Saturday, December 05, 2009

Rest in peace, Barrel Man

The Denver Post is reporting today that Tim "Barrel Man" McKernan has died after a long illness. He was a local icon for many years, showing up wearing his cowboy hat & boots and that famous barrel to home games in all types of weather. He became so well-known to Bronco fans that the team honored him in 2007. He even had a bobble head toy!

Not a bad bit of notoriety for a guy who just wanted to win a bet with his brother that he could get on national television.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

The tale of Hans Solo and Luke the Farmer

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The silliness continues...

Friday, November 27, 2009

Nail houses

Now that we don't have children around full-time any more, Sweetie & I need an excuse to see kids' movies without looking silly. Unless it's playing at the local art theater, of course. But how often does that happen? So I was at the grocery store buying food for the holiday and I saw a display with copies of UP for sale. We hadn't seen it and I really wanted to ... so I bought it. The gal at the checkstand said she thought it was sad. I thought maybe I'd made a mistake, but upon viewing the film I think my choice was redeemed. It's a little sad but mostly funny and hopeful. I love that the house ends up landing right where she wanted it to be, and that in the end the curmudgeon finds happiness.

One of the most interesting things about the film is Carl's house, standing there all alone and defiant in the middle of that empty lot... Sweetie told me there was a name for that kind of home. He's right - it is called a "nail house." A nail house is one that is owned by a person who will not bend to the will of the corporates / developers just because all their neighbors have. And there are TONS of examples all over the world - particularly, it seems, in China.

Google "nail house" and you'll find all sorts of great examples and articles about them. One blog entry I found has photos and descriptions, plus the comments site all kinds of other examples. This article is about a "spite house" built in 1830 to keep people and carts out of the alleyway; the home is still occupied today. I read another story about a "spite fence" that was built by a man named Crocker in San Francisco because his neighbor would not sell the property to him. In the end Mr. Crocker and his family ended up losing the war.

But the stories I enjoyed reading most were about nail houses that exist all over the world, properties belonging to defiant homeowners who have no intention of giving up their homes no matter what. There's a property on the M62 near Yorkshire in England which is situated between the two sides of the highway. The builders built the homeowner a couple of tunnels under the highway so he can get off his property without having to use the motorway. Here's a story about a family named Spiegelhalter who ran a jewelry business back in 1927 and refused to sell their shop to the Wickham's Department Store when they came in to build. The architect designed the Wickham's property to be able to build around the old shop once the owners gave it up, but the downturn in department store shopping in the 1960s drove Wickham's out of business. The Spiegelhalters outlasted the big corporate!

Another homeowner featured in the first blog post I read was a Mrs. Edith Macefield of Seattle. She refused to sell her home to the big developers (and in fact, never did - she died in her house) and became such a heroine to the locals that a tattoo artist named Curtis formed what was to become "Edith Macefield's Army." Their symbol is Edith's little house, which you can have inked permanently on your body for a fee.

And then there are the not-so-successful stories, like the one about Mel's Lounge in Santa Barbara, which held out against the mall developers until the landlord doubled the rent and drove the bar - which had been in business there since 1963 - out of business last year.

There are a million more stories like these out there, stories about defiant homeowners living in their nail houses, holding out against the big-money developers and corporates, protecting what is theirs, what's been in their families for generations. Typically the money eventually wins out - but it's heartening to read about the people who stand up for what they believe in, because they are the ones who always win in the end.

Wouldn't it be great, though, if instead of fighting we could just choose to go UP?

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Shameless plug! Pick me! Yeah!

Anyone who has read this ridiculous little blog for any length of time knows that I'm a fan of David Malki! and his Wondermark strip. (Check it out, I just added a search box thing on the sidebar that allows you to search this blog for that kind of stuff. Go ahead, I'll wait.) He cracks me up on a regular basis; I subscribe to the strip via email - it's always a highlight of my day - and to his YouTube channel. Just recently he wrote a new story about a cop who follows all the rules - it's really silly but funny. David's obsession with beards and facial hair is practically legendary. I even bought his movie, Expendable, and loved it! (The story is about a henchman hired on to an evil organization and the events of his first day at work. Genuinely hilarious.)

David is running a little contest for bloggers and libraries and all I have to do to enter is blog about Wondermark! How simple / cool is that? It just doesn't get any easier! So here ya go, David, my entry into your Turkey Day contest! Pick me, dude! I'm bonafide!! :D

Monday, November 23, 2009

Don't watch this video!

Unless you don't mind another LOL song from Kelly.

NSFW!!!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Thoughts of Eireann

If I wrote a travelogue about our entire two weeks in Ireland it would send you, dearest readers, into a catatonic state - and get me a lot closer to that case of carpal tunnel I've been working on all these years. So instead, how about some highlights and random observations?


Dislikes:
-- The public bathrooms in Ireland are ALL COLD. Every single one of them. I mean sit down and cry out, 'oh shit that's cold!' cold. (I asked one woman working at a gas station how she did it. "As little as possible," she replied.) However, they are for the most part amazingly clean.

-- The tertiary roads, the small ones like those that run through small neighborhoods in the States? Are barely one car width across. Boy, does that make for a scary drive, especially when you're already driving on the wrong side of the road and there's someone coming at you from the other way and you're blocked on the passenger side by a stone wall. (I spent half the time cringing.)

-- The way people give directions is the same as the way people in the South give directions. 'Go down the road past the old pub and it's practically on your left, near the church. If you've reached the bakery you've gone too far.' And everyone is overly concerned about the weather.

Other than that, not much to complain about.

The people are a little stand-offish at first but warm up very quickly, and are full of advice and suggestions. Travelodge hotels in Ireland are as basic as you can possibly get - not even so much as a complimentary packet of shampoo - but are also cheap. We had a lot of luck with hotels in the city centers, they had good prices -- but don't buy the breakfast with the room. Find your own meals instead.

In Dublin we took the hop-on/hop-off buses in order to see all the touristy spots. I really wanted to see something of the Viking influence on Ireland so we went to Dublinia and Christchurch Cathedral. It's amazing to think that there is surviving physical evidence that the people of Ireland were defending their lands from invaders over 1200 years ago. We walked the quays, ate some fantastic meals, explored the small town of Swords in the north of Dublin. I became happily reacquainted with Oscar Wilde.

Drove up north through the country to Letterkenny (Sweetie had a business meeting) and managed not to get lost until we tried to drive to Malin Head. As the navigator, I'm here to tell you that those small roads are tricky to follow on a map! We ended up driving over a small mountain called Slieve Snaght instead of around it, so we had to take another shot at finding Malin the next day. Malin Head is the northernmost point of Ireland - and man, was it ever cold! The north Atlantic wind was blustering and pushing a chill rain around. Brrr!

We drove through a town claiming to be the "smallest cathedral city in Europe" (Raphoe), saw the harbor where Lord Mountbatten's ship was bombed (Mullaghmore), saw W.B. Yeats' grave (Drumcliffe), spent the night in Donegal, spent several in Galway. We drove through The Burren, a national park containing some of the oldest structures in Ireland including a megalithic tomb that is 1000 years older than the pyramids of Giza. Risked life & limb driving down one of those tertiary roads to The Burren Perfumery but I thought it was worth it; I learned a lot about the flora of western Ireland. We got threatened by small dogs protecting their home (hilarious) and saw sheep in just about every meadow we drove past.

Eddie Izzard is right, you can drive down any road in Europe and run into a fuckin' castle. There are castles and round towers and stone circles and old churches and stone forts and ancient cathedrals just about everywhere you go. In the middle of open fields and in the middle of cities. It is so very cool!

The weather was just what I had expected: cold at times, sunny at others, rained some but not too much. Irish television is an interesting combination of UK, Irish and Irish-Gaelic channels. We saw a show about road bowling that was fun and interesting; that's something we're going to try to see in person when we go back. They have a lot of antiques/collectibles and auction shows and tons of soap operas. Reality TV is so big there that the programs actually get regular coverage on the news!

Random observations made while out and about:
Irish horse butts (in a trailer) .. spotty cows and shaggy cows .. a 3-legged dog running down the street .. Broncos sheep (go orange and blue!) and counting sheep (they had numbers on 'em!) .. nuzzling cows .. an honest-ta-gawd jig-dancing old Irishman in a pub! Boys wear trousers that fit so one does not have to look at their underpants! I love that.

Oh, you betcha we're going back. There's still so much more to see!

(Click to enlarge photos)

UPDATE: Try this link for photos.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Irish holiday

Oh my, oh my... I am SO TIRED. We really took advantage of our two weeks in Ireland. Walked practically everywhere (seriously, we must've walked more than 30 miles) and saw people and places I'd only heard of from others. The food was fantastic - for the most part, I wouldn't recommend the hotel breakfasts - and the people were generally stand-offish but warmed up very quickly. The roads were absolutely the most terrifying I've ever been on in my life! And everywhere we went there was just so much history and storytelling that it's overwhelming to relate in any coherent fashion right now.

I'll try to do a little travelogue thing later on, post some pix, maybe a gallery or slideshow somewhere. Today, sleep and catching up. Tomorrow, job interview (oh boy!). Gonna have to owe you a rain check, dear blog...

Saturday, October 31, 2009

BOO!!!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Permission to speak freely, sir?

It has become apparent lately that I make the people around me uncomfortable when I speak passionately or emotionally. More than one person has told me to calm down recently. (It is then extremely difficult for me to fight back the need to go ballistic on their ass.) What the hell? Does passion now equal irrationality? I want to know when expressing oneself with fervor became too unpleasant for society to handle. Why is it that people say they value individual expression, but when you actually express a feeling or mood that is not upbeat you've become an hysteric in need of calming?

How can people claim to love a person when in reality they only want to see the parts that don't make them squirm? I am not happy all the time. I am not an automaton. I need occasionally to express anger, or grief, or displeasure, or sadness. This is a need, not a choice. I am an emotional human being, not a mannequin.

Every once in a while I'm going to be vociferous. Sometimes I'm going to need to yell. Or cry. Or speak forcefully. I believe I should be allowed to lament my regrets, if only for a moment or two, without judgment. Please stop trying to stifle me. It only makes me feel worse, less valued, and ultimately like an apologetic idiot (because I always end up fucking apologizing). If there's one thing I despise, it's having to apologize for being ME.

Well, that's that. Thanks again for listening, dear blog - at least you don't tell me when to shut up.