"And we'll bring it back no matter what it takes..."

Remember how Smokey and the Bandit was about smuggling a lot of Coors beer from Texas to Atlanta, because at the time it was illegal for Coors to be shipped anywhere east of Texas? Well, right now I feel a bit like "Big Enos" Burdette 'cuz even though I don't drink beer, I do now have something that is still as hard to get outside of Texas today as Coors was thirty years...

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Wii are family: The things I do for the women in my life

It's now almost 2 weeks since Christmas, and Lisa is happily playing her new Nintendo Wii.Yes folks, we have a Wii. And my sister does too!How did it happen? The Thursday night before Christmas, I went to a GameStop store in Greensboro, where they were due to begin selling vouchers the next day for the Wii (which might have been the hottest item of Christmas 2007). The plan was that you buy the voucher, and your Wii comes in on January 25th. ...

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I finally have an iPod

A few days before Christmas, Lisa and I were at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh and we wound up going into the Apple Store there. That was the first time that I ever beheld the video capability of the iPod. The first thing that I thought about was that this would be a neat way to carry around my video work to show to people. It was enough to make me forget about my initial...

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Phil Link passes away at 92

The first time I ever met Phil Link, it was the fall of 1992. I was working at a sandwich shop here in Reidsville and Phil came into the place. I wound up being the one who made sandwiches for he and his wife.Phil started to gab like crazy! He asked me what my name was, and then told me a bit about himself. Turned out that he ran a well-known pharmacy in town. And he...

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Ruminations on the postcyberpunk era

Lawrence Person has published "Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto" on Slashdot. I used to be a bigtime reader of cyberpunk science-fiction in the early Nineties (William Gibson's Neuromancer was my intro to "hard" sci-fi, though I later thought Heinlein was much harder :-) and Person's treatise is an intriguing look at how that genre has now given birth to what is being called "postcyberpunk". Deep, heady stuff to be sure. Probably not something...

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The Ron Paul "Affair"

Without a doubt, the support for Ron Paul has been the most passionate and creative that I've ever seen from regular people for a candidate for President. And it's also wonderful to see that, unlike too much of modern-day politics, the pro-Paul campers aren't afraid to laugh at themselves from time to time.Check this out f'rinstance...

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2008: The year of the cultural hangover

I'm going to make a bold prediction, and Lord only knows how January 1st, 2009 will bear me out as a prognosticator. I might be totally wrong and maybe daring to be branded a "kook" for saying this.But here it is:2008 will be the year that a lot of Americans finally realize that the country they always thought they were living in doesn't exist anymore.There was much more that I had started to write that was going to elaborate upon and build up my...

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University of Georgia wins the 2008 Sugar Bowl

Final score: Georgia 41, Hawaii 10.Way to go Bulldo...

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Happy New Year 2008!

And I'm glad that those were not gunshots that I heard at midnight, but rather our upstairs neighbors who were setting off firecrackers and jovially shouting out "Happy New Year!" ...

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Looking back on 2007

I don't really feel like doing this right now. We got back from a trip out of state a short while ago and I'm way tired, among other things.But, these are the last few hours of 2007, before a whole new year rings in. So I'm going to try to do my traditional wrap-up of the preceding year.I'm not going to sugarcoat things: 2007 was a very, very rough year. In fact, of the "year-end reviews" that I've done so far on this blog, 2007 has been by far...

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Remembering Gene Saunders

I wanted to write this a few days ago, when I first heard the news. But it's been hard, folks. It still hasn't fully sunk-in that this has happened.It was June of 1988 when I first met Gene Saunders, during a summer enrichment program at Rockingham County Senior High. I took the drama elective during the program and Gene - or "Mr. Saunders" as I'm still feeling inclined...

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TRANSFORMERS: THE SCORE is still a hot seller

And over the past week it's actually become more popular (some of that might be due to Christmas shopping, no doubt). While a few days ago it was ranked around #260, the CD of Steve Jablonsky's amazing score for the movie Transformers is currently #184 in Amazon's music sales. It's also #4 in the Orchestral Pop category and #8 in Movie Scores (behind the Sweeney Todd soundtrack - which I got for Christmas - at #1 and The Polar Express at #7) and...

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A Christmas gift from 25 years ago

I couldn't let this day go by without honoring what has become without a doubt the most treasured Christmas gift that I've received over the course of my life...Christmas 1982 was dominated by the Atari 2600 (which we got that year). But more than anything else, I wanted a telescope. All my life I've been interested in astronomy, and the craze really took hold when I was...

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"'Twas the Dark Knight Before Christmas"

Merry Christmas y'all! We're having a great time here at the Knight homestead today! Last night I deep-fried up some turkeys, have hooked up with a lot of family and friends, and Santa brought all kinds of good loot this year! More on that in the next few days.Anyhoo, here's something that I found on YouTube, that I thought was too good not to share here during Christmas. Here is, "'Twas the Dark Knight Before Christmas"...

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Merry Christmas 2007!

Look, it's our Christmas tree!This year, Lisa thought it would be fun to decorate our tree with all the Star Wars ornaments that I've been collecting over the years. Which is something that I've never done before: until now, they've all been in their boxes, never removed except to momentarily oggle and admire. But after how we did up her classroom a few months ago, I guess...

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Elon University lit up for Christmas

Last night on our way back from Raleigh, Lisa and I drove through my alma mater Elon University. It's usually lit-up for the holiday season and this year is no exception. Here's the Alamance Building, as seen from the road...Here's looking the other way across the road, toward the Moseley Student Center...And here are some geese gliding atop the water at Lake Mary Nell...

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King's Inn Pizza Parlor in Eden, North Carolina

Thursday night I had a hankerin' for pizza. But not just any pizza, mind ya. No my friends: I was getting ready to go out for the night on a very special mission, that might involve some danger. And I wanted an extra-special meal to fill me up before I set out on my quest.So I called up King's Inn Pizza Parlor in Eden and ordered a pepperoni pizza for take-out...King's...

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