What was the neccessity of the pot smoking at the beginning of Poltergeist? Did it make them look like cooler parents, or did it trivialize their case, so that no one would believe them that something weird was actually happening?

Which way was Carol Ann actually supposed to go? Into the light, or away from it?

During an interesting argument on the merits of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle versus a “crotchrocket”:

“Kissing your butt is easier on a crotchrocket…”
“…and so are homosexual acts, too.”

Jinny & I see a lot of badly named places when we go on trips. Here is a small sample from our recent travels through Central Texas.

Koo’s Chinese Kitchen – Whitney, Texas. Perhaps I have watched the Soprano’s too much, but I just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Wide Open MRI – Corsicana, Texas. The concept is nice, but the sign, with an outstretched stick figure, with legs (and arms) spread wide, made us wonder where they were putting the MRI equipment.

And finally, from Copperas Cove, Texas is:

“Bush’s Chicken.”

I’m not sure whether the apostrophe is supposed to be possessive, or a contraction of “is.” What makes this more unfortunate is the location; right outside of Fort Hood. You can make up your own “Who’s on First?” barracks conversation…

Today’s unfortunate name comes from HEB. I had to take a picture, since otherwise, I am sure you would think I was making this crap up.

“Golden Stream” brand Oriental Rice Cracker Mix.

Um, Golden Stream? Doesn’t that cost extra?

I’m not referring to the cover as white trash, because, this time, I really feel like I did a good job. See, when I bought the house, the hot tub was covered only by that lame solar heating cover (which looks like the sheets of plastic bubble wrap). And this did NOTHING to keep the hot tub clean, because you couldn’t actually remove the cover without all the pine needles and leaves falling into the hot tub. So my first attempt at a cover was to build a PVC pipe frame that the solar heating cover was stretched over. And this did initally work. But soon after the first major rain, I realized a couple problems.

1) Water will collect on the cover (despite my attempts at building it so rain would roll off).
2) Water will make it impossible to remove the cover, or you will break the PVC frame trying to lift the cover to drain the water off.
3) Large falling sticks will impale this cover and render it ripped and worthless.

So, I let it sit there for a while. Too long, really. So long that I had to drain the thing with buckets because the pump would have clogged, choked, or otherwise burnt up trying to suck in so damn many leaves. :(

But once we cleaned it, we realized we had an old problem on our hands again.

Kamikaze squirrels.

You think I am making this up, but I am not. Squirrels are pretty stupid rodents, I guess, because they will jump into the hot tub (BONZAI!) and try to drown themselves. Before the first, PVC frame cover, I had three squirrel deaths, and two near misses (my wife fished them out with the net before they drowned). The dead ones are buried over where the bottle brushes are now, in case any of you care to visit with the deceased. The lives ones probably still morn their squirrelly brethern, lost in the “Battle of Red Cedar Place.”

This is why I had to build the first cover. And yes, yes, I could have bought a cover, but hot tub covers tend to be heavy and you can never use it alone, because you’ll put your back out if you try to move anything 9′x9′ made of wood all by yourself. And where do you put it when not in use? Plus, they are expensive! I understand why a hot tub heater is $800 or so. But why the hell is the cover $300? It’s WOOD with a vinyl cover!

So, being that sort of “alternative materials” kind of guy that I am, the first thing I did was I went to the hardware store and got a tarp. I had already fished one near-casualty out of the tub that morning, so I needed to get SOMETHING to cover the thing.

I found a nice, brown 8′6″ x 10′ tarp, brought it home, and bungee corded the thing over the tub. So now, instead of a watery grave, the squirrels now had a trampoline!

This worked for a couple of days, but it really didn’t look so hot, and still had the water drainage problem.

My next thought was… what if I set up the tarp with a pulley, so I could just pull the tarp up into the air on the one side? It could be used as a privacy screen when it was up!

A little experimenting with this made me realize that this was a bad idea. There are no trees in the right position above the hot tub, and it also had the double-bad issue of having exposed lines that could be seen from the outside world. Just what I need– the deed restriction board after my ass.

So I pondered for a little while, and then, I realized that what the tarp needed was to be retractable, like venetian blinds. One person should be able to pull the handle and pull back the tarp, much the same way that venetian blinds come up when you pull the cord.

And you would need to have something sturdy on the far end of the tarp so that you could pull the tarp back across. Additionally, you would need to have at least two crossbars so that the tarp wouldn’t just fall into the tub. These crossbars could be the folding points for the tarp when it was pulled back.

So, using the PVC from the failed, earlier cover, I built three 8′6″ PVC poles with caps on the end. I threaded clothesline through the tarp and PVC poles, then ran the clothesline through a system of pulleys so that at the far end, there was a handle. I built the handle out of a short length of PVC (with two endcaps) and voila! She is done.

Wanna see it? Then tune in next time for another exciting episode of… Home Improvement at Red Cedar Place.

This is from someone we all know and love…

Of Mice and Men

The two characters I chose for my movement study in Of Mice and Men were Lennie and George. We’ll start with Lennie. I saw the actors’ movement choices as very confused. By that I mean he made it seem as if Lennie did not know what to do next. Very clumsy, loose, and an almost stop-motion animated movement choices related the character wonderfully, in my opinion. I Went with animal images to look for in the performance. I saw in Lennie a cow. Big, dumb, clumsy, and complacent, he very much reminded me of that animal. Another thing I noticed about the actors’ movement choices was that when Lennie was proud, he was very erect, but when was ashamed or scared, he slumped quite a bit. This brought the performance a very real quality.

George, on the other hand, was very, well, quick. His movement choices were very direct. In addition, when George was tense, he moved very little, and when he did he moved stiffly. When relaxed his movements were almost languid. When he became angry, his movement shouted, and flailing fist-pounding abounded. I thought that these varied movements indeed helped make George more real to the audience. I saw, in George, a cat, the reasons ones I named above.

In my opinion, both of these actor’s movement choices helped their performances. I’ve seen Of Mice and Men done three different times, and this was by far the best interpretation I’ve seen done. I think a lot of that hinged on their movement. After all, if it doesn’t move like a real person, it can’t be a real person, right?