Tuesday, 24 July 2012

After mulling over the thoughts of my last post (see: MY LAST POST), I realized there must be more mini-series on my motion pictures list besides just Roots. So I opened up my list of every motion picture I’ve seen, and sorted them by catergory. This collected all the made-for-TV movies together, allowing me to scan through that relatively short selection and see which ones are mini-series.

Turns out, I had forgotten about V, both the original series, and The Final Battle. So I deleted those from my list, too. Then there was Tin Man, a mini-series my wife and I just watched a couple of years ago. It stars Zooey Deschanel, too, so shame on me for forgetting about it. Also in the mini-series catergory was Alice in Wonderland, a 1985 series I watched as a kid and, pretty much have completely forgotten about.

Besides these mini-series, the only other possible contender on my list was Anne of Green Gables. But then I looked it up at IMDb, and realized that both it and the sequel were not mini-series but were, in fact, really long movies. So Anne stays.

Naturally, I figured I now needed to have a separate list of mini-series that I’ve seen, so I whipped me up a new list. Then I thought, hey – if I’m gonna have a list of mini-series I’ve seen, then I also need a list of maxi-series…you know, regular TV shows? So I made that list, too.

Here they are:

 You may be surprised to note that Survivor and The Amazing Race are not on this list. That’s because there are a few seasons I have not watched, and everyonce in a while, I miss an episode. I’m currently ploughing through Better Off Ted, Seinfeld, The Sopranos, and Modern Family, so I’ll be adding those soon, too. If I was to expand this list to “Series I’ve seen loads of,” then I’d have to add in all sorts of embarrassing stuff I watched as a kid, such as Diff’rent Strokes, The Facts of Life, Golden Girls, Happy Days, Family Ties, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitch, I Dream of Jeannie, Macgyver, as well as some long-standing shows I couldn’t possibly catch in their entirety, like The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live.

Monday, 23 July 2012

Last night, my wife and I finished watching the last part of Mildred Pierce, a 2011 five-part miniseries from HBO starring Kate Winslet.

Jennifer put this one on the Netflix queueueu, and I figured I’d watch it with her because it starred Kate Winslet. Did I mention Kate Winslet is in it? She’s one of a few actors or actresses where I’ll actually watch the movie just because they’re in it. Obviously, the best way to get me to see a movie is if I’ve heard good things about it’s story, but I am often a sucker for a film if I like the director (e.g., Tim Burton) or if I like the studio (e.g., PIXAR) or if it’s won an Oscar for best picture. But, there are a few cases where I am willing to sit through a film because of who stars in it. Or, put another way, there are a few times when I sit down to watch a movie, and the credits begin, and I see so-and-so is in it, and I think, “Hey, so-and-so is in this! That’s great! I love so-and-so.”

Besides Kate, I also like James Cromwell, Helena Bonham Carter, Jodie Foster, Steve Buscemi, Patrick Stewart, Johnny Depp, and probably a few others I can’t think of right now. I’ve seen at least 13 movies in which Kate has either acted or voiced, including, as of last night, Mildred Pierce. And that brings me to my main topic:

Do miniseries count as motion pictures?

See, it’s an important question because I keep a listing of every feature length motion picture I’ve ever seen. My list contains a couple dozen made-for-TV movies, so I’m not trying to slight Mildred Pierce because it was “only” on TV and not on the silver screen.

I scrolled through my list of motion pictures, and the only other miniseries on the list was Roots. By a long shot, this is (was) the longest motion picture on my list. But then I got to thinking: Roots and Mildred Pierce aren’t movies…they’re TV shows. After all, they’re not called “Maxi-movies,” they’re called “Mini-series,” indicating they’re not incredibly long movies, but incredibly short TV series.

[Incidentally: I also once listed Roots in a blog post listing my 50 All-time Favorite Motion Pictures; I guess it shouldn’t be on that list, either.]

“Wait,” you say, “Don’t think of Mildred Pierce as one long movie, think of it as five movies, kind of like Star Wars, only with five instead of six.”

“Nah,” I say, dispensing with the quotation marks from here on out, it seems each part is an episode, just as HBO used to have a series called The Sopranos, and each of those parts was an episode. If I include each part of  Mildred Pierce, then I should include every episode of every TV show I’ve ever seen. Which would be both impossible and embarrassing.

So, today, I made a thoughtful decision and, instead of adding Mildred Pierce to the list of motion pictures I’ve seen, I deleted Roots, bringing my total number of films down (wow, that’s the first time the total’s gone down) to 1,322.

Anyway…Mildred Pierce. I’m gonna go ahead and say skip it. Unless you really like Kate Winslet. Did I mention Kate Winslet is in it?

Saturday, 21 July 2012

So, if you’d asked me five years ago what a zine was, I’m not sure how I would have answered. I might have guessed that it was a new brand of alcoholic beverage. Or I might have thought it was a new way kids were shortening the word “magazine” in the same way they were calling pizza “‘za.”

But, according to Wikipedia, it’s “a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images.”

In the past half-decade, I’ve been to a few bookfairs, and I’ve perused some of the zines for sale. They’re usually small – think of a magazine, and then imagine something just one-half or one-quarter that size – and they’re usually pretty short. Too short, in my opinion, though whenever I begin to bemoan that something is too short, I immediately remember that being too short just means that I want more – which is great.

Last week, we finally acquired zines of our own. Specifically, we purchased a pair of zines available from our friend AT THIS SITE. They were great. I suggest you buy “Will There Be Smoking?” which explores some of those questions parents-to-be and new parents aren’t prepared for.

Did I mention they’re locally grown, so you’d be supporting a local business instead of some big corporate publishing agency? The zine creators have their own fest annually, too. CLICK HERE for info on that.

Sunday, 22 July 2012

My wife found out about a Family Fun Night, sponsored by Creative Kidstuff. She signed up our kids and, tonight, after the store closed to the general public, we showed up for a Fun Night.

Our kids loved it. And it was free, so I loved it, too. There was ice cream, rock painting, a butterfly garden, temporary tattoos, real live reptiles, a scavenger hunt, other random games, and even fish painting.

Here’s how fish painting works: the kids painted a fish carcass. I’m not very good at identifying fish species. In fact, I’m really bad at it. This was some sort of freshwater fish, about a foot long. It was silver color. That’s all I know. Anyway, the employee wiped it off (to remove the paint from the last kid), and then gave Owen the paint brush. Our daughter stood next to him and did the deed at an adjacent station.

Once the fish were painted, the employees pressed a canvas bag against the fish, leaving a print on the bag for the kids to take home. Isla’s is pink and red; kind of all mixed together. Owen’s is a third green, a third pink, and a third blue. One employee explained that this is how fishermen used to document their catches in the days before photography was affordable – they lathered up their catch with paint, then smacked it on the side of a board or canvas or whatever, then they had proof of what they’d fetched from the sea.

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

Today I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity. They’re a Lutheran organization that builds and repairs houses and sells them to people in need for relatively cheap.

This wasn’t totally volunteer, I suppose. A few months ago, my supervisor asked our department what we’d like to do for a summer outing and, instead of selecting a ballgame or booze cruise or laser tag engagement (all things I’ve done in the past with my department), everyone agreed it’d be nice to do something meaningful for the community. So, today, i was at a house in south Minneapolis scraping mud off the wall and, in the afternoon, painting the walls.

Here’s a picture of the house we worked on today:

It’s a pretty nice house, actually. Four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a large living room. The yard is small, and there’s no greenery on the lot (except for that one tree in the front). It’s also devoid of many amenities: no central air, no dishwasher, no two-car garage, and the same windows that my wife and I had in our townhome (which allow steady drafts to blow through all winter – great for blowing out candles!). Still, I would live in this house, despite the fact that I did some of the painting.

Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Session II of the strength training course at my job began this afternoon. I was one of the first participants to arrive, and when the instructor asked how I was doing, I informed her I was sore from working on a house yesterday. She said she’d go easy today. And she was right, too, perhaps because she’d just sprained her ankle and wasn’t up to par.

It appears a lot of people lost interest in the class. During the first course – which ran through May and June – there were always a dozen or more participants. Today, there were seven.

After holding a paint brush over my head for most of the day yesterday, while balanced on a step stool, in the stiffling heat, and now using weights and bands to work my muscles, my arms feel like rubber. I’m gonna try to not use them for the rest of the day.

Thursday, 19 July 2012

Right now, Owen and I are reading through The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. I have known about this book for a long time, but I’ve never read it before. When someone mentioned it in a blog post recently, I started looking into again. I figured Owen would like it because it has Mathmagicians in it (and Owen fancies himself a Mathmagician) and there are discussions about infinity and dodecahedrons and other mathematical curiosities.

Well, we haven’t arrived at the math part yet; that won’t come until Milo arrives in Digitopolis, but we’re nearing the halfway point. In some ways, the book reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, in that crazy things just happen to the young child for no reason other than just because they give the author a chance to say or do funny things. It wasn’t even until chapter six, or mayebe seven, that some sort of plot seemed to be coalescing.

At any rate, Owen seems to be enjoying the read. I’m just doing my best to plow through it, eager for the day when we can return to the A to Z Mysteries.

Friday, 20 July 2012

So, I’m sure you’re sick of reading about my wedding ceremony escapades, so I’ll try to keep that part toned down in this blog entry…

This evening, I participated in the rehearsal for a wedding I’ll be officiating in 24 hours. Instead of talking about the details of that rehearsal, or tomorrow’s wedding, I want to talk about the location:

The Little Log House Pioneer Village in Hastings.

I had no idea this place existed until the betrothed couple wrote it down on our contract. Even then, I just made a mental note that it was in Hastings and then, this afternoon, I looked it up online to figure out how to drive there.

This evening, I drove through the city of Hastings, then just kept going south until, right when I started to fret that I had gone too far, I saw the sign and made a left. About a mile down the roud – right in the middle of farms – a tiny city just popped up. It looked like something out of the 1950s; the kind of place where Clark Kent grew up. There was an old gas station with old fashioned pumps, an old post office, an old church, an old saloon, several old homes, and even a mid-centruy style automobile bridge across a creek. There were several old vehicles sitting around, too. Everything looked meticulously maintained. The grass (with signs ever five feet or so saying not to park on it) was perfectly groomed, and all the buildings looked like they’d somehow escaped the ravages of the decades.

I overheard a few groomsmen talking, and they claimed the owner, on older gentleman who grew up just down the road, began collecting old buildings on his property. He goes around the country looking for buildings he likes, buys them, has them disasssembled, shipped, and reassembled in this city-sized museum.

Despite the name, I never saw a log house, and I don’t think it’s within the city limits of Hastings. The place is nearly always closed to the public, too, just opening their doors for weddings (there was a wedding taking place today), retirement parties, corporate functions, and, well, anything that anyone rich enough to rent out the place would like it for. According to one of the groomsmen (and confirmed on the website), the place opens up to the public during the fourth weekend in July – which is just a week away.

I’m considering taking the family for a looksee.

Monday, 16 July 2012

I mentioned in my last post (see: My Last Post) that my wife spent the day up at the cabin with the other ladies in her family. She came home that evening bearing gifts. Most significantly (to me) were the gifts of food.

Ever since I started shoehorning my way into Jennifer’s family, they’ve had this minor tradition attached, like an appendage, to their larger tradition of hanging out at the cabin. That minor tradition is: bringing something from the local KFC to dine on.

Upon inquiring as to the roots of this tradition, my wife believes it stems from the dual reasons of her grandfather liking KFC and KFC’s proximity to the cabin. Up until, say, this century, KFC was the closest restaurant to the cabin (there are at least three closer nowadays).

Anyway, I don’t really go for eating food out of a bucket and, as a pescatarian, there’s not much on the menu at Kentucky Fried Chicken (as it used to be known) for me, anyway. I also have this short list of fast “food” restaurants I positively despise. Among them are McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Taco John’s, Dairy Queen, and KFing C.

But…

Let’s face it, some of theses places have some irresistible delectables. Primarily, Dairy Queen reigns large in the dessert department. So even though their fries = near instant diarrhea and they use melted PVC in place of cheese, I can’t say no to their frozen cakes. And in the KFC department, I love me them biscuits. 

So, among other items, Jennifer arrived home Saturday night with a bag of biscuits and the accompanying condiments. I applied the honey and butter – noting that the butter was, in fact, termed, “buttery goodness” – and scarfed down a biscuit. The biscuits were gone in no time, with a bunch of spare condiment packages. I told Jennifer I’d take the honey packets to work, where I could add them to my cups of tea. So I did.

This morning, for the first time, I took a closer look at one of those “honey” packets. To my horror, it wasn’t honey; it was Honey Sauce. I nearly gagged on my tea.

Take a look:
Notice, honey isn’t the first listed ingedient. It’s THIRD! It follows both high fructose corn syrup, and just plain corn syrup. Just in case you might be under the delusion that the packet contains 30, or even 25%, honey, there’s a side note that alerts you the concoction you’re about to put into your body is only 7% “real” honey.

Yuck.

Also, notice that fructose is ingedient #4, and all the remaining ingredients account for less than 2% of the packaged bile. So…we’re talking above 90% fructose and corn here. Gross. This explains why the “honey” wasn’t a rich, amber color but, instead, a piss yellow hue reminiscent of, well, corn.

That is just disgusting KFC. Please, charge 25 cents a packet and put in 100% “real” honey and, I promise you, I will swing through your drive through to buy a sack of biscuits.