Little Willie's senseless ramblings

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Live to Ride, Ride to Live...

Finally, after literally months of wanting to, I got a chance to ride my hog to Springfield. I've been wanting to go to Hall's to get a Tshirt ever since I saw where it was (we drove past it when we went to the airport for our Nevada trip). Since then, it was too hot, or it was raining, I had to work, it was my birthday, or any number of things. Today was finally my day. It was a nice ride down old route 36...

I've done this on 2 wheels before, but it's been 25 years ago. My friend Kevin and I decided we were going to venture to Springfield -- why? I don't know, because it was there I guess. I was riding his Jawa moped, and he was riding his bicycle. I was carrying our provisions (water, lunches, jars of premeasured 2-cycle oil for fuel stops on the moped) and providing wind blocking for Kevin. We did fine until we reached the end of old 36, and couldn't figure out how to get into town (old 36 merges into the interstate, a no-no for bicycles and mopeds). So we stopped a nearby house, and they told us where we needed to go -- and we made it in town. We stopped at a motorcycle dealership (not Hall's, my destination this trip). Kevin was exhausted though, so we called his girlfriend to come over and pick him up, while I made the long trip solo back home.

Needless to say, this trip was a little different. No one got sick, I didn't carry any provisions along with me (except for a wallet with plastic in it), and the whole trip there and back took less time than the trip home the first time.

It was louder though...

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Ha Ha Ha

Slate.com 's funny for the day....

http://www.slate.com/id/2172692/

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

If at first you can't remember, write something else...

I was in the shower this morning, thinking of something that would have made a good blog entry -- then forgot what it was by time I had a chance to write it. This happens a lot...

So, I'll write about what I was thinking of yesterday -- Movies. I ended up watching quite a few last week. Matthew was over, and since he hadn't seen it before, we put "Wild Hogs" on the projector downstairs and watched it. It gave me a chance to pay more attention to some of the details (for example, Tim Allen's character is riding a Fat Boy -- something I notice more often these days) than I did when we saw it at the theater.

I also watched "Epic Movie" -- You know, film spoofs are more fun when they don't trot out send ups of every picture made the year before and beat you ever the head with it. "Airplane", "Young Frankenstein" "Blazing Saddles" "High Anxiety" (almost any Mel Brooks film), the incredibly under-appreciated "The Big Bus" -- all great, this one only so-so. Still, it was nice to see that Crispin Glover could have been almost as weird as Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka.

"Monster's Ball" is a probably the best movie you haven't wanted to see -- but it offers so much. For the tawdry folks, it offers a very nude Halle Berry -- for the artistic integrity audience, it features Halle Berry earning a much deserved Academy Award -- for the hip hop audience, it features Sean "Puff Daddy/P Diddy" Combs -- for the i-hate-hip hop audience it features Sean "Puff Daddy/P Diddy" Combs being executed in the electric chair -- for the Tiger Beat set, you get Heath Ledger -- for the codger set you get "Everybody Love's Raymond"s Peter Boyle. Ok, so it's got Billy Bob Thornton in it -- but his performance is every bit as good as Halle Berry's. The only thing I found jarring about the film was in the use of music -- many times in the film there was no soundtrack trying to lead you emotionally to where the script was maybe failing to. Only at the end do we get this VanGellis / Mark Isham lonely horn stuff interfering with a very well told story. In fact, I watched it edited over the weekend, and it's every bit as good whether you see Halle naked or not...

I don't know if the same could be said for "Black Snake Moan" -- no Halle Berry doesn't get naked in this one, Christina Ricci does. But both films contain a healthy dose of inter-racial sex, growing up, changing attitudes, and redemption. There's almost enough of the actual actors singing in this film to call it a musical. Strangely enough, Justin Timberlake doesn't sing a note...

While watching other things, I flicked back and forth during "Enter the Dragon", "The house of Flying Daggers", and what I thought was "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" but now I'm not so sure. I do know that Flying Daggers will be a film I will look out for -- not that I generally enjoy this type of film, but sometimes something catches my eye (it also is similar to some of the anime I have -- Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai Champloo). The thing that really got my attention on this was the music in the last scene -- it reminded me so much of something I already had. Then it occurred to me it was similar to something from "Kill Bill" -- which makes sense, because I think Tarantino had something to do with getting Flying Daggers released in our country.

So what to watch next? I picked up "300" a little while back -- The girl at the WalMart checkout said she wanted me to tell her how it ended. I said I hadn't seen it yet, but that they all die at the end. "Really, how did you know?" "it's a historical fact" "You mean this really happened?" "don't you ever watch the History Channel?" Needless to say, her interest was really peaked by then -- so maybe I'll watch that one next.

Or maybe not...

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Help Wanted

I'm in the process of filling out a job application. I don't think there's anything I find more annoying than that -- that's probably why I stay at jobs for too long, it's such a pain to find a new one. But this one is getting old and pointless so it's time to move on.

One problem I have is the fact that places disappear soon after I leave them. Richland Community College is still there, and at least one of the people I worked for is still around, so that's good -- but it was 20 years ago. my first, big, real job was for a greeting card company. I was there just over 8 years when they began to jettison employees. They downsized to a marketing company about 10 years ago, and completely ceased to exist about 5 years ago. Gateway is still around, but they closed up the Country Stores about 6 months after I left to take a job at Officemax. Officemax is still around, but the store I worked in closed 6 months after they fired me. WDZ/WDZQ changed owners about 5 times. Bloomington Computer Service Company -- their sign disappeared several years ago, along with most of their customer base in this area. Performance Planners -- never amounted to a lot of money for me, or the owner, so he sold it off and moved to Michigan. Where I'm at now has closed one store since I've been here, and they've cut the hours at this one -- which is why I'm looking to move.

Before this place disappears too...

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Reminiscing

I just noticed today that part of my past has been obliterated. The Steak 'n' Shake on Eldorado is gone. Oh sure, it hasn't been a S'n'S for several years, but the building held a lot of memories. My family used to have Friday night dinners there all the time -- the waitresses knew us by name. Saw my first Harley's there (or at least motorcycles that I knew were Harley's). It's probably the last place I saw Nancy Smith (the girl who got me on motorcycles in the first place -- no, she's not dead (that I know of) I just lost track of her). Even took several dates there.

True story: Kevin and Julie, Bill Poarch, and myself -- about 2 am -- we'd just gotten out of a midnight Rocky Horror show, and stopped at Steak 'n' Shake for some hot fudge sundaes. All of the sudden there was a huge bang as some drunken idiot decided to turn the store into a drive thru! He made a real mess of the glass airlock on the front of the building, but didn't manage to penetrate the restaurant itself. We talked about that for weeks.

Now there's gravel where the building used to be.

PS: Around Decatur, Eldorado is spelled as one word and pronounced "ell - doe - RAY - doe" (or frequently, just Eldo), as opposed to spelling as 2 words El Dorado and pronouncing as "Ell - doe - rah - doe". What can we say, we live in the state that pronounces Cairo as "Kay - roe"...

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Spector of the Gun

I caught up with the Phil Spector murder trial this morning -- didn't even know it was still going on to be honest. I guess as celebrity crimes go, an aging and increasingly irrelevant hipster doesn't warrant the attention a sports hero or former TV star do. He acts as weird as he looks, which isn't helping his defense much, and the people around him are even loopier than he is. I only follow the mess because he used to be a big time music producer -- and I dig music.

But not his so much... He is (in)famous for his "Wall of Sound" that graced the recordings of many 60's artists, and was the spiritual precursor to Meatloaf and Jim Stienam. He also produced the lamest of the Beatles albums (Let it Be). I prefer a "Wall of Music" to a "Wall of Sound" -- the Christian group delerious? does the "Wall of Music" better than anyone I've listened to in recent months (they also do praise music that I find really dull). Spector just tossed in a bunch of instruments and huge plate reverbs -- delerious? layers in guitars, synths, vocals, processed vocals, and percussion in a way that you hear when each comes in and when each goes out.

So... what's the point? I guess there isn't much of one, except that I always thought Phil Spector was a little overated, and now I think he's a whole lot nuts. And I bet Lana Clarkson would wish she'd never met him...

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

So just what have I been up to lately?

Well, for starters, I'm writing this again. Even with the neat new autosave (even after having manually saved it a couple of times) I leave work, go home to finish this -- and it was gone. So all that typing went to the big old byteyard in the sky, completely bypassing Blogger's safety net.

I'm working less -- the owner went over the books for the store and found he'd lost $50 last month. So he decided to cut my hours and my paycheck $400 a month so he could be profitable again. Never mind the fact that my boss spends too much time traveling back and forth to our store an hour away, and that she and the other gal get way too much overtime. My boss doesn't really seem to care too much, after all, her dad -- I mean the owner -- isn't going to get on her case too much.

I've been trying to tame my yard -- it's a fairly new house (<1 yr old) and the front was sodded, while the sides and back were seeded. Unfortunately, the side over by the driveway has never come in very well. I've tried all sorts of stuff this year to fix it, new seed, fertilizer, watering, patchmaster -- all that has come up is crab grass. Plus it's spreading to the sod in the front (there are still a lot of vacant lots in our neighborhood where this stuff runs wild). I have my work cut out for me.

We've been working on the garage -- we'd really like to get at least 1 car in the garage this winter, and my Harley out of the storage room. It has been extremely hot lately, and after about an hour you have to stop for the day. But not anymore, we have a portable air conditioner unit we bought one year when the central air quit on the house in Marion -- that unit is now in our garage bringing the temperature and humidity down to workable levels. We just have to keep the doors closed.

The praise band at church has been invited to play at the Gospel /Hospitality tent at this years Pony Express Days. We all agree on 2 things -- Yes we want to play, and No, we aren't playing Gospel music. We tend to like things a bit more contemporary than that...

So that should catch everyone up. Next time I'll see if I can't come up with a more typical rant and rave.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Wierd

The post I wrote 24 hours ago is still not showing up on this machine. Blogger says it's there, and I'm pretty sure it showed up on my machine at home last night. And now Blogger crashes while typing this post (this is the second try).

Wierd...