Hey everybody, B here. Thanks to Mr. Poynter I’ll be using this space to let ya know what’s going on while I’m sailing the crystal waters of the Caribbean.
Enjoy the snow!
Feb 08
Guest blogger
This week my friend B is going on a cruise. He wanted to keep us up to date, but didn’t want to set up his own blog, so I told him he could just upload posts to mine, so you’ll see those throughout the week.
Feb 02
Review: Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Unfortunately, yes.
Heather and I went out on a date Saturday afternoon and saw the aforementioned romcom.
It was not that great.
The premise is that native New Yorkers Paul and Meryl Morgan (Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker) are a couple that have been separated for three months. Paul is trying to make up for the act of infidelity that caused the separation. After they finally go to dinner together, they witness a murder and have to be put into the witness protection program, and are sent to live with Clay and Emma Wheeler (Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen) in the tiny town of Ray, Wyoming. Hilarity does not ensue, spoilers follow.
The movie doesn’t stink, but it doesn’t rock, either. It’s just kind of boring, really. Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant don’t seem to have much chemistry together. The distance between them seems to put a distance between them and the audience, and it’s hard to connect with either character. She is unforgiving, and he spends about the first third of the movie groveling. The only healthy marriage you see in the movie is Clay and Emma. Side note, Mary Steenburgen is 57 and seems to have aged very gracefully. And no, I do not still have a crush on her from Back to the Future III.
The only common theme I could find among the couple was that the men in the three male/female relationships you saw in the movie all showed their devotion to their partners by groveling, buying them things, and being obedient, and you didn’t see any kind of reciprocity from the women. On that note, Paul spends three months trying to get forgiveness for his unfaithfulness, while Meryl is upset that Paul doesn’t immediately forgive her the same day she reveals her own infidelity.
My advice: skip it, and don’t wait for it to hit DVD.
Jan 25
Madmannah
A while back my friend The Bob texted me to let me know he had found the Hebrew version of my alias, MadMan, in the Bible:
Joshua 15:31 “And Ziklag, and Madmannah, and Sansannah,”
I thought that was exceedingly cool, and over the weekend I decided to look up the meaning.
It means ‘dunghill.’
Jan 22
Review: Dracula
I recently read Dracula by Bram Stoker. It wasn’t my first attempt at reading this book, but it was the first time I succeeded. Overall, I liked it a lot, and it’s easy to see why it’s such an enduring classic.
The first third of the book is amazingly slow; it’s told from the journals of Jonathan and Mina Harker, Dr. Seward, and other characters. The book really starts taking off when Dr. Abraham Van shows up. Van Helsing is the obvious star of the show, being doctor of literature, medicine, theology, and other disciplines, like, say, vampire hunting. Van Helsing is so awesome that Stoker had to hobble him with a bad Old Country Dutch accent, which does occasionally make for some humorous literal translations of common English idioms (“Quincey’s head is parallel with the horizontal plane.”).
Renfield was written as amazingly brilliant (at least when he wasn’t eating bugs), which is really wild because Dr. Seward comes across as smart and Van Helsing comes across as really smart, and that means that the entire time Stoker was writing Van Helsing, he was holding back so that Renfield would shine.
Spoilers follow:
My only real gripe with the book was when Mina got bitten. Stoker drops a tiny hint with, “Mina looked pale.” In light of all the characters have gone through with Mina’s friend, Lucy, you know what he is hinting at, just with that small clue.
But he spends another several chapters drudging through the diaries of Van Helsing, Mina, and Jonathan Harker elaborating how Mina is so sick and so tired and so pale and no-one has the slightest clue what could be blah blah blah. This section of the book was amazingly frustrating to read, and then when Harker does his big reveal it goes down like this:
MINA: I’m so pale!
JONATHAN HARKER: Mina!
COUNT DRACULA: What’s up, homies?
VAN HELSING and JONATHAN HARKER: What are you doing here?
COUNT DRACULA: I totally bit Mina!
READERS: Duh.
JONATHAN AND VAN HELSING: NOOOOooooo!
COUNT DRACULA: Ha ha! PWNED!
Other than that section, I loved the book as a whole, and I think you should read it.
Jan 19
Chicks and nerds
I’m making a cudgel. For those of you who are not Howard Pyle aficionados, a cudgel is a heavy staff with which to deter or defeat enemies (those without missile weapons, anyway). The one I am making is only about four feet tall–perfect for a miniature nerd. Which is good, as it is for a miniature nerd.
The reason of course is obvious: to repel chicks. As anyone who has seen an average number of American movies can attest, chicks are attracted to nerds. Especially the girl of your dreams–the one who looks like a supermodel. She may be attached to the jock with the Corvette now, but she’ll come around to see your quiet charm past your thick glasses, stupid hair, pudgy belly, and lame transportation–if you’re just persistent.
At any rate, my nerdy client plans to be wealthy and retire at 40, and he knows he can’t do that if he gets married and has a bunch of kids. You might be wondering: if thick glasses, stupid hair, and unreliable transportation won’t repel chicks, then why would a cudgel help? Also, if attraction is based on persistent pursuit, then why not just refrain from pursuing?
Understand, while the cudgel is designed to repel chicks, it’s not to be used on them. The idea is that when this particular nerd finds someone attractive and thinks about pursuing her, I will beat the fire out of him with the cudgel. It won’t necessarily work, but he will have to decide that being with this girl is worth whaled on on a regular basis.
Jan 17
Snowy, blowy
In the book of The Princess Bride, the giant Fezzik attempts to overcome a moment of cognitive dissonance upon seeing the Man in Black leaving the cliffs where he had fought a duel with Inigo. Fezzik couldn’t explain to Vizzini (inconceivable!) the idea that Inigo could have ever been beaten, so he rationalizes something to the effect that Inigo, had not in fact, been beaten, but had beaten the Man in Black and then taken his opponent’s clothes and dressed up as him.
And gained 50 pounds.
Point is, I am still trying to figure out how Lafayette County can get the interstate clean just hours after a snow, but the larger, wealthier Jackson County cannot. It must not be that Jackson does a poor job, but it instead must be that both counties don’t receive equal amounts of snow, but Jackson actually receives approximately 65 times what Lafayette receives.
Jan 13
Gorgeous
Last summer we built a large set for our church’s Vacation Bible School program. While we were outside spraying our 100 faux stone blocks, my wife brought me a sandwich.
“Thanks, gorgeous!” I said
Another woman who was helping with the project said:
“I wish someone would call me gorgeous.”
