Les Simpson - Le Film

I have finally seen The Simpsons Movie. It's a little embarrassing how long it took me to see it considering what a Simpsons fan I consider myself to be. I thought it was good, in fact I laughed as I read a comment on IMDB the other day stating something to the effect 'I'm glad it didn't suck.'

I guess when something has been in the works for so long and rumored even longer there is a lot of expectation built in. I have to say it was great to have a story that could be fully developed in a way that a 30 minute, or 20 when you factor in breaks, show just can't get into. Also, I think they were able to spend a little more time on the animation. I can't explain what the difference was, it just seemed to be of finer quality, or I just wanted to see it as such. See the movie if you haven't even if you don't like The Simpsons.

What happened to your trees?

For Labor Daywe went to Boise and we had a great time there with family and friends, well, I had a great time with family and frinds, Kinsey had a great time with family. The dive back form Boise was dreary and rainy pretty much the entire way. I think the storm was following us the entire way home. When we got home we found all to be well with our home, I've got to say that is always a relief.

The DW's mother invited us to dinner that evening, which was nice. We were in no mood to prepare a dinner and having an offer to get a home cooked meals is always appreciated. While we were having dinner the wind was crazy and there was a bit of rain with it. It was loads of fun getting the boys back into the car with the wind and rain! When we got back home we saw this site, two trees laying across the sidewalk.

One of the trees was completly uprooted, and the other was just about laying flat on the ground. I got my saw and cleared the mess that used to be our trees in the parking strip in front of our house. Since then I've had a few people question what happened to our trees. I guess it was an act of God.

How I love the Beatles

As I was siting here listening to Abbey Road I was reflecting on how much I love the Beatles and how long that love has lasted. I don't know that there has been any other group so long lasting in my eyes musically speaking, especially considering they haven't even produced an album together since Abbey Road.

One thing I love about the Beatles music is the number of renditions I have from other groups. I am not like my father who says he likes the Beatles music, just not when they perform it. So, what brings up the Beatles and covers of their music, I guess it's the new film Across The Universe that uses the music of the Beatles to tell their story. I've only listened to a couple of the songs from the soundtrack, and it's all right so far, it'll probably be a while before I actually see the film.

There are covers that I love and will probably always listen to since I can't really remember a time that I didn't listen to them, namely the Sergio Mendes arrangements, thank you Dad. There are others that I wish had stayed in the minds of their creators rather than being recorded. The soundtrack to another film, I Am Sam, has some great covers and others that bring to mind the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. One of the play lists that I will probably never get rid of on my computer will be Beatles Covers just because it is so great as are the Beatles themselves.

Me and the Simpsons

So a coworker told me about this web site that lets you create a Simpson's version of yourself. I tried it out and thought it was fun. I've done the whole family now in fact. If you want to try it out go to simpsonizeme.com, I think this explains all the Simpson's look alike icons on some of the forums I visit.

The WohleHog

Last night I had a great time going to see Rush with a friend of mine. I think it's been six years since I've paid to see a concert, and this one was well worth it. One band playing for about three hours was incredible. My friend and I made one person particularly angry. When you go to a show like this most people stand, but I guess we were in the family section or something, and many people decided they would prefer sitting. One person behind us thought we were making too many people stand to see the show. He approached us and asked us to sit. The people immediately behind us said that they were going to stand even if we sat down, so we continued standing. A little later the man that talked to us about forcing everyone else to stand "accidentally" spilled some beer in our direction. We didn't see him the rest of the night, I think he was scared that he had hit too many people with the beer and would face dire consequences if he came back.

So it's been three years since I've done any work in the theatre and I guess I'm a little behind the times. As we were heading toward our seats we passed the sound and lighting consoles and there were three lighting consoles. I've seen two used, but never three. With the exception of ten follow spots that were manually operated, all the lighting was robotic. I guess that many lights makes it difficult for one person and or console to control all of them simultaneously, it could also have something to do with the addressing of teh lights, but what do I know. The picture above is the WholeHog III, that was what they were using to control the lights, just so you know what the title refers to.

Happy Birthday DW

Birthday cakes are very important in my family and my wife also has strong feelings for birthday cakes. I'm not too great at decorating cakes, but I'm related to plenty of others that are very talented in this area, fortunately the DW prefers the substance of the cake to its appearance. She chose an orange cake this year, fitting because orange is her favorite color. Being that it was a layer cake with orange flavored frosting I looked at the picture in the cookbook and tried my best to duplicate the cake. I think I did a pretty good job, but I won't know for a few more hours how well it really turned out. Until then, Happy birthday, may it be delightful.

That's how I fondue it

First off, let me apologize for the title that is very similar to a title that I used just earlier this week. Moving on now. We decided to have fondue and I thought the DW would just pick up a packet like we usually do and we'd go from there. To my surprise she bought the raw ingredients and we were making it from scratch. It's not that I mind doing this type of thing, but it has never worked for me before and I had just resigned myself to the idea that I couldn't make a basic Swiss fondue because it is always stringy and a little separated. I guess it's all in the recipe. It was great this time and we all enjoyed a nice dinner of cheesy bread, apples, broccoli and carrots.