smacky and bucky

You weren't a horrible year, but you could have been so much better. Try harder 2010!

I knew I was getting the home Ovechkin jersey, but Laura surprised me with the white Capitals away jersey too!

In the meantime, I'm simply having a wonderful Christmas time. And I'm out all next week too. Woooooo!

Mr. O'Bannon, your "tar zombie" in Return of the Living Dead scared the crap out of me. You created one of the few horror comedies that completely works on both levels. Moments of clever humor intermingled with effective scares. Thanks. And thanks SO MUCH for the first Alien movie. Your script gave the movie the perfect tone. And let's not forget Total Recall!

My "friends" on Facebook currently include the first girl I ever kissed (who was also my first girlfriend), the girl to whom I lost my virginity, the girl to whom I was briefly engaged, and my wife.


I'm glad that Facebook doesn't consist of a group of people standing in a room in the real world. That would be awkward.

We decided to take the train to my hometown for the funeral, saving us eight hours behind the wheel, and giving us eight hours to watch movies on our laptops, sleep, read, etc.

In the spirit of the train, here's a man who has high praise for them:



And Johnny Cash knows his damn trains.

...but I won't be doing that now. I just got a call from my mother that my great uncle (my grandmother's brother) died last night in the hospital. He'd had major surgery last week and was in recovery. His original illness was a shock, but his recovery chances weren't great, so his death wasn't completely unexpected. Might be taking a day off early next week to drive 3.5 hours south to attend a memorial service.

The practical, coldly analytical side of me thinks the following:
(1) He's not suffering now
(2) At least it didn't happen right at Christmas
(3) It's good that he didn't linger long enough to wipe out his finances (he leaves a wife, no kids).

The more human side of me thinks the following:
(1) My grandmother lost her husband last year, now her brother is dead. She didn't need this.
(2) My great aunt is a really sweet lady and now she's alone.

Both sides of me think this sucks.

I went to one of those discount stores (Marshall's or Ross) to get some cheap Star Wars figures for my nephew. While I was walking to the register I caught a glimpse of something on a shelf at eye level and it stopped me in my tracks.


It is a life-size bust of Elvis Presley. I mean, really, actual size. The box was HUGE. That's not all, though. Not by a long shot. It was animatronic. It played music and the bust moved its eyes and lips along. Now, I didn't get to see this. I just read the side of the box.


It has real hair, even for the eyebrows. The creepiest feature it has is you can turn it to "room monitor mode" and have it speak Elvis phrases when someone enters the room or you can set it to "random mode" and the Elvis bust will speak Elvis catchphrases whenever it feels like it. Like in the middle of the night. When it's dark and you're almost asleep. And it scares you to death.



His sideburns are perfectly symmetrical. As freaking creepy as it is, I was in fact momentarily tempted by it. It was marked $44.00, down from the list price of $250.00! If my wife was more into kitch, and wouldn't mind it being the centerpiece of our home (because what are you going to do, hide this in the guest room? No way!) then maybe I would have given it more serious consideration.

But Christmas is for giving, not receiving, so I had to be satisfied with taking a few pictures and sighing wistfully. As I walked away, I swore I could hear him whisper to me, "Take me with you, Jack!" I sped up and didn't look back.

So I'll leave you with a pic...

Had a doctor's appointment after work which meant a stop at Goodwill. And you know that means I left with something! Here's what $1.50 gets you:

The deluxe facsimile paperback of To Kill a Mockingbird and "Lady In Satin" by Billie Holiday. Yeah, it's a cassette. Remember those? Still have a tape deck in my car, so that's where I'll listen to it. Here's the synopsis from Amazon:

A harrowing classic, Billie Holiday's personal favorite among her '50s albums captures the singer 17 months before her death, her once honeyed voice, scarred and weakened from punishing life, its ravages highlighted by the 1958 session's crisp sonics and the contrasting "satin" of Ray Ellis' sleek string arrangements. Yet it is that very contrast that explains the power of these performances: In revisiting its torchy standards, Holiday reduces them to their core of pain and longing, transforming "I'm a Fool to Want You," "You Don't Know What Love Is," and "You've Changed" into naked declarations as mesmerizing and unsettling as a horrific accident.

Yeah, this isn't the easy listening jazz CD you should choose as background music for your next dinner party. The performance on this release will haunt you. I can't recommend this release enough. Find it online. Listen to the entire thing here: http://www.last.fm/music/Billie+Holiday/Lady+in+Satin

Here's what Ray Ellis, the orchestra leader on the recordings, later said about it:

I would say that the most emotional moment was her listening to the playback of "I'm a Fool to Want You". There were tears in her eyes... After we finished the album I went into the control room and listened to all the takes. I must admit I was unhappy with her performance, but I was just listening musically instead of emotionally. It wasn't until I heard the final mix a few weeks later that I realized how great her performance really was.

Listen to it. Do it.

Last night Laura and I attended our first professional hockey game, and it was a doozy! Yesterday I mentioned there was a game tonight, imagining we'd be watching it at home. Then Laura said "Should we go?" I checked Stubhub and found two tickets in section 110, row D for $50 each. I checked other seats available, and another pair five rows back were going for $85 each. Score!


They print lineup lists specific for each game and insert them in the programs, for which they only charge $2, which I thought was amazingly fair. You know at a Redskins game a program would be $15, but that's why the Redskins (despite their awful record) are the second highest money-making team in all of the NFL. It's also why everyone despises Redskins owner Dan Snyder. The loss of Ovechkin was tempered by the return from the injured list of Alexander Semin, another Caps powerhouse. He had a fantastic night, with two goals and two assists.

The game had everything, even the obligatory brawl. In the third period, Florida player Mike Duco flat-out attacked Caps player Alexandre Giroux (yep, the team has THREE Alexes!). When it was all over and the players were pulled apart, Duco racked up TWENTY-SEVEN minutes of penalties: 2 for instigating, 5 for fighting, 10 more for misconduct, and 10 after that as an aggressor. Holy crap! He was ejected and Florida had to play seven minutes a man down with someone in the penalty box. The Panthers were already down 4-0 at that point, and it killed their chances of coming back. By the way, the Panthers are the same team who just a few days earlier had a player get mad and try to break his stick against the goal, only to smack his own goalie in the face, sending him down and requiring a stretcher.


We definitely had a heck of a first game! We'll return again sometime. I'm hoarse this morning from cheering!

By the way, I am not a "sports guy." I watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, hate basketball, college football, pro football, and baseball (except to see live at the pro level now and then). But something about rooting for a home team, a home team that is good, is fun. And amazingly, my wife and I have an equal level of interest in it.

Laura and I are going to our first hockey game tonight, and floor seats! Row D, $50 each. Stubhub also had someone offering two seats in the same section--but row H--for $85 each! We got a good deal. Report on the game tomorrow.

Websites I Check Daily:

Google Reader (Which only counts as one, even though it collects RSS feeds from at least 100 websites!)
Facebook
Twitter (It's on my Google homepage with the Reader, so I don't technically visit Twitter.com)


Magazines To Which I Subscribe:

Entertainment Weekly (Got some deal for 15 cents an issue)
Rolling Stone (Got a 3-year subscription for $5 somewhere)
Popular Science


Things I Can't Live Without:

A toothbrush/floss
My laptop
Moving air (or at least some ambient noise at night)
Something to drink
Music


Places I Have Lived:
With parents
Fredericksburg, Virginia
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa
Silver Spring, Maryland
Arlington, Virginia

I had a cold most of Thanksgiving break, which flat out sucked. But it didn't affect my appetite, so I did get a nice Thanksgiving meal. The wife and I decided to skip both sets of parents and their general craziness and just spend the holiday alone. Considering I was sick, it's just as well we didn't spend hours and hours on the road. I took a number of naps, we watched a few Washington Capitals hockey games on TV, and we just relaxed. Not super exciting to read about, but it was a nice break.

I also took a number of items to the local used CD place to sell. Whenever I go there to sell something, I tend to leave with something as well. Hey, it happens! This time it was a record I bought for a dollar, just for the front cover. It's on a book shelf in my office at work now:

It sits beside my autographed photo of Master Kang Rhee, Elvis's Karate instructor in Memphis (who still runs the same dojo there, and yes, Elvis gave him a car once as a gift).

Ha! When I was looking up the spelling of Rhee's name, I found a page with this pic on it:


(1) When Elvis wanted something, he wanted it TODAY.
(2) He had rather bad handwriting.
(3) He was an 8th degree black belt, so he could probably have killed Tom Jones and made it look like an accident, if he hadn't spent the last few years of his life higher than a kite.