So I'm gonna turn to this blog's loyal readers (all two of them and maybe others?) to help me out, 'cuz I am bound and determined to see The Road as soon as I can. If you know of any theater in North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, heck maybe even Georgia and eastern Tennessee, that is currently running The Road, e-mail me at theknightshift@gmail.com and please lemme know where it can be located at. I'm seriously looking forward to watching this film (and writin' a review of it 'course :-)!
Here's the first bird that I did (for a customer), after about 30 hours of marinading and rubbing-in seasoning, as it awaits the 350 degree Fahrenheit hot oil...
Yours Truly carefully lowering the turkey in...
Frying at 3 and a half minutes per pound, this 9-pounder took 35 minutes to cook...
A little over half an hour later (a heckuva lot shorter time than basting it in an oven) this turkey is done!
Beautiful, ain't it? :-)
Now this next one is the turkey that I fried for my own family's Thanksgiving dinner. And lemme tell ya: I've never done one this big before. It weighed in at more than TWENTY AND A HALF POUNDS! I nicknamed it "The Beast", it was so monstrously large. Think the previous biggest one was about 13 pounds and I darn nearly had cardiac infarction when Dad told me how big a bird he had purchased. But, I'm always up for a challenge.
Here's "The Beast" before frying...
A turkey this big deserves something better than just still pics, don't ya think? So how about a video clip of me lowering it into the oil...
"The Beast" took 75 minutes to thoroughly fry...
And an hour and fifteen minutes later...
That is going to be my personal standard by which all future fried turkeys will be judged. If all the rest to come can be as big and juicy and delicious as The Beast, I will be happy :-)
Well, I missed it last year (because of some circumstance that a few of you are now aware of). But it's a funny thing: now, two years since the last time I said I was thankful, I feel more thankful than ever before... and thankful for things that maybe I didn't appreciate as fully as I should have been.
Thanksgiving remains a uniquely American holiday. No other place in the world, so far as I know, has a holiday devoted to reflection upon the blessings in our lives. Yes, I know: our Jewish brethren and many other religious groups do have festivals of thanks to God. But Thanksgiving enjoys the curious place of being perhaps the one holiday with anything like a spiritual basis that is endorsed by an understandably secular government. That doesn't mean that I think Thanksgiving is a strictly "Christian" affair.. but you've gotta admit: we would all be the better for it if we spent more time thankful for what we do have, and not lamenting that which we don't.
So without further ado, here is what I am thankful for as we wind down 2009...
I am thankful, more than I can possibly express, for the very many wonderful friends that I have been blessed with throughout my life.
I am thankful that for those friendships which may have fallen by the wayside, that there is hope for the reconciliation that I fervently pray for each day.
I am thankful for my Mom and Dad, who have always been there for me... even when I have been at my lowest.
I am thankful for my sister, who is far more an inspiration than she will ever know.
I am thankful for all of my family, now spread out throughout the world...
...and thanks to Facebook we are keeping in touch with each other more than ever before!
I am thankful for the very many opportunities that God has opened up for me in recent months, and I look forward to seeing where they might take me.
I am thankful to be an alumnus of Elon University, not only because I love the school but because the Phoenix have become the team to watch in football and basketball.
I am thankful for the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County and everything - and everyone - that comes with being involved with it!
I am thankful for this blog, which in however small a way I want to believe might be an encouragement for anyone who might find their way here to take a stand and contribute their own unique voice and perspective to the world.
I am thankful for discovering the joy of Warhammer 40,000 and Monsterpocalypse this past year, and the numerous friendships that have come about from meeting to play those games.
I am thankful for YouTube, which is always there to show me how to tie a necktie whenever I need the instruction.
I am thankful to live in the country, where I can take my telescope out on any clear dark night and use it as I please without getting honked-off at light pollution.
I am thankful for getting to see my life-long best friend Chad Austin get married this past summer.
I am thankful that I get to be creative and productive, and can now get away with it after some previous stunts finally garnered me some hard-earned street cred (especially among my family ;-).
I am thankful for Fallout 3, which has to date consumed 130 hours of my life (and still counting...).
I am thankful that I am getting to learn more of the fine art of knifemaking from Dad.
But, most of all...
...I am thankful that I serve an awesome God, Who has been faithful to me even when I have not been as faithful to Him. I am thankful that His grace is sufficient to cover the unbelievable amount of shortcomings that are in my life. I am thankful that even though I do fall and make many mistakes, that He is ever there to pick me up, dust me off, and be beside me closer than a friend as I continue on the difficult, strange and at times all-out wacky journey that is life.
If am am thankful for nothing else, then I am thankful that I have Christ in my life. And I am thankful for being able to see, thirteen years later, that He is a presence in my life... and one that I want to grow all the more, for as long as I am in this world.
Chris Knight says that it's TOO EARLY for Christmas music!! Can't we wait until Friday?! If I hear ONE MORE #&@% Christmas song I will brutally murder a kitten. In the name of all that's good and holy, THINK OF THE KITTENS!!My good friend Lee Shelton (who is celebrating his first Thanksgiving as a father this year, congrats Lee!) read that, and decided that I was not nearly vehement enough about that sentiment.
And so, Lee made the following visual reinforcement...
Lee, next year I'm going to go around all month of November wearing a t-shirt with that graphic on it :-P
The planned title for the sequel is Doctor Sleep. And so far as what it would be about, King plans to revisit the story of Danny Torrance, now forty years old "...and living in upstate New York, where he works as the equivalent of an orderly at a hospice for the terminally ill. Danny’s real job is to visit with patients who are just about to pass on to the other side, and to help them make that journey with the aid of his mysterious powers. Danny also has a sideline in betting on the horses, a trick he learned from his buddy Dick Hallorann."
I'm cool with that. And a revisit to the Dark Tower series as well (which King has recently said he's working on too). Just as long as there's no follow-up to The Stand: whatever happens after that story needs to stay in our imagination.
But more tales of Danny Torrance? Sounds intriguing...
Here is that brilliant, spot-on and hilarious spoof of Ron Howard's Apollo 13 that Gene Kranz himself has taken to watching with his family as a holiday tradition.
Behold: Thanksgiving With The Kranzes...
So all the birds are now marinaded and well-rubbed in with Cajun seasoning. There'll be several more treatments throughout the day but for now "the chef" is going to take a break and do something I've hardly had time to do at all the past few months: finally get into seriously playing Batman: Arkham Asylum :-)
Folks, that is NOT from a BioShock video game! Harrison Krix out of Atlanta built that unbelievably sweet Big Daddy costume, then contacted reps with the Georgia Aquarium and got some time scheduled there for a photoshoot. With Harrison in his Big Daddy gear and his fiancée in decrepit dress and scary makeup as a Little Sister, they brought Rapture to life amid real sharks and jellyfish.
Click here for MANY more images of Harrison Krix's BioShock session at the Georgia Aquarium, including some that Harrison has made wallpaper size for your desktop (and they will certainly be made useful, of that there is no doubt :-)
Although I didn't take part in the costume parade itself (since it had been provided by the Theatre Guild with special arrangement with the Madison Fire Department) I did put on my Fireman's getup for the first time, and kept it on when we rehearsed the fire scene...
I have an entirely fresh appreciation for firefighters now, after wearing that for just one evening. It is heavy! And that's still not all of what I'll be running around in during the show. Firefighter's attire is big and bulky and gets hot inside: it's like a Snuggie from Hell. But when you think about the alternative and then realize that at the present time there is no alternative... yeah, I have to really tip my hat to the men and women who choose to do this for real.
"Technical rehearsal" is just what it sounds like: rehearsing just as we've done for the past four or five weeks, but with things like props and furniture in place, going through the lights and sounds, etc. We'll do it again tonight, and then full-blown dress rehearsals next week.
Everyone is stoked about doing this show! The kids especially are doing a terrific job. Hope y'all will get to come and see them shine :-)
If you're frustrated by poor service at a restaurant, think twice before you decide to not tip. You may be in for a bit more than just a dirty look from the waiter.Bet that's one place that's gonna lose some patronage!"Nobody, nobody wants to be forced to pay a tip or be arrested for terrible service," Leslie Pope said when her happy hour ended in handcuffs.
Pope and John Wagner were hauled away by police and charged with theft for not paying the mandatory 18 percent gratuity totaling $16 after eating at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pa. with six friends.
Pope claimed that they had to wait nearly an hour for their order and that she had to get napkins and silverware for the table herself.
"At this point I became very annoyed because I had already gone up to the bar myself to have my soda refilled because the waitress never came back," Pope said.
After the $73 bill came, the group paid for food, drinks, and tax but refused to pay the tip. After explaining the bad service to the bartender in charge, Pope claimed he took their money and called police. The couple was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car.
"I understand that, you know, we didn't pay the gratuity, but it was a gratuity, it wasn't something that was required," said Wagner.
The owner admitted that the group waited unusually long for their food, but said the pub was extremely busy that night. He said managers offered to comp the food, a claim the couple denies ever happened.
Obviously we would have liked for the patron and the establishment to have worked this out without getting the police involved," said Deputy Police Commissioner Stuart Bedics.
Police charged them with theft since the gratuity was part of the actual bill. However, it is doubtful that the charges will hold up in front of a judge. The couple is scheduled to appear in court next month.
GeekTyrant has posted a fine retrospective of Alien, including some thoughts and observations that had never occurred to me before, as well as lots of trivia that will now doubt come as new information to many people (like how H.R. Giger's designs for the Facehugger were held up by alarmed U.S. Customs agents at the airport, prompting writer Dan O'Bannon to drive on over and explain that they were meant for a horror movie).
See those legs in the foreground wearing the blue-trimmed shoes? Those are Chad Austin's legs!
Sorry girls but as nice as Chad's calves are, he is a married man as of this past summer :-P
And I'm gonna do something that I've never done before: if you maintain a blog, SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE HACKING OF THE CRU! I'm seeing the traditional press start to finally disseminate this news, but they're (perhaps understandably but that's still no excuse) being awfully slow-pokish about it. This very well might be the biggest scam in modern history, when you consider all the money that's been wasted and legislation that's been enforced in the name of "global warming". Should that make everyone "f---ing pissed"?!? Yer #&@%ed right it should!!
If sincere investigation bears out that this has been a fraud, then careers must be forever destroyed and I'll even suggest that a lot of climate con-artists need to be strung up from the nearest telephone poles by their circular reproductive units. With piano wire.
Later: writing more of the novel that I've been working on for National Novel Writing Month, which as things stand now won't be finished by the end of November because of all the good stuff that I'm finding to add into it. But what will be done by then should still be enough to meet the 150-pages needed to qualify as "done" for the month. I'll just put the finishing touches on it later :-)
Later still: painting some more of my army of Orks for Warhammer 40,000 and then laying out all my works for turkey frying on Thursday.
And done already this morning: videography of the baptisms of a friend's children at a church in Greensboro. I'd never done a baptismal job before.
Maybe someday I'll get to film a bris. But please... no tipping! :-P
Dr. d'Armond Speers wanted to observe whether baby Alec would pick up Klingon as naturally as most babies learn English or any other real language. Speers was especially giddy about the prospect of Alec's first word being "vav" (the Klingon term for "daddy"). Although Alec, now 13, doesn't speak Klingon at all, at the time "He was definitely starting to learn it... When Alec spoke back to me in Klingon his pronunciation was excellent."
This dude should have tried getting his son to speak fluent Sindarin or Quenya. Now that would have been impressive!
