesus!”
*George hangs his head*
DK – “What should we call our scaly orange Flangian? I don’t know. Just say whatever pops into your head. That’ll be his name.”
GL – “Bill.”
DK – “Bill?”
GL – “That’s the first thing that popped into my head.”
*George twiddles his thumbs*
GL – “Okay, we can work with…Bill.”

In the town of Loro Ciufenna that we were staying there was a newsstand that sold, on each Sunday, one copy of the International Herald Tribune. The IHT is the European version of the New York Times, but from a decidedly Euro-centric viewpoint, but you still have to put up with Paul Krugman and Roger Cohen. So the first time we bought the IHT (for  2 Euro) and splashed across the front page was a story about Michael Jackson, sort of a career retrospective and how it mentioned that he had planned to tour in the fall. Only after 10 or so paragraphs did it mention that he was dead.

Wow. Michael Jackson was dead? I called my mother and asked her when it had happened and was told that it was a few days after we had left the States, which made me happy to be in Italy, because it meant that I didn’t have to live through all of the crap that was going on in the States about how, oh my God, he’s dead! What happened? What will we do without this lovable eccentric genius who died before his time? Let’s all run out right this freaking second and buy everything that we can that has Michael Jackson’s voice or picture or essence on it!

Supposedly Michael Jackson’s estate has earned over $100 million since his death. And yes, I feel for his children, whom I’m sure loved their father, even though he nicknamed one of them Blanket. And I’m sure that his family was sad when he died, but I hope there is some remorse they feel cashing checks for everything from their shares of his estate to the new reality series that is going to be broadcast with most of the Jacksons in it. I’m probably being pessimistic, given what human nature is really like, of course.

I think that the thing that gets me the most about this Michael love is that everyone seems to have forgotten how completely freaky this person they are worshiping was. All of these “Thriller” dance things and “Thriller” on Party City television ads and Neverland Ranch and the child-sex thing – what the hell? This person, only a few years ago, was considered a freak of nature, a possible child rapist and understandably distrusted by many people. Is the new love the product of a remarkable PR campaign? It’s definitely possible. Who the hell knows.

And why do I care? Part of the “Thriller” thing is, I’m sure, a long-lost love of an ephemeral, imagined 1980’s and a simpler time. Do people feel lonely for this? Should I care at all?

Give it a little while. It will go away.

I hope.

After that Kat and I left. Like I said, I didn’t like Drivin’ n’ Cryin’, so I didn’t stay, but I followed the band I went to see for the next several years. I didn’t see them live anymore, but I got all of their albums and watched their progression from country-rock (starting with “No Depression”) to a mixture of bluegrass and country-folk (“Anodyne”). I didn’t know about all of the internal turmoil that was going on within the band at the time, I just thought they were great. And it hit me hard when I heard that they’d broken up. Great bands break up every other day, but this one hit me rather hard. I really liked them and now I had to stop being lazy and find something new to listen to.

Of course, I didn’t have to wait long. Farrar went out and formed Son Volt and Tweedy formed Wilco.

And if I’d been looking for a band to like after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, Wilco was real love.

Their first album “A.M.” is fantastic. It continued an already established sound that Tweedy and begun with Uncle Tupelo and carried it a step further, in more of a Rolling Stones direction. If CDs could wear out I would have worn out “A.M.” by now. It is still one of my favorite comfort albums to listen to.

Their second album is less than perfect though. “Being There” has great moments, but interspersed through it are tracks that I could have done without (‘Outta Mind, Outta Sight’, ‘Kingpin’, ‘Hotel Arizona’) and that made me not love it as much as I wanted to. Not saying it isn’t good, it is, but I didn’t have that total unconditional love that I’d felt with “A.M.”.

After that a year or so went by and they came out with “Summerteeth”. And I thought, “Hmm…that’s a stupid album title.”

And my love for them stopped there. It was like people who like kids from TV shows in the 70’s. Peter Billingsley never aged beyond A Christmas Story. Mark Hamill never aged past Star Wars. Cryogenically frozen, my love for Wilco stayed. And that was 1999.

Fast forward to a week and a half ago.

My friend Jimi has an extra ticket to their show at the Palladium, his wife doesn’t like the experimental guitar work of current Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, and they can’t get a babysitter, so a free ticket is mine for the taking if I want it. And I do. So we go.

And the show was great. They played for about 2 hours plus and, strangely, didn’t play much off of the 2 albums that I love so much. Mostly from “Summerteeth”, “A Ghost is Born” and “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. So now I’m catching up on my education by listening to their other albums.

And I have one thing for Mr. Tweedy. Please, Jeff, no more goofy album titles. I’d rather we didn’t break up again for such a long period of time. Thank you.

Every week on the uplifting program “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” Ty Pennington and his rotating crew of altruistic humanitarians find a family in need and then build them a new house. The new home is tailored to the peoples’ needs, whether they be with terminal ailments or something else horrible. The people are always appreciative of the efforts and there is usually a lot of crying.

One of the nice things that the team will do is create rooms for the various kids centered around interests of their’s. Jungle rooms, princess rooms, music rooms, Lego rooms, they’ve done it all…except one type of room.

Here is the hypothetical show:

Ty (entering room of 14 year old): Hey there, Hunter. How ya doing?
Hunter: Good. Good.
Ty: Well Hunter, what do you like? What are you in to?
(awkward silence)
Ty: …Is something wrong?
Hunter: Wha? Oh no…no, not at all. (shakes his head fervently. Possibly…too fervently)
Ty: Hunter, you can talk to me. Is something wrong?
Hunter: But we’re on TV….
Ty: It’s okay. No one is going to judge you.
Hunter: Really?
Ty: Really.
Hunter: Okay, well…I like girls.
Ty: Well, man, so do I. So do I.
Hunter: No, I really like girls. You know, really like them.
Ty: Well, I do too.
Hunter: But it’s not what you think.
Ty: Wha? What’re you talking about? I guess I don’t understand.
Hunter: You’ll laugh.
Ty: Dude, I promise I won’t laugh.
Hunter: Okay…boobs and butts.
Ty: (He laughs out loud, then calms himself) Boobs and butts, huh?
Hunter: …Yeah. Boobs and butts. I said it. Boobs and butts.
Ty: Man, Hunter, there is nothing to be embarrassed about liking boobs and butts! (Putting his arm around Hunter) And buddy, I swear to you, you’re going to have the world’s best boobs and butts room, or my name isn’t Gary Tygert Pennington!
Hunter: Awesome!

Later….

Hunter walks into his new room. Covering the walls are what he loves. Boobs and butts.

Hunter: YES! YES! YES! This is awesome!
Ty: You like it?
Hunter: I LOVE IT!
Ty: Man, this is the single greatest boobs and butts room in the world. And see that over there?
Hunter: HOLY CRAP! Oh my god, a Real Doll! You got me a Real Doll!
Ty: That’s right man, the world’s greatest love doll on the market!
Hunter: Ty, you rock!
Ty: No man, YOU ROCK!
Hunter: (Silence, then quietly…) I think I’d like to be alone for awhile.
Ty: Dude, you go enjoy your new room.
Hunter: Oh, I will. (And holding his Real Doll, he closes his door)

Would that ever happen? Never.

Well, if the show was on Showtime, it might.

My son has very cool tastes in music. He’s five years old and he likes Johnny Cash, Weezer, The Avett Brothers, The Pixies and other hardly-ever-on-the-charts bands. He doesn’t like girl singers, just boy singers, but the boy singers he likes by and large are pretty awesome and I’m proud to say that, yes, my son knows the words to Cash’s “Sea of Heartbreak” and The Avett Brothers “Die Die Die”.

My wife on the other hand does not always listen to cool music. She gravitates towards the ‘mix’ stations, and that’s where our trouble starts.

If you ever listen to any of these ‘mix’ stations you’ll realize that they are pretty much easy listening for 30 year olds. Songs you used to shake your fist in the air to, like Bon Jovi, or piano ballads from Elton John, or the official band of the ‘mix’ station, The Fray. These songs were once cool, long ago, and now are not, but these ‘mix’ stations continue to pump out these songs every hour so people listening in office buildings can hum along to something and hopefully, god willing, get them through the day.

Several months ago one of the big songs on these ‘mix’ stations was “Hey There Delilah”, a sappy syrupy love song written, I guess, to the singer’s girlfriend. The song is pretty lame, but for some reason my son, who has very cool tastes in music, loves it.

Damn you, Plain White T’s.

Where did you emo wannabe’s come from? Will you ever leave us? Probably not, now that you have some other crappy song called “1, 2, 3, 4″ on the radio, on that ‘mix’ station that my wife listens to and my son hears as my wife drives him around Dallas. Why can’t my wife listen to something awesome like Hüsker Dü or Wilco or Grandaddy or something like that? Isn’t there a law against music like this? Aren’t we closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay because of people like The Plain White T’s?

Maybe we should waterboard The Plain White T’s. That would be satisfying.

And now that show is over. Completely over. And I can’t stop saying “frak”.

I’ll say it in the car when the kids are around. ¹And she rolls her eyes everytime and then chastises me.] my parents, people I don’t even know, and I can’t stop saying it. I am a junkie for “frak”.

Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer, and, for frak’s sake, help me stop saying “frak”. Pretty please?

Why are you a fashion trend? Who thought that taking a pair of $2 rubber rain boots and adding colorful paint was a good idea? Whoever it was has made a hell of a lot of money off of all of the moms at my oldest’s school. Doing the minimal amount of research for this post, I saw that Neiman Marcus sells a pair of rain boots for $225.00. They’re the Burberry Check Rain Boot, and I’m sure that Mr. Burberry will be laughing the whole way to the bank as some silly woman drops down her AmEx Titanium card for a pair of them.

I once bought a pair of utilitarian, black rubber ones for walking around the muddy lot that my house was being built on after destroying a pair of tennis shoes. I got them from Wal-Mart and they were worth every penny of the $8 that I spent on them 3 years ago. I still have them. Maybe I’ll wear them to school sometime to try to fit in with the trendy ladies. Then again, I’m not a lady, so they might take it as a slight or an insult that I’m wearing rain boots minus colorful painting emblazened on them.

Do we really need things like these? And why do people feel that they have to spend tons of money on something like this? It’s a free country, I know, but come on, people.

But I’ve noticed that ‘Lost’, which is probably one of the best shows currently on television, keeps doing this stupid stupid dialogue convention over and over and over until you could make a drinking game out of it. Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but that’s my job, to notice the mundane and pointless.

It goes like this – two people are going somewhere on the island, doesn’t matter where, but they are alone, walking, or eating something, or listening to a record, and one of them will suddenly say a seeming non sequitor, the other will be confused, reply, “What?” or something like that, and the other person will explain. In an episode a couple of weeks ago they did it not once but three times in one episode. Like I said, you could have a drinking game.

So this is the way I would write it if I were writing the show -

Locke and Sawyer are trudging through the jungle, not a care in the world about Others or Smokey or Christian popping out or anything, just trudging through the jungle. They haven’t spoken in some time.

LOCKE – “Five.”
SAWYER – Looks around confused, focusing on LOCKE. “What’d you say?”
LOCKE – “Five. I said five, James.”
SAWYER – Still confused. “…Five what?”
LOCKE – Now confused too. “…Uh…you know, about what you said earlier. There are five. Five.”
SAWYER – Now looking peeved. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
LOCKE – Spreading his hands, ever the teacher. “About…2 hours ago we were talking about…you know, that thing we were talking…about.”
SAWYER – “John, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what “five” means.”
LOCKE – Now very confused. “You don’t?”
SAWYER – “…No.”
There is a long silence as Locke looks at Sawyer. He is very confused now, to say the least, and trying to figure out what “five” refers to.
LOCKE – “Hmm…I don’t know what “five” means either.”
Sawyer smirks. “Nice one.” He begins trudging again.
Locke stands in the jungle, then follows Sawyer. “I’ll think of what it means in a minute!”
SAWYER – “Sure you will, Sherlock.”

He heads off into the jungle. Locke quizzically follows.

It would be funny. And then maybe the ‘Lost’ writers wouldn’t do it anymore.

I have a strange history with members of the WFAA news team. Way back, when I was about 17 or so there was a guy on WFAA that did the news named Quin Mathews. One day I saw him at a CD shop, so, being the curious sort, I followed him around and would casually try to see what he was going to buy. I think it was jazz. Then I would see him at Blockbuster with a female. They both picked a video, his pick lost that night.

Then Gary Cogill and I exchanged some emails about film criticism and we even saw each other at a press screening for a Kevin Kline film that was pretty terrible. And I saw Troy Dungan in college at a Parent’s Weekend function at Baylor. But it had been a loooooooooong time since I’d seen any current WFAA team players…until Friday evening.

White shirt, pink tie. Hair looking perfect, as usual. Looked like an iced tea in a beer mug. In fact, the whole family had drinks in mugs. Three kids, two other women. The strange thing? There wasn’t a lot of talking at the table for so many people being there. Seemed kind of strange for a party of six.

The other thing that I noticed almost immediately is that the waiter that everyone else on the patio had was not attending to Delkus, party of six. They had Martin, who is one of the old timers there. He’s good. He paid attention to the Delkus party while we were waiting for refills, Delkus, party of six had refills immediately, thanks to Martin.

I guess it pays to be weather royalty in this town. Now if only us little people could get our refills in a timely manner, too.

It’s been a couple of weeks now since Battlestar Galactica left the airwaves and since it’s been off I’ve thought a lot about that last episode. After all of the buildup and anticipation for some sort of mind-blowing ending you’ve got to wonder – Was it good or was it just okay? Did they answer enough questions to the lingering plot points that were mysteries? Was it a good mix of action (which it was) and exposition (the jury is still out on that one)?

Our ragtag band of survivors killed off (or had their enemies kill themselves) their enemies, specifically Dean Stockwell’s wily Brother Cavil, who opted, instead of resurrection, to end it all with a bullet in the head. With his death I’m assuming that the Cylon threat is gone, but aren’t there more Cylons out there? And come on, that was a cheap way out. Cavil had a sweeping master plan to bring the Cylons back on top and take resurrection back to his people and he ended his life with a bullet? In the mouth? Sure, I know that Tyrol had just killed Torie and that the secret of resurrection would never be his after that, but suicide? He had the human race where he wanted it and it’s not like the guy can naturally die. Suicide seems like a lame way out for him.

But there were other things. The Opera House vision was all about the Galactica CIC? Really? What writer thought that up and how rushed to deadline were they before they thought that lame idea up? If Baltar and Six were supposed to take Hera why would Roslin and Sharon be so scared?

A huge problem with the episode? A lot of the loose ends seemed to get tied up rather loosely.

We never find out why Kara came back or or why or what she was. And you kind of knew she was going to be it but Roslin was the dying leader? ¹ Did she really lead them to Earth or did she just lead them in space? What happened to the relationship between Tigh and Six? He’d gotten her pregnant. ² And Head Six and Head Baltar? What was that? Are they angels? Cylons? No explanation given. Or not worth giving.

Another problem is that Ron Moore gives explanation of many of these hints on his show commentary podcasts, which is also how you would have found out that everyone who took part in Zarak and Gaeta’s failed coup d’état was put on board the prison ship. You never would have heard a single character just mention in passing, “Everyone who took part in Zarak and Gaeta’s failed coup d’état was put on board the prison ship.” I guess those 3 seconds of airtime would have eaten up too much story time.

Probably my biggest problem with the show was that way too much time was given to the battle at the Cylon colony and not enough given to the time on Earth. Several parts of the final battle seemed to drag as Colonials would walk through the Cylon hallways, guns drawn, staring straight ahead like they were…waiting for something to appear…like Bad Sharon. Or Simon. Or that PR guy. Or a battle between CG Cylons.

And too much time spent on the characters’ pasts on Caprica. Time was wasted so we could see that Roslin slept with a former student, Bill had a job interview, Anders talk about “perfection”, Tigh and Ellen drink ³ and Lee almost sleeps with his brother’s fiance Kara. Probably collectively 45 minutes was wasted on flashbacks. Sure, it showed why some of these people survived the war, but still needless and pointless.

And because of the time crunch Earth seemed to be hurried through. We had a lot of territory to cover there and a lot of stories to wrap up, we couldn’t take a few minutes out of the pointless Lee/Kara flashback and show more of what happened to Lee on Earth?

There he was, talking to Kara, then she just upped and “disappeared” and he was alone. And that was that.

Nothing else about Lee? He’s just left alone in Africa? Alone? Without Kara? What a waste of time that was.

I think of all of the Earthbound storylines that was served the best was the Baltar/Six one. You learned that Baltar grew up on a farm and knew how to cultivate crops, so now that he has no more science equipment he’s at least going to survive. And after all they’ve been through, tall Six is going to be with short Baltar. But I don’t get Head Baltar and Head Six. I’m guessing they’re angels? I don’t know. If they’re Cylons those clothes they’ve been wearing for 150,000 years still look good.

And a logical fallacy – If the notes of “All Along the Watchtower” are given numerical values, and those numerical values, when punched into an FTL computer, take that ship to Earth, wouldn’t Jimi Hendrix’s version of the song at the end of the show technically lead whoever figured out the numerical code right back to a bombed out nuclear Earth in the future? As I’m assuming by the end of the show that the writers are hinting that our current Earth is heading down the same path as our “forefathers” did on Kobol. Maybe the next coordinates could have been put to “Dancing Queen” or “How Much is that Doggy in the Window” or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

My last problem with the show was that the series was so great and well written that it felt like most of the mysteries from early on were just given short shrift because some sort of answer had to be given as an explanation for them. The final five plotline was alright but ultimately silly in the end. Kara returning from the dead was never adequately explained, the conceiving of Hera, and lots more. It was great TV but I think that the show creators owed it to their fan base to elaborate better and figure out better answers to the mysteries, even if they were convenient plotlines from seasons ago that helped propel the story along. A good example that they could have looked to was “Lost” which just seems to get better the longer it goes. The creators of it may not know where it’s going to go from season to season, but they think up new and interesting situations for the Losties to get involved in, and it’s not like the two shows have little in common. The Losties are stuck on the island (sort of) and the Colonials are stuck on the Galactica. Both sets are trying to get home and only one so far has succeeded. Let’s hope that “Lost”, with all of the expectations it has built up for itself, can pull of an ending better than “Galactica” did.

Jason’s Deli, Which Wich, chopped beef, sliced turkey with honey barbecue, I love them. And if they were sentient and could feel love, they would love me too.

And so I was at Potbelly Sandwich Works the other day with Kim. I ordered the Pizza Sandwich and she got the Turkey Skinny. I had to go back to the house so I took mine with me and she met a client. About twenty minutes passes.

I eat the sandwich when I get home.

Seriously? They call this a Pizza Sandwich? Pepperoni, marinara sauce (whoever put that on pizza?), provolone(again, who put that on pizza?), mushrooms and Italian seasoning. Those are the ingredients that make up the vaunted “Pizza Sandwich”.

It was terrible. Possibly the worst sandwich I’ve ever bought at an establishment that purported to be a sandwich shop. It didn’t taste like pizza, and it didn’t even taste good. It was like the bread was a wet sponge and the “pepperoni” (all two slices) was so low rent that it needed a bailout.

I talked to Kim later and told her the Pizza Sandwich was terrible. She immediately retorted, “My sandwich was terrible too!”

So goodbye and good riddance, Potbelly Sandwich Work. You’ve been in business for 32 years but hopefully you’ll go out of business very soon and stop polluting the world with your crappy “sandwiches”.

But whether it’s Rob Lowe and Snow White dancing to “Proud Mary” or Savion Glover tap-dancing to the music from Schindler’s List, the musical numbers do serve their purpose. Imagine you’re the one sitting in that giant theater waiting for your name to be called as one of the honored few in your category. You’re crowded next to your co-stars and the producers, you kinda need to use the restroom but the lines are incredibly long and just at that moment the producers of the show have shined their timing wisdom on you and start showing a dance retrospective from the past eighty years of Oscars.

And all of those people that make the movies, most of them are the little guy, the guy you’ve never heard of that did something really cool with the special effects from Iron Man or The Dark Knight, shouldn’t he be honored too? Yes, he’s crammed into the boring part of the show, the part of the show that everyone watches just to see what the goofy costume designer is wearing and what bizarre political rant they’re going to go on during the Best Documentary award.

The Academy is made up of TONS of people, and they all want their moment in the sun.

What if you were that little guy? The guy that won Best Live Action Short? Wouldn’t you want your moment?

So stop complaining during the bloated, overly-long Oscars. Let’s win one for the little guy.

Not that she’s not a great character, we just haven’t had a chance to get to know and like her like we have her husband, Saul. While Saul’s personal standing had continued to rise as the years went on and the fleet continued their quest through uncharted space, Ellen died in the early parts of Season 3 after passing information over to Brother Cavill in order to get Saul out of prison. She was manipulative, cruel, evil and lascivious. She drank heavily and plotted against everyone so that her husband (and her) could benefit from others failings. She is not an easy person to like.

But Saul loved her (until he had to kill her) and still loves her, and now that he’s had his vision as he prepared to kill himself in some icy radioactive ocean on Earth he’s convinced that she’s the final Cylon.

But I wasn’t convinced about that. How to explain Starbuck and her resurrection from the dead? What about that Viper she and Leobon saw with her charred body in the cockpit? If anyone had a legitimate claim to the Final throne I thought it would be her. Maybe as the final Cylon she is the most powerful and can resurrect without the Resurrection Ship? Maybe.

But Ron Moore, creator of the re-imagined series, said -

“[Ellen and Saul Tigh have] always been Cylons, and there’s something profound about that. They’re a married couple who just have to go at it periodically and just have major issues and major problems. But the bond between the two of them was something that literally could not be broken. And I thought that was a really interesting and ultimately very positive thing to say.”

So I’m apt to believe it. And I thought it would be interesting if someone that had been killed off of the show was the final on, but not her. Maybe Billy or Dee or that little girl that died on the cruise ship during the pilot. Ellen just seems like such a…blah choice.

If and when Ellen returns (and they’ve set it up where she just has to return) how will she? Can she create herself? Will a Higher Cylon Power create her? Will she be all knowing? I doubt it. The other four don’t know anything even though they’ve been asked. Do they know the way to Earth? Nope. Do any of the Final Five have the answers to the big questions? Probably not. If they do it’s been dribbled out of their programming, like that song they all sang together, which was cute, but they don’t seem to share a hive mind of higher powers or advanced knowledge.

Will Ellen be the Know It All? Probably not.

I’d hoped (hoped hoped) it would be Tom Zarek because that way when it was (hoped it would be) revealed in the last episode that he was the final evil Cylon then Adama could nuke him and his evil compatriots. Of course, the way the storyline is progressing right now along the lines of treason and revolution Adama may have his chance to do just that. But now we know it isn’t going to be Zarek.

Oh well. Had to be somebody.

Peyton really grew to love the show. I like it too, as anyone who has read this blog before can attest to, and I’ve got my favorite characters on the show, but Peyton’s has become Mailbox, who shows up rarely more than once a show after Steve/Joe have sang their mail song and always delivers “a letter from our friends”. Mailbox wants to be a standup comedian someday but he’s rooted in place in the front yard, so it will probably be hard for him to travel.

But Peyton loves the guy (or girl, it’s hard to distinguish, since his voice has a strange timber to it) and always sings along to the mail-retrieving songs that Steve/Joe sings. And this love has translated into our everyday lives as well now. So while we’re out Peyton will now want to look inside of the mailbox when we leave on our walk and also on our return to the house. And he likes the vanity mailboxes, like the mailbox that looks like a dog at the end of the street or the stone one that has vines growing on it. But he loves all of them pretty equally.

So the next time if we show up at your house with Peyton and he has a pile of your mail in his hands, you’ll know why.

The Internet Archive, also known as the Wayback Machine, is a wonderful thing. You can see the way Google looked a long time ago or the website of the New York Times from September 11, 2001. It’s not the fastest thing in the world (and come on, if you archive the majority of the internet for free, do you really have to answer to anybody about the speed of your servers?) but it sure is awesome.

And its awesomeness now travels over to this site. My first blog that I wrote years ago “Central Services – The Minstry of Information Retrieval” ¹ is on the Wayback Machine. Not all of it, sadly, but a large portion of it. So if you start seeing new posts appear in your RSS reader or you’re just poking around the site avoiding the boss, check ‘em out.

Which is sad. For the past few years or so every time I’ve eaten at the Black-eyed Pea the service has been terrible. The food is *okay*, I suppose, and since there are few restaurants around that still serve the Southern-style food that most of us Texans grew up on it was like a half-assed oasis in a sea of Asian fusion and California Pizza Kitchen-type places. Like I said, the problem is the service is terrible. Several weeks ago we went in, again on a Sunday, and were sat fairly quickly, but then our waitress, who looked like she was charged with seven or eight tables, came by and said she’d be right back to take our drink orders. Five minutes, then ten minutes passed, no waitress, no drink order. We eventually flagged the hostess and asked if we could just have some water and rolls, since the kids were getting antsy and angry.

Ten more freaking minutes passed and no waitress to take our order. And so we left.

Jump back to last Sunday. We’re sitting at The Dixie House. It’s around 1:30 in the afternoon and there are probably eight tables full and three of the wait staff to shephard over them. Our waitress came, said she’d be right back with our drinks. Another table is sat in her section, they order drinks and then get them before we get ours. Five more minutes pass, no drinks. We finally flag down our waitress and ask where our drinks are and she stumbles over what we’d ordered. She then gets them out. The food is alright but still the service is incredibly lacking.

So we’ve made a pact: no more Black-eyed Pea. Ever.

We’re never going there again. I’ve wasted far too much money on a crummy establishment. I’m done with them.

So if anyone reads this and has a suggestion of where to find this mysteriously hard to find Southern cuisine in the Dallas area, leave a comment. If it’s good we might even ask you to go with us sometime.

But I have to agree with Corliss on his secondary point; being the end of the year this is the time for awards-caliber films, and this year is looking pretty lame. Early on I was interested in seeing Gran Torino but then my interest fizzled out for no perceptible reason even though I love Clint Eastwood. The Reader sounds so boring and Slumdog Millionaire deals with under-aged prostitution so they’re out in my book.

But Corliss doesn’t bring up the biggest glaring omission that he made about the two films that we do agree on. The Dark Knight was directed by Christopher Nolan who did the fantastic Memento ¹ several years back and John Favreau directed Iron Man. Favreau started out in indie films (Swingers, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) and then moved on to directing (Will Ferrell’s second most underrated performance – Elf) ² Indie directors tend to focus more on story and plot than, say, Michael Bay or that dufus McG ³ because their budgets are usually in the high hundred-thousands or the low millions. What’s been great about Nolan’s and Favreau’s careers is that they so far have kept the indie ethic of storytelling first and just tacking on the special effects to aide the visuals.

I doubt Iron Man or The Dark Knight will get nominated for the big awards, other than Heath Ledger, but the were enjoyable and interesting films that deserved the critical accolades, and the piles of money, that they earned.

Everyone who’s anyone, on first hearing, just knows that John is the better songwriter. He was much cooler than Paul ¹ since Paul had gone on to be in that lame band Wings. Then Paul did “Ebony and Ivory”, which immediately disqualified him in the cool category. Paul was the pretty one that all of the girls loved while John was the rebel and resident weirdo. Who would have thought to have a bag in for peace? John. Would Paul have thought about having a bag in for peace? No of course not, because Paul was the good one.

So time passes and I see the film Imagine, starring the rebel himself, and you come away with only one thought: Man, John was a jerk. And not just a small-time jerk. His jerkiosity could have caused an eclipse. Or sank the Titanic. Or crushed the Third Reich. At one point there is a fan hanging around outside of John’s home, so John goes out to the gate and talks to the guy. He is less than friendly and actually insults the man several times.

John was a tool. But that shouldn’t discount his ability to write cool songs. “The Ballad of John and Yoko”? Genius.

And now when I listen to the Beatles albums ² I hear the songs that Paul sang and how their much more…singable…than John’s songs. “Eleanor Rigby”, “For No One”, “Let it Be”, Paul is the winner on my scorecard. John’s got some great ones to his credit, and Paul did sing “Back in the USSR”, which I think is terrible and knocks Paul down a few notches, but the same album has “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey”, which are awesome. But they don’t make John the winner. John wrote some very strange songs, which I’m sure some people like, but for me, the walrus is Paul.

We last saw our band of pilgrims as they arrived at Earth, but not the Earth that we currently know. It’s a bombed-out radioactive-looking wasteland that doesn’t look very welcoming to the voyagers from the twelve colonies. I would guess we’ll get our questions answered this season, at least I hope we do. Battlin’ Bill Adama has brought these people this far, I doubt that he’ll leave them hanging, but what about hope at this point? Most of what was keeping everyone going onboard those flying tin cans was the hope that Earth would be out there, somewhere, and that it would be habitable. It’s like getting half of a prayer answered. Sure, you made it to Earth, but are you going to like it once you get there? Good luck. Brother Cavil is still out there with his compatriots, and when they find Earth…eek.

We’ll also finally get to see the last secret Cylon. I guess after Baltar’s aborted Cylon Detector didn’t figure out that four of the Final Five weren’t human that someone we know and love will be the last one. I’m hoping that it’s not one of the top two (Adama or President Roslin), and I don’t think that the creators of the show would take so obvious a tack. My gut tells me that it could be Tom Zarek, but who knows. It would also be a complete mind f*ck if it was Billy Keikeya, who died in a barroom shootout, or Ellen Tigh, who was killed by her husband back on New Caprica.

And is Lee Adama still the president now that Roslin is back? Does she even want to be president anymore? If Lee is still president, will Zarek keep trying to influence him(another reason that I think he is a top contender for The Last One)?

My only complaint? That the Sci-Fi network survives off of people watching this one show, and because of that they aired the first ten episodes of season four and then had the audacity to hold onto the final 10 until 7 MONTHS LATER. Shame on you, Sci-Fi Channel. At least you’re finally going to air them.

And I’ve waited so long for this show to come back on. Please lord let it be good. No, be better than good, please be great and remind me why I love this show so much. Please.

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I sucked it up and watched all but one of the 80’s/90’s Batman movies Batman & Robin. (Why anyone would look at that and think it was good is just crazy) and used to collect the comic books off and on, watched the crummy 60’s TV show in reruns when I was a kid, so don’t even try and not call me a Batman lover. Not in a Batman/Robin…you know…well…not-that-there’s-anything-wrong-with-that kind of way, but I’ve always enjoyed Batman. Bruce Wayne went from wimpy kid one minute to crazed future vigilante in the next with the death of his parents. He donned the cape, the mask, he became what criminals would fear, and he kicked ass which was the best part.

Superman…yeah, he’s alright, but Batman was a normal person wailing on somebody. You could feel your blood pump and the adrenaline go up as he started in on, as the Fantastic Four’s Thing would say, “clobberin’ time.”

Batman never really cared much about the consequences of his actions like Superman did. Clark was always the fine upstanding man that he was raised to be and was supposed to be. He was good and kind and saw the world in black and white. But the world has never been black and white, sure there are good guys and bad guys, but sometimes the bad guys are on your side fighting for your interests 1 and sometimes they’re not. 2 Sometimes they’re out for world domination and other times they just want money or power or something that makes them look sexy in the eyes of others. And it’s those reasons that would make me want to be a super villain. But not just your normal run-of-the-mill vanilla super villain. No sir. I’m looking to be unique, if possible.

Good guys always have to look out for the innocent bystanders and are racked with guilt if they cause an innocent life to be extinguished in the process of saving others. 3 I’ve read that Warner Bros, the studio that puts out the Superman films, is thinking of taking a hint from the Cristopher Nolan lead Batman films and that they might reboot the Superman series in a darker light. What are they thinking? Superman is sunny, Batman is dark. Is Superman not going to care what he does? He’s the son of Krypton sent to Earth to be this planet’s protector, not some gray-area hero.

Which is why it would be cool to be a supervillain. You just wouldn’t have to care. Your whole reason for living is to gain street cred, or cash, or babes, or something intangible that makes up for that horrific time in your life that made you that evil bastard that you became. And it would be fun because taking out your aggression is fun, even if it’s a planeload of people you’ve never met before, sure, one of them did something that they deserve a huge pounding for. Heat vision to the wing of the plane, that’s the way to do it.

I’d drive a cool car and live in some foreboding super-fortress in the Himalayas and have a legion of warriors at my beck and call and have minions, evil minions, that would do whatever I commanded. They’d probably be ninjas. Or some rogue paramilitary outfit that I have on my payroll. I’d be friends with dictators and international criminals and I’d naturally flaunt it in public, because what’s the fun in being a supervillain if you can’t rub it in the face of the people that you call your mortal enemies?

And I’d have to be best friends with my mortal enemy too, just like Magneto and Charles Xavier. I don’t know anybody who is bald and needs a wheel chair, but I’m evil. I’ll put someone in a wheelchair and then shave his head or something. And after I’ve been caught and put in some foolproof prison where only the hardest of the hard villains reside and my best friend comes and visits me we’ll reminiscence about the old days and I’ll make allusions like I’m planning to escape and he’ll threaten me in veiled terms and we’ll glare at each other and then we’ll laugh as I block his king with my knight in the game of chess we’ve been playing and I breathily whisper, “Checkmate.”

Now that’s a hell of a career right there.

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He and I read Curious George books probably twice a week thanks to the library. Curious George Goes to a Restaurant. Curious George Plays Baseball. Curious George Flies a Kite. Curious George is Bored. Things like that. You know the drill.

And no one in this country or world would know about Curious George if it wasn’t for his ubiquitous friend, the Man With the Yellow Hat (MYWH for those in the know). He has no name, no history, he just exists as the Man With the Yellow Hat. We do know a few things about him though. He is an explorer, as we know from the first Curious George book. He also appears to be wealthy, having an apartment in “the city” and a house in “the country” and because if this he is a man of leisure. There are no real world locations in Curious George, but one can assume that given the history of his creators, the husband and wife team of H.A. and Margret Rey, who fled Nazi Germany to eventually live in New York City, that New York is “the city”, but I’m completely and totally getting off topic.

The Man With the Yellow Hat is ALWAYS wearing yellow. He never wears blue. He never wears red. He never wears black. Only yellow. And it can only be yellow or else part of his persona and psyche is gone, like a war veteran who lost a limb that can still feel it itching when he gets back to “the world”. This weird character trait would make it difficult for a normal person to shop for clothes, but he does live in “the city”, so he probably gets his clothes tailor-made at some haberdasher, being a wealthy gentlemen and all.

And for the love of all that is holy, don’t lose his hat. Few things are worse than this scenario. As he said in one of the episodes of the Curious George show, which I watch with my oldest, “Without my hat, I’m just not…me.” No kidding, Man With the Yellow Hat. Then you’re just “The Man”. A generic plot point in a children’s book. He. Is. Nothing.

The Man With the Yellow Hat also seems strange just for the fact that he’s a strapping young guy in a city full of available ogling females who lives with a monkey. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! And he’s always leaving George by himself, saying things like, “Now I’ve got to conveniently go over here. Don’t get into trouble!” What does this jackass think is going to happen, George is going to just sit there? Everybody in the books calls the monkey CURIOUS George. There is no “Mild-Mannered George” or “Dullard George”.

But all in all the Man With the Yellow Hat seems to live a pretty cool life. He’s an explorer, he drives a convertible, he flies a plane, he has a pet monkey. My oldest would kill for that life.

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Facebook is a social networking site, meaning that people that you talk to already on a regular basis can now have another way of talking to you on a regular basis. You can chat, email, do little applications (I have book reviews for books I’ve read/am reading on there) and other stuff. It’s pretty easy to connect with people but not so easy to always find people you’re looking for. Say you have a friend named “Bill Smith”. Good luck finding the correct Bill Smith, especially if he didn’t include a picture of himself in his profile.

And people who are friends with other people that you’re already friends with will then try to add you as their friend (yes, it sounds complicated). Someone will want to add you to their “friend list” and then they’ll email you asking your permission. You can ignore, deny or approve their request. If you approve it you get added to their friend list, and then you two are “friends” in the virtual sense.

It only gets weird when someone that you don’t know suddenly emails you asking to be friends. I got a request the other day from someone that I literally had no idea who they were. Some girl. Supposedly we went to high school together. Did I recognize her? Nope.

So what do you do then? Be a jerk and not add her? Deny her? Or just ignore her? Or do you say, “Okay, let’s take the plunge and see where this goes.” I more often than not ignore these people. I don’t think of myself as a jerk; I just don’t want to be friends with everyone. I’m pretty selective. If I like you and I have some idea of who you are, then sure, I’ll add you, but if you’re like this girl that I’ve never met before, forget it sister, ain’t gonna happen no matter what tangential link we share. It’s like someone walks up to you on the street or in a bus and just starts talking to you. “Hey, you look familiar.” Can’t place them to save your life. Then they say, “Let’s be friends.”

I like to know who my friends are and those who aren’t my friends. What’s so wrong with that? So if I don’t know you and you want to be my friend on Facebook, think twice.

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I’m going to do away with the email feed for awhile. I can’t get the plugin that runs it to work. Sorry.

So, if you’re reading this, and you subscribed at some time to my website’s feed, please point your eyes to the new feed in the upper right of the grey bar at the top of the screen. Thank you.

And looking for work hasn’t been terrible. I’ve had quite a few nibbles on the resume, had an interview, working the emails and the phone. Something will happen soon, I can feel it. Then I won’t be Mr. Mom anymore.

But that’s not what this post is all about. It’s going to be a very big week around here. In no particular order -

1. Noah starts kindergarten. Monday August 25th, 2008. Today. Ms. Owen is his teacher. Is daddy nervous? Oh lord yes. He will be a Seahawk, as the picture to the right shows. That’s the school mascot.
2. Peyton starts mother’s day out. Is daddy nervous about this? Nah, not as much. It’s mother’s day out, not kindergarten. Minor league stuff.
3. I am finally starting the long march to the Master’s degree this week out at UTA. Colonial America to 1763 will be the first class. I couldn’t be more excited and nervous at the same time. It’s going to completely rock.

So that’s life right now. I miss writing here. Gotta finish up that Operation Downfall series. How will it end? Who knows.My bet? The Americans win. I’ve got a shiny penny riding on the outcome, believe me.

But I started noticing something as we were reading through the four stories that make up the collection – it’s only Harold. There are no other humans anywhere in the book. I’m probably reading too much into it, as I tend to do, but Harold is just all alone in a world of his creation 1 where no one else is. The stories mention him looking for his home, and him drawing the chair that his mother would sit in when she read, and how he remembers where his bed is by gauging where the moon is in his window, but other than that Harold is never in a real world.

Now, it could just be that he’s dreaming and you just never see him wake up, and that’s the more-than-likely answer to the whole thing, or it could be (and I’m just hypothesizing here, brainstorming if you will)maybe Harold is crazy and trapped in his own mind and the purple crayon is some sort of enabler for him to get out of his inner insanity, or maybe he’s been transported into a “Twilight-Zone”y place of sight and sound but no dimension other than 2-D and he only has a crayon to help him escape….

I am reading way too much into it. My son likes the story. That’s enough.

Downfall would have been the largest amphibious landing in history, including 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, 400 destroyers and other ships. Fourteen U.S. divisions 1 would take part also as they used Okinawa as a staging base and then seized the southern portion of the island of Kyushu. The invasion was scheduled to start on November 1, 1945. But there were some other considerations that the planners had to take into account.

There was, naturally, to be a deception plan leading up to the Olympic invasion. By having such a plan it was hoped, as all deception plans in war were, that Allied casualties would be minimized because the enemy force would believe that it needed to focus itself elsewhere. The plan to precede Olympic was Operation Pastel, wherein which the Joint Chiefs of Staff would attempt to fool the Japanese into thinking that a direct invasion of the southern islands had been rejected and instead that the Allies would focus first on Japanese forces still in mainland China. The first strike would be a false Allied attack on China’s Chusan-Shanghai area, with a fictional landing date of October 1, 1945. This was to be followed by one of the smaller southern Japanese islands, Shikoku. After this the Allies hoped to surprise the Japanese with the Olympic invasion.

All of this was leading up to X-Day, as it was called, where the Alllied forces would invade Kyushu along the eastern, southeastern, southern and western coasts of the island near the towns of Miyazaki, Ariake, and Kushikino. The invasion force was to consist of three main groups landing on 35 different beaches, all codenamed after makes of automobiles. The Eastern Assault Force consisting of the 25th, 33rd and the 41st Infantry Divisions, would land near Miyaski and quickly move inland to capture Miyazaki and its nearby airfield. The Southern Force which was to consist of the 1st cavalry Division, the 43rd Division and American Division would land inside Ariake Bay and capture Shibushi and to capture, further inland, the city of Kanoya and its surrounding airfield. On the western shore of Kyushu near Kushikino the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Marine Divisions would land and split, part of which would head inland to capture Sendai while the other half captured the port city of Kagoshima. Once these areas were secured more Allied reinforcements consisting of three American divisions would be brought in each month to strengthen the hold on the occupied portion of Kyushu.

Before and during all of this activity the U.S. Twentieth Air Force would be bombing strategic targets such as railroads, airfields and the various beaches that were to be hit. With a successful bombing campaign it was hoped that they could minimize any fast means that reinforcements could utilize to arrive at the various invasion points.

The four month timetable for Olympic was not to conquer the entire island but to gain a foothold for the Allies to jump off of and use as a staging ground for the even bigger invasion – Coronet. More on it in part 3.

(The info for this piece came, once again, from Wikipedia, the the Combined Arms Research Library)

After that first Cylon war years ago you were drifting, floundering here and there, drinking, getting into fights, until that one bar where you met Bill Adama and the two of you pledged to each other that no matter what happened the two of you were going to get back into the fleet. And you did. That took guts and guts you have, my brother.

You were crafted by war, Saul, and war needed you. When the Galactica had been hit by nuclear missiles during the initial volleys of the Cylon War II, you had the hulls sealed off and then the airlocks opened to put out a fire that was threatening to take out the entire ship. In the process you shot many living people into space, but you saved the ship. You killed your crewmen but you did it for the greater good and it was a shining moment in your dented and scarred career. Who else would have had the stones to do that? Few men, I tell you.

And when the war came again you found your place. You hated Cylons with a white-hot Tilium-burning passion and that hate has gotten you this far, but now you’ve come to a HUGE crossroad, my friend – you’ve discovered, along with three other people on board the Galactica, that you’re Cylons. You’re part of the fabled Final Five which makes you special, very special. Suddenly your life has tremendous meaning – you’re now more than just a man, you’re a symbol to some, a god to others. You’ve been killing Cylons for fifty years, from the first rebellion to the holocaust of the human race to New Caprica, and now you find out you’re a Cylon? You yourself are one of the enemy? Well, that’s almost too much for an ordinary man to bear.

But damnit Saul, you’re no ordinary man! You’re Saul Tigh, the most rip-snortin’, butt-kickin’ Colonel, XO and one-time dictator in the entire human race! Man up, son! Get yourself together!

Oh sure, it was soul cleansing when you told Adama that you were a Cylon. But what did you think he was going to do, kill you? Would that have made everything better? That would be too good, too easy for you. He handed you over to his son who almost killed you, but Bill never could kill his best friend. You think The Old Man could really have done that to someone he loves almost as much as his own son? Never. I even had in my mind the way I thought you would go on the show but as the midpoint of season four showed us it won’t happen. Here it is though for you -

Adama knows you’re a Cylon. He’s in a rage, holding you up against the bulkhead and has a gun to your chest.

ADAMA : You want absolution, Saul?! What the frak did you think I was going to do? Kill you so you wouldn’t have to?

TIGH : No Bill. I couldn’t let you do that. It wouldn’t be right.

And then you shoot yourself in the head and as your body falls to the floor of the airlock Bill bursts into tears as his best friend dies in his arms and he weeps over you because he knows that part of his soul is now gone and can never come back no matter how many model ships or mirrors he destroys.

It would have been a hell of a way for you to go and it would have sucker punched me in the stomach to watch you die. But you’re not dead yet, Saul. You have to keep going. The race isn’t over yet, brother. You said it yourself : you’re Saul Tigh, XO of the Battlestar Galactica, and whatever you were then, that’s the way you’re going to be until the day you die. That’s a hell of a mantra to live by Saul, given what’s happened to you.

Toughen up, Saul. The worst may be yet to come. Good luck and gods’ speed, friend.

The evil on the show is Gabriel Gray, a nerdy watch repairman who took the lame moniker of Sylar from one of the brands of watches he fixed. He is able to acquire other powers by (he thinks, but I’m not so sure) eating other hero-type people’s brains. Lovely.

The first season was fun and I stuck around to see if New York would indeed be destroyed by the man who can’t control his powers, Peter Petrelli. Peter had acquired nuclear capabilities from Ted Sprague. Peter, unlike Sylar, gets powers by being around people who already have the power he will develop. I think Sylar operates the same way but he just doesn’t know it.

Half the joy of season one was watching Hiro, the time-traveling Japanese office worker, discover his ability and then realize that it can be fun as well as powerful. His journey, of all of them, has been the most enjoyable to watch as he grows.

Anyway, there was this “mastermind” named Daniel Linderman (he has powers too – regeneration) who was going to bring about a new age by having Peter Petrelli destroy New York with his nuclear capabilities and then get Peter’s brother Nathan elected president. Nathan helped Peter get out of the city by flying up into the stratosphere before exploding. In the “destroy NY” show Linderman is shot to death, right through the head, and can’t regenerate. He’s dead. Really dead.

Which brings me around to now. Ain’t It Cool News is linking to a story where someone from the BBC is giving away what’s in a season 3 ‘Heroes’ promo. I’m talking spoilers, so if you care and watch the show, skip the next paragraph.

LINDERMAN IS BACK?

What?! Why can’t they kill anyone on this damn show and not have them stay dead?! Why can’t someone just die and be really dead?! The freaking guy was SHOT IN THE HEAD. Kill him! Kill him! Have him be dead, really dead! Bad guys, even SUPER BAD GUYS, die! Damn, man, just kill someone off of this show and have him be gone! He wasn’t that cool or anything. Even his name is lame. He was even lamer than the guy that could paint the future.¹ Jeez.

And man, I’ve hung on even through the lame new characters they tried to introduce last season where all I wanted was for the girl who’s eyes turn black to die. The sweet release of her death would have been a high point of last season, but no, they had to have her “fall in love” with Sylar. She’s as lame as Nikki and Paulo on “Lost” were and the creators of “Lost” were smart enough to kill them off! Kill Black Eyed Girl! Kill her as soon as possible!

The list of people on the show with powers just keeps growing. Nikki, who supposedly died in an explosion, I’m sure will turn up alive. Nathan, who was shot at the end of last season right before he “came out” about his flying power, I’m sure will be back too. Claire’s dad, who’s death was very powerful on the show, was resurrected. Sylar himself probably was dead but they’ve brought him back to annoy us with his “my-head-is-down-but-I’m-looking-at-you” eyes and stupid way of talking again. And Hiro can’t even kill a bad guy; he has to bury him in a coffin alive. The guy he buried is immortal so I’m sure he’ll turn up again, as usual.

The only one that I really am glad is back is Hiro’s friend Ando. Ando is one of the few people on the roster without powers which is probably why I like him so much. Can’t we have fewer people with powers? To see their perspective on those with powers? And can’t this freaking show thin the ranks a little bit before the whole planet is on the show because, you know, they ALL have powers?

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

The conference had many other factors to think about also. How could they force an unconditional Japanese surrender with the least amount of Allied casualties in the shortest period of time? Originally a joint British-American team had written a document entitled “Appreciation and Plan for the Defeat of Japan” where they didn’t foresee an invasion until after 1947 but the conference felt that dragging the war out that far would have dangerous consequences to American morale at home. And not only would the Allies face Japanese military units but also a “fanatically hostile population”. Fighting the Japanese military was one thing, facing an entire population armed with various weapons carrying out banzai attacks was another. The death toll on both sides could have been tremendous.

In light of this the US Navy urged a sea blockade and airpower to bring about surrender. The US Army Air Force, using captured airbases in China and Korea would be able to bombard Japan into submission.² The US Army, though, believed that the strategy could prolong the war for an indeterminate amount of time and needlessly waste lives. In light of this the Army’s opinion won out.

And so planning on the two-part invasion began. It was to be broken into two operations, Olympic and Coronet with Olympic scheduled to begin on X-Day – November 1, 1945.³

We’ll talk about the first phase, Olympic, next time.

So who is this guy? Where is his white makeup? Does he have a pet? What make and model is his tiny car? Why is he trying to be non-frightening and generically non-threatening?

This clown is known as Bello. He works for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Time magazine called him “America’s Best Clown.”

Oh really? Is this what fearsome and horrifying clowns have come to in the 21st century? Wimpified lame asses who’s gimmick is that he has tall hair and gets into all sorts of wacky mischief? Take away the hair and turn him into a monkey and he’s Curious George. George even goes to the circus too.

Over the past years Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey has been on the ropes a little bit as people start loving more and more the weird antics of Cirque du Soleil. Is Bello the answer to their problems? Are people going to start coming to the circus to see this guy? Is he that big of a draw? Why do I feel that the answer is “no”?

I’m a dad, so I have to go. Would I go just to see this guy? Well….

And now is the time of year that the yard is finally kicking into high gear. The grass is growing, the flowers are blooming, the ground cover is covering but of course the problem with all of this is that all of these things have upkeep and care involved. If I lived (as my brother does) in Las Vegas I would guess my front yard would be a nice plot of rocks or pebbles or sand with some cactus and other sharp weather-hardy plants there. Not great for the kids but able to survive even the worst heat wave or atomic test. But this isn’t Vegas, it’s Dallas, where we do actually get rain sometimes during the summer, and that means that the grass is still growing, the flowers are still blooming and the ground cover is still covering.

Yard work in that kind of weather is hard, especially without a self-propelled lawnmower, which I don’t have. Yard work for me has always been one of those things that I have to do – I’m the man, I must care for the yard even if I don’t care for the yard, which I don’t, because the only time that mowing the yard is not a risk to your well-being around these parts is in early spring. So about every weekend I’ll go out to the shed, pull out the weed eater and the lawnmower and the blower and drag all of them back to the front yard and then run the weed eater and then the mower and then the blower and by that time I’m completely burning up and ready to lay down and die right there in the front yard. If only Hudson from Aliens had been right. ¹

But we’re living in the freaking 21st Century, a time of jet packs and flying cars and nanotechnology and Ubuntu and cool stuff like that. Robots these days are still pretty primitive, at least on the consumer side. We don’t have cool robots yet like R2-D2 or C-3P0 or even HAL. You’ve got that stupid Robosapien and that weird talking Fairy Dora and the even creepier looking Alive Elvis. I saw Alive Elvis at Macy’s before Christmas and he was going for $250. After Christmas? $50. Nobody wants a creepy singing/talking Elvis yet.

There are two robots that I could live with right now. The Roomba and the Robomow. Two robots that do things that no one wants to do – vacuum and mow the yard. As you can tell, I could learn to love the Roomba, but man what I wouldn’t give for a Robomow. Being able to just sit up on the porch with the kids and the wife having breakfast on a warm summer morning while that wonderful little robot mows the yard for me. Sure, he doesn’t do weed eating or blowing the excess grass away, but if I didn’t have to mow would I even care? Probably not.

So come on Skynet, materialize from the minds of 21st Century Man. Give me a Robomow and I would gladly let your Terminators rule o’er me. At least in the summer when you robots don’t care if it’s hot.

But on the lighter side of having the possibility of the Union torn asunder forever, he was the tallest president we’ve had – 6 ft 4 in. ¹ He often would talk about how he never had to look up to anybody since he was always the tallest man in the room. On meeting a wounded Union soldier that was taller than him, he remarked, “Hello, comrade. Do you know when your feet get cold?”

James Madison, the president that got us into probably our most pointless war ² was our shortest president, coming in at just 5 ft 4 in.

And our tallest first lady? Eleanor Roosevelt. She was 6 ft tall. While Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd, was probably our shortest first lady, measuring in at 5 ft 2 in. ³

And it gets you thinking about surviving something terrifying : could I do it? How would I get my family out alive? Where would we go? What would we do about food and water? Could I trust my fellow living humans? Even my own neighbors? ‘Cause you never know what people will do when faced with the end of modern civilization and we’re suddenly living in the Dark Ages all over again. Everybody, let’s party like it’s 999!

Being Mr. ADD my mind will wander sometimes so when I’m stuck in the break room the other day waiting for the microwave to finish warming my lunch up I look over at the ice machine. Hanging off of it is a pretty hefty ice scoop probably measuring about 12 inches by 5 inches by 5 inches. The thing is big.

So I hefted it off of the scratch-built hook that it hangs off of and raise it up. Could I cleave a skull with this? Would a machete be better in close zombie combat? How would I get out of this breakroom if my office were infested with the undead bodies of the people I work with? Could I differentiate between their living and undead selves?

Somebody came in after that. He was taller than me. What if he was a zombie? He’s pretty tall, could I cut his head off with this thing?

I took my lunch back to my cube and started looking around at more items in my general vicinity. I have a knife but a knife in zombie combat is going to be pretty useless – no point in stabbing them. Could I crush a head with a laptop? My monitor weighs as much as a car so it’s useless too. The cube walls aren’t too tall, I could escape over them if I got pinned down and there’s a pretty hefty door right near my cube. That could my my escape route, but what if there were more zombies behind that hunting for fresh brains?

There’s a guy that sits at the end of my row. I sometimes wish he were a zombie so I could cleave his head with an ice scooper.

For the whole time the band never really changed, appearance-wise – makeup, black clothing, teased hair. Smith, who’s approaching 50, still pretty much has the same look that he acquired in the early 1980’s.

Why does he still look like this?

David Bowie had his glam phase and he outgrew it. Michael Stipe of previously mentioned R.E.M. even wore makeup for awhile but then he gave it up. What gives, Robert?

Well, maybe he’s a better looking man WITH makeup. Not that he’s a good looking guy to begin with, but yikes, if the makeup improves your look, then continue on, sir. If not, grow up. You just look silly now.

And so I was perusing it the other day and came across a headline, written with, as usual for AICN, with too many exclamation points -

Lucas Talks INDY 5!!

Wha…? More Indiana Jones movies? Isn’t Harrison Ford getting too old (Of course, it’s not the age, it’s the mileage.) to do this kind of stuff anymore? Shouldn’t he be the loving father in a Sandra Bullock or Kate Hudson movie? Why not an arty drama, Harrison, like the Michael Douglas role you turned down in Traffic?

But then again George Lucas has never seen a bad opportunity to return to the well too many times. The second Star Wars trilogy was enough to prove that and once again Lucas is bringing the anger to himself. From AICN, quoting a Fox News article -

“I haven’t even told Steven or Harrison this,” he said. “But I have an idea to make Shia [LeBeouf] the lead character next time and have Harrison [Ford] come back like Sean Connery did in the last movie. I can see it working out.

“And it’s not like Harrison is even old. I mean, he’s 65 and he did everything in this movie. The old chemistry is there, and it’s not like he’s an old man. He’s incredibly agile; he looks even better than he did 20 years ago, if you ask me.”

Damnit, George! Leave. It. Alone! It was bad enough that you guys had to make just one more Indy film, we might have another 2 or 3 films where Indy is hobbling around while his son is the hero?

Good God, man, when are you going to know when to say when? Stop it! Just stop!

Joe, to the untrained eye, appears to be Joe-like, but he acts far more juvenile than Steve Burns ever did. Watching him you get the feeling, and it’s probably not Donovan Patton’s ² fault. Steve, towards the end of his tenure on the show, seemed to be getting more and more cerebral. He would lift an eyebrow for effect here, a slight double-take there. He even used the word ‘jejune’ on the show.

Then Steve’s brother Joe showed up right as Steve was going away to college.

The producers probably wanted to go back to the more kid-friendly format of the early years of the show but after watching Burns Patton’s delivery seemed so pre-preschoolish.

When singing the signature song he looks longingly at the screen like he honestly doesn’t remember from program to program that he needs to use his notebook or find a clue. For god’s sake, in one episode he didn’t know where his nose was. Or his ear. Who the hell doesn’t know where his nose is? If you’re Joe, then you don’t, obviously.

The whole “Steve goes to college” angle was alright, since Burns wanted to leave the show, and, from his own website “we have male pattern baldness.” Steve was looking a little long in the tooth. But how could “Steve” get into college? He couldn’t find clues (as far as I know he only found one and that was in the “Blue’s Big Musical” episode) so how did he get into college? And what college is it? Stupid U?

But at least Steve got into college. Joe, the lame ass brother, has been stuck at home for years now, living out his pre-preschoolish existence with a talking mailbox, some talking salt and pepper shakers, and a bar of soap that wants to be a ship captain. Maybe Joe is crazy and the “Blue’s Clues” show is all in his head, or maybe Steve was crazy and, living in the Bluesiverse, made up a brother out of thin air so he could escape his own insanity. Think about it. I could happen. Sorta Being John Malkovich-esque. Or like the ending of “Saint Elsewhere”. Maybe Joe is dreaming up the whole thing. Wouldn’t surprise me if he did.

But what to get? So many to choose from. I wanted something different since I’d been drinking stouts for so long. Anchor Steam would have been fine but they were all sold out. Started looking around at all of them. Samuel Smith. Späten variations. Maybe a six pack of Cooper’s? The Rar Brewery from Fort Worth? They have about 300 beers so it’s hard to choose.

So I decided to wing it and try Coal Porter from the Atlantic Brewing Co. I wanted something different, a porter would do. When held up to the light I couldn’t seen through the bottle which is usually a good sign. Just not a fan of those Bud-esque light-as-water beers.

It sat in the fridge for a night and then I was going to have one last night during (don’t laugh) ‘Dancing With the Stars’ when my in-law’s showed up. My father-in-law hit the fridge ³ looking for something and out he brought a cold virgin Coal Porter. I hadn’t even had one yet and he was taking one.

I hadn’t offered one to him. The damn stuff cost $10 a six pack, so I was reluctant to part with one for just anybody, but he’s my father-in-law, so what are you going to do? Tell him he can’t have one? I lived with the guy for a year while my current house was being built, I’m too stingy to offer him one beer?

He opened it and drank and his eyes went wide. “Wow…that’s strong.” 3 more swallows and he was done. He set it down and walked to play with my kids.

A wasted beer. One freaking wasted beer.

I wasn’t going to drink after him, that’s just not what I do. I don’t take free samples from people handing out food unless I’m at Sam’s, so I wasn’t going to drink after him. We (the fam) just got over a virus, who the hell knows what he’s carrying in that mouth?

That bastard beer sat there on the kitchen counter until 10 pm that night. After Yamaguchi had won the competition I went and poured the remainder in the sink. Hershey-brown liquid headed for the drain, n’er to be seen again. With it I placed my other pint glass that had once held the second Coal Porter, now drained into me.

It was pretty good. A little thicker than the usual porter I like, but pretty good.

So yeah, I’m a beer snob. I don’t want people touching them without asking, capiche?

“The lake” is White Rock Lake, and people of all shapes and sizes go there in the very early morning hours to run, walk, jog and ride bikes. It’s a lovely tranquil place to just drive (or run, walk, jog or ride bikes) around the lake and look out at the water. Noah loves going there to feed ducks and also try his hand at (very amateurish) fishing. I like to go look at the gigantic houses and just while away a little time before I realize how much money I’m blowing on gas.

So Peyton and I were driving and I’d come to the southern portion of the lake where the road diverges from the lakeside and I was out in residential land again and there’s a pack of about 20 bicyclists coming towards me. I knew from learning to ride a bike that the safest way to ride is towards traffic in a single file line, but these bicyclists were only doing the former and not the latter. Because of this there was a giant swarm of bikes and we were on a collision course with each other.

But I kept driving towards them. “They’ll realize they’re going to be killed and they’ll avoid me, the larger vehicle.” This did not happen.

I drove on, approaching them at about 35 mph. They kept on coming straight at me.

I got to about 15 feet from them before I steered clear of them. I also gave them a very noticeable finger, letting them know that I was number one and they weren’t.

The arrogance of some people! Where do they get off thinking that naturally I, the automobile driver, am going to avoid them just because they are on bicycles? “We are exercising and you are contributing to making Dallas one of the fattest cities in America,” was what I assumed they were thinking as they pedaled on.

So bicyclists, this is your warning. I will take you arrogant muthas down!

So it’s break time for me for a little bit longer. I hadn’t realized how long it had been.

Anyway, kudos and salutations to David Griep everyone! He’s the first person I don’t know personally to comment on the blog! A big round of applause for Dave! Thanks Dave. Here’s his comment, over at the Beach Boys/Manson post.

I’ll be back. I promise.

Maybe I’ll talk about robots or something.

And often you’ll put a lot of effort and caring into choosing that special birthday party gift. What does the child like? What is the age range on the gift? Does it have small parts and do they have a younger sibling that might choke on those parts? You want to make sure that you don’t get something that the kid won’t play with because more and more stores aren’t letting you return, or even exchange for that matter, toys that don’t have a receipt with them. You end up putting a lot of research into determining just what kind of present you’re going to buy.

But lately there’s a new trend that until now I hadn’t noticed – the host of the birthday party (the birthday partier, if you will) not opening their gifts that the invited got for said partier until after the party’s over and everyone’s gone home.

After your effort, aren’t you entitled to a little closure with that present that you took care to find and wrap? What’s up with that? You take your present to the party, your child has fun, and then you leave without the host opening their gifts. It’s like watching all the way up until the end of Star Wars and not seeing if the Rebels destroy the Death Star.

Anyway, I’m sounding the klaxon that this is a completely uncool trend. Let it end now, parents of would-be present non-openers. Don’t even try it, muthas.

I always wanted one. I never got one.

They were awesome. Your face would be warm out in the cold. An efficient piece of clothing for keeping your nose from freezing.

Of course, if you wear one now, people look at you a little funny. You can see it on their faces. “Who’s that shady, yet warm, character over there? Is he going to rob me? Kill me? Maybe blow up a bomb?”

Everyone thinks you’re a terrorist or a bank robber or a mugger now if you wear a ski mask. Which is why I want to rehabilitate the ski mask’s reputation. Who’s with me?

I want a ski mask just so I can drive around with one on. People may stare but I’ll only do good thing while wearing my ski mask – help the environment, care for old people, be kind to animals, go shopping for groceries, all while wearing my trusty, warm and woolly ski mask.

Why can’t we all love the ski mask again? It never stopped loving us.

And the dinosaurs are pretty cool. They move and make noises and stuff like that, but rather than just make them dinosaurs who coexist with each other, Fisher Price has turned it into a battle. From the Fisher Price site -

Imagine…a primitive civilization of humans and dinosaurs, living in a lush, green land. One side—the predators—are using up its natural resources, wiping out everything and everyone that gets in their way. The other side—the ecovores—want to preserve their land. And they’re willing to fight to make that happen.Will the predators succeed in destroying the land, causing their own extinction? Or will the ecovores stop the destruction and make the land a place where dinosaurs and humans can live together peacefully? In the world of Imaginext®, anything is possible!

Is it possible? Really? “If I had a hammer….”

Let me ask you this – did the predators win? Or the ecovores?

I don’t want to give this away, gentle reader, especially if you don’t know how this whole thing ends, but I really, really can’t help myself. I’m sorry. It’s just too difficult to keep such spoilerific information all to myself.

Okay, I’ll say it – they both lost!

Here’s how it happened.

The place is Pangea, and our enemies, the Predators and the Ecovores, are meeting up and about to have one of those mother-of-all battles, you see, and there they were, Razor and Ripper and Slasher and all of their allies, and they were moving in for the kill on Whip, Thunder, Tank and Hammer, when out of the blue, they heard something in the sky. They stopped their running and slashing and biting and looked up, quizzically, to the sky.

“ROWR?”
“ROWRROWR!”
“RUHROWR?”
“RUH…ROWR!”

BANG.

And thus died the Imaginext Dinosaurs as that big comet hit the Earth and destroyed them all. Sadly, they, and their political agendas, were lost in the coming ice age.

Can’t we just let them be toys?

Kim, never one to shirk from making a comment, had the guts to pipe up when she said that she lived on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

“We had our honeymoon there!”

It kind of threw Charo ¹ off, but hen became excited. She was bonding with the audience, you know. “Oh, did you love it? Where did you stay?”

“South side of the island at a B&B.”

“The B&B’s on Kauai are wonderful, aren’t they?”

“Yes!!!” Kim was so excited.

What was even cooler was she even took a picture with us. She was wearing a red sequined minidress and was completely falling out the thing. We were going to use the picture for our Christmas card (“Merry Christmas from Kim, Glenn and Charo”) but Kim was laughing when the picture was taken and her smile was Joker-esque, so we didn’t use it, but, you know, it’s still a great story.

1) Damon has said no more Bourne films after this one.

I understand what he’s doing here. He wants to be identified with something else besides Jason Bourne, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

2) The amazingly cool Brian Cox is gone.

I love Brian Cox. He’s one of the great character actors of his generation and seeing his character Abbott kill himself in The Bourne Supremacy was heartbreaking for me. I was very disappointed when he turned out to be a bad guy because up until that moment that he stabbed his lackey he was just a great amoral character.

3) More shaky camera fight scenes.

One of my big criticisms between the first and second films was the way hand-to-hand combat scenes were filmed. Doug Liman filmed the scene in Bourne’s Paris apartment from about 10 feet back, allowing you to see what was going on with the knife/pen fighting. Paul Greengrass shot the fight scene inside of the house in Germany way too close to the action and with far too many edits for my taste. French director Jean-Luc Godard said “Every edit is a lie,” and it’s true. I would have preferred a more continuous feel to the combat than a shaky pile up of visuals.

4) No more Franka Potente.

Unless some miracle happened in that Indian river, Marie’s not coming back. That’s too bad.

And unless there’s a huge plot change, this is how it will all go down – the CIA will find Bourne somewhere and try to dispose of him. Bourne will rely on his training and smarts and will outwit all of them and overcome his adversaries. In the end he will be more paranoid than ever.

I’m sure it will be good, though. We’ll see.

And so that dirty hippie was loping through the hordes, probably going somewhere in a slow and “keep on truckin’” kinda way, when I saw him. He was the weatherman that I’d grown up with, and I knew his daughter was attending his alma mater at the same time that I was. His trademark bow ties were legendary around Dallas from the first time I remember him and he wore them every newscast, no matter what. He’d always been short, you could tell that by comparing him to the other news anchors on the channel 8 sound stage, but I didn’t know he’d be that short. I’m talking like Danny Devito height, no kidding, the man was SHORT. Like 5′ 2″ or something.

As I brushed by him (literally) he seemed startled. I mumbled, “Hi there.” He didn’t say anything, just sorta glared.

I thought, “Man, what a jerk.”

And that was my close encounter of the weather kind with Troy Dungan. He’d started working for WFAA on July 19, 1976, and he’s retiring tomorrow, July 18, 2007. From what his collegues say he’s a swell guy. I’m sure he is and was just probably scared of that dirty hippie kid way back when. So long, Troy. Happy trails.

So…how does the Secretary of Education skip all of that running for President and the election and just become President of the United States? Why, have everyone in front of you in the line of presidential succession die! Want to know the current line of succession? ¹ Well, here it is -

1. Vice President of the United States and President of the Senate
2. Speaker of the House of Representatives
3. President of the Senate pro tempore ²
4. Secretary of State
5. Secretary of the Treasury
6. Secretary of Defense
7. Attorney General
8. Secretary of the Interior
9. Secretary of Agriculture
10. Secretary of Commerce
11. Secretary of Labor
12. Secretary of Health and Human Services
13. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
14. Secretary of Transportation
15. Secretary of Energy
16. Secretary of Education
17. Secretary of Veterans Affairs
18. Secretary of Homeland Security ³

“About how big?” Mr. Mitchell asked them. At the time the moon was rising, so a miner held out his hands, framing the moon in them and said, “About that big!”

He headed back to the bakery after making his rounds and saw some of the workers dipping graham crackers into marshmallow and laying them on window sills to harden. With a concept for the perfect working man’s snack, he added another cookie and a coating of chocolate and sent them back for the workers to try. When the response they got was favorable he sent samples around with their other salespeople, too. The MoonPie was a hit.

The usual way to enjoy a MoonPie in the 1950’s was with an RC Cola, which, when couple with a MoonPie, cost about 10 cents. RC was preferred since the RC bottle was a little larger than that of Coca-Cola. The two became inseparable and was often referred to as “The Working Man’s Lunch.” ¹

He refused an appointment of first lieutenant in his company on account of his age (he was 16 at the time) and instead was made a non-commissioned staff-officer. Upon entry of his unit into the war he was promoted to captain of Company A, 97th Pennsylvania Volunteers on August 22, 1861. Roughly a month later he was promoted again, this time to major.

He remained with the 97th for many years, where he was well respected and liked by his men. By the time 1864 rolled around, and after seeing much action and combat, he had been promoted to colonel.

Pennypacker’s greatest moment of the war came at the second battle of Fort Fisher ² on January 15, 1865, where he was severely wounded while crossing enemy lines. Because of his bravery in leading his men and his wounding in the battle he was awarded Congressional Medal of Honor with a citation reading -

“He gallantly led the charge over a traverse and planted the colors of one of his regiments thereon; was severely wounded.”

After the battle Pennypacker was given a brevet ³ promotion to Brigadier General on January 15, 1865. After convalescing, he received a full promotion to brigadier general at age 20, making him the youngest officer to hold the rank of general in the United States Army to this day. He was brevetted, once again, to major general on March 13, 1865. He was not yet 21 years old.

In her favor, she’s been in some fine movies but that doesn’t mean that she’s been fine in them. Several cases in point I’ll go over here – Dave, The Truman Show and Breach. Let’s break ‘em down.

I loved and continue to love Dave. Why wouldn’t I love it, given that it was the first “date” I went on with my wife in college? In Dave, Kevin Kline is thrust into the role of President of the United States when the man (the real President) he was doubling for has a massive stroke. Linney plays the Oval Office secretary that the real President was having an affair with when he had the stroke and her “fawning” and “relief” when the “President” returns to office ring hollow. You can tell that Dave is a little freaked out by her reaction and with good reason – he has no idea who she is and she’s chomping at the scenery. Not a good choice for a rather important plot point.

I also love The Truman Show and still think that Jim Carrey has the makings of an actual living breathing actor in him, if he can just get away from mainstream fare like Fun with Dick and Jane or Bruce Almighty. But in The Truman Show, Linney once again rears her bad-actor head, this time in the role of Meryl, Carrey’s television wife. She’s over-the-top skittish and not likable at all, and maybe that’s the point, but it doesn’t make her sympathetic in any way when she breaks down while Carrey interrogates her in their kitchen about his situation. The only good that could have come from that scene would have been if Carrey had killed Meryl with that jar of Mococoa she was holding.

And what can you say about her in Breach? It wasn’t a big money maker, but it wasn’t a bad movie at all, far from it. It was better than I thought it would be, but Linney plays tough-as-nails FBI agent Kate Burroughs, and she wasn’t a very good choice for the part. Get someone else, Holly Hunter, Jodie Foster, just don’t pick Linney to talk tough to Ryan Phillippe. It’s flat and silly and we know that she’s doing the one thing she doesn’t want you to know she’s doing : acting. She was just wrong for the part.

In her favor though she’s done some wonderful (or at least, good) films also where she too has been wonderful. You Can Count on Me, where she plays big brother to the way-cool Mark Ruffalo, is excellent, and she is too. She’s also great in Love Actually as the pathetically lonely Sarah who pines away for Rodrigo Santoro. She hits all the right notes as she tries to woo Santoro and take care of her mentally imbalanced brother. And while it wasn’t (any) good, The Life of David Gale featured her as an anti-death penalty advocate and she was very good. It always seems that the parts she’s best in are where she’s a pathetic little creature trying to get by in the world or fight for a higher cause. Unfortunately, you don’t get too far in Hollywood playing the same character over and over. ²

When Linney’s good and cast in the right character she’s great, but when she seems completely out of her league it’s embarrassing to watch. I just don’t “get” Laura Linney. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

The truck driver stopped. “Was that your cat?”

Taylor replied, “No.”

The driver nodded and started driving again, leaving the squished cat in the street. We all went outside to look at the flat cat and then called our friends to tell them what just happened. Patrick, Josh and Willie were amazed by the story and how quickly it all happened.

Later I went with Patrick’s girlfriend Kim to find the Branch Davidian compound. The compound was outside of town, not in Waco as so many newscasters said. It was getting dark and you could see the spotlights that the FBI was using from miles away. We started driving, just following the lights. We never found exactly how to get to the compound, as the ranch was on several back country roads, but we had fun just driving around and looking for it.

Kim dropped me off at our apartment, and as I stepped up to the front door I noticed something in the doorway. There, with string tied around its two front paws and taped up to the inside of the doorway so it stood up, was the dead cat. It’s squished little body no longer bleeding, there was a scrawled sign reading “YOU KILLED ME” in red ink made up to look like blood.

I stepped over the cat and went inside, finding Joel and Taylor. I showed them the cat and we knew immediately who’d done this – Patrick, Josh and Willie.

Joel and Taylor carried the cat out to the garbage, then we called Patrick, Josh and Willie. They feigned innocence of the whole matter at first, but after hardly any interrogation they fessed up and said that they had done it. They’d thought it would be funny for us to leave our apartment the next morning on our ways to class and see the tiny crushed cat sitting there in our path.

It was about at that moment that we heard some banging around out at the garbage. We opened the door, while still on the phone, and peeked out at the garbage. There, dumping bottles and cans into the garbage, were 3 men in a truck. They continued to dump their trash until someone sneezed or something and they heard us. The 3 of them jumped into the truck and took off, very quickly. It was kind of strange, we thought.

And then we remembered the cat. We walked out to the garbage and, yes, the cat was gone. They’d taken a squished dead cat.

Probably going to use it in some satanic ritual or something, but the sickos had taken the dead cat.

In 1792, Alexander Chisholm of South Carolina, the executor of the estate of Robert Farquhar, attempted to sue the state of Georgia in the Supreme Court over payments due them for goods that Farquhar had supplied Georgia during the American Revolutionary War. In 1793, U.S. Attorney General Edmund Randolph argued the case for the plaintiff before the Court in “Chisholm v. Georgia“. Georgia refused to appear, claiming that as a “sovereign,” a state did not have to appear in court to hear a suit against it to which it did not consent.

The Court, in a 4-1 decision, found in favor of the plaintiff, with Chief Justice Jay concurring with Justices Blair, Wilson, and Cushing, with Justice James Iredell dissenting. The Court argued that Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution abrogated the States’ sovereign immunity and granted federal courts the affirmative power to hear disputes between private citizens and States.

In 1795, largely as a result of the Chisolm decision, the Eleventh Amendment was ratified, which removed federal jurisdiction in cases where citizens of one state or foreign countries attempt to sue another state. However, citizens of one state or foreign countries can still use the Federal courts if the state consents to be sued or if Congress, pursuant to a valid exercise of Fourteenth Amendment remedial powers, abrogates the states’ immunity from suit.

He ordered his food and he and his compatriot sat down at a booth, chatting and waiting for their food. When his buzzer/coaster went off he sauntered up, not a care in the world and, upon receiving his food, returned to his booth and ate. No one really paid much attention to him since he really didn’t look like The Don Henley that you see pictures of and remember from The Eagles and his illustrious solo career.

But my history with the Donster went back even further than that.

Don was born in Gilmer, Texas, which is about 20 miles northwest of Longview. From what I know about the man, he lives out at Caddo Lake along the Texas/Louisiana border and is a big environmentalist out there. I guess I would be too, given the fact that Caddo Lake is one of the few natural lakes our state has. Anyway, his Texan credentials are true and up to date.

I’d also heard, back in the time when the Internet was young, that he also has a house in Dallas, somewhere…out in the hinterlands. Which brings us to my first brush with Don Henley.

It was 1995 and I was working at the Bookstop near the Inwood theater (Where, it seems, I meet almost everyone famous that I know) and in strolls Don Henley. He wanted to know where Mary Karr’s bestselling memoir, The Liar’s Club, was shelved. Per our training, I looked it up and walked to where the book was kept. Most of Ms. Karr’s other books were kept in the Poetry section, and since the Bookstop gods had not deigned for us to have a dedicated Memoir section, her latest, and all other memoirs, were kept in Poetry. This troubled Don greatly.

“Why is this in Poetry?”
“We keep all memoirs in the Poetry section.”
“But this isn’t a poetry book.”
“…Right.”
He fumed a few moments, looking at the hardback.
“Well that’s stupid.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
He looked at me, taken aback a tad by my comment, then back to the book, then to me again. “Ok…thanks.”

And that was it. He was a pretty big jerk with me so I didn’t say “You’re welcome,” or anything like that, I just walked away without checking to see if he needed more help.

Hey Don, I didn’t run the company at the time, so I didn’t make the rules up, okay?

Steven Burns, ¹ who played, inexplicably, “Steve”, was on the show from 1996 to 2002. When Burns decided to move on (one reason given – male pattern baldness), “Steve” went off to college and his younger brother Joe (played by Donovan Patton) moved in to take care of Blue. Joe was introduced over several episodes where he learned the ropes of playing the signature game, “Blue’s Clues”. The human sidekick would ask Blue a question and rather than answer, Blue would demand that his token human must find 3 clues that would lead to what Blue would have said.

Just once I wanted the human, upon learning that Blue wanted to play the game, to say, “No. I don’t want to play Blue’s Clues today.” Would have been a short show.

So which was a better human henchman, Steve or Joe? Both are likable enough, and my son is glued to either of them when they’re on the screen, but each has a different style, which, after repeated viewing (as I’ve done) becomes apparent.

Patton’s acting is more sitcom-y, I think. He’s a ham when he’s onscreen, kind of like a silent screen actor. He has terrible hair, but that’s only partially his fault, since he was born that way. The other half of it is his fault, because he should get a cooler haircut.

Hard to believe, but Donovan Patton is a cousin of General George S. Patton. ² I think Patton’s acting is goofy and his character of Joe acts more stupid and clueless than Steve did.

Steve just seemed to be played by a better actor. I actually laugh at him, which isn’t saying much, but he had facial quirks, eyebrow movements, comic timing. Joe seems like his mother drank while she was pregnant with him.

So I award Steve the Ultimate Blue’s Clues Human Sidekick award. Congratulations Mr. Burns. You earned it.

Processed cheese, according to the FDA, is a “food product” made from regular cheese and sometimes other unfermented dairy ingredients, plus emulsifiers, extra salt, and food colorings. It was developed as a way of staving off the usual perishability that all foods have. Processed cheese has the capability to last almost indefinitely.

Walter Gerber was the first person to invent processed cheese in 1911 in Thun, Switzerland, but James L. Kraft (of Kraft Foods), seeing that the cheese hadn’t been patented, applied for an American patent in 1916. In 1917 he supplied to the US Armed forces the first batch of Kraft canned cheese for soldiers fighting in Europe during World War I. In addition, the Kraft Company also developed a process for producing sliced processed cheese and a machine that individually wrapped slices of cheese. ¹

Kim’s cousin Karen lived a couple hours south of D.C. in northern Virginia, so in late June we flew up there to visit for a couple of days. We would rent a car and drive into D.C. on the Fourth and toodle around. I thought we was prepared, but nothing prepared us for the heat and humidity.

I used to watch David Letterman and hear him complain that the thermostat got up to 92 degrees that day in New York City and I’d just shake my head. “How can these people not survive 92 freaking degree heat? I’m a Texan! We deal with 192 degree heat every summer!” My father told me that the heat there was different; I scoffed. Texas heat is terrible. I scoffed too soon, I think.

We drove to the Pentagon City mall (right across from the Pentagon, no less) and took the Metro blue line from there. The D.C. Metro is amazing – clean, comfortable and quiet, it’s the complete antithesis to the New York City subway as I would find out a couple years later. Nobody hassling you, people not feigning sleep so people wouldn’t bother them, none of that, only quiet and clean. The Metro is the way all subway trains should be.

We stopped at the Smithsonian stop and climbed out of the underground and got hit by a hot blast of wind. Very hot wind, and it felt like you were swimming there was so much humidity. Instantly our clothes started sticking to us and the backpack we’d brought with us caused my back to ooze sweat. It was not a good sign.

Kim had never been to the Lincoln Memorial so we trekked down past the Washington Monument (which was closed) and walked past the reflecting pool. As we walked past, Tito Puente was playing at a band shell near the Monument, a crowd gathered around. I’d forgotten how big the reflecting pool actually was and it seemed like we walked forever. We finally got there, out of breath and red in the face and saw Lincoln. Took some pictures, went past the Vietnam wall and saw the Korean War memorial and then grabbed a tram to Arlington National Cemetery. Yes, there are Revolutionary War veterans and presidents buried there, but I was there to see the grave of Lee Marvin, who had served in the Marine Corps during World War II. We went and asked at the visitor’s center where he was located and after a little searching found him. He has a very simple white marble headstone, very much unlike his neighbor, professional boxer Joe “The Brown Bomber” Louis, who had volunteered for the Army, even after an amazing career he’d already had. We went to the Tombs of the Unknowns and then headed back to the tram.

We hit the Air and Space Museum at that point and then started to stake out our turf. The Mall was crowded already with thousands of people and it was probably 6 hours before the fireworks would begin. We’d been hot and miserable most of the time we were there, but it was beginning to get to me. I was starting to say things like, “Let’s just go back to the car, I can’t take it anymore,” and other whinyisms, but Kim, the trooper she is, said that we hadn’t come all that way to give up. So we found an office building that had an open lobby and camped out in the air conditioning for several hours. It was heavenly.

When the fireworks started many hours later, we were just east of 14th Street. Right across the street was a huge line of port-a-potties, with a line of people waiting to go them stretching several hundred feet. With the amount of sweating Kim and I had been doing we couldn’t see how anybody would even need to pee in this heat.

The fireworks were amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen before or since. I would think that that much ordnance was not even expelled on D-Day. The sky was full of rockets, light and sound. We were so close to the actual launch site that the booming of each rocket was almost simultaneous with its explosion. It was pretty incredible.

Afterwards, we headed back to the Metro stop, along with about 10,000 people. The heat had been bad, but cram 10,000 people together trying to go down a flight of stairs and you learn a new definition of hideous. It was claustrophobia inducing.

Despite the discomfort, we’d had a great time. Lots of fun. Everyone should go to D.C. for at least one Fourth of July.

So I put him in there with me. I was tired, half asleep still and not firing on all cylinders. Peyton, naked, was on the shower floor. Usually in the morning one of the first things that Peyton does is poop. After that I change him and we both go on our merry ways, but like I said, I was tired, half asleep still and not firing on all cylinders.

So after rinsing the shampoo out of my hair I look down at him to make sure he’s fine and not splayed out on his back. And then I saw it – there was poop all over the shower floor. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I probably lost all the color in my face as I went sheet white. There was crap all over him and he was just about to start playing with it.

I grabbed him and held him up to the water, a cascade of poop raining down onto me.

Couldn’t get worse, could it?

I washed him off and set him down and started to clean myself up. After having been both peed and pooped on I wasn’t too worried about me; skin is waterproof, and nothing was going to get into my bloodstream unless I wanted it to, but still, it’s poop. It’s what your body doesn’t need or want, that’s why you get rid of it.

I looked down again at him. He’d pooped again.

Now I had two watery piles of poop on the shower floor. We’d reached Defcon 1 in my opinion. I called for backup.

Kim came and helped me out. She’d been asleep. I hate waking her up, but I felt that this merited a little teamwork.

We got him cleaned up (no more pooping after that) and then I scrubbed myself down. Later Kim, the saint that she is, Cometed the shower floor. What kind of woman would love you enough to clean up crap? Like I say, she’s a keeper.

Mr. Peppermint was the host of Peppermint Place, a local kids show in Dallas that showed in the area from 1975 to 1995. Mr. Peppermint, wearing his trademark white and red striped blazer, and his sidekick Muffin the Bear entertained me daily when I was a kid. Think of it as a local version of Captain Kangaroo, if you will.

Years ago when I worked at a bookstore (where I met Bizarro creator Dan Piraro) Haynes would drop by and browse the shelves. He was fairly hippie-ish, often with longish hair. Always quiet, he hardly ever spoke to anybody, which I never took as a sign of arrogance but more of shyness. He was just a very unassuming, very tall guy.

He’s also is the father of Gibby Haynes, the lead singer of the Butthole Surfers. I remember at the time that I learned this (from the newspaper, no less!) and they called his group the ‘B Surfers’. Ah…the naive quaint 1980’s. How we miss your censorious ways.

But back to my story.

So as I’m getting the grocerys in the car and getting one of the kids into the car, I see him walking behind the car. Where was he going? To his car, a green Ford Taurus. How un-pepperminty of him.

He gets in, I start heading home, he leaves and I get it into my head to follow him. I thought if he was going in the direction of my house I’d follow along, but if he diverted from my pre-determined course and deviated, I’d break off the chase, resolved to never know where he lived. But when he started driving I saw that he was going the way that I had intended to go in the first place. Very interesting.

So I gunned it and caught up with him. He drove really slow. And strangely, on the wrong side of the street.

But he kept going the same way I would have gone home. And he turned right where I would have turned right, and then he turned left onto a street near mine. Not wanting him to become alarmed, I broke off the chase at this point. But I picked it up again when I realized that the street he was going down existed for only one block, and if he turned there he probably lived on that block.

And he did. Driving down that street slowly, I saw him park the car and get out and go into a house not 3 blocks from mine. Six tenths of a mile. How crazy is that?

If someone wanted to know what was going on in the world they would ask me because I would know what was happening day after day. I became cocky about it; correcting people about what was going on, because I knew, damnit. If there was a story I knew who the main players were and what they were doing and how they were involved and I could posit several ways that a story would turn out based on what I knew, and a lot of times I would be right, because there’s only so many ways that a story can end.

But it started to take a toll on me, I started having panic attacks, I was stressed out a lot, became irritable all the time. I had bad dreams, worried all the time about things that might happen.

If America goes to war with Iran, what can I do about it? Nothing.

If someone blows up a nuclear warhead in a major city, do I have any control over it? No.

Governments are run by men, but I am not one of those men. I am an everyday average person who just tries to take care of his family. I give them food and a nice place to live and guidance and friendship, but President or Senator or even Representative is not something I want to be, ever, because those people know things that I never want to know, things that our government must do to keep its people safe. Could I sleep at night, knowing what Senators know, or CIA chiefs? Would I be stressed out all the time? Hell yeah I would be.

And that’s why about 6 months ago I cut the cord. I tuned out. I don’t watch TV news anymore, hardly read about the news on the internet, where I am all day long. I unsubscribed to all of those Google alerts and news RSS feeds and any form of immediate information that was out there that I had been plugged into. I stopped listening to radio talk shows and keeping up with them. And I am a better person for it.

I know that the influential members of the media feel that the public doesn’t pay enough attention to what’s going on with the world, but why would they want to? When all we hear about on the news is Iraq and Iran and oil and global warming and how people are basically rotten and life sucks, why would you want to watch the news? All you’re going to do is feel crummy about things you can’t control. The media feels that it’s their job to rally the public around something, what I don’t know, but they feel that they are advocates for some purpose (that’s why the got into journalism), but they eat that crap 24 hours a day, they are the junkies I used to be, but the average American doesn’t want that. There are things going on in this world (like Darfur) that Americans don’t want to know about. We’re all just trying to make our lives better in our compartmentalized worlds.

I don’t have panic attacks as often anymore, if I do I flip over to the local classical station. If someone asks me about a current event I hardly know what is going on with it anymore. Iraq? No idea. Iran? I have a vague notion. Global warming? Probably just a world climate change, and those have been happening for eons. Oil? Someone will find a replacement for it. Rotten people? There have always been rotten people, and the majority are government officials. But what am I going to do about it? I’m going to try to remain happy and take care of my family. That’s all I’m going to do, and I’m going to stay tuned out and deaf and dumb about the world because it makes me feel better.

Pickersgill had learned flag making from her mother, Rebecca Young, who made ensigns ² and continental standards during and after American Revolution. After marrying and moving to Philadelphia, Mary returned to Baltimore, widowed and with a small child. She established a flag-making business out of her home. Through her trade she supported her family by designing, sewing, and selling “silk standards, cavalry and division colours of every description.” She created signal and house flags for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and merchant ships that visited Baltimore’s harbor.

When asked by Major Armistead to sew the flag, she created in just 6 weeks an American flag measuring 30×42 feet with the help of her daughter, two nieces, and two servants. Each stripe was two feet wide and each star was two feet from tip to tip. As a result the flag could be seen from several miles away from the fort.

When the British attacked Baltimore, Francis Scott Key, a lawyer aboard the British ship HMS Tonnant, saw Pickersgill’s flag while he was held captive and was inspired to compose the poem that became the national anthem of the United States. Pickersgill’s flag, being restored, is the centerpiece of the redesigned National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. ³

What hath Hasbro wrought?

What you’re looking at there is a Star Wars Transformer, the latest in a loooooooong line of Kenner/Hasbro toys that attempt to capitalize off of the (fast fleeting) memory of Star Wars in the minds of today’s children. How can you sex up a line of toys spawned by a 30 year old film for Generation Wii? Try synergy.

Michael Bay, the rich man’s Uwe Boll, is helming a big screen live action star spangled version of the Transformers that will be hitting millions of theaters near you in the coming weeks. Will kids want Transformers toys after seeing this film by the man that gave us Pearl Harbor? It’s hard to say, but I think Hasbro has seen the writing on the walls and know that their 30 year old mainstay is not aging well.

One only has to look at the current Star Wars site that Hasbro maintains to see how little they have left in their arsenal. First off, kill the music, Hasbro, because you couldn’t have made it much louder. Once you get past the ear-splitting theme music and into the section that includes the toys by category the boredom begins. What is Darth Vader doing riding a motorcycle? It’s pathetic and silly. From the site –

As outlaws, rebels and renegades take to the road in a galaxy far, far away, the Star Wars CUSTOMS shop designs and builds awesome choppers with expert precision. These choppers are built to the exact specifications of their owners, each with a few special modifications.

You want speed? You got it. Horsepower? Ditto. Attitude? Plenty to spare.

So hop on and hold tight as this custom chopper cruises all over the galaxy!

Rev it up and let it go for smooth riding action! Detailed chopper comes with lightsaber.

I guess “If you like American Chopper, you’ll love Star Wars CUSTOMS!”

Next up is ATTACKTIX, which I think are some sort of nerd-pleasing role playing game pieces that can actually shoot/fight/etc.. The problem is that some of the pieces have weapons the size of the character carrying said weapon. And the picture on the main page of Chewbacca with a huge wavy hand is not comforting.

Last up is the FORCE BATTLERS, large, cartoony figures that barely resemble the characters you love (Chewbacca) or ones you couldn’t care less about (General Grievous, Jango Fett, Emperor Palpatine). Each comes with weapons that were probably never used by the character (Chewbacca has a freaking shield!) or silly weapons (Palpatine comes with, get this, balls of energy).

Granted, Star Wars figures were always the hallmark of the toy line, and Hasbro has come a long way in updating the figures we 6 and 7 year olds horded on the playground, but how many times should I buy an R2-D2 figure? Thee or four times? Sure, the latest one looks like the real deal and is very detailed, compared to that clunky clicky one that I had as a kid.

But then it comes down to economics. Does Hasbro need my money? Star Wars figures aren’t like buying consumables like milk and bread; you hang onto them and put them away in airtight baggies, praying for that day that someone will pay you 100X what it was worth when you bought it.

Hasbro, let Star Wars die. You’ve kicked your dead Tauntaun enough. Let it go.

My wife, the ballsy one, asked the dad if his brother was in the Old 97’s.

“I don’t have a brother,” he said, sort of standoffishly. “And I’m in the Old 97’s.”

So that was it. The pictures were of Ken and his wife, but before the graying hair. Case solved!

He was genial enough. While we both chomped pizza and cake we talked about “Heroes” and a group watching party that a local comic book shop puts on at the Magnolia every Monday night. He talked about a Chili’s ad that they had done (a lot of money for one day’s work) and were happy with and how they were going to tour the following week. Maybe it’s just the way he talks, but he kind of had that “bask in my glow” way of speaking, and some of the other dads who were there were giving him those puppy dog eyes, which I thought was kinda gay, but, thinking about it, Ken has attained a dream that all men at some point in their lives dream – he plays guitar in a band that tours and puts out albums that you can buy on Amazon. And the band is marginally famous.

I wasn’t going to tell Ken that I had all of their albums up until Fight Songs (which bordered on being too poppy for my tastes) and sing their songs loudly as I drive because I didn’t want to be one of those people that slobbers all over celebrities. He’s not flashy like lead singer Rhett Miller, who I remember from high school when he went to ESD and dated a girl in my class. It looks like Ken leads a pretty simple life, with his wife and 2 kids. We just chatted and it was alright. Pretty nice guy.

It ended kind of weird though. I have one other tangential link to Ken – he dated a friend of mine’s wife. Not when they were married, of course, but before all of the matrimony stuff. When he found out that we knew him through our friend, he started telling a story to us about when he dated her. Ken said it was difficult going out with her, since he had the band and would be back in Dallas for a week before heading out on the road again for another month or so and he didn’t really know if he should call her his girlfriend or not. It all ended badly and he felt more than a little responsible for the whole mess, which, according to our friend, he did create. He said to say hi to her when we saw her.

When you know these people as people the high sheen of what they do seems to come off a little bit and you realize that the people that Entertainment Tonight and gossip rags hold up as famous are just people who want to have lives also, and they screw up relationships and stuff like that too.

But he does play a pretty mean guitar. And I like the pillow that says “Buenos Dias” on it in their house. Where can I get one of those?

Some legacy, huh?

Screen writer Milton Gunzburg and his brother Julian thought they had a solution for the declining attendance with their Natural Vision 3-D ¹ film process. They tried to shop it around Hollywood, but no one really had any interest. Columbia and Paramount passed on Gunzberg’s pitch. 20th Century Fox introducing CinemaScope and weren’t interested in throwing another viewing experience into the mix . Only one man, John Arnold, who headed the MGM camera department, liked it enough to convince his bosses to purchase an option on the technology, but they let their option lapse.

To the Gunzbergs, it appeared that the Natural Vision technique of filming was doomed and they were back to square one until a man named Arch Oboler wanted a meeting with the them. Oboler, producer and writer of the popular radio show, Lights Out ², was impressed enough to option it for his next film, The Lions of Gulu.

The film was based on a well-known event at the time, the killing of more than 120 workers building the Uganda Railway for the British at the turn of the century. The incident was also the basis for “The Man-eaters of Tsavo“, a story written in 1907 by J.H. Patterson, the hunter who tracked and killed the animals.

Bwana Devil premiered on November 26, 1952 at the Paramount Theatres in Hollywood and Los Angeles, CA. The critics hated it but it was a smash with audiences. Local premieres followed in San Francisco on December 13, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio openings on December 25 and New York on February 18, 1953.

United Artists bought the rights to Bwana Devil from Oboler for $500,000 and a share of the profits put the film into wide release in March. After other studios saw the big profits that UA was bringing in with Bwana Devil, other studios raced to release their own 3-D films and a cool, albeit short lived, trend was begun. ³

As best as I can gather, the Losties have been on The Island for roughly around 70 days, just south of 2 months. In that time they’ve had 9 of their own die (Scott, Boone, Shannon, Arzt, Libby, Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, Nikki, Paulo) and one more if you count the Oceanic Air pilot killed in the first episode, and some of those people, if the show’s time line is to be believed, died literally only weeks ago. Our castaways don’t seem very visibly upset by a lot of the death going on around them.

I attribute this to the “The ‘Lost’ Short Term Memory Syndrome”. It’s a condition commonly found in television characters who crashed on an island 3 years ago and are still living in that time, yet they’re being watched 3 years in the future on television. How else can you explain the lack of feelings, the forgotten things that happen from one week (or day, or whatever their passage of time consists of) to the next?

We’ll be talking in “Lost” time, not real world time, FYI.

On the second day our Losties are on the island some of them hike to higher ground to see if they can use a radio to contact the outside world, but they pick up signals in French from a radio tower. Shannon is able to decipher them, but many more people were there besides her. Do they not remember this unseen tower? Why aren’t they looking for it?

Sawyer was tortured by Sayid roughly a week and a half after they crashed for hoarding, yet in last night’s episode, Sawyer and Sayid are paling around and trying to get Juliet to talk. Would you be friends with someone who had tortured you not 2 months before? Why isn’t Sawyer trying to get even with Sayid for doing this?

Three weeks ago Jinn, Sawyer, Michael and Walt set sail on their boat, which was blown up by the Other known as Tom later that day. That was 3 weeks ago? Feels like forever ago.

Sayid loved Shannon, and she died about on day 48 of their time on the island. If we’re at about day 65+, shouldn’t Sayid still be a little torn up over her? The guy sure did mourn a long time for his girl, didn’t he?

On day 59, Locke was trapped beneath the blast door in the Hatch. It pierced his thighs, but a week later he’s fine? What gives? I know it’s the “healing powers of the island”, but come on, don’t give me that crap.

Eight-ish days ago, Michael killed Ana Lucia and Libby. Eight days ago. Three days after that Michael and Walt are given a boat and coordinates by Ben Linus. They leave the island.

On the same day the Hatch explodes. If the Hatch exploded on day 65, and we’re right around day 70 or so, it’s been less than a week since that occurrence. None of the Losties seem to remember the Hatch, but the Others talk about the Purple Light that screwed up their navigation systems.

I guess they forgot about the Numbers too. And they were such a big deal, weren’t they?

I’ll give them a point of consistency though – Sawyer has not reverted to calling people nicknames yet. I expect that to change as he conveniently forgets his deal with Hurley.

Dan Piraro was the creator of the Bizarro comic strip, and I knew that the name wasn’t very common, so I carefully asked, “Is this the Dan Piraro we all know and love?” And she answered that yes it was. Dan’s wife called him over and I said how much I liked his comic and he thanked me. They left, but later I put out another staff recommendation of “Best of Bizarro, Volume 1″. The card that I put with the book said, “If Dan Piraro is cool he will sign these.” And he obviously was cool, because he did sign them, all of them. I of course snatched one of the autographed copies up. Still have it, too.

He didn’t look like the picture I’ve included at the time, he looked much more eccentric, with long curly hair and a goatee. The picture next to this makes him almost look Dad-like.

The next time I saw him in our store he was buying a “Do Your Own Divorce in Texas” book. I hope that wasn’t concerning the woman who’d called him over to say hi to me.

UPDATE :

On April 9 of this year I got up the gumption and wrote Dan from the email address given off of his website –

Dan,
About 12 years ago I was working at the Bookstop near the Inwood theater in Dallas and knew that you occasionally came into our store. I had set out a staff recommendation of your Best of Bizarro (the first one) and my card underneath it read “If Dan Piraro is cool he will sign these.”

Suffice to say, you were very cool and signed all of them. I still have one, even though my wife wonders why I keep it around.

Just wanted to say thanks for that.

–
- Glenn Vance

I had no idea if he would write me back…but three days later he did.

Thanks for the note, Glenn. It was awfully nice of you to thank me after so many years. Hope all is well with you and yours and that you are finding life to be grand and groovy. I lived in Dallas then and live in NYC now. You still in Dallas?
Dan

Holy crap. He was engaging me in conversation. So I told him about my wish to get my masters and PhD in History and then teach. I thanked him for writing me back and told him to have a good one.

And he wrote back again!

Good luck with your professorship. Sounds like a good career and one that hardly ever includes being paged in the middle of the night. As long as you stay away from the co-eds. : )
d

How freaking cool is that?

McCall was chairman of the New York ad agency McCaffrey & McCall, and he put the problem to his underlings. They suggested he hire Bob Dorough, a Texas jazz musician known for creating catchy music to create the songs. Dorough was willing to give the idea a shot, and he plowed through his daughter’s math books, making up tunes on his piano until he’d created the trippy ballad “Three Is a Magic Number.”

McCall loved Dorough’s song, and the tune was eventually released as a record by Capitol Records under the title Multiplication Rock. A workbook deal fell through, but Tom Yohe, McCaffrey & McCall’s creative director, thought that the songs would go well with animation, so, after doodling some pictures, which McCall once again loved, they put together a 3 minute film to accompany “Three Is a Magic Number”, which they showed to ABC’s head of children’s programming, Michael Eisner. Eisner was receptive to the idea and gave McCaffrey & McCall the go ahead to create films for the rest of the multiplication tables. General Mills was brought on as the sole sponsor of Schoolhouse Rock.

Eisner also demanded that the big animation studios of Hollywood that made their Saturday morning cartoons cut 3 minutes from each show so that the animated shorts could be run. The studios were not too eager to comply, but after prodding by Eisner that it made good business sense, the relented.

Schoolhouse Rock premiered on the weekend of January 6-7, 1973, with the play list being “My Hero Zero,” “Elementary, My Dear,” “Three Is a Magic Number” and “The Four-Legged Zoo.” The shorts were aired for 12 years, ending in 1985. ¹

Tigh has been my favorite character on BSG since the excellent miniseries launched the show, and it’s funny, since if the guy were real and we were to meet in real life I’d probably hate him, mainly from his demeanor. Upon first meeting he’d probably give one raised nostril in a sneer and snarl something degrading, But Michael Hogan makes him so real and flawed that his humanity (or lack of humanity, now that the season 3 finally has come and gone) pours out of him.

Now that supposedly Tigh is a Cylon, I have no idea how they will rectify his back story with what we now know he is. According to the excellent Battlestarwiki.org, Tigh served aboard a warship called the Brenik during the first Cylon war when he was just a teenager. He was released from service after the war, served aboard civilian ships and met Bill Adama during a bar fight. The two men grew old together while they served the colonies together. How they’re going to make him a Cylon that grew old is beyond me. I don’t know.

I guess what I like about him is his irascible character, his take-no-crap attitude and his willingness to do anything that is necessary to survive. He only seems to have given up that fight twice in his life, once when he’d divorced Ellen and was drifting aimlessly, and then after he’d had to kill Ellen and return to the Galactica. Executing Cylon collaborators seemed to have helped quench some of his fury, but as a man he was drifting.

Now that he believes that he is a Cylon he has turned back to the one constant in his life; serving under Bill Adama as XO. He defiantly declared upon realization that he isn’t human, “My name is Saul Tigh. I’m an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that’s the man I want to be. And if I die today, that’s the man I’ll be.”

God, I love this man. Godspeed, Tigh! May you make it to “Earth” so we may all know you in all your ornery glory!

Make me care again.

You bastards!

The people behind “Lost” must have noticed that our household was getting tired of their little televised social experiment, because out of the blue they’ve started putting on far better shows than we were used to seeing on ABC on Wednesday nights. Except for a few glitches this season (like the horr-i-ble Jack-centric “Stranger in a Strange Land”) the second half of season 3 hasn’t been too shabby, with episodes like the Desmond-centric episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes” being the stand out for me this season, followed by “The Man from Tallahassee” and last week’s fun (for me, at least) “Expose” where they killed off the latest clumsily introduced members of the Losties.

The producers definitely were yanking our chains when the season started, what with the downbeat episodes of Jack, Sawyer and Kate’s captivity and Jack’s growing relationships with Ben and Juliet. I love Ben now, he’s just so creepy/weird and you really (up until “Expose”) didn’t know where he was coming from, but he’s either manipulating people to do what they wouldn’t normally do and he’s a mastermind of sorts, or he’s delusional and thinks he’s some amazing puppet master. And Juliet has evil written all over her. Just a feeling I get.

John Locke has been infuriating this season though. You can’t stop playing with computers, can you John? First Mikhail escapes because you want to play chess on the Fire Station’s computer, then you blow up the Fire Station out of stupidity, and then you kill Mikhail because he knows you were a paraplegic, and to top it all off you go and take that C4 that you found and blow up the one reliable mode of transportation off of the island? What’s your angle, John? You better pray that Penny Widmore rescues your ass, or at least your compatriots, since you’ll never want to leave the island now that you can walk.

Charlie can die anytime he wants now. After the drug storyline was done with he started feeling extraneous, like Shannon. Hey Desmond, don’t tell Charlie when he’s going to die so he won’t know you didn’t save him, okay?

Where did Rose and Bernhard go? I liked both of them and they’ve just disappeared, but of course, in “Lost” time, they’ve been gone for probably 5 days.

I keep hoping we’ll see Michael and Walt again someday. I like to think that the coordinates that Ben gave Michael when he left at the end of last season took him straight to the second island and that they’re both there. They’re probably locked up somewhere, but I wish they’d explained Walt’s weird gift with animals and drawing them to him. Guess that’ll go straight into the crapper, won’t it? Along with so many other mysteries.

And I don’t miss Eko. He had the ability to become cool, like Locke, but he used all of his street cred up with me. RIP, Eko.

But you ask, why do I love you so?

Because of your very name – “Chewy”. Through some sort of chemical process which, I’m sure, is bad for you, they (being Chips Ahoy) made a cookie that “tastes” like it was “freshly made”. The Chewy Chips Ahoy cookie is like the Easy Cheese of cookies.

But damn, I love them. I hadn’t eaten them in 20 years, but out of the blue I ate one the other day at my in-laws’ house and before I knew it I had scarfed down 6 of them, which I’m sure shortened my life by a couple of months, but then to further damn myself to an early grave I went out and bought my own bag of them to keep at work this morning, hidden away inside of my desk. I’ve had 3 already today, and in the name of C. Everett Koop, hopefully that will be all of them that I eat today.

Chemically, the Chewy Chips Ahoy is far different from the generic Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookie, and within that maze of ingredients, I’m sure, is the reason that they retain their moisty quality. Is it the palm oil? Or milk? Might it possibly be the molasses or the annatto extract? Only God, and the wizards/alchemists at Nabisco know. But I will tell them, as they ought to be aware, that they have made, for me at least, crack in cookie form.

Damn you, and I love you, Nabisco.

This is more just rambling, isn’t it?

The infected basestar episodes (“Torn“, “A Measure of Salvation“)were excellent in execution but made me furious when a potentially huge new plot line was discarded just because Helo had a conscience. Adama should have shot him himself. Or else Tigh could have eaten him, which I think he would have gladly done.

Tigh continues to be my favorite character of the series, and when he isn’t on screen for long periods of time I miss him. He’s a complete jerk and a drunk, but it’s priceless lines like “It’s in the frakkin’ ship!” and that little laugh he gave Helo in “The Woman King” that make me wish someone would recognize how great an actor Michael Hogan really is. But he’s Canadian and a recluse, from what it sounds like, so he may never get the recognition that I think he deserves.

Next favorite is Chief, Galen Tyrol. Everytime they want to have a heavy mythos-centric episode they seem to allow him to shine. Whether he’s coming to grips with the idea that he may be a Cylon, or trying to decipher the Eye of Jupiter, or even in Crossroads, where he and others, for some reason, keep hearing “All Along the Watchtower”, Aaron Douglas as Tyrol is great, and he plays the tortured part well.

Is it okay to think that Grace Park (Sharon/Boomer/Athena) isn’t that great an actress? Yes, it is okay. Because she’s not.

And I miss Brother Cavill (Dean Stockwell). We need more of him next season. He’s just so slimy.

Or so says some outfit out of England called Oxford Ancestors. They’re a firm that is pioneering a burgeoning field called “bioarchaeology“. It all sounds very suspect, especially given what Oxford University geneticist Bryan Sykes, the founder of Oxford Ancestors says.

Oxford Ancestors, founded in 2001, offers DNA testing to people who want to test their genetic lineage.

Sykes believes that humanity’s common ancestry can be traced through DNA. In 1994, he linked a woman in Britain and a frozen 5,000-year-old corpse found in the Tyrolean Alps, all through their common DNA.

From the AP -

Sykes’ 2001 book “The Seven Daughters of Eve” claimed that 95 percent of Europeans are descended from seven tribal matriarchs – he dubbed them Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine and Jasmine – who lived between 10,000 and 45,000 years ago. He also believes most Europeans can trace their descent to “Five Sons of Adam,” and offers tests to identify these paternal ancestral clans by mapping patterns of DNA within the Y chromosome, the genetic material handed down from fathers to sons that changes little over generations.

Published in an article in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2003, research suggested that 16 to 17 million men, most in Central Asia, shared a form of the Y chromosome that indicates a common ancestor.

Sykes says that the obvious candidate for this is Genghis Khan, who conquered almost all of Asia and fathered many children in the process. Of course, there isn’t any actual tissue from the Mongol ruler – whose tomb has never been found – the tests are based on an assessment of probabilities.

“This is circumstantial evidence but it is very good evidence,” said Sykes. “I think it does mean that people who carry this chromosome are direct patrilineal descendants of Genghis Khan.” How this chromosome came to be so prominent was that when he conquered new territory Genghis Khan would kill the men and routinely inseminate all the women.”

Now, this totally sounds like BS. But what I found funnier than the explanation about how this man was related to Khan was his response in finding out he was related to the conqueror. Again, from the AP -

“My first impression was, ‘Oh no, who is it?’ imagining it was Adolf Hitler or something like that,” said Robinson, 48. “So I was actually pleasantly surprised.”

Now, I know Adolph Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions, but Khan wasn’t much better. He took over the Asiatic continent, and, according to Jack Weatherford, author of “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World“, the death toll estimate caused by Khan was roughly 15 million people over 5 years of conquest.

When it came to desserts, though, he insisted that they be expressive. It may be apocryphal, but it is said that he once demanded of a waiter, “Take away this pudding, it has no theme.” There is no record of how the waiter took the “compliment”.

When it came to drinking, though, he was very particular. He was personal friends with Sir Alexander Walker, and loved his scotch, Johnny Walker Red. When he drank brandy, he always took a snifter of Hine. ³

While cruising westerly over the Gulf of Mexico Richardson’s B-47 refueled as was standard practice on these missions. Upon reaching New Orleans, Richardson turned northerly and proceeded to the Canadian border in preparation for a southerly turn to begin his “bomb run” on radar scoring facility at Radford, Virginia. Richardson’s B-47 “bombed” the target electronically and headed for home. The crew had covered 4000 miles in 8 hours and were ready to rest and relax. Richardson was told by a message from headquarters that on the return trip he would not be “attacked” by enemy fighters, which added a little bit of comfort to the remaining flight.

But no one seemed to have told Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. Lt. Clarence Stewart and two other pilots and three crew chiefs are readying their F-86 fighters to “attack” Richardson’s returning B-47. They had been given permission to attack Richardson’s plane any time before it landed in Florida.

At 12:09 a.m. on February 5, Air Defense Control radar picked up one of the B-47’s roughly 180 miles north of Charleston Air Force Base, but it did not pick up Richardson’s B-47. Ground control radar directed the 3 F-86’s to a point several thousand feet over and 15 miles away from Richardson’s B-47. Stewart, and his radar, locked onto the known B-47 and he began descending rapidly to “attack” the bomber, never knowing that he was on a collision course with Richardson’s B-47. Stewart didn’t know he was plunging towards Richardson’s B-47, as he was intently looking at his radar for fear of losing the other B-47 in the darkness, but he looked up for a second and saw the moon reflecting off the top of Richardson’s B-47. He attempted to roll the F-86 right but was unable to avoid a collision.

Stewart was able to eject from the crippled F-86, but, amazingly, the B-47 was only damaged. Upon inspection, the B-47’s crew noticed that the far right engine was bent upwards at a 30-degree angle and the right external fuel tank had been sheared off. Because of the bent engine the plane is rolling wildly. In an effort to control the craft Richardson cuts the power to that engine and then cuts the speed of the plane in an attempt to make an emergency landing at Hunter Air Force Base in Georgia. The tower at Hunter advises Richardson that because of maintenance on the runway, if the plane lands short it could cause the plane to crash, hurtling the Mk 15 bomb through the cockpit and down the runway at 200+ mph. Richardson radios Strategic Air Command and informs them that he is going to ditch the bomb in the Atlantic near Tybee Island, off the coast of Georgia. He does this and is able to eventually land the damaged plane.

On February 6, 1958, the Air Force 2700th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squadron and 100 Navy personnel began the arduous search to recover the lost Mk 15 bomb. 10 days later an announcement was made that the search had turned up nothing, with the Air Force and Navy believing that the bomb was buried below the water in upwards of 5-15 feet of mud. To this day it has never been recovered. ¹

She produced 24 quarts of milk during the flight, which was sealed into paper cartons and parachuted to spectators below. Charles Lindbergh reportedly received a glass of Ollie’s milk.

And yeah, you know some of these men, but what about the other men? Here they are, the members of the Second Continental Congress – ²

From New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware
George Read
Caesar Rodney
Thomas McKean

From the Province of Pennsylvania
George Clymer
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Morris
John Morton
Benjamin Rush
George Ross
James Smith
James Wilson
George Taylor

From the Province of Massachusetts Bay
John Adams
Samuel Adams
John Hancock
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

From the Province of New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

From the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

From the Province of New York
Lewis Morris
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
William Floyd

From the Province of Georgia
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

From the Colony and Dominion of Virginia
Richard Henry Lee
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Jefferson
George Wythe
Thomas Nelson, Jr.

From the Province of North Carolina
William Hooper
John Penn
Joseph Hewes

From the Province of South Carolina
Edward Rutledge
Arthur Middleton
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Thomas Heyward, Jr.

From the Province of New Jersey
Abraham Clark
John Hart
Francis Hopkinson
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon

From the Connecticut Colony
Samuel Huntington
Roger Sherman
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
From Maryland
Charles Carroll
Samuel Chase
Thomas Stone
William Paca

Against the backdrop of this knowledge, Germans were fleeing the advancing Soviet army as fast as they could. The Wilhelm Gustloff was there in Gdynia to help with the evacuation as part of Operation Hannibal. ³ Commanded by Friedrich Petersen, the Wilhelm Gustloff began taking refugees aboard on January 28, 1945, with a launch time 48 hours from then. After launch they were to head to Kiel. ⁴

Armed guards allowed passengers on in an orderly fashion, even though panic had taken over the harbor. The mob mainly consisted of women, children and old men, as the SS was combing the crowd for men to fight the advancing Red Army. As the 30th approaches the throng became more panicked, mothers and children became separated, shoving caused some to fall overboard into the icy waters below, hysteria was setting in as the last remaining avenues of escape dried up.

At around 12:30 pm, the Wilhelm Gustloff weighed anchor and left Gdynia with their escort, a small torpedo boat, the Löwe. The sailing was anything but smooth. Rough seas, snow and hail pelted the ship, while on the bridge the crew debated the best course of action to take. Route, optimal speed and whether the Gustloff should be following a zigzag course to avoid detection were all topics of discussion. Shortly after 6 pm the crew was alerted that convoy of minesweepers was approaching them from the opposite direction. In order to avoid a collision, shouldn’t the ships running lights be turned on? The decision, which would prove fatal, was that they should.

Near 8 pm that night the crew of the Soviet submarine S-13 spotted the lights of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Captain Alexander Marinesko gathered his officers together and formulated their plan off attack on the huge ship. Because of ice, the Löwe’s anti-submarine sonar was disabled, forcing lookouts on both ships to rely on sight to spot submarines, which allowed the S-13 to get in close to both ships. Shortly after 9 pm Captain Marinesko orders 4 torpedoes to be launched at the Wilhelm Gustloff (only 3 worked properly), each hitting the starboard side of the cruise ship. Passengers were caught off guard, as most believed that the worst of their journey had passed.

The 3 torpedoes had hit the front of the ship, midship where the swimming pool was, and the rear of the boat near the engine room, knocking out all power on board the ship. Because of this the radio room operator had to use an emergency transmitter to transmit the SOS distress signal. Complete chaos ensued as the ship descended into anarchy. An hour and 10 minutes after the first torpedo hit at 9:16 pm, the Wilhelm Gustloff slipped beneath the waves of the Baltic, taking thousands of people with it. Some survivors flailed in the icy water attempting to climb into life boats, only to be beaten back by those occupying them.

The Löwe was able to pick up 472 passengers from the water, while another torpedo boat, the T-36, was able to pick up 564. The minesweepers which were feared to cause a collision arrived and picked up an additional 179 people from the water, eventually bringing the combined total of rescued to approximately 1,230. All in all, 9,500 people would perish in the sinking, making the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff the worst maritime disaster in history. ⁵

George moved the family to Waxahachie for work reasons, but he left the family there and moved back to Oklahoma, once again in a quest to find better work. The interesting thing about this is that Susan and the children did not go with him. The family continued to pick cotton to feed themselves.

During all of this Bessie believed that she was destined for greater things than living out a meager existence. Trying to get out of the situation she was in, she saved all the money she could and attended a year at the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma. The problem was that her money ran out after that amount of time and she had to go leave school. She returned home.

At the age of 23 she moved to Chicago and lived with some of her brothers who were living there at the time. She worked at a supermarket and as a manicurist, but she dreamed of flying. Orville and Wilbur Wright had flown their Wright Flyer in 1903, and Bessie wanted to do the same. She heard stories from men returning from The Great War about flying over the battlefields of France and they fascinated her.

With some financial backing, she took classes in French and then in 1920 traveled to Paris to attend the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. She’d had to travel that far to learn to fly, because American flight schools would not allow blacks to enroll. By 1921, after training, she was the only black pilot in the world.

She became a role model, not just for black women, but people of all races, for she had overcome great obstacles and fulfilled her dreams. Sadly, her dream came to an end on April 30, 1926 in Jacksonville, Florida when she crashed in the first plane she had ever owned.

She and her mechanic had taken the new plane out for a test flight. During the flight the mechanic, who was piloting the plane, experienced engine trouble and lost control of the aircraft. Bessie fell out of the open cockpit of the plane and plummeted several hundred feet to her death.

More than 5,000 people attended her memorial services in Chicago and another 10,000 filed past her coffin to pay their last respects. She garnered much attention even in death, but she will always be the first black woman pilot. ¹

The idea of a meeting such as this was floated a year earlier by Renaissance man Benjamin Franklin, but it took the closing of Boston Harbor by the British and the following Boston Tea Party ¹ to get the ball really rolling. The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia’s Carpenters Hall on September 5, 1774. Of the 12 colonies, only 12 sent delegates, as Georgia was beset by problems with Indians and needed help from the British military to put down the problems.

So…you know those few men that you had to know for school, but what about the other ones? Here they are from the First Continental Congress -

From the Province of New Hampshire
Nathaniel Folsom

From the Province of Massachusetts Bay
John Adams
Samuel Adams
Thomas Cushing
Robert Treat Paine

From the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
Stephen Hopkins
Samuel Ward

From the Connecticut Colony
Silas Deane
Eliphalet Dyer
Roger Sherman

From the Province of New York
John Alsop
James Duane
John Jay
Philip Livingston
Isaac Low
County of Kings
Simon Boerum
County of Orange
John Haring
Henry Wisner
County of Suffolk
William Floyd

From the Province of New Jersey
Stephen Crane
John De Hart
James Kinsey
William Livingston
Richard Smith

From the Province of Pennsylvania
Edward Biddle
John Dickinson
Joseph Galloway
Charles Humphreys
Thomas Mifflin
John Morton
Samuel Rhoads
George Ross

From New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware
Thomas McKean
George Read
Caesar Rodney

From Maryland
Samuel Chase
Robert Goldsborough
Thomas Johnson
William Paca
Matthew Tilghman

From the Colony and Dominion of Virginia
Richard Bland
Benjamin Harrison V
Patrick Henry
Richard Henry Lee
Edmund Pendleton
Peyton Randolph
George Washington

From the Province of North Carolina
Richard Caswell
Joseph Hewes
William Hooper

From the Province of South Carolina
Christopher Gadsden
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Henry Middleton
Edward Rutledge
John Rutledge

Possibly next – the members of the Second Continental Congress. ²

It followed the lives of the Molly and Jake Goldberg and their family as they made their way through their everyday lives in Brookylyn, NY. Gertrude Berg, the writer-producer behind the show, portrayed Molly and Philip Loeb portrayed her husband Jake. Also on the show were Roslyn Silber and Alfred Ryder Molly and Jake’s children Rosalie and Sammy.

During the first season on CBS, the show was the third most popular program on the air. It was such a popular show that performers from other fields desired to be on the show, like Jan Peerce of the Metropolitan Opera.

It went on to be the 3rd highest rated show for CBS during that time. It eventually went from CBS to NBC to a now none-existent network known as the Dumont network where it ended its run in 1955. ¹

Many women have made a run for the presidency. Who were they?

Victoria Woodhull, 1872: The first woman to run for president, Woodhull was an Equal Rights Party candidate. Ulysses S. Grant won the 1872 election as a Republican.

Belva Ann Lockwood, 1884 and 1888: Lockwood, who also ran on the Equal Rights Party ticket, eventually became the first woman lawyer to practice before the Supreme Court. In 1884, Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected president; in 1888, Cleveland lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison.

Margaret Chase Smith, 1964: Smith, a Maine Republican, was the first woman to run on a major party ticket, entering primaries in New Hampshire, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas and Oregon, among others. She withdrew after the first round of voting at the Republican National Convention. Sen. Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination and lost in a landslide to the incumbent, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Shirley Chisholm, 1972: The first black woman to run for president, Chisholm ran as a Democrat and received more than 150 votes at the Democratic National Convention. She was also the first black woman to serve in Congress; New York sent her to the House of Representatives in 1968. George McGovern won the Democratic nomination that year and lost to the incumbent, Richard M. Nixon.

Patsy Mink, 1972: A congresswoman from Hawaii, Mink ran in the Oregon Democratic primary as an anti-war candidate.

Pat Schroeder, 1988: Schroeder’s headline-grabbing campaign never got off the ground after the Democratic congresswoman from Colorado could not raise enough money. The party’s nomination went to Michael Dukakis and the election to Republican George H.W. Bush. Schroeder was first elected to the House in 1972, where she served for 24 years.

Elizabeth Dole, 2000: Dole announced her presidential bid in January 1999 and dropped out of the race nine months later. Republicans eventually nominated George W. Bush, who defeated Democrat Al Gore for the presidency. Dole’s husband, former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., was the Republican presidential nominee in 1996, when he lost to Bill Clinton. Mrs. Dole is now North Carolina’s senior senator, elected in 2002.

And last, but certainly not least-

Carol Moseley Braun, 2004: The first black woman to serve in the Senate, Braun was one of 10 candidates to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in the last presidential election. Primary voters eventually tapped Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as the nominee. He lost to George W. Bush. ¹

The first English casualties to be suffered in an air raid didn’t come from Messerschmitts or any of Hitler’s Vengeance weapons during World War II, but from German blimps, or zeppelins, in 1915.

The tiny town of Great Yarmouth was bombarded by a 3 zeppelins of the German Navy near the beginning of World War I. The zeppelins, designated as L3, L4, and L6, left the northern German coast on the morning of January 19, 1915 for, what was cryptically called “a distant mission to the west”. If it can be believed, these missions were not to include bombing London, as Kaiser Wilhelm had decreed -

“Targets not to be attacked in London but rather docks and military establishments in the Lower Thames and on the English coast.”

The first mission was to encompass bombings in the areas of the Thames estuary, the mouths of the Humber and Tyne, and the East Anglian ports of Harwich, Lowestoft and Yarmouth.

Fregattenkapitan Peter Strasser, the leader of the mission, lifted off from the German coast aboard his zeppelin, the L6, at 9:30 that morning, but his participation in the raid was to be short-lived, as his zeppelin developed engine trouble off the Dutch coast and was forced to return to Germany. Despite the loss of their captain, the remaining 2 zeppelins, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Hans Fritz on L3, and L4, skippered by Kapitanleutnant Magnus von Platen-Hallermund, floated on to England.

Problems began to arise for the remaining 2 zeppelins were blown off course and they made separate landfalls over the coast of Norfolk. Without radio contact between the 2 zeppelins and with the weather being bad, neither knew where the other was. Locals, on the other hand, began reporting sightings of various aircraft to authorities.

Finally, at 8:20 pm, L3 sighted Yarmouth and began its bombing run over the town, traveling from north to south. During the next 10 minutes L3 is thought to have dropped eight bombs, three of which failed to detonate, and two incendiary devices, causing an estimated damage and killing or wounding a handful of innocent bystanders.

Because of the bewilderment of the locals on the ground, the zeppelins encountered almost no resistance, with reports of only one sentry firing on L3 as it flew overhead.

As for the bombing raids, they achieved little in military terms. The damage was almost all done to private property, but psychologically the damage was huge. No longer were the British Isles immune to attack, with their powerful navy. Now the enemy could bypass that obstacle entirely by just flying over it. This attack, while small, was primarily a trial run for larger attacks that would come later on London, which began on May 31 of that same year. Several hundred people were killed in subsequent raids that eventually declined as the British developed incendiary ammunition which helped to bring down the zeppelins and once again regain control of English airspace. ¹

After being under way for roughly a month, Kuhlmann and his crew scored their first kill when the intercepted the Dominican schooner Carmen off the coast of the Dominican Republic on July 11. Not wanting to waste his valuable (and finite) supply of torpedoes, he surfaced and destroyed the schooner with the sub’s deck mounted guns. Two days later he struck gold again, this time with the U.S. steam freighter Oneida, off the eastern tip of Cuba. From there he and his crew continued westerly along the Cuban coast.

He encountered the fishing vessel Gertrude on the evening of July 16 about 30 miles northeast of Havana. The trawler was too small to use a torpedo on, so he surfaced, commanding the crew into life boats before he destroyed it with the sub’s deck guns once again.

For the next 2 weeks Kuhlmann’s crew sailed northward into the Gulf of Mexico hunting for prey but finding none until he found the mouth of the Mississippi River, an excellent location to sit and wait for tankers steaming eastward. Patience paid off, when on the afternoon of July 30 he encountered the passenger steamer Robert E. Lee.

The Robert E. Lee had been pressed into service by the Navy, running cargo here, passengers there. On July 30 she was carrying passengers from Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, some of which were survivors of other attacks instigated by other German U-Boats. With the heat of summer pressing down upon the overcrowded Robert E. Lee, the captain was trying to find a safe harbor for his passengers. After trying and being unable to dock in Tampa, Florida, he headed for New Orleans, along with his U.S. Navy escort, the U.S. submarine chaser PC-566, where they met up with U-166.

After picking up radio transmissions coming from the PC-566, U-166 homed in on the location of the 2 boats. Firing a single torpedo into the freighter’s port side, the Robert E. Lee went down, taking 25 lives with it.

Once the Robert E. Lee began sinking, PC-566 jumped into the fight, dropping depth 10 charges over the fleeing U-166. After the dropping of the charges, an oil slick was seen rising from the water, but since the other usual evidence that a sub was sunk (a rush of air to the surface) it was assumed that the sub had escaped. In reality the U-166 had been sunk by PC-566.

In 2001 the wreckage of both the Robert E. Lee and U-166 were found by C&C Technologies while the firm was surveying a proposed pipeline route for BP Exploration and Shell international. The 2 ships rest over 5000 feet down on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. ²

From March through September of 1836 Texas had as interim president a man named David G. Burnet. Burnet, a failed land speculator, was chosen at the Convention of 1836 to be the interim president of the newly-formed Republic of Texas following the adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence. After the Battle of San Jacinto Burnet, along with Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna, signed the Treaties of Velasco on May 14, 1836, making Texas a free republic.

But Burnet was not to continue as president of the weeks-old republic. Burnet’s political enemy, Sam Houston, was elected as president on September 5 of that same year. Whether it was out of disgust with politics or him just being a sourpuss, Burnet resigned as president on October 22, handing over the reigns of power to Houston, who was supposed to assume the presidency in December.

Houston had been a veteran of the War of 1812, a lawyer in his adopted home state of Tennessee, and had also been a senator there. Even with all of the success he’d had, Houston’s 2 year constitutionally-mandated term was plagued with problems. Texas had a mountain of debt left over from the revolution, and to compound on this the new country had no money, and no real way to raise it. Also the new republic lived under the constant specter of another imminent invasion, as Mexico had renounced the signing of the Treaties of Velasco. Lastly, Texas was a country that was unrecognized by any nation of the world. Houston sought to immediately join the United States to alleviate some of his country’s troubles, but, with the slave issue raging, Texas was denied entry into the Union, as it would have entered as a slave state.

At the end of his 2 year term Houston was succeeded by his vice president, Mirabeau Bounaparte Lamar. Lamar had fought under Sam Houston in the revolution, joining up after the massacres at Goliad and the Alamo. He commanded the cavalry during the Battle of San Jacinto.

Lamar, unlike Houston, wanted Texas to remain an independent nation, eventually expanding itself out to California, and to eventually rival the United States for control of the North American continent. He also was in favor of exterminating all Texas Native Americans. But on the plus side, under him Texas was recognized by several European countries, and he also founded the new capital of Texas in Austin. Through all of this he spent money like it was going out of style, raising the national debt to unheard of heights.

It may have been the problems that Lamar faced that caused his old political rival to once again assume command of Texas, and on December 12, 1841, Sam Houston once again became the president of the republic and led the fledgling country until it was finally annexed by the United States in 1845. ¹

The balloon had been made by conscripted Japanese schoolgirls to carry a bomb across the Pacific jet stream from the town of Kokura and hopefully land in the United States. A Japanese officer urged the girls on, saying

“You will be defeating America with these arms. Work to your utmost. Achieve your goals!”

The balloon that landed near Lakeview was one of 9300 others launched into the westerly winds during the war. Others landed as far east as Ontario and Michigan, but the balloon that exploded on May 5 killing the woman and the children caused the only wartime deaths due to enemy action in any of the 48 states. ¹

Four days before the MLK celebration the city received the plaque, but instead of Jones’ name, the plaque read :

“Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive. City of Lauderhill, January 19, 2002.”

Ray, of course, was the man who plead guilty to assassinating MLK at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968.

Snopes ¹ has some stuff about it, a little more about the reaction of the company, Merit Industries, that created the plaque -

AdPro hastily checked to ensure that the blunder hadn’t been the result of a mistake on their part:

Gerald Wilcox said he knew the error didn’t come from his company, but he sent a company secretary scurrying through order forms — just to be sure.

“In all my communications with the vendor, I never used [the name James Earl Ray]. I almost fell off my chair when I saw it,” said Norbert Williams, 68, a former middle school principal who is an AdPro account executive. The evidence pointed to Georgetown, Texas.

Even with his doubts, Wilcox said he was willing to call it an error but wanted Merit executives to tell him what happened. He said the first phone conversation broke down when a Merit employee became uncooperative and cut the call short. On a second try, Gerald Wilcox talked to the owner, Herbert Miller.

“I explained to him why this was so important. He said I was making a mountain out of a mole hill,” Wilcox said. “They had no sense of history. First I was stunned, then the anger kicked in.”

Miller, apparently lacking any diplomatic skills whatsoever, assuaged nobody’s feelings by blaming the error on some of his poorly-educated employees and terming the mix-up an innocent mistake that had been “blown out of proportion”:

He said some of the company’s workers are barely in their 20s, possess poor English language skills and have limited grasp of history. “[They] don’t know who James Earl Ray is from James Earl Jones from the man in the moon,’’ he said. Miller said the worker responsible for engraving this plaque was handling another one about the same time bearing the name “Ray Johnson.” He said the “Ray” from that plaque ended up on the Lauderhill plaque, supplanting the word “Jones.”

He said the mistake slipped through quality control because it was a rush job. “It was a stupid, stupid error,” he said.

Mr. Jones, to his credit, brushed it off. From CNN ² -

James Earl Jones brushes off engraving mistake

LAUDERHILL, Florida (AP) — James Earl Jones brushed off a mistake by an engraver who erred while inscribing a plaque meant to honor the actor during a Martin Luther King Jr. tribute.

The plaque was engraved: “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive.” Ray was the man convicted of assassinating King in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968.

Jones said the company made a common mistake and he’s been introduced as James Earl Ray before.

“There’s no point in getting too sensitive about it,” Jones said Saturday at the ceremony.

Instead of the plaque, the city gave Jones a colorful Ashanti stool similar to ones traditionally used as a throne in the African tribe.

Merit Industries, the plaque’s maker, said the mistake happened when an employee was preparing the Jones plaque at about the same time as one for someone named Ray Johnson.

Dennis lived on Sunset Blvd in a house formerly occupied by Will Rogers, and he left Ella Jo and Patricia there while he went to a recording session. Upon returning home at 3 am, a man appeared at the back door of Dennis’ house.

Dennis, frightened, asked the man, “Are you going to hurt me?”

The man replied, “Do I look like I’m going to hurt you, brother?” and he dropped to his knees and kissed Dennis’ feet. He invited Dennis into his own house where about a dozen uninvited house guests, nearly all of them girls, were gathered.

The man was Charles Manson, and he and Dennis got along great. He and Manson would sing and talk about important things, while the girls cleaned house, cooked, and catered to their needs. Manson liked to write music, even though Dennis said he was not musically gifted, and Dennis introduced Manson around town to various people in the entertainment industry.

The Beach Boys eventually went on to record one of Manson’s songs, retitled from its original name “Cease To Exist” to become “Never Learn Not To Love” from the 1969 album 20/20. ²

By this point, of course, the Nazis had been defeated by the Allied forces in Europe, negating the need for the Allies to bomb Berlin, much else any German city. But that hadn’t stopped Nazi physicists from pondering how a nuclear device might be delivered to either New York or London. The diagram at right shows an idea for this.

While far away from the ideal nuclear bomb eventually delivered by the Manhattan Project, Nazi physicists believed that if they could construct a small low-level nuclear device and combine it with a rocket (probably a V-2) that the Axis powers could deliver their nuclear payload to London. Naturally a larger rocket would have to be constructed if this type of scenario were to befall New York, but the war ended before the possibility could even be envisioned. ²

Since Taft’s first pitch ¹, every President but one has opened at least one baseball season during their tenure. The exception: Jimmy Carter. Maybe he just didn’t like baseball.

He had volunteered for militia duty during the War of 1812 and, following the war, had practiced law in Jackson, Tenn. While on a business trip to New York City and Philadelphia he heard about land opportunities in the new territory of Texas. Determined to make an even better life for his wife and children he set off in 1835 aboard a steamboat from Nashville.

Once there he joined up with the rebels fighting the forces of Antonio López de Santa Anna. On January 13, 1836 while in Nacogdoches he enlisted in the Volunteer Auxiliary Corps of Texas under the command of Capt. William B. Harrison. He and others, including Davy Crockett, set out for Washington-on-the-Brazos. He arrived in San Antonio de Bexar (soon to be San Antonio) with his company on February 9 and joined the Alamo garrison under the command of Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis.

But one thing made Autry stand out; he was an expert marksman. Because of his skill with a long rifle he was chosen by his company to attempt to eliminate Santa Anna, who often walked out in the open across the grounds near the Mexican battle lines. Whether out of arrogance or cluelessness he didn’t seem to understand that a sniper might try to take a shot at him.

During one such walk by the Mexican dictator, Autry raised his long rifle and took aim as his compatriots looked on, and fired. In that moment, the history of Texas and Mexico might have been changed, but either because of nervous tension or the great distance to the target, Autry’s bullet went wild and Santa Anna scrambled for cover. After a siege lasting 13 days, Autry fell with his comrades at the stockade near the chapel, overwhelmed by the Mexican troops.

To: H. R. Haldeman

From: Bill Safire

July 18, 1969.

IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT:

The President should telephone each of the widows-to-be.

AFTER THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT, AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN:

A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to “the deepest of the deep,” concluding with the Lord’s Prayer.

The 80-ton side-wheeler had been hauling cargo on the Brazos River during 1834 and 1835. After their victory at the Alamo on March 6, 1836, Mexican Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops began moving toward Harrisburg (today it’s a part of Houston), pursuing the Texas rebels. In early April, David G. Burnet, the interim president of the new republic, impressed the Cayuga into public service to transport provisions to the Texas army. On April 15, Burnet and his cabinet boarded the Cayuga just ahead of the advancing Mexican army. The steamboat made stops at Lynch’s Ferry and New Washington, in the vicinity of today’s Morgan’s Point in Harris County, then proceeded to Anahuac and Galveston with the officials, who conducted the republic’s business as they went. The officials went ashore at Galveston on April 26, then moved to a succession of locations before finally settling in January 1839 in the new capital at Waterloo, which soon was renamed Austin.

The eruptions believed to have caused the anomaly were -

1. The 5 April – 15 April 1815 volcanic eruptions of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies
2. Mount La La Soufrière in Saint Vincent in the Caribbean in 1812
3. and Mount Mayon in the Philippines in 1814

Because of these eruptions a large amount of volcanic ash was launched skyward into the atmosphere and resulting in lower temperatures and sudden cold snaps worldwide.

In the northeastern US the summer of 1816 started out with a climatological bang. May brought on a hard frost that killed off most of the crops that would have been harvested later that year, then in June snowstorms hit eastern Canada and New England resulting in many deaths.

The interesting thing about that summer was that the cold didn’t last the entirety of the summer, it only came in fits and spurts, with the temperatures ranging from downright hot one day to below freezing later the same day. As an example, on the 5th of June the temperature in Salem, Mass reached 89 degrees, whereas on the following day, after thunderstorms blew through the temperature was 41 degrees. The temperatures then rose until they reached, for that area, almost heat wave proportions. Then as June slipped into July the cold returned.

Because of the cold snaps, freezes and snow the prices on corn, wheat and other grains rose dramatically. Conversely beef prices fell, given the fact that farmers found it hard to feed their livestock and wanted to make all the cash they could off of already starving animals.

So what did this climatic abnormality end up causing, besides possible starvation and cold toes? Historians believe that it was the impetus for many Americans to migrate westward and start settling the Midwest. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, was one such man, having begun his move westward after he had several crop failures.

In Europe, where the cold snap was even worse, there were food riots in England and France, the government of Switzerland declared a national emergency, while brown and red snow fell in Hungary and Italy, respectively, the cause of which is assumed to have been volcanic ash.

And the prolonged rainfall forced Mary Shelley and her friends to remain indoors during most of a planned holiday in Switzerland. They all decided to hold a contest, seeing who could write the scariest story, leading Shelley to write Frankenstein.

Inspired by the writings of the French philosopher Francois Marie Charles Fourier, the colony was intended to become a socialist Utopian conclave basing itself on the idea of communal production and distribution for the benefit of all. Unlike true communist systems individuals could own private property.

Built on a 2,000 acre purchase, La Réunion had problems almost from the very beginning. The colonists, none of them farmers, planned to support the colony, misguidedly, through farming, mainly wheat and vegetables. Mix in a large group of watchmakers, weavers, brewers and storekeepers and suddenly there was a large portion of the colony that didn”t have the foggiest idea on how to survive in the Texas landscape.

But they stuck it out and succeeded at growing some wheat and vegetables, although not enough to sustain the colonists. Throw in a blizzard in 1856 which destroyed all of their crops and the blazing Texas summer heat and it’’s little wonder why they failed to take hold.

With over 350 colonists eventually made La Réunion their home, the commune was already beginning to fail as its population began to leave the area. Some returned to their native Europe while others just moved out away. In 1860 the growing town of Dallas incorporated the La Réunion colony into its own land area and absorbed the skills of the remaining colonists into its general population.

Little of the experiment is left today, mainly an odd reminder here and there. The most recognizable reminder of the colony was a tower built in 1978 which was named Reunion Tower as an esoteric honor to the colonists who have become a little less than footnotes in Dallas history.