Right now UNC-TV, the public broadcasting network here in North Carolina, is having their annual "Festival" fundraising campaign. This is when they do stuff like run marathon showings of EastEnders, bring "Mama Dip" into the studio for live demonstrations on how to fry chicken and bake biscuits, and interrupt Sesame Street every little while so they can break back to the studio where Muppets are begging for money.Okay, it's soooo easy to make fun...
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
"Hotter than a pistol!" Autistic player's story still stuns
In case you haven't heard by now, the breakout sports star of the past week or so has been Jason McElwain of Greece Athena High School in Rochester, New York. In spite of his autism, McElwain (or "J-Mac" as he's known on campus) has been the manager of Greece Athena's basketball team for the past few years, doing everything that was expected of him but never actually playing...
And now Dennis Weaver has left us
Over the weekend we lost Don Knotts and Darren McGavin. Now it comes out earlie today that Dennis Weaver died over the weekend also. He was Chester in Gunsmoke and had the title role in the 70's TV series McCloud. But what I'll always remember him for was the first time I saw Weaver in a role, way back one night when this movie ran on television about a salesman in a car...
Monday, February 27, 2006
Getting the REAL box for The Simpsons Season 6 DVD set
It's not as creepy as that plastic-faced "king" in the Burger King commercials, but it's still somewhat disturbing to have the Season 6 DVD set of The Simpsons packaged inside a Homer Simpson head...I got this for Christmas (and bought the Season 7 set the next day, which they give you the option to buy it in either a Marge-head in the same style as the Homer one, or a real...
The Bowie knife my Dad made
My Dad has been working on a Bowie knife lately. The other week he finished it. I thought it'd be neat to post some pictures of it, show off some of his handiwork:And here's the beginning of my own, the first one that I've worked on in a while:It'll look a lot better once it's ground and polished. The handle isn't done yet either.I might post more pics of what comes out...
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Darren McGavin 1922-2006
Within hours of losing Don Knotts, another great actor left this earthly realm: Darren McGavin. Which has a tinge of irony to it because in 1976 McGavin and Knotts starred together in Disney's No Deposit, No Return:From Kolchak: The Night Stalker, detective Mike Hammer, later on he had a memorable appearance in an episode of The X-Files, to many, many roles over the years,...
Don Knotts 1924 - 2006
Well, what can be said that hasn't been said already. The man was a comic genius. And even though Knotts was from West Virginia, his character of Deputy Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show will always be one of North Carolina's favorite sons.One of the best roles he had was this really nervous corporal in No Time for Sergeants (in which he appeared with future co-star...
America, the ports, and Napoleonic France
Remember those six American ports that Dubai is set to take over?Well, it ain't six ports at all.It's twenty-two ports.This makes a lot more sense if you start thinking of America as being post-revolutionary France, with Napoleon Bonaparte running things. Being so overstretched in our "empire" we are now selling off some of our holdings to fund it all, like when France sold the U.S. the Louisiana territory. Sorta makes Iraq our own version of Borodino...
Thursday, February 23, 2006
About the story that USED to be here
After some reconsideration, I decided to pull the article about the Mohammed cartoon. No, nobody threatened me or anything like that (which would have only made me keep it up even more). It's because I'm in the process of "switching over" my more political/op-ed stuff to a separate blog, and keep The Knight Shift for my more "happy/upbeat" material. That's not to say that there won't be "heavy" stuff in this space though. But I do want to keep...
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
So y'all went looking for Taylor Hicks and found me :-)
According to the stats, about 85% of this blog's new visitors lately are coming in from search engines after they've entered "Taylor Hicks", "Under the Radar", "Hell of a Day", "MP3" and other terms related to Hicks. This blog has suddenly become a magnet for fans of Taylor Hicks to come and find stuff and maybe congregate around. Can't help but feel might proud at that, hope that I can do my share of spreading the good word out about our man Taylor...
The boys rocked tonight's Idol
We watched the girls last night on American Idol and tonight's show and between the two, we felt most entertained by the guys tonight. Last night it was Paris Bennett and Mandisa that I was still thinking about this morning. Tonight... ooh-boy. So many good performances. Being a Carolina boy I might be biased when I say that Chris Daughtry and Bucky Covington did well. Gedeon McKinney and Jose "Sway" Penala definitely have moves in their acts....
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
NOW he threatens to veto something: Bush wants foreign control of American ports
Why in the name of Valhalla is our President Bush hot to sign away control of several American ports to a foreign company run by the United Arab Emirates? He's even threatening a veto if legislators try to block the transaction... which would be the very first time that he's used the veto since he took office in 2001.He didn't veto McCain-Feingold, and he does nothing about our borders being flooded with illegals and who-knows-what-else... but he's...
Monday, February 20, 2006
An American original passes away: Bill Moran re-discovered centuries-lost secret
Of all the sad news that I've had to pass along in this space lately - and there's been more than its fair share - this is by far the most heartbreaking...Word reached me earlier this afternoon that Bill Moran, the "Master of the Forge" and knifemaker extroardinaire who over thirty years ago re-discovered the long-lost secret of how to make Damascus steel, died last week at...
Rep. Ron Paul on "The End of Dollar Hegemony"
A little over a month ago I wrote here about how the value of the American dollar was being underwritten by how it is used on the global oil trade. Countries such as Iran and now, as of last week Syria, are beginning to make the transition from the dollar as the standard unit of exchange to the euro, which may dramatically increase the euro's value while significantly decreasing that of American currency.Now Ron Paul, member of the House of Representatives...
Government quashes independent dairy farmers
I'm posting this because as a former independent dairy farmer, this is an issue that I've some passion for and I think it matters to most Americans more than they probably realize. It's about how the government - at the urging of bigtime agricultural co-ops - is putting the squeeze on independent dairy producers, forcing them to adhere to needless and overly burdensome regulations that have nothing to do with the quality of the milk they produce....
Saturday, February 18, 2006
"Red Riding Rashomon": We get Hoodwinked
It snowed at a pretty good clip for most of the day, which made the outside look really beautiful... while it lasted. When we got to the theater it had started getting too warm and what snow had stuck to the ground soon melted. It was gone entirely by the time we came out of seeing Hoodwinked.This was a far better movie than I was expecting when we first went in. The animation style is different than what you'd come to expect if you've only had...
Got a fix for some Taylor Hicks? Lookee here!!
EDIT 08:01 PM EST: Looks like Blogger is finally working again. I had to republish the index though and doing so made the original Taylor Hicks post (and its unique URL) disappear, meaning I had to repost this again (which is what the post you're looking at right now is). Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused someone...But anyhoo, if yer like me, and especially...
Friday, February 17, 2006
Late night snack: Putting two BBQ giants together
I am somewhat of a barbecue connoisseur. Over the years I've visited many different restaurants, tried every style there is, and sampled just about every kind of barbecue sauce on the planet. Think the most unique place I've ever been was The Dinosaur in Rochester, New York (it is exactly what it advertises to be: a real honkey-tonk joint). And I never ate at his restaurant...
Thursday, February 16, 2006
"Shout hallejulah c'mon get happy!"
Power Line is making hay of a Pew Research study indicating that, apparently, Republicans are happier than Democrats. It also says that only 29% of us independents are happy... but hey nobody polled me so what do I know (and I like to consider myself a pretty happy guy).Here's where Power Line demonstrates considerable narrow-mindedness:That conservatives (Republicans) are...
My favorite Idol contestant
We watched American Idol last night, the one where the judges picked the top 24 contestants (12 guys, 12 gals) who'll go on to be judged by popular vote. Yah, I though I wouldn't be getting caught up in this again, but so help me this crop of singers has some people I really, really want to see go far. This might be the best group since Season 2 (the one that produced Ruben...
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Tonight's Lost...
...was intense.I found it to be darkly ironic that Mira Furlan's character Rousseau hands Henry Gale over to Sayid for torture... when it was Furlan's character Delenn who was mercilessly tortured in the "Comes The Inquisitor" episode of Babylon 5. Anyone who watched that show will know what I'm talking about (and this is the 2nd time in 24 hours that I've linked to the Lurker's...
Wait a sec... so Cheney WAS drunk?!
From my first post about Vice President Cheney shooting a fellow hunter a few days ago:Part of me is wondering if alcoholic beverages were involved in this thing...I'll admit that it was a joke. A bad one at that. And then it comes out in an interview today that Cheney really was under the influence of alcohol:Cheney on TV: Takes Blame for Shooting But 'Unapologetic' About Aftermath, Admits Drinking One Beer at LunchBy Joe Strupp and Greg MitchellPublished:...
Outbound Flight: Star Wars novel soars with Zahn at the helm
Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn is one of the best Star Wars novels I've read in a very long time.But first: Has it really been fifteen years?I mean, there's now been more time elapsed since Heir to the Empire, than there was between its release and the premiere of Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977. And even then that seemed like an awful long time.It was a morning in May of...
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Andreas Katsulas - G'Kar and the One-Armed Man - has passed away
The sad news is just now hitting the wires that Andreas Katsulas has died of lung cancer at the all-too-young age of 59.Katsulas was a Shakesperean actor who appeared in performances all around the world. But what I'll never, ever forget about him was his portrayal of G'Kar, the Narn ambassador on the television series Babylon 5. Starting from the very first time I saw him...
Happy Lupercalia to you and yours
From an article at Wikipedia...In Ancient Rome, the day of February 15 was Lupercalia, the festival of Lupercus, the god of fertility, who was represented as half-naked and dressed in goat skins. As part of the purification ritual, the priests of Lupercus would sacrifice goats to the god, and after drinking wine, they would run through the streets of Rome holding pieces of...
Monday, February 13, 2006
New look and other stuff
As both of my faithful readers have no doubt noticed, this blog underwent a dramatic facelift over the past few days. I'm still tweaking some things but for the most part I really like how it turned out. There are no more vast acreages of blank black space on the sides, and it's not so color-clashy as the original scheme was. It seems to read a lot easier too. The original template will still be "active" for posts dated before my "overhaul notice",...
Bid on eBay for lunch with King Richard
This is one of the coolest charity fundraisers I've ever heard of: an eBay auction for lunch with NASCAR legend Richard Petty and his wife Lynda. All the money goes to Communities In Schools, an outfit devoted to encouraging young people to get their education. As of this writing the high bid (of 14 so far) is $760, with the reserve price so far not being met: I'd guess...
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Just realized something about Cheney...
Dick Cheney is now the first Vice-President to have shot someone since Aaron Burr. It was in 1804 while serving as VP under Thomas Jefferson that Burr had his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton. That was the first and last time a sitting veep got someone with a firearm... until this weekend.(I always thought that it shoulda been Burr who got his face on the ten-dollar bill......
Dick Cheney shoots fellow hunter: Is Ana Lucia on Lost really VP's lovechild?
This sounds way too much like what happened on Lost when Ana Lucia shot Shannon: The Vice-President of the United States unloaded his shotgun on a 78-year old man during a hunting trip in Texas this weekend.Does this sound like someone who's very responsible with firearms to you?Armstrong said Cheney turned to shoot a bird and accidentally hit Whittington.Well, it was sort of easy to figure that Cheney was the trigger-happy sort. Never thought he'd...
Saturday, February 11, 2006
"Change, my dear..."
This place is due for an overhaul. I'm working on a lot of new stuff - template, graphics, etc. - that I'll be doing some trial-and-error with this weekend and the next few days. Hopefully a better/more fun and engaging blog will emerge from the wreckage. In the meantime if something goes way off-kilter on this page, it's prolly just me monkeying behind the scenes and I'll try to have it fixed in a jiffy ...
Friday, February 10, 2006
Look at what they've gone and done to Juggernaut!
The more I've heard about X-Men III: The Last Stand over this past year, the more I've come to dread it. The X-Men movies had two solid installments (X2 was in some ways much better than the original even, which is pretty rare) but if even half the stuff I'm hearing about this next chapter is true, well this is going to be a pretty sucky movie. Which is sad 'cuz it does...
Phil Brown passes
It's being reported at this hour that Phil Brown, who had a storied and colorful career but is probably best known for playing Uncle Owen in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, has died today at the age of 89.One thing I always found interesting about Brown was that he was one of the American actors who got "blacklisted" during the McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s. Brown never...
If the Internet was around in 1944...
...would Yahoo! have betrayed Anne Frank to the Nazis?The web portal giant is helping the Communist government in China track down political dissidents. At least two of them are now sitting in prison because Yahoo! handed over records that led to their arrest... for the simple crime of sending an e-mail.Why the hell is a U.S. company like Yahoo! dealing with a government that would rather see this nation destroyed? Why is any American company dealing...
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Found a Spudtrooper!
Last week I went driving around for no particular reason and wound up at the new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Mayodan (I'll refrain from once again ranting about how it makes no sense whatsoever for Rockingham County, North Carolina to have three Wal-Mart Supercenters). Anyway it had just been open for a day so I figured they might have some of the newer Star Wars loot. Including...
"Crazy Dave" Hoover is the new Meat Loaf
Three guys stick out in my mind from last night's American Idol, the first covering the "Hollywood week" part of the contest: Garet Johnson, Taylor Hicks, and "Crazy" Dave Hoover. Johnson is the cowboy who broke down in tears after seeing the ocean for the first time in his life (and he sings pretty good too): Lisa especially wants him to go far. Hicks is the gray-haired guy from Alabama who really seems to be a standout individual in terms of...
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Song Tapper: Search for music by tapping your spacebar
Lisa found this really cool website through a music educators mailing list she's on: The Song Tapper. Tap out a tune with your spacebar and the site returns you a list of songs that it probably matches. I tried this with the Dukes of Hazzard theme and the Imperial March from the Star Wars movies, and the site figured both of them out. May be good to bear this one in mind if you ever know what the song sounds like but don't know its tit...
"HEY YOU GUUUUYYYYSSS!!!" The Electric Company lights up on DVD
Hitting DVD as of yesterday is The Best Of The Electric Company! At last, the breakout PBS hit of the 1970s from the creators of Sesame Street comes home in a four-disc set. They're all here: J. Arthur Crank, Easy Reader, Jennifer of the Jungle, Fargo North: Decoder, Letterman, Paul the Gorilla, Spider-Man, the Cranky Director, DJ Mel Mounds, Road Runner, Lorelai the Chicken,...
Duke beat UNC tonight
87-83 at the Dean Dome (that's Carolina's home turf for anybody not from around here). One of the best played games I've seen in awhile. Have never been much of a Tarheel fan but I gotta say, they were in pretty fine form tonight even though they lo...
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Idol contestant sings Jigglypuff lullaby
This must be said: Donnell Bolton is a pretty bold guy. The 20-year old showed up at the American Idol audition in Austin, Texas. And how did he try to impress Simon, Randy and Paula? Donnell did the Jigglypuff song from Pokémon! This one must be seen and heard to be believed, folks. I mean... just daaaaarrn...
Greatest Star Wars action figure ever
Why am I posting so much about Star Wars lately? We were in a lull for a good while there, but in the past few days I've made three posts about it. And there's at least one more coming up in the next day or so. But in the meantime Scott Johnson has this picture on his ExtraLife blog of what may be the best Star Wars figure of all time. Thanks to AfterShock for sending...
Episodes 7-9: Star Wars Virtual Sequels laid out at last
Finding that stuff about Star Wars Legacy – the new series from Dark Horse Comics that takes place almost a century and a half after the Star Wars movies – I couldn't help but think back to something from several years ago, back when I was on staff at TheForce.net. It was gonna be a pretty ambitious and unique project, and unfortunately it didn't really take off the way I'd thought it would. I never shared much of the details about this with the...
