Sigh.

Bon Jovi Beat The White Stripes To Number One
In the American album charts...

I guess I’ve finally joined the 21st century.

No I didn’t do anything so rash as to start carrying a cell phone… mercy me, no!

Kerry got me iPod for my running and boy, this thing is tiny! Since it’s so small and since… err… well, since I’m Jim, she got me an orange one AND had my phone # engraved on it.

Intown Hijinks

Last Saturday, I headed intown to hang out with Matt and Travis in celebration of T and my upcoming birthdays. We had dinner at 6 Feet Under which is a very cool little seafood/bar-type joint around the corner from Matt’s…. across from Oakland Cemetery. I came up with the idea to get raw oysters on the half-shell. I don’t know why but it’s one of those foods that I decide every 10 years or so to try again and see if I like it. When it comes to food, I hardly ever burn bridges.

Mehh… they’re alright but I probably won’t get’em again for another ten.

Shot some pool and saw a band at the “new” Lenny’s. Get this.. the band was named Dark Overlord.

Dark Overlord? You’ve got to be kidding. We decided their marketing campaign needs to have the guy that voices the monster truck ads proclaiming “Trapped in a glacier since the early Eightes and only now freed from their icy crypt… it’s Dark Overlord!!!!” Actually, they did sound like they’d make a pretty decent Slayer tribute band.

Finally, hit the place where all the kids are hangin’ out these days. To me, Astoria has absolutely no atmosphere. I just feel like I’m at a crowded restaurant. In it’s defense, however, the two or three times I’ve been there have been after three a.m. and I’ve been half-blasted but I still say it’s no Earl.

Speaking of half-blasted, the night ended with a beer shower for yours truly and it took me ten minutes to find my clothes the next morning. Happy Birthday to Jim.

P-l-l-l-leeeeeease!!!!

Regarding Liam's readiness for PG movies.... forget it. I rented Roger Rabbit last Saturday for Family Movie Night, thinking the PG rating was only given for Jessica's less-than-modest attributes but, no, there was a guy shot in the back twice and a pretty scary performance by Christopher Lloyd not to mention his getting run over by a steamroller before you know he's a Toon.

I should have cut it off when Lloyd "killed" a cutesy cartoon shoe by "dipping" it in acid.

Bad Dad... bad!

Certainly, Ma'am.

Sometimes I wonder if very physically attractive women have an altered sense of reality. I mean, every guy they meet, every male cashier, repairman, desk clerk, and every cop they cross paths with treats them sweetly… “oh, no problem.. I can take care of that for you, miss”. I can’t imagine they get the blasé indifference that’s the norm from service personnel. Every Home Depot guy hops to assist them with quick attentiveness. The guy checking the groceries is smiling and cheerful. The world is such a happy, helpful place!!

But, then again, I guess they also get the annoying glances, the disturbing leers, and the persistent guys that won’t stop coming on to them. And maybe people being nervously nice to you all the time gets to be a pain. It’s all relative as usual.

By the way...

Just in case you didn't know, the reason that the Transformers movie is a big topic in the household is that one of Liam's obsessions is playing with them... as detailed here.

Autobots, transform and roll out!

Next month, the new Transformers movie opens. I just found out that it’s a PG-13… and even worse (for Liam’s sake), it just scraped by getting an R. Sure, a lot of this is publicity… Hollywood wanting its cake (toys) and eating it, too (adults want an edgy movie) but either way, Liam won’t be seeing it anytime soon.

To be honest though, I’m not sure if Liam would even get upset by it. Cars being tossed around wouldn’t phase him. I’m not sure how people getting shot would effect him. I suspect it wouldn’t bother him much but even so, there’s no reason for him to see that stuff for a while.

I’m not saying he’s desensitized… far from it. If there’s any suspenseful situations or anything that even hints of ghosts or something about to pop out, he’s out of the room. He couldn’t even get past the first 5 minutes of Revenge of the Jedi because Jabba the Hut’s castle was too ominous.

I told him I’d wait until he could see Transformers and we’d watch it together but he said he wants me to go and then tell him about it… which works for me because I kind of want to see it. I never grew up with the toys so couldn’t care less about keeping to the “true spirit” of the cartoons. An action-packed, robots-shooting-missiles-while-smashing-through-cars thrillfest definitely sounds like something I want to see on the big screen versus someone’s widescreen in 5 years and, of course, I wouldn’t even bother watching it on our TV. Like a lot of others of our ilk, Kerry and I hardly go out to see movies anymore so when we do, we tend to see eye candy.

That being said, the flick better have a decent story and something to make you care what happens to the characters or I’ll walk out feeling I wasted my time and money like I usually do after I see one of these movies. Likely it won’t but it’ll probably have enough.

Mike Nesmith's mother was the inventor of Liquid Paper

I found this on one of the very few sites I regularly visit on the Net. Along with Snopes, I check out the Onion (and actually their A.V. Club much more than the humor site), Yahoo News (hey, it’s there), 2 or 3 blogs, and maybe Boortz’s site every once in a while… that’s about it. Oh wait, I used to go to Craig’s Previews every few weeks but now only monthly.

And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one other thing – except for this ashtray.

And this paddle game. That's all I need.

Anyway, I still use Liquid Paper. Granted, only once or twice a month… barely enough to keep it liquid. In college, I was probably one of the last students to use the Typewriter Lab to type up a paper. I think the Mac’s were comin’ in but I didn’t want to deal with signing up or accounts or whatever so stayed with the ink-smeared keys.

Come to think of it, other than one FORTRAN class, I rarely used a PC in college… at least not undergrad. I did actually write a game on a TRS-80 when I was in Junior High. It was a Space Invader-style thing but with only one alien. But it DID come at you!

My first experience with the Net was on my roomate’s PC. Wait a sec, now that I think of it, I did use a PC in college…. playing Lemmings, Incredible Machine, and Civilization while my roommate was at his girlfriend’s. When he was on it one night (his computer, that is!), I realized he was writing text messages… but more importantly, he was receiving them.

“You mean those are from other people?!”

But even more than the technology, I remember being amazed at the fact that it was FREE and argued that there was no way that would last for long. Yeah.

Back in those wild and crazy days, people didn’t think anything of having a few and starting up their computers and heading to their homepage but I’m ashamed to say that my first post was made while I was intoxicated… and it wasn’t even under my own username! The horror…

I didn’t get my own e-mail address until years later in Atlanta… on Yahoo probably around 95 or 96. And, along with my work one, it’s the only one I’ve ever had.

Fort Wilderness... Now in Technicolor!

Here's the campsite. Note that we left everything out all the time even when we gone for hours... just like everyone else did.















Here's us standing DIRECTLY in front of the entrance to the Magic Kingdom. The monorail station that we instead went to is off to the left.















Here's the obligatory pool pic. Kerry's taking the photo (as in 99.5% of the time). My sister visited us for one day and night. Note that they sell draft beer at a window in the building in the background!















The fam and Chip (or is it Dale?) at the place where they had campfire sing-a-longs followed by a movie.















And of course, what review of camping at Disney would be complete without a shot of the fancy-schmancy "Comfort Stations"? Not your typical campground port-a-let, eh?

Some Clarification of the Previous Post

We planned on 4 nights but added another because we were all having a good time and the place was definitely relaxing. On the second day, coming back from the immaculate restrooms (or “Comfort Stations” as Walt calls’em) Liam smacked his toe on something and split the nail. He wailed like a banshee for a while but was then over it. The incident did not dull his excitement over the new privilege of walking to the restroom and back on his own.

On the morning of the third day, Liam felt sick and, after breakfast, proceeded to reintroduce his oatmeal to the world. Since he was fine later, we assume it was something he ate the night before or (one of several all-encompassing diagnosises resorted to by dumbfounded parents) “general overexcitement”.

The “moovvees” Liam refers to were shown outside every evening on a big screen right after the Chip’n’Dale Campfire Singalong. Although Erin would typically fall asleep about 3 minutes into the movie, Liam was very into these… even Bedknobs and Broomsticks but especially National Treasure… so much so that he threw a bit of a fit when we planned to skip a movie to watch the nightly fireworks from the lakeside beach across from the Magic Kingdom (I hate calling it that by the way… sounds like some elfin land in Oz where the pink bunnies can talk… but it’s more specific than my usual “Disneyland”). The show also featured a “purad” of towed floats with various lighted-up animals displayed on them.

The Coleman tent had two dividers but they weren’t very useful except just to designate areas. The “kichin” tent was a screened-in tent that we put over the picnic table. We prepared and ate food here. This proved a lifesaver since it was lovebug season and even though they don’t bite or even try to land on you their sheer numbers made me glad that Kerry bought it. Not to mention there were these crazy birds (Boat-Tailed Grackles for the Marks) that would have robbed us blind if we didn’t have the tent zipped completely up. No mosquitoes though and the weather was perfect. Great pool weather during the day and cool in the evening.

I’ll skip the part about the monorail for now although a Mai Tai at the Polynesian was brutally murdered and it was Be Cruel to Kids Day at the gate of the Magic Kingdom.

On the topic of bikes, I think this and the pool were the hit of the trip. Each campsite is in a group of about twenty sites on a loop that at any given time is a veritable racetrack for kids on bikes (and teenagers in golf carts but that’s another story). Liam was constantly doing the loop and even Erin rode around a few times making it the first time she rode on a bicycle… albeit with training wheels.





Chalk one up for Flordudu!

From Liam’s Journal

5/31/07 I went camping at Disny for five nites and six days. It was fun. I bent my nale on the secint day. I pucte on the third day in the morning. My nale got better on the fourth day of camping at Disny World. We got to wotch moovvees every nite. But on the first day we only wotcht a little bit of Peter Pan. On the fith day insted we wotcht a purad. I didint wont to do it. We have a tent that has three rooms. We have a kichin tent too. We went on a bus, boat, and the monural too. We rode bikes. There was a outside pool. Look at Liam Keough’s rite big toe. Wut do you see. There was a exirsise trale. We went on it on our biks. Erin dinit ride her bike.

6/2/07 This morning I was sad. Becas we wir leeving flordudu and camping at Disny World.