gas prices, state fairs, parking lots, and 24

* Gas prices have really gone down lately! I drive a car that will only run on premium grade gasoline (for reasons known only to Cadillac), so I tend to pay more for mine than most people anyway, but prices have dropped for everybody. As recently as mid-September I filled up my car for $3.99/gallon. Since that time, I have filled up my car 4 times, most recently on Sunday night, and have paid the following prices per gallon: $3.85, $3.69, $3.29, and $2.89. That’s consecutive fill-ups where the price had dropped 40 cents from the previous one, and a decrease of over $1 in barely a month’s time. In fact, the last time I paid less for gas than I did on Sunday night was October 14, 2007, and I know this because dad got me into the habit of filling out a log book every time I got gas for my car, and I log the total mileage, trip mileage, and cost of the gas (among other things) whenever I fill up. Somehow, I doubt all the grandstanding liberals in the Senate will be calling for investigations and sending subpoenas to oil company execs obligating them to appear before a congressional committee and explain how they let the price of their product drop so much so fast. You can imagine the righteous fury those same politicians would be showing if the price had gone up over $1 per gallon in that short of time.

* I went to the State Fair of Texas on Sunday afternoon and had a good time. I didn’t ride any of the rides this time around, but I sampled some of the fried foods, such as fried banana split, chicken fried bacon, and chocolate-covered strawberry waffle balls. I also spent some time looking at the new cars displayed at the auto show. That was my favorite part of the Fair when I went as a 12 and 14 year old (I didn’t go to the fair again for 10 years after that), looking at the new cars and collecting the cool pictorial brochures from each of the major car makers.

I also ran across a stand that did handwriting analysis for people, where you wrote your signature on a small card, then the guy put it through some kind of scanner or computer and it would print out 10 things that your handwriting supposedly says about you. I had done that some 12 years earlier and found most of what it said to be right on, though how much of that is actually true of me and found in my handwriting and how much of it I suddenly “realize” when a computer says it’s true is up for debate. Here are the 10 things about me that resulted from my handwriting analysis, and I’d like to think they are at least 80% right:
- You are usually quick to get over disappointments.
- You have an inner shyness but cover it up well.
- You are affectionate to those close to you.
- You are able to adjust when things do not go according to plan.
- You are unusually observant and sum up situations quickly.
- You like to collect things.
- Your sincere friendliness is a great social asset.
- Missed opportunities upset you more than they should.
- You are dedicated to succeed and you pursue your objectives with zeal.
- You may have a closet that needs some organization.

The only real negative from the day was the parking fee. Now I knew going in that the parking fee in the official lots at the Fairgrounds was $10, and that there were always businesses and homeowners across the street who offered parking for slightly less. Traffic was really bad while driving over there, and when we (my brother was riding along in my car) finally exited on 2nd Avenue in downtown Dallas we immediately found guys with flags waving people into private parking lots. I wanted to keep going and follow the road until we got to the official lots, but for some reason, either by my brother’s urging or my own impatience, I changed lanes and pulled into one of the lots. There was no sign anywhere that advertised their parking rates, but I assumed the fee would be fairly minimal since it wasn’t in a fenced-in area and the lot was a good walk from the Fairgrounds entrance. But when I pulled up to the guy who was collecting money from people parking in the lot, he told me parking was $20! My jaw dropped and I came very close to uttering an obscenity and driving away, since it made absolutely no sense to me to pay twice the official rate to park in a less secure lot that was a longer walk to the gate than a spot in the official lot would have been. But before I could think to do anything else, my brother handed me a $20 bill and I parked in the spot I was directed into (on an unpaved part of the lot, no less). I was steamed about that for the next hour or so, and then even moreso when I found out that my parents (who came in a separate car) had parked just up the road in a lot that charged them a mere $5. To top it off, when they were waiting at a red light, a woman in a nearby car had rolled down her window and held out two tickets to the Fair and offered them for free to whoever wanted them, an offer mom literally jumped at, or so dad said. So the combined price for mom and dad to park and enter the State Fair was $5 (had they paid regular admission for seniors, that would have increased to $25), for myself and my brother it was $48 (we each paid the regular $14 admission price after having paid the obscene $20 fee to park).

When I returned to my car later that night, I had some words with the guy who had taken our $20 earlier in the day (I say “our” because we were going to split the parking fee but David paid for the whole thing because he owed me money for something else). I pointedly asked him where their sign was that told people how much they were going to pay to park there, and he was evasive in his answer, pointing first at a temporary sign that only said “public parking” and then at another permanent sign that had been covered up with paper, probably to hide the fact that the normal rates to park there didn’t apply during the State Fair. When I said that the official parking lots only charged $10 and I assumed theirs would be less than that, he tried to explain the $20 parking fee by saying theirs was a privately-owned lot, which still didn’t explain the ridiculousness of not only charging double what people would pay to just go to the Fair’s lots (let alone 4 times what my parents paid to park just down the street), but not advertising their fees to people and letting them know what they would pay before they went through the trouble of pulling into a lot and faced the prospect of battling traffic to leave the lot and get back onto the street if they chose to park elsewhere. The whole situation stunk and was unethical at best. They had put a slip of paper on my dashboard showing that I’d paid to park, and from that I learned that the company who owned the lot is called Parking Company of America. A google search shows there is one large company that goes by that name, as well as several smaller ones based in cities all around the country. Whether the smaller ones are franchises of the larger one, I don’t know. I did find this report from someone who said he was similarly ripped off by that company after parking in one of their lots in Dallas. When I told my story to a co-worker, he immediately guessed that the parking attendant had asked for more money than he was supposed to charge, then pocketed the extra money and given the rest to his boss. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit if that was true.

The moral of this story is NEVER park in a lot owned by Parking Company of America if you can avoid it. Take my word for it, and I’m sure there are other stories just like mine and that in the link in the above paragraph.

* I began watching season six of 24 last night, going through the first three episodes. This one had hardly began before it registered high on the implausibility scale. Jack Bauer, having spent two years in a Chinese prison, is released and sent back to Los Angeles, and when we first see him he is very hairy and weak. Then he’s brought into a room where he’s allowed to clean up and change clothes, and within 10-15 minutes of screen time he’s clean shaven, bathed, dressed in a suit, and looks like he’s back to normal. Oh, and he still seems to be in good shape physically, despite being tortured and probably not well fed during his imprisonment in China. Also, the first episode begins at 6 AM Los Angeles time and it is completely dark outside when we first see Jack Bauer, then it goes from being pitch dark to being bright as noon within maybe 10 minutes. Past seasons have had this same phenomenon. It’s an interesting season so far, with plenty of tension through the first three episodes, if a bit filled with politically correct statements that seem like an obvious outreach from the Fox Network to the Muslim community for its past depictions of Muslim villains on the show. Though this is not only unwarranted, it is somewhat deceptive, since one of the Arab characters in an early episode is defended by a white neighbor from a bigoted man down the street who is angry about the terrorist attacks that we are told have killed hundreds of people all over the country in the weeks leading up to that day, but then that goes out the window as we learn that this same Arab man is working for the terrorist leader who is organizing the attacks within America.

I’m hoping to finish this season faster than I did season 5, since there is a two-hour 24 movie airing on Fox next month, which is supposed to bridge the long gap between season 6 (which ended in May of last year) and season 7 (scheduled to begin in January).

Top 5 Tuesday – Texas State Fair foods

Top 5 Tuesday returns after a too long absence, not that anyone noticed. The State Fair of Texas ends this Sunday and I may end up spending that afternoon and evening at the Fair with my family. It’s been two years since I last went (as of today) and in my 26 years I have only been to the State Fair of Texas 3 times. It is an event known for a number of things, but what is most unique about it may be its wide assortment of creative baked and fried foods. In past years they’ve had everything from fried oreos to fried Twinkies. This year’s food list includes another impressive (or excessive) array of totally unhealthy foods that I’m quite curious about. So for this week’s entry, I’ll list the top 5 foods I want to try at the 2008 State Fair of Texas. Food descriptions are from the Fair’s official website.

1. Chicken Fried Bacon – “Thick and peppery Farm Pac® bacon is seasoned, double-dipped in a special batter and breading and deep-fried. Served with a creamy side of ranch or honey mustard sauce.”

2. Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Waffle Balls – “Plump fresh strawberries covered in a thick chocolate shell are dipped in a sweet, waffle batter and deep-fried. Dusted with powdered sugar and served on a stick.”

3. Deep Fried Apple Bites – “Fresh cut apples dipped in a homemade batter, deep fried, and then covered with a caramel sauce and cinnamon topping!”

4. Fried Banana Split – “A mixture of banana and honey peanut butter is rolled in balls, battered and deep-fried and topped with assorted, delicious fixings, including powdered sugar, caramel and chocolate syrups, chopped peanuts, whipped cream and banana split flavored ice cream bites then fittingly crowned with the traditional cherry.”

5. Fernie’s All-American Fried Grilled Cheese Sandwich – “An American classic with a State Fair twist. Two slices of white bread filled with a blend of American and cheddar cheeses, dipped in an egg and milk batter and lightly coated with panko bread crumbs for extra crispness. Served with a side of shoestring potato sticks, a pickle spear and tomato soup dipping sauce. The All American Meal!”

It’s getting hot in here

The weather services are forecasting a high temperature of somewhere between 104 and 106 today for my area. Last week some guys at church had talked about getting together and playing softball on some Sunday afternoon. It will not be happening this afternoon, needless to say. Record high temps are projected for today and tomorrow. A lot of people’s electricity bills are going to go up a tick after this week, not to mention last week.

My most recent Facebook status: “Jonathan is a hunk of burning love… minus the hunk and the love.”
I think my next one will be “Jonathan does NOT like it hot, unlike some.”

I keep putting off writing my Implausibility Scale. I have all the entries I want listed out, it’s just a matter of sitting down and writing the thing. I was pretty well set on which movie scene rated a 100 on the scale, but yesterday I saw the following video posted on a message board, and it completely shattered the Implausibility Scale. I laughed out loud for several minutes watching it multiple times.

vacation by the numbers

My family and I took a mini-vacation last week, driving to Corpus Christi on Monday and returning home Thursday. I won’t give a blow-by-blow account of the trip here, but I will provide a few numbers that give a snapshot of it.

813 – Total miles the family van drove from the time it was gassed up on Sunday night until we arrived back at home from our trip on Thursday night.

25 – Total number of counties we drove through on the trip, roughly 1/10 of all the counties in Texas (which has 254 of them).

68 and 71 – The low temperatures recorded on Monday and Tuesday, our first two days in Corpus Christi. Both of those temps were record lows for their respective dates.

100 and 99 – The high temperatures recorded those same two days in the city where I work. I picked a good week to take a vacation.

$20,868,722 – The amount of money that The Dark Knight grossed at the box office nationwide on Tuesday July 22, the day my family went and caught a matinee showing of the film.

Category 2 – The strength of Hurricane Dolly as it made landfall on the south Texas coast on Wednesday July 23, about 100 miles south of where we were. It weakened soon afterward but brought high winds and heavy flooding to the Rio Grande valley and South Padre Island. Up in Corpus Christi, we were far from the eye of the storm, but we got a ton of rain on Wednesday and winds over 40 miles per hour.

4 – Total meals we got from Whataburger while in Corpus. The Whataburger chain was founded there in 1950, and today there are over 20 Whataburger restaurants in the city. You can hardly drive a mile without seeing one.

11 – Number of times our waitress at a Chili’s in Austin brushed back her hair while taking our food orders at dinner on Thursday night. She was in her early 20s and had one of those hairstyles with long bangs that were brushed off to one side of her head, but which kept falling over her face and covering her left eye. She was in bad need of some kind of hair pin. I noticed that her hair kept falling and she kept brushing it back in place with her hand while she took our drink orders, so when she came back for our meal orders I counted the number of times she brushed her hair back off her face.

90 – The number of unread message in my inbox when I checked my email on Thursday night, after not having checked it since Monday morning. Few of them were worth reading, unfortunately. I deleted all but about a dozen of them on sight.

May 17 – The last time I filled my car with gas that was cheaper than what I filled it up with on Saturday night.

68,001 – The mileage on my car’s odometer at the time I filled it up on Saturday night.

9 – Days I went without shaving as a result of our trip. Since I started my job last year I don’t think I’ve gone more than 3 or 4 days without shaving at any time. I have a habit of avoiding shaving if I can get away with it, and when you take a week off from work for a vacation, you can get away with it. I shaved on the morning of Friday July 18, and didn’t shave again until late at night on Sunday July 27. I got a lot of funny looks and comments about it at church that day, most of them complimentary, but I told them I was just trying out the beard look and that it would probably be the last time they saw it on me.

1:26 – Total hours and minutes I have left in my work day. My head hurts and I could really use a nap right now.

soreness, movies, “nuking the fridge”, and a joke

I helped a certain newly-engaged friend move out of her apartment and back to her parents’ house on Saturday (and may even end up helping again soon, as she’s getting married in a month). My shoulders were very sore on Sunday. I played a few pickup basketball games on Monday night. My lower back and my legs are sore today. It feels good to feel like I’m getting some semblance of a workout, though I sweat like no other. I’ve always been a heavy sweater but it seems to be turned up even more lately for some reason. At one point on Saturday morning between carrying loads down the stairs and into a van or the back of a truck bed, I looked in the mirror and between my absolutely soaked t-shirt and my thoroughly wet hair, one could have been excused for thinking I’d just hopped out of a shower. I don’t remember sweating that much back in my basketball or track days, but maybe it’s just been so long that I’ve forgotten what it was like, either that or I’m sweating more because I’m likely carrying 35-40 more pounds than I was when I last participated in any organized sport (track and field my junior year of high school).

This reminds me of a good quote from Robert Downey Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: “Wow, I feel sore. I mean physically, not like a guy who’s angry in a movie in the 1950’s.”

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Joke of the week:
How do you intimidate an agnostic who has moved into your neighborhood?
You burn a wooden question mark on his lawn

I saw that one recently in a review of a book on the history of jokes, although the original version had “unitarian” in place of “agnostic”, but I told the joke to a couple friends at church and they both thought “agnostic” fit better, so I’ll go with that one.

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Overheard at the law library this week…

“I need to go back to criminal defense. This family law stuff is for the birds.”

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Movies I’ve seen lately: Get Smart, Vantage Point, Wanted, WALL-E

Get Smart – I must have missed the boat on this one. I’ve heard a few people I know say they thought it was absolutely hilarious, and one of the funniest things they’d seen in a long time. Me, I chuckled a lot, laughed out loud maybe once or twice, but that’s about it. If you’ve seen Steve Carell in The Office, The 40 Year Old Virgin, or Bruce/Evan Almighty, then he doesn’t do much here that you haven’t seen him do before. It has a lot of sight gags, some of them amusing, and three pretty well filmed action scenes, which feel like they belong in a much better movie. Overall, it’s a decent comedy, harmless but largely forgettable, and I doubt anyone will still be talking about this movie 5 years from now. My grade: C+

Vantage Point – An interesting movie to watch, but almost completely forgettable. I appreciate any movie that tries to pull off Rashomon-style multiple perspectives or Memento-like uses of time, but this movie is over almost as soon as it feels like it’s begun, and it leaves a lot unsaid and unexplained, probably because to say or explain those things would only make the plot holes seem bigger. My grade: C-

Wanted – A bloody, violent, vulgar, adrenaline rush of a good time if ever a movie was one. It doesn’t quite pass Transporter 2 as my favorite implausible action movie, but it’s up there. The plot is ludicrous, and I’m afraid for what will happen when somebody inevitably tries to “curve the bullet” like the characters in this movie do, but it’s one of the more original looking pieces of pop action to hit the screen in a while. There’s a big action scene at the end that has parts that reminded me of everything from Equilibrium to The Last of the Mohicans, and finally Swordfish. My grade: B+

WALL-E – I was really excited about seeing this after seeing the trailers a bunch of times on TV and in the theater. I’ve liked everything Pixar has done so far and WALL-E had the look of a movie that I expected to threaten Monsters, Inc.’s place atop my list of favorite Pixar films. But in the end I’ll confess I was mildly disappointed. Any movie with a plot involving robots having human emotions can have its problems if it isn’t done right. The TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation had many interesting episodes centered on the character Data, an android who had much to say about humans and human emotions, and later in the series (and in four movie spin-offs) he was even programmed with a range of emotions. That was a good example.

A bad example was the 2005 animated film Robots. Rather than have robots programmed with or displaying human emotions, the robots in that movie may as well have been metallic humans, as in everything from their character to their anatomy, they seemed to be humanoid first, and robot second. The robots in the movie had hopes, dreams, goals, they were “born” as tiny robots ordered from a store, and steadily they grew as their parent robots ordered them newer and bigger parts, until they grew into adulthood, or whatever stage in robot life it was supposed to be. Humans, as far as I could tell, didn’t exist in that movie’s world, and thus it was hard to figure out where these robots came from, and why they should have been designed as different sexes, or what the point could possibly be of a “male” robot and a “female” robot “marrying”. When two robots are putting together the parts that will become their son, the movie unambiguously says that the baby robot has a male sex organ. Which can only lead one to ask, “Why????” What need could he ever have for it? Why don’t robots just get delivered fully grown? It’s not like it should need parents to teach it, when it can just be programmed with whatever knowledge it needs. The movie didn’t work at all because it made the robots far more human than they needed to be, rather than make them robots first, and emotional second.

WALL-E I largely enjoyed, though I was put off by the cynicism and not-so-veiled environmental message and corporate satire. The movie portrays a future where Earth is uninhabitable because it’s piled sky-high with trash as far as the eye can see, so humans have lived several centuries on ships in space, which are staffed by robots and apparently run by Buy n Large, a satirical take on big corporations that is probably supposed to be a composite of companies like Wal-Mart and Starbucks. All the humans are fat and lazy, they get around on floating easy chairs, and they know nothing beyond the messages that Buy n Large broadcasts to them. It’s the sort of dystopian vision that liberal-minded Literature majors will eat up, but I found all the cynicism a bit insulting, and more than a little hypocritical coming from a company like Disney, which has probably done more to over-commercialize all forms of entertainment and merchandising and mold young kids into budding consumerists than Wal-Mart or Starbucks ever have.

The story between WALL-E and EVE was sweet and very enjoyable, but the plot itself and the cynicism lost it some points from me. My grade: B

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I read in the newspaper this morning that the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has inspired the new term, “nuking the fridge”, which is meant to be used in a similar vein as “jumping the shark“. The Urban Dictionary defines “nuke the fridge” as, “A colloquialism used to delineate the precise moment at which a cinematic franchise has crossed over from remote plausibility to self parodying absurdity, usually indicating a low point in the series from which it is unlikely to recover.”

My brother told me several weeks ago that he’d seen this term used by people on message boards he frequents, but the apparently it’s just now become big enough for the mainstream media to note it.

Budgets, Death (Cab) and All His Friends, and the Implausibility Scale

The county I work for currently is facing a $34 million budget shortfall, which apparently means a few departments overspent their budgets, or whoever works in the budget department never learned how to balance a checkbook. After much deliberation, our esteemed Commissioner’s Court decided that the best immediate short term answer is to make everyone remove their personal refrigerators, heaters, and fans from their offices, and to turn off the power for all electronic devices at closing time. Left unstated was that they would also be turning the thermostats in the two county courts buildings a few degrees higher. I had a judge ask me today if they’d turned the temps up in the law library, because her office was noticeably warmer than it normally was. I didn’t notice much difference in my own work space, but my co-workers did. Apparently having everyone remove pull the plug on their mini-fridge and fan and making us work in offices that feel 80 degrees is going to save the county millions of dollars. Personally, I don’t buy it and it’s just the county commissioners trying to look like they’re doing something to solve the problem. Nobody is happy with it, and things will probably get worse and more draconian before they get better. I’ve half-seriously thought about buying a mini-fridge for my apartment, just to plug it in for a month and see what, if any difference it ends up making on my electric bill, because I don’t see how a few less personal mini-fridges or fans being used is going to save the county any tangible amount of money.

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I saw The Incredible Hulk on Saturday, and liked it better than the first Hulk movie. It was more action oriented, more interesting in a lot of ways, and had some great cameos (Stan Lee; Lou Ferrigno, who played the Hulk on TV for years; and even a certain other comic book character who has starred in his own movie recently).

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At this time tomorrow I will be watching Death Cab for Cutie live in concert. I’ve been a fan for nearly 4 years now and this will be my first time to see them. I’ll try to keep up with the setlist and post it afterwards, along with a picture if I get a good one. As long as they play “Title and Registration”, “Brothers on a Hotel Bed”, and “Marching Bands of Manhattan”, I think I’ll be happy.

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I’m four episodes shy of finishing season 4 of 24. I’ve had in mind something I want to write about that season, and the show in general, but I’ll wait until I’ve finished that season. I’ll just say that it’s alarming what the lifespan is of CTU agents assigned to either protect analysts in the field, serve as backup for Jack Bauer, or be the security detail for an agent doing investigative work. If the mortality rate for extras on that show was anything like that of real life counter-terrorist agents, no amount of money would be enough to get anyone to sign up for that line of work.

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Another blog I may end up writing later on has to do with a concept I’ve thought of in recent weeks. After watching the new Indiana Jones movie and the trailer for the upcoming Angelina Jolie-McAvoy actioner Wanted, I’ve decided that we need an Implausibility Scale to measure the sheer ridiculousness of the action sequences seen in movies today, and perhaps also for silly plot devices and plot twists. It would be similar to sportswriter Bill Simmons’ legendary Unintentional Comedy Scale, which he has said is topped by a YouTube video of William Shatner “singing” Rocket Man.

I had a few conversations about Indy IV last week and it says something about a movie when it features a crazy sequence where a kid swings on dozens of vines and glides quickly through a forest to land safely on a speeding vehicle, and that part isn’t even one of the 3 most implausible scenes in the movie. However one puts the Implausibility Scale list together, the sequence in Transporter 2 with the crane removing a bomb from the bottom of the hero’s flipped car has to rate at least a 105 out of 100, because such a thing is so ridiculous it doesn’t even happen in video games or comic books. I feel this is a good time to mention that Transporter 2 is among my favorite dumb action movies ever.

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Coldplay’s new album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends is out tomorrow, but between that night’s Death Cab concert and Wednesday night’s Texas Rangers game that I’m going to with a couple of friends, it looks like I won’t be getting my hands on the album until Thursday at the earliest. I got X&Y the day it was released and that album reminds me of the year 2005 more than any other one does. I’m not quite as high on the new album now that I’ve heard parts of some of the songs on it, but it may grow on me after a while, as X&Y did. Personally, I think A Rush of Blood to the Head will always be my favorite set of songs from that band.

Memorial Day 2008

Saturday night I had a dream that I was driving and that I rear-ended (Dallas Cowboys quarterback) Tony Romo’s car. I think in the dream I saw a light at an approaching intersection that went from green to yellow and I expected the car in front of me to keep going through the intersection, but it didn’t and I wasn’t prepared to stop in time and hit it. How I could have known it was Tony Romo’s car I don’t know, that’s how logical most dreams are. I don’t remember anything else about it, though I wonder if my hitting his car symbolically counts as a missed blocking assignment on the part of Flozell Adams or Leonard Davis, since it was a hit that came from the blind side.

Last night I had a long dream that included me smoking a long cigar, or at least trying to light one up. In my 25 years I have never rear-ended a car and I’ve never smoked anything. It’s interesting the things you do in dreams that seem completely normal, even though you’ve never done those things in real life, such as getting into auto collisions, smoking, shooting guns at bad guys, and… um, let’s just move on.

Being a government employee I don’t have to work today since it’s Memorial Day. Which is nice. Today I made a trip to Target, and my car’s odometer passed the 65,000 mile mark. For those keeping score at home, that’s over 24,000 miles I’ve driven it in the 14 months I’ve had it.

But back to Memorial Day for a minute. Nobody in my immediate family served in the military, but my late grandfather I think was a medic or had something to do with that side of the army. I haven’t been told much about it, but apparently he spent some time in the European theater in World War II, though I don’t think he was ever in the middle of any battles. I do know a good number of men who are veterans or who are currently serving somewhere. One of my college roommates is stationed in Germany, though I think he’s currently serving in Iraq or Afganistan. A guy who was my dorm’s RA some 6 years ago became a commissioned officer after graduating, and is probably serving somewhere.

Several of the men at my church have served in past conflicts. One of our deacons was an MP, another a marine. Our pastor’s oldest son served 4 years in the army, specializing in driving tanks. Another man was a pilot during the Vietnam War, flying helicopters on covert rescue missions out of Cambodia (or it could have been Laos) when the Viet Cong would manage to shoot down choppers flying other missions. He was shot down himself on one such mission and after being captured he spent something like 6 years as a prisoner at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison, the same place John McCain, Admiral James Stockdale (Ross Perot’s presidential running mate in 1992), and numerous others were held as prisoners. He told his story to a group of us during a young adults Bible Study last year, and it was an amazing story of God’s grace in how he was kept alive during that time and came away from that place with a faith stronger than he had ever had. He’s a good friend and a great encouragement to all the men of our church. He’s getting married this coming weekend and I plan on being there to congratulate him. But today we should extend our heartfelt thanks to him, and to all those who served in past wars, especially those who gave their lives in battles and wars large and small.

Enjoy your hot dogs, chips, fireworks, and drinks, but remember the men who fought to make sure that you could one day spend the fourth Monday of May eating hot dogs instead of frankfurters, drinking Coca-Colas instead of Vita-Colas, and watching a version of Das Boot where the Germans lose the war. I’m hoping to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull later tonight, which might be a good occasion to remember that without the service of our veterans who ensured the defeat of Germany in World War II, Steven Spielberg and many other great Jewish artists might not be alive, much less able to create moving and entertaining films for free people everywhere to enjoy. So today I salute our fallen veterans and their families who remember them.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

How I met Chewbacca

I have to start this entry by mentioning a couple of funny signs I saw recently. The first wasn’t actually funny, it just had an amusing typo. I was washing my hands in the bathroom of a Subway and saw on the door a sign with the reminder that “all employess must wash their hands before returning to work.” Now that I think about it, I’m frankly surprised that it was only written in English considering the language skills of a lot of the people who’ve worked there in the past year, but I digress.

The other sign was one I saw today in the office of one of the court coordinators. There was a mirror one of the walls and below it a sign that read, “Mirror, mirror on the wall… what the #!*% happened?”

But onto the topic of the subject. I’ve told this story to a lot of friends but I’ve never written it here and I feel there could be no day more appropriate to share it than on actor Peter Mayhew’s 64th birthday. Mayhew’s IMDB page notes that he has played such film roles as “Sherpa Guide”, “Dead Man”, “The Tall Knight”, “Giant”, and “Minoton”, and his greatest notoriety in life might have been limited to being the world’s tallest hospital orderly if not for the only prominent role on his resumé, that of the wookie Chewbacca in the Star Wars films. It was a role that brought him great fame, even though he wore a hairy suit for the entire series and never spoke any dialogue of his own (sound effects were used for Chewbacca’s noises). How our paths ended up crossing is a strange story, one that resulted in easily the most surreal event of my life.

It happened 8 years ago this month or last, near the end of my junior year of high school. I remember coming home from school and laying down on my bed to take a nap. I don’t remember if it was track season or not, but athletics was my last class of the day that trimester so I would have done a bit of running anyway before going home, so that might have been why I was tired. In any case, I hadn’t been lying down long when mom suddenly burst through the door. She obviously was trying to get my help for something, and I, being tired, wasn’t looking forward to whatever it was. Her words to me, as closely as I can remember them, were, “Quick, get up! You need to help us get the photography equipment together. We have to go take Chewbacca’s picture!”

That’s one way to get someone’s attention. Not sure of what I had just heard, I asked mom to clarify. She asked me which actor had played Chewbacca, and I answered that it was Peter Mayhew. Reminded of the name she was looking for, she debriefed me on the situation. Peter Mayhew, the world’s most famous wookie, was now living in our hometown. He apparently had a convention of some kind coming up and had a very low supply of whatever publicity photos he usually took with him to sign at these things. So he needed some pictures made quickly, and his wife (who was actually from Texas) had looked up photographers in the local phone book and found my parents’ business listed and called them.

I helped mom and dad load their van, as I often did on these jobs, and rode out to Mr. Mayhew’s house. He drove up a minute or two after we got there. He shook hands with dad (who stood a good 1′5″ shorter than him) and introduced himself in his Yorkshire English accent. We had brought a backdrop with us and we set it up in his living room. For the picture, Mrs. Mayhew had bought a t-shirt with a picture of Chewbacca on it, from Wal-Mart I think she said. It still had the tag on it so they cut it off and Peter Mayhew put on the shirt with the image of the character he portrayed. While waiting for him to be ready and the pictures to be taken, I sat down on a couch in the living room and couldn’t help but laugh at the situation I’d found myself in. I’d come home expecting to take a nap and get some rest, and less than an hour later here I was sitting on Chewbacca’s couch. How high does such an event rank on the surreal scale? I say at least 9 out of 10.

They took several pictures, the best of which ended up being the one they made several hundred or thousand copies of for Mayhew to sign for fans at conventions, and at one time he even was offering signed copies of it from his website. To this day the main picture on his IMDB page is one of the ones my parents took. You can see it below.

Afterwards we all chatted for a bit, and he gladly talked some about his Star Wars co-stars, who he still considers good friends, especially Kenny Baker (R2-D2) and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO). His walls were lined with pictures of all of them, including (I think) a few with Harrison Ford and George Lucas. He had a glass case where he stored his lifetime achievement award that he got at the 1997 MTV Movie Awards. In that same case was what appeared to be a Star Wars script opened to a random page, though I don’t know if it was a shooting script or an earlier copy. I’d seen the original Star Wars trilogy enough times to recognize most of the dialogue, but what was on that page wasn’t any dialogue I recognized, and indeed I think part of the page had an “X” marked over it, probably meaning it wasn’t something they ended up filming.

Peter Mayhew himself was a supremely nice guy. He was friendly, had a good sense of humor (he didn’t groan when dad asked him how many “wookie of the year” jokes he’d heard), and seemed quite humble. I’m sure that he’s well aware that he has made a very good living off of playing one character in four movies, although at the time I met him it had been less than a year since The Phantom Menace came out, so he was still living off of a character he’d last played 17 years earlier, and he may not have known yet that he would be playing Chewbacca again later in the prequel trilogy.

That was the only time I met him, though dad met him at least one or two other times to take him some more copies of the print. Some years later, he bought the rights to that negative from my parents (knowing mom, she probably sold it for a lot less than she could have), so unless he needs any more pictures taken in the future they likely won’t be meeting him again. But it was an interesting arrangement while it lasted, and it provided me with a good story to tell, one that is still my only notable “meeting a celebrity” story, but when that one is Chewbacca it makes it that much cooler, in my opinion anyway.

Can marriage get to one’s head?

A friend I’ve known for essentially my whole life got married early in March, after about a yearlong courtship and a 5 month engagement. He and his bride are quite the bubbly, happy couple. In fact, they’d been married barely a month when they announced they were expecting their first child in December, which prompted this response from an anonymous source: “That’s what you call hitting the first pitch.”

Marriage, I’m sure, has a way of changing people, in ways both subtle and obvious. My friend seems to have changed in at least a few noticeable ways. His birthday came on a Wednesday in late March and I went to talk to him after church that night because I had a gift for him. I kinda jumped into a conversation he was having with another guy, wherin he ended a sentence with the phrase, “that kinda sucks”, or something similar to that anyway. My jaw almost dropped because he’d always made a point to avoid using even the most seemingly harmless of potentially rude words, “sucks” in particular. In fact, I remember a Sunday when I was probably about 11 or 12 and having a lunchtime football conversation with some friends at church and his mother got really upset and told my mom when she overheard me say “sucks”, a word which, if memory serves, was preceded by, “Dan Marino”.

So it was, in its own way, shocking when my friend said that. I turned to the guy he was talking to and said, “did he just say ’sucks’”? My friend chuckled and responded, “Yeah. And I say ‘crap’ now too!” Hmm, where are his standards going? One day you get married, have your first kiss, and lose your virginity, then before the month is over you’ve started saying “sucks” and “crap”? Is there a pattern here?

Sportswriter Bill Simmons coined the term “I’m Keith Hernandez” status, which was named after a memorable scene in a legendary episode of Seinfeld. In the scene, pro baseball player Keith Hernandez goes out on a date with Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and it ends with the following bit of dialogue:

ELAINE: Well, thanks for a nice evening. It was really fun.
KEITH: Yeah, it was. [mind] Gosh, should I kiss her good night?
ELAINE: [mind] Is he going to try to kiss me?
ELAINE: I love Cajun cooking.
KEITH: Really, you know my mom’s one quarter Cajun.
ELAINE: Uh, my father’s half drunk. ha ha ha ha
KEITH: Maybe they should get together. [mind] Go ahead. Kiss her.
I’m a baseball player dammit.
ELAINE: [mind] What’s he waiting for? I thought he was a cool guy.
KEITH: [mind] Come on I won the MVP in 79. I can do whatever I want to.
ELAINE: [mind] This is getting awkward.
KEITH: Well, goodnight
ELAINE: Good night
[they kiss - REALLY KISS]
ELAINE: [mind] Who does this guy think he is?
KEITH: [mind] I’m Keith Hernandez.

Thus, “I’m Keith Hernandez” status is reached when an athlete, beloved by the fans and possessing of great skill, reaches a ridiculous level of self-confidence and believes that he can do anything –  especially things that lesser athletes couldn’t get away with – and it will be okay because he’s a superstar and he can do that. Just like Keith Hernandez saying in his mind, “Come on, I won the MVP in ‘79. I can do whatever I want to.”

In a similar vein, a newly married man might start doing things and saying certain things unashamedly that he never would have done before, thinking “Come on, I’m married. I’ve left my father and mother and I’m leading a new family now! I’m free. I can say whatever I want to!”

After a lifetime of shying away from saying things as mild as “sucks” and “crap”, he’s suddently started using those words. He’s a prolific photographer and he posted several Facebook albums worth of pictures from his honeymoon trip, one of which included a picture of his wife holding up (and giving a thumbs-up to) the book Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage. Not a hint of awkwardness there on his part, and even his sister responded with “good grief”. And this week he announced his wife’s pregnancy by posting a picture on facebook of her positive pregnancy test stick, predictably prompting comments like “ok, that’s gross”, “wow…?”, and “Err..yeah…that’s…yeah…”

Has this whole marriage thing totally gotten to his head? Should we call this “I’m leading my own household now” status? I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with any of those things in the previous paragraph, but it just goes to show how marriage might give you a sense of freedom and strip you of a lot of awkwardness and inhibition you had before. That being said, I hope I don’t suddenly become that open after getting married, whenever that ends up happening.

Administrative Assistants Day

I’ve had some very slow afternoons at work the past couple of weeks. I’ve spent some of them filling out the daily sudoku puzzles in the local newspaper, some trying to read whatever book I have with me (I finally finished Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union last week), and just generally fighting off sleep in whatever way I can. I have a relative (a first cousin once removed) who works in the same building I do in the afternoons, so sometimes I’ll take a break and go upstairs and chat with her a bit. She works in the District Attorney’s office, a place to which I have to go at least once a week to deliver a weekly legal newsletter. I went upstairs to the DA’s office today and found their conference room strewn with plates of cookies, from which I was encouraged to help myself by one of the guys who works at the front desk. A sign outside the conference room informed people that it was “Administrative Assistant’s Week”, which I am told is celebrated the last full week of April, with the Wednesday of that week being Administrative Assistant’s Day.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the punctuation in that name. Is it a celebration for one assistant or many? I tried to search online for a proper format, and found references to it either written like that or without an apostrophe. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, since other holidays have names that seemingly can be either plural or possessive (i.e. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Veterans Day) but are one or the other for reasons unknown to me. There was a genuine typo farther down the sign, where it announced that they would be celebrating the day from “2 o’clock – 4:30″. Just pick one way of writing the time and stick with it. I love government signmakers. The cookies were good by the way, though I’m almost certain they came from Target.

In other news, the manager at the law library was doing close-out at the end of the day and when he was taking the day’s money out of the public copy machines, he ran across a huge cockroach. He decided he didn’t need to check the coin box for any coin change that may have gone into it, so he ended up closing and locking the machine with the cockroach still inside. We were both scratching our heads at that one. How did a cockroach that big get into there? Why haven’t we seen other cockroaches if one that big managed to not only get into the building but also find its way into the law library and into a copy machine’s money taker? I called a co-worker at the civil law library about that and we both had a laugh about that, among other things. I expressed doubt that a cockroach could live long inside of there, since there shouldn’t be anything in there it could eat, to which my co-worker said he’d heard on a documentary that cockroaches can live for two weeks off of a single fingerprint. Weird! If that’s true then it’s the most interesting thing I’ve learned this week.

Just another day at your local government law library.