Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: Ken Levine posted this, and it’s absolutely hilarious, one of the funniest bits of product placement in a teevee show ever. (I think it’s unintentionally funny, though.)

My favorite bit of product placement ever comes in Superman: the Movie. After Pa Kent has died and young Clark has found the green crystal, Ma Kent is up at dawn getting breakfast ready in the kitchen, and we see her hand plunk a box of Cheerios down on the table, just so its label catches the sunlight. Hilarious…especially in the end credits, when there is actually a screen credit reading “Cheerios by General Mills”.

In general, I tend to actually prefer it when people on teevee or movies use real products. I always found it more distracting to see cola cans that were obviously Pepsi cans, but with “Pepsi” replaced by the word “Cola”. I find that almost as distracting as any time someone recites a phone number. Hearing “555-xxxx” is glaring on the ears, but after years of hearing “555” prefixes, whenever a more daring movie uses a real-sounding prefix, that stands out too. I now think that movies and teevee shows should never have characters saying phone numbers out loud. At all.

:: My friend Aaron sent me this photo of a business whose building is obviously an old Pizza Hut. I should go around and take photos here of former PH’s that are now something else. There are a lot of former PH’s in Buffalo.

:: I’d love to try a bite of this. But no more than a bite. Wow, my heart stutters when I just look at the pictures.

More next week!

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How I spent International Overalls Day

IOD: Bib

Well, basically, today was for me just another day out and about…but even a bit of online funnery called International Overalls Day made it more enjoyable, in some weird way. So here’s how I spent the day (after initial coffee):

Well, there was a load of laundry to do. Yeah, whee! Except it’s always fun to dump a basket of warm laundry on top of one of the cats, in this case, Julio:

IOD: With kitties!

And then there was the drive to the grocery store, with my head apparently swiveling back and forth fast enough (checking to see if I could pull out yet) that it actually blurs.

IOD: Blurry head

Shopping on the Saturday before Thanksgiving is a major chore. The place was packed, which meant lots of waiting around in certain spots.

IOD: Waiting for Eggs.

And more waiting at the checkout.

IOD: Waiting to check out.

After loading the groceries in the car and heading out, I was able to sneak a photo of the kid as she was trying to keep sun out of her eyes!

IOD: She has no idea I'm taking her picture!

She likes to thwart my attempts to take photos of her, so I’m glad I got this one.

Later on, it was off to Regal Cinemas to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (More on this to come in another post.) Here I am, staring at the movie screen.

IOD: In the Screening Room

No, I didn’t take this during the movie. Not even during the previews. I took this during the commercials they run in between screenings. (And by the way, based on the trailer, I can’t wait for Green Lantern next summer.)

Later on, after the movie, it was back home, for dinner and hanging out and finally wrapping up the day with a beer and a book.

IOD Book and Beer

All in all, it was a terrific day! But in many ways it was a totally normal day for me — going to a movie is a Special Event for us now (I don’t care how long it’s been since I was a kid, I am still simply not wired to spend $16 to get into a movie), but laundry and groceries and a beer and a book at the end of the day are all perfectly normal things. So is it perfectly normal for me to do all this stuff in overalls. So why the special day?

Well, it’s not a big “We want to be taken more seriously!” kind of thing, because, let’s face it: bib overalls do not merit being taken “seriously”. They’re too goofy and fun and even whimsical for that, when worn by folks who aren’t actually wearing them as work clothes. I’ve noticed that overalls have become a popular choice of garment for clowns; and not to suggest that those of us who love overalls are clownish by nature, but it says something that overalls are fairly popular with the pie-in-the-face set. (Of course, I myself am no clown, but I do love a pie in the face. Not sure what that means, but there it is!)

And I don’t think it’s totally a sense of trying to resurrect something that’s out of fashion, either. I’ve written before on what I think of the idea of “fashion” before, so I won’t rehash it except to note my disdain for the notion of a few people in some industry collectively deciding what’s “in” and what’s “out” and the rest of us merrily going along. But through all my life, overalls haven’t really been a fashion “out” until just this past decade. They were common in the 70s, when I was a kid; they became less common in the 80s but still never went away. They came back big in the 90s with grunge and the baggy look that I’ve always preferred; but it’s only in the 2000’s that they’ve become distinctly unpopular. I’m sure they’ll come back, if they’re not starting to already. But that’s not what today was about, anyway.

It’s just a sense, I guess, of community amidst some people who tend to have fairly quirky and fun outlooks on life. Certainly none of the folks I’ve met in the whole “online overalls-wearing community” strike me as stodgy or dull; quite a few are artistic or creative by nature, and all are kind and nice by temperament. Am I saying that people who wear overalls are nicer people? No…but maybe!

Hooray for overalls!

And now, back to regular posting topics!

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I guess I’ll wait for my unavoidable doom, then

Via Palgolak:

Yeah…I’m screwed.

IOD: Zombie weapon?

No, I don’t think that a dip pen is likely to slow down an encroaching zombie. Sure, it’s nice and sharp so maybe I could use the pen to stab the zombie in the brain, but I’m not sure it would penetrate through the skull into the zombie’s brain on one shot, and I’m not sure the pen is strong enough to retain its shape and sharpness for a second stabbing attempt. Or maybe I could pour the rum from my hip flask onto the zombie and then use the matches to set the beastie aflame, but there’s less than eight ounces of rum in there. Not sure that would make an effective enough, or large enough, flame to bring the zombie to a stop.

I have a feeling that if a zombie cornered me at my desk, I’d be seriously out of luck.

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Happy Overalls Day!


IOD: Coffee, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

It’s International Overalls Day, or as I call it, “Saturday”. Originally created by Niels Windfeld Lund, a University professor from Norway who manages to out-do even my devotion to the Sacred Garment, this day is just a time for like-minded goofballs the world over to bask in fellowship and sweet, denim comfort. There’s a Facebook page and everything.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need more coffee.

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I probably hate this, so let me tell you what I think of it!

Here’s the kind of review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that’s driving me crazy. I’ve seen a bunch of these over the last few days, all striking the same kind of tone, but this one takes the cake. Why oh why oh why should I take even remotely seriously the opinion of a person who leads off thusly:

Fans know the tales better than I; I stopped reading the books after the third entry, and have only enjoyed the movies intermittently. The first two, directed by Chris Columbus, were too faithful to their source material to have much life or personality. The next couple had moments of macabre delight in part because they strayed from their predecessors’ literalness but also felt curiously static; formula crushed the energy from them to the point that I skipped the fifth altogether. I did see the sixth, but cannot remember a single frame.

I’m not saying you have to be a fan to review the film, but it’s the final chapter of a larger tale. If you’re going to grapple with it, then you really should have some working knowledge of what has gone before. This kind of thing is like reviewing, oh, A Tale of Two Cities and saying, “Well, I didn’t really like the first ten chapters, skipped a bunch of the next ones, but here’s my take on the book’s last six chapters anyway.”

Ultimately this goes back to my deep, deep aversion to the whole notion of “objectivity” where Art is concerned. I remember arguments I’d have on rec.music.movies, for instance, where someone would say, “Well, the score to [Movie Title Here] is nice, but when you listen to it objectively, you realize it’s not that good.” I’d respond with the obvious point that no, you’re not being “objective”, you’re just being negative but trying to give yourself an air of authority by claiming “objectivity”.

I submit that if someone says “I really don’t know anything about Harry Potter”, then their opinion on the new movie is next to useless. And that goes for everyone, including Roger Ebert. If someone who loves Harry Potter doesn’t like the film, that’s interesting to me. Otherwise, it’s just people who don’t like spinach offering reviews of a cookbook of spinach recipes.

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All prophecies come true if you wait long enough….

Fifteen years ago, I was in Year Two of what would be a four-year stint working at Pizza Hut in Olean, NY as a shift manager. One thing I remember from back then was the way upper management was constantly exhorting us to compare ourselves to other restaurants. “Are we as good as McDonald’s? Are we as good as Burger King?” And so on. And it wasn’t just the chains that were already in place, either — they were constantly kvetching over the places that hadn’t even come into our region yet.

For instance, there’s a chain of fast-food Italian restaurants called Fazoli’s that announced that it was coming into Western New York, and they were coming hard, with lots of locations. Cue the ensuing panic amongst the Pizza Hut folks. We had to be on our toes! We had to be ready! Well, Fazoli’s came…and went. They opened, there was much fanfare, they operated for a while, and within five or six years, they all closed. So much for them.

There was an even scarier chain out there, though. This chain had the higher-ups at PH quaking in their boots. We heard their name invoked at every major meeting we attended, and our store managers brought back the latest rumors from every major meeting they attended. This other chain was coming. They were expanding very quickly, and when they finally touched down in WNY, we were going to have all we could handle keeping our business. The chain?

Papa John’s.

Which, as it happened, never came.

There was never a Papa John’s, not one, while we worked for PH, not even as late as fall 2000, when The Wife left PH to work somewhere else. We wouldn’t even see a Papa John’s until fall of 2002, when we moved to Syracuse. We ordered from there once, we kinda liked it, but it wasn’t anything special. And wouldn’t you know it — Syracuse’s two or three Papa John’s locations closed while we were living there. And six months later we moved back to Buffalo anyway.

Flash forward to this morning, when one of my Facebook friends posted something about the Papa John’s pizza they ate last night. It seems that as of two months or so ago, Papa John’s has finally touched down in Western New York. With a single location. I, of course, no longer care, having (a) left Pizza Hut as an employee almost thirteen years ago, and (b) having pretty much sworn off chain pizza anyway.

But I do wonder if the local PH higher-ups are still nervous about Papa John’s.

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Yes, Virginia, you CAN like Star Wars!

This little girl loves Star Wars — but the boys in her class shamed her into leaving her Star Wars water bottle at home.

I remember this kind of crap from when I was a kid. I didn’t see it as bullying, which I always interpret in its more brutal traditional forms: the group of big kids hanging out on a particular corner because they know the smaller, weaker kid has to pass that way to get home, for example. But this kind of relentless “Make fun of her until she buckles” stuff is bullying, as much as any “Hey kid, gimme your lunch money” thuggery. But I like this father’s approach: blog the story, solicit comments from women who love Star Wars too, and use those comments to show the kid (who is really cute, by the way) that it’s OK to like Star Wars and that those little boys can suck it.

Yes, I’m a guy who loves Star Wars. But I know plenty of women who love it too, and as a kid, I might not have come to love it had I not had a bigger sister who, at the time, adored it.

And besides, the little girl can always point out that if Star Wars is for boys, why is it that so many men in the movies get their asses kicked by two women, Padme and Leia?

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The winner will receive a swimming pool filled with “Meh”.

I’ve gotta say, the current seasons of both Survivor and Hell’s Kitchen aren’t really doing it for me. Neither show is presenting any kind of favorite, any kind of contestant whom I want to see win. I’m almost thinking, maybe both shows should forego a winner this year and give next season’s winner two grand prizes.

I’ve missed some of Survivor this go-round, owing to its new Wednesday timeslot, but wow, what a bunch of doofuses. These are people who left their camp in last night’s episode to go to a challenge, and who decided to build a barrier for their big campfire, between the fire and their lean-to shelter, out of their wooden storage chests. Which caught fire, destroying all of their food stores and their shelter. Nobody deserves to win after that.

As for Hell’s Kitchen, well — Sabrina’s gone, because she was just too juvenile to make it to the end. Gail and Russell seem to both do well in challenges, and then crash and burn in the services. Nona and Jillian are just kind of there. And Trev? Here’s a guy who thought that cooking frog’s legs was thinking “outside the box”. For a dish he was preparing for, among others, a French judge.

It’s still fun to watch the shows, I guess, but without anyone to root for, it’s just watching something dull unfold. I hope the next seasons are better.

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Something for Thursday

(Yeah, I screwed up the date when I scheduled this post, which is why it was here, then it wasn’t, and now it’s back. Oops.)

A lot of my friends from work are either hunters or married to hunters. I’m not into hunting myself, but lots of people I know are. With hunting season about to kick off in a big way here in Western New York, here’s a selection in their honor. From the opera Der Freischutz by Carl Maria von Weber: the Huntsmen’s Chorus.

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I am Locutus!


Locutus, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

You will service me. All your power tools will be added to my own!

I bought a Brinkmann LED headlamp the other day, for use when I’m on the scissor-lift at work — oft times I’m doing work up there above the level of our lights and occasionally a little light would be helpful. Now, I’ll have it, by strapping this thing to my hard hat. Interestingly, it has a red light for night vision. Cool!

Wow, do I love tools!

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The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer

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