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...
