Watervale, Pt II

This weekend we went back to Watervale. As I mentioned previously, this is a lovely old resort in northern Michigan, started by the family of old college friends of my grandparents. My grandparents used to come here now and again in their youth, then again several times when my mom and uncle were children. Of course, this tradition continued when my siblings and cousins were children, and now it's continuing when the rest of us either already have children, or are thinking along those lines. It presumably will continue on through our children's and grandchildren's lives, adding generations and families to this mass escapade.

There are a handful of obligatory tasks that are required at Watervale. One is to head across Lower Herring Lake to the outlet into Lake Michigan. Typically you take a boat of some kind out there, and swim or build a sandcastle or just dink around. This is my brother and I starting out our voyage across the lake.

Another obligation is to climb this 1000' sand dune called "Old Baldy." It's a fun hike through the forest, then a slow and somewhat difficult climb up the back, and then a kickass run down the front. I don't actually have a picture of the front of Baldy, as my camera broke during the hike there. But these are various neices and nephews on the hike (the only ones who would take the course faster then myself).

The last obligation is to have a campfire out on the beach of Lake Michigan, having S'mores which are frequently built from marshmellow torches.

I have two sides of the family; my side (coming from my parents), and my cousins (coming, obviously, from my aunt and uncle). It's really surprising the difference between them. My brother in law was the only one of my side who would have one of my beers. My uncle's side couldn't get enough of them. Other than my brother, nobody dared have a whole bao (sort of a Chinese hotpocket), whereas my uncle's side couldn't get enough of them. There were other examples, but you get the picture. It was a bit offputting being with a family that lacks any desire for adventure (my side), when the promise of open minds (my uncle's side) is just a couple doors away. It's not as much of a complaint as it sounds; it's more of an observation.

In all, Watervale is absolutely wonderful. I never had my keys, never had my wallet, never needed to lock the door, my cell phone didn't work, and I barely saw a computer my whole time there. There was no schedule, except for dinner. Especially after the high stress couple months I've just had, it was bliss.

Back to the Bank

A couple months ago, the old Post Office building downtown was transformed into the Gotham National Bank temporarily for the new Batman movie. The filming stopped there due to some unfortunate circumstances: they set the Post Office on fire. This was unintentional, but I'm sure they were shooting the six fire trucks and the whole cacophany surrounding it and will try to find a way to work it into the movie. But that meant that they couldn't shoot there for a while.

Well, they're back, and I got a picture. Since it's my phone, and it's grey on grey, and it was kind of a cloudy day, you need to pop the picture a little bigger to really see the signage, but I can also give you a bit of a closeup.

John's Advice: Never Get a VW Beetle (an unfortunately ongoing series)

A few months ago, I had a really bad oil leak, and went to Midas to see what was up. It was simply a poorly placed oil plug from Jiffy Lube. There was something else in there too, but I forget what it was. No matter, the point for this story is that Something Went Wrong. While Midas was working on it, they turned on the check engine light. During their digging around in the engine, the throttle sensor went all wonky. Of course, the Midas line was that this sort of thing happens all the time for no reason, but they'd be glad to give us a deal on labor and could get the part for $750. It was obvious to me that they had hosed something, and that they weren't going to do a damn thing about it. They also didn't fix the oil leak. Schmucks.

The car ran a little rough, but still ran. We went down to Chattanooga in it, and haven't had a bit of trouble with it, except that at low speeds it couldn't figure out what gear it should be in. And so we didn't spend any more money on it. Until the emissions test notice came.

Heres the thing. If the check engine light is on for any reason, you automatically fail the emissions test, and 2 1/2 months later, lose your driving privileges. So, obviously, it was time to get the thing fixed. We took it in to a great local shop, run by someone Heidi's mom helped in her job (she's a nurse in a NICU... that's about as much as I choose to say). We got a wonderful deal on labor, and the part costs significantly less than Midas said it was. We brought it in on Saturday, they needed to get the part, and told us to bring it back on Tuesday. This was Tuesday of LAST week. It wan't the throttle control, as it happens. The computer was buggy, so they had to get a new computer. However, VW, being the master engineers that they are, needed the shop to bring the car in once it was installed to program the computer. The VW people have been giving the shop a runaround for the past three days, and it looks like it's not getting fixed anytime soon. It also looks like it's more than one problem.

So yeah, wah, cars have their issues. That's not the main complaint. Even the Midas thing isn't the main complaint (although this and previous history makes me never want to trust them again). Here's my big beef: VW is riding on their 35-year-old reputation, while cranking out horrid crap that costs an obscene amount to fix. When you bring it in to a dealership to fix, they charge an arm and a leg (I don't think I ever mentioned the $400 headlight a year ago) and drag their feet on getting the damn thing fixed. Hm, substandard customer service, substandard parts, substandard construction. Woohoo! VW is da bomb (which I hope isn't literal... I'm hearing reports of these things catching fire).

Two great tastes that taste great together

I can't say these are two of my favorite things put together, but these are two things that mesh really well together, and it makes for some incredibly entertaining watching. I haven't laughed this hard since Borat.

I tried to embed the video in here, but it's not working. Bugger.

The End of an Era

So I'm borrowing the title of this post from David, who wrote about the same thing. Comcast is gone. Their customer service stinks, their service is unreliable and too expensive. I wash my hands of them. Our internet and phone is now handled by AT&T. Faster, more reliable, cheaper. Their customer service also stinks, but at least there's less reason for me to call them.

Now, normally, the end of cable would require an immediate subscription to DirecTV or somesuch (an option that I heartily recommend, by the way). Now, however, time is an issue, and I like to watch DVD's, and I like to play games (and the TV is GREAT for both). Battlestar Galactica isn't coming back until September or so, same with Heroes. Lost isn't coming back until January. And we can see all those on their respective networks' websites. The only purpose to continuing the cable service is to veg for an hour or two. Sure, we'll miss Pucca and Adult Swim and Alton Brown, but losing cable saves us enough that if we wanted, we could get two seasons of our favorite TV show each month and never miss it.

So begone, wicked Comcast! Never again will I bow to the filth you spew!

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Franchise's End

We saw Pirates of the Caribbean a couple days ago. Now, I'm a big fan of pirates and pirate movies. I think it's a great thing to see a mess of people leaping from ship to ship, and being all swashbuckley. But this was a really bad movie.

It clearly tried hard to be a good movie. I liked the second one a lot, despite other people's abject hatred of it. But this just didn't really go anywhere fast, and it kind of stayed in that nothing place for the whole movie. Sure, it wrapped up some of the open plotlines from the previous movie, but it was just really unsatisfying.

I really can't get into a lot without adding spoilers, but the climaxes aren't all that climatic, the choices made were stupid ones, and the action scenes were too chaotic to be as fun or suspenseful as they should have been.

The performances of the best actors weren't as good as they had been, although the performances of the weak actors were better than usual. Therefore we have a lowball average; you don't really go to a show to see Orlando Bloom and Keria Knightly act, you go there to just look at them. Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, and Bill Nighy, you go to see act (alright, women can go to swoon over Johnny Depp, but not so much in that role). Their performances were little more than charicatures of their characters, taking out a lot of the spontenaity and fun that they developed in the earlier films, and replacing it with shallow hamming.

So anyway, I'm afraid the "season of the threes" (Shrek, Pirates, and Spiderman) is going to be a weak one. I've not seen the other two, but haven't heard particualrly good reviews of them. I'll still see them, doubting that they can be as much of a disappointment as this one was.

In-law Funeral

My sister's mother-in-law died Wednesday. It's actually a good thing; she had lung cancer, and had had several strokes in the hospital, and was suffering. She had been given only weeks to live, which was a huge stressor on her children. She's in heaven now. But still, she's gone.

Jean was a cool woman. She was strong, faithful, brutally honest and she had a really wry sense of humor. She was one of the most nonverbally expressive people I've known, as one look from her spoke volumes. A small roll of the eyes or a quirk of her mouth, and you knew exactly how she felt. I didn't spend a lot of time with her; I maybe saw her once or twice a year, but each time we did get a chance to talk, she was great. I will miss her to some degree, but I really think about my brother-in-law, and his family. I've never seen my brother-in-law close to tears before yesterday. It brings me back to my own father's death a little bit.

I started blogging in response to my dad dying. I knew I needed to get stuff out, and I was learning what this blog thing is all about. It's been really therapeutic to write down what I'm feeling, as it helps me identify and develop the emotional mess into something more concrete.

Ah well, in any case, I'll miss Jean. I know I'll see her again, and I'm cool with waiting, but she was a good person to have in this world.

In-law Wedding

Darrick, Heidi's brother, got married yesterday. Freakin' awesome! Heidi's family has been pouring in from hither and yon over the past few days, people I never really got the opportunity to know the last time they were here.

Anyway, the cermony was a good ceremony. Not much different from our own, but with more of a wedding party. And what a wedding party! Darrick has this amazing ability to inspire loyalty in a large group of cool people, and him being the wild guy he is, he sucks others into his vortex of fun, dynamic geekiness. Therefore his cronies are a group of people more fun than I've run into in a long time, and instantly accepting of another geek such as myself.

The reception was a huge kick in the pants. Ours had better food, theirs was a heck of a lot more fun. Admittedly, in mine, I was more focused on running around and chatting with everyone, and last night I was able to sit and talk in greater depth with some of Heidi's cousins.

In any case, I'm incredibly happy for Darrick and his new bride. They had a kick-butt celebration, and they make a fantastic couple. Mazel Tov!

Blood Diamond

I just saw Blood Diamond last night. This came out in December, while we were still coping with the leftover schedule of the wedding, so I didn't get a chance to see it at the time. I see the value of not going to see it in the theatres: if I saw it in the theatres, Heidi would have seen it with me, and she has an issue with overly intense, overly violent movies. This was one of those.

It's set in Sierre Leone, during a civil war in which the government was bad, and the rebels were worse. The RUF (Rebel United Front) attacked and burned villages, killing everybody but the boys that they could brainwash and use as combatants, and the men who would make good slaves for the diamond mines. With these diamonds, they would buy weapons with which they would carry on the fight with the government. It was very similar to my concept of hell.

This show is primarily focused on the RUF, as Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) was one of the men taken for labor in the diamond pits, but not before he gets his family on their way to relative saftey (compared to the rebel extermination of the village). During his slavery, he does find a huge, nearly perfect pink diamond (astonishingly rare and expensive), and manages to hide it from the rebel leader, burying it near the camp. Meanwhile, Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio, doing an exceptionally convincing South African accent) is a weapons dealer, being paid by the rebels in diamonds, and subsequently smuggling them across the border to sell them. Eventually the two come together, (more manipulated by Archer than by chance), and they subsequently set off in search of Solomon's family and the diamond.

It's an interesting and complex plot, but the biggest aspect of the film that stands out to me is the chaos the country is going through. I've seen a fair share of the chaos that happens with warlords throughout Africa on various TV shows and films, and by nature these are fictional accounts. But I know that horrible things are being done in Darfur, and I have doubts that it's much different than depicted. Certainly, Blood Diamond was only showing the horror of life plagued by these gangs of rebels, and not that African life is pretty similar to life everywhere else most of the time, but the horror is still pretty horrible.

I'm sure that was the point of the movie, and not so much the story (although the story was pretty good as well). It was a pretty heavy-handed call for people to do something about the hell in Africa. There's even a dialogue between Solomon and Jennifer Connelly's character (who is a journalist that ends up working with Danny and Solomon):

Solomon: Will [the American people] do anything?
JC: No. They might send a check, but that's about
it.

There are a few quips from Jennifer Connelly's character that talk about how the chaos and horror they're witnessing might be shown "between sports and the weather." Or that "the world is falling apart, and all they talk about is [the Clinton sex scandal]."

My own reaction to this was a sort of resigned acceptance. In America, we simply don't hear about what's going down in various other countries, simply because it's deemed unimportant or not ratings-friendly. It's also a little discouraging to be reminded just how messed up the world can be. I find myself overwhelmed to the point that I don't even know how to start, even in prayer.

So yeah, it's a good movie, and I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not sure I can recommend it. It's good, but be prepared to be really uncomfortable for a couple hours (or maybe an hour and a half... the last half hour is much more of a Hollywood movie).

2007 Goals, Update 4

So... it's been a slow month. I've been putting effort in some places, not so much in others. As it stands, I haven't progressed much, if at all, on any of my goals. It's frustrationg almost to the point of discouragement, but not quite there yet. Or rather, it was there, but I moved past the worst of the discouragement. It's partially lighting a fire under my butt, and partially just annoying the hell out of me.

1. Get at least 5 union voiceover gigs: I just finished up my first promotional mailing to ad agencies. Since I'm on a budget, I wasn't able to send out any CD's, but instead postcards that have my website on them. I have yet to get a single hit from an ad agency IP address. Hm.
2. Get one national gig: See #1.
3. Get at least three agents in the local market: I have one; no change from late last year. We'll start sending out mailings to talent agencies probably this weekend.
4. Get into both SAG and AFTRA: Heh.
5. Drop my bodyfat to 12%: After a lazy month (we did keep working out, just not as much), we've decided to hit the gym in the evenings when we can, and mornings when we can't. Still, I'm pretty much in the same shape I was at the beghinning of the year.
6. Travel at least four times: 1 down, 3 to go
7. Get my headshots done: I'm waiting to lose a bit of weight, as I tend to hold a lot of my weight in my face. Not entirely sure what good headshots will do me at present, as I need a flexible day job in order to do on-camera auditions. Perhaps that will be a next year goal.
8. Join the Fighting 501st: I'll start work on cleaning out the garage this weekend, or at least clean enough to set up a card table. I should start work on the suit this month.
9: Get out of debt: Slow going. We're trading out high interest for lower interest, and plugging along as best we can.
10. Brew at least four batches of beer: 1 down, 3 to go. I just got this month's Zymurgy (the magazine of the American Homebrewer's Association), and there's likely a recipe in there on which I can work. I haven't looked through it much, but will check it out. Otherwise, I'll just get another kit.
11. Read the Bible from beginning to end: I'm still a little behind, but moving along with this. So far, so good.

Plans for this month: Dunno. I'll keep reading and praying, probably work on the Stormtrooper outfit, send out some mailings to talent agents, but I'm frustrated right now. I kind of want to just spend my time playing whatever Gamefly sends me. I'll get over it, but it's a hassle.