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Showing posts from October, 2005

Dealing with a clogged pipe

Another weekend spent at the tavern, two nights in a row, and as always, it takes a day to get back to normal, or even closer to normal. The baby girl is doing well, and so is the mother. I'm getting the chance to go through my e-mail and other things. Catching up on articles. For the fourth year in a row, I totally missed the Film Festival. One of these years, perhaps. I'm also wiped because I gave a presentation at a conference at JMU on Friday, and I think it might have been okay. Since then, I've not felt like doing much of anything. I worked today on the Rivanna Trails piece, which I'm just about to post. The pieces have also been sent to the places that will hopefully air them, reminding me I had better figure out some time to invoice. I'm not too keen on the coming approach of winter. Usually I like the approach of cold, but that was before I lived in a big house and had to pay a lot of money for it. We can't put the temperature down too much this year b

Tapping the Inner Geek

So, yes, I'm a Superman nut and have been since I saw the movie in 1978 when I was 5. When I was a kid, I used to take out a book from the Campbell County public library that was a compendium of Superman comics from the 1930's to the early 1980's. My favorite era was the late 1950's and early 1960's, when the writers went crazy with all kinds of imaginary stories . There was all this crazy stuff happening with all the crazy versions of Kryptonite, and something about that fascinated me. Still does. Anyway, the first two movies are excellent, and then, well, we all know what happened. I didn't really care for the Lois and Clark show, and I didn't understand anything about the much-hyped Death of Superman. So, I didn't really pay much attention when Smallville debuted on the WB in 2001. When I was in England in January of 2004, I was fairly bored and jonesing for something American to consume. And, I watched the season 3 premiere on one of the digital st

Morning Thoughts

The little baby girl is staring up at the few things approved for her to play with. She's having a hard time sleeping. I was as well so I decided to get up at 4:00 to get some work done. Of course, the wife-to-be brought the baby girl down here so that she could get some sleep. Now the baby girl keeps waking up every five minutes or so, breaking my train of thought. I'm going to have to learn how to work in spurts, which is definitely not easy when you're writing and producing a radio story. She's so angelic, though. And so beautiful. She's staring up at the big cow hanging above her little chair. Every few minutes she opens up her eyes, and then closes them again. I think she senses I'm writing about her, or maybe the sound of the keys lulls her somehow. Every time I switch to the radio computer, she squawks. ---five minutes later--- She's back to sleep. So, I'm back to radio. ---30 minutes later--- I've progressed a bit further with the story. Help

The World at 2.0

60 Minutes tonight had a story about Charles Robert Jenkins, the army sergeant who got drunk and deserted his U.S. Army post in Korea. He spent almost forty years in North Korea, and was only allowed to leave the country last year. In the interview, Jenkins describes what it was like being a prisoner of the regime, and they even show clips of the movies Jenkins was forced to star in, usually in stereotypical roles like The Evil American . Jenkins was described by reporter Scott Pelley as a "modern day Rip Van Winkle" who had never seen a computer, didn't know what a Big Mac was. Watching the video is well worth it if you have the time. What a different world we're in in 2005, as opposed to 1965. 1965 was the year my parents came to North America, leaving England in search of a better life. I've grown up in between two cultures, England and America, and I've spent my life wanting to be somewhere else other than here. It's deep in my family history. My grea

Anticipating the Word Wars

Fellow Cville blogger L.M. Squires has given me a great tip to add to my Netflix queue. Word Wars is a look at four obsessive Scrabble nerds. I know that I'm guilty of being obsessed by the game, and have had relationships ruined by my former inability to take the game anything less than seriously. Now I'm much more relaxed about the game, but that may be because I've not lost a game in a long time. I don't play nearly as much as I used to, but would love to have a copy of the game at Court Square Tavern, where I work part-time. If anyone has an extra Scrabble board they'd like to loan to my smokey little home away from home, I will buy you two beers. Not just one. Two. C-Ville Weekly has highlighted the Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse as a special reason to come to the Tavern. I'd have to say that I'm not a fan of it, nor any of the other expensive German beers we sell. I prefer American microbrews to the imports, though I do like our Spaten Lager. So, yes, tha

Revisiting an old friend

So, we're sitting here watching the second half of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries while we wait for our baby daughter to have her second feeding. Everyone tells you you should sleep while the baby sleeps. Yeah, we get that, we really do, but we also have to have a little down time. Anyway, the point is, I'm missing this show so very much. It's three more months until the second half of the second season begins. I think I'm the only person in Charlottesville who actually watches this show. Well, there is the wife-to-be, but she doesn't really count. Something about this show captivates me. It is the smartest show on television today, in terms of what it's trying to achieve. So many words have been written about this show's ability to twist the viewer's expectations. I'm hesitant to write about it, because I don't want to ruin a second of it for anyone who missed it the first time. But, this show gets in your head because it feels so real. Al

Announcing the Garden Variety Show

So, why this title? Why this name? Why another blog? Aren't there enough to go round as it is? Who would read this? Who will cite this? So many questions about intent, and I don't have time to truly answer them. All I know is that I am possibly the 3,445,320,043 oldest person in the world. How do we wrestle with identity in a world where it's all been done before? My answer: We simply go ahead and do the things we have to do to to make our mark in the world. We talk about the things we like, we post links to our favorite things. As I continue through my 13th year on the Internet, I'm making a career out of the whole webbiness of our computers. And so, I've decided to create this blog to provide a way for me to tell people about what I'm watching, what I'm reading, what I think about what happens. Of course, because I'm a journalist, I'll steer away from anything political. I'll steer away from the controversial, at least as it affects by business