Category Archives: Diversions

The Radio City Christmas Spectacular


The Yogi family ventured downtown Tuesday afternoon to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at the BOK Center.

We saw why they call it a Spectacular, because it is. They had everything, the Nutcracker, Christmas Carols, Santa Claus (a bunch of Santa Clauses, he revealed the secret to why there are so many Santas floating around), a Christmas Pageant (complete with live critters, two camels, a donkey, and several sheep), ice skating (part of the thrust stage was a small ice rink), a bus tour of New York and of course the Rockettes.

The Rockettes were truly spectacular. The troupe is very fluid and precise. Their various routines are very intricate and they pulled them all of flawlessly at least to me. They did lots and lots of kicks. To the right, the left, and straight ahead. I had never seen so many legs flying around.

The special effects were also spectacular. The coordination between the video screens and the peformers on stage was unbelievable. One segment had a life size double decker tour bus on stage. Somehow, with the video screen behind the bus, it made it look like it was going on a nighttime tour of the lights of Manhattan.

The show is completely over the top in almost all respects. I loved it and recommend it highly.

We had an unexpected bonus of the show. We had bought nosebleed seats and we got a free upgrade to lower level, so it was a double upgrade. I don’t think the show would be too enjoyable from the cheap seats. We bought the tickets prior to finding out at the Carrie Underwood concert that the cheap seats are not worth having.

We had a great time. I rate the show as 4+ stars out of 4.

More Thanksgiving Weekend

Gramps continues his visit from Idaho for the Thanksgiving Holidays. As far as the critters are concerned he ought to stay permanently.

I made pancakes this morning. I do a pretty good job. These are healthy for you. They have oatmeal, egg beaters, skim milk, brown sugar. My Mother gave me the secret to pancakes way back when I was a young boy. She always told me not to turn them until 97 bubbles came up. I gave away the family pancake secret. Darn!
Also from an engineering perspective. I like to use 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. The face centered cubic pattern I use on placing the individual cakes results in the maximum area of pancake to area of grill ratio for the 1/4 cup batter portion. Later on we went to the Gilcrease Museum. Lots of photographs by Ansel Adams and of course western art. Its a family favorite. Take a look at the sculpture of the Native American with the bow behind SuperPizzaBoy. That image is going on our new license plates.

The Rat Pack Live at the Sands and Dinner at Sonoma Bistro & Wine Bar

Saturday night Sweetie and I left SuperPizzaBoy in the care of sitter Erica and ventured downtown to see the matinee of “The Rat Pack Live at the Sands.” at the PAC.

The show is a recreation of the shows that Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, junior gave at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas during the early 1960s. Obviously not knowing much of anything about the original shows but having seen Frank, Dean, and Sammy plenty on tv during my childhood, I loved the show. The guys, Setphen Triffitt, David Hayes, and Phil Barley as Frank, Sammy, and Dean respectively could really sing.

My favorite was David Hayes. He sang a unique version of “Mr. Bojangles” that made it actually sound like a song. I hate sloppy songs and Mr. Bojangles is the worst ever but I liked Mr. Hayes version tremendously.

The little one liners they tossed out and zingers from Frank and Dean toward Sammy were entertaining also although the audience missed the some of the jokes.

Guys, the ladies playing the Burelli Sisters did a very nice job also.

It was a very satisfying show and I recommend it highly.

Afterward, Sweetie and I had dinner in Brookside at Sonoma Bistro & Wine Bar. We were looking for something a little unique and decided on this. It is a nice little restaurant with a huge wine list many of them by the glass and a small but interesting menu. They told us that they use local and organic ingredients so they are very politically correct. But hey, is the food good, heck yeah, the food is great. I had chicken and avocado sandwich with a cup of tomato bisque , Sweetie had a cobb salad.

I splurged and spent more on the glass of wine that I had than on my meal. Something about good wine just makes it taste a lot better than the rotgut I get.

Dinner was great. I would go back.

Time to get back to reality. SuperPizzaBoy had his friend “N” over for a sleepover Saturday night.

Kids World

Big weekend for SuperPizzaBoy. Birthday party Friday night and then his friend Q had a sleep over at our house. After a nutritious sprinkle donut breakfast and a mentally stimulating multihour videogame session we headed to the fairgrounds for Kids World International Festival put on by the Tulsa Global Alliance.

Its kind of an old school idea, that understanding cultures besides our own is of some benefit. I am not sure it leads to world peace or whirled peas but it was fun today.

Each child gets a passport and then goes to booths representing many different countries and organizations to get their passport stamped and maybe engage in an activity. Everything from trying out wooden shoes from the Netherlands to crayon rubbings to coloring to receiving a sample cd of songs from the Tulsa Opera. We spent a couple hours there and saw it all.

SPB and Q showing off their fish rubbings.

SPB showing some karate moves at the Japan booth.

Dum dum, you give me gum gum!

Little Dixie Halloween

For Halloween we drove down to Nana’s house in Southeast Oklahoma.

Sweetie as the Mad Scientist.

Link (aka SuperPizzaBoy) demonstrating spin attack.


The Mad Scientist found her own little sweetie.

Yogi, not to be outdone, found his own sweetie.
Can we trade in our smelly stinky boy for one or two of these?


OK, John its http://crustygasguy.blogspot.com. No www, no dot com,

Forget it, lets have another beer.

No I don’t want to look at your phone. Yea, its great,

Hey let me know when you figure out how to make a phone call on it.

Yep, John, I’m putting you on my blog.

After all, you are one of the top 20 hair guys in southern Pushmataha County!

HallowZooEen

Early this week we went to the Tulsa Hallowzooeen. We go every year. This year we went earlier in the week than we normally do. We were rewarded with no crowds and more pleasant people. The folks handing out the candy were a lot less stressed and more generous.

We were in and out in less than an hour. It wasn’t like we were in a hurry.

SuperPizzaBoy likes the pretty girls. (Don’t say that, its embarrassing Dad!)

Grrrr, I’m not Robin Hood, I’m Link. Can’t you see the shield?

Making off with lots of candy.

Stab attack on the Tigers on the way home.

Carrie Underwood Concert

Wednesday night we left left SuperPizzaBoy with Clara the sitter and Sweetie and I headed downtown to the BOK Arena to see Carrie Underwood.

She put on quite a show. She is even more beautiful live than on TV. She is really gorgeous. She was like #2 gorgeous woman in Oklahoma that night. She wore some really nice outfits. Her first dress was very short. As she was going down a runway into the audience bending down shaking hands she said “I’m glad I’m wearing shorts under this dress tonight.” I strained my eyes really hard, I couldn’t quite see her shorts.

She can really belt it out and sing and is really personable. It is very hard to believe that it has been just since 2005 since she won American Idol.

The production was good, the only cheesy thing was the video montage, during a costume change, of her winning multiple awards during the years. Its like, OK Carrie, we know that you are a big star. After all we bought tickets to be here girl. Also, its about time she dropped the “oh golly gosh, I can’t believe I’m a star, and I’m just from Checotah, Oklahoma and I’ve been to Nashville, and I’ve been to Hollywood, and I’ve been to New York City, and I just can’t believe that all that is happening to little ole me and everybody is being so nice to me” rap. We know that you are a star Carrie! Start acting like one.

You can tell that she had true fans there. The fans sang the hit songs right back at her word for word. We were at a Garth Brooks concert once and he said that was the highest tribute that a fan could make toward a singer, singing the song back. I think it is a little strange myself.

Carrie still has a sweetness to her. She had her 5 year old niece on stage to help sing “American Girl” and she had an infant nephew in her arms in another song until they had to cut it short because he started crying. Neither song went quite to plan but Carrie looked she didn’t mind a bit.

Another thing was that when she was done singing, she said good night, the house lights came on, and the audience hauled ass for the parking lots. No encore, no nothing. What is up with that? I’ve never been to a concert that didn’t have an encore. Is that a country concert thing. The only other country concert I’ve been to was Garth Brooks. He had an encore, he’d of sang all night I think.

Maybe she sang all her songs and didn’t have any left.

I like her and all that and am proud of her being from Oklahoma but really and truly I’m can’t help but think that if she had she just stuck it out with Tony Romo the Dallas Cowboys would be doing much better than they are. I just don’t think that Tony ever got over the breakup.

One final note on the venue. The nosebleed seats at the BOK Arena are not very satisfying. They are too high up and the video screens are occluded by some strange apparatus. The sound was kind of muddy up there compared to the Eagles where we were fortunate to sit quite a bit lower.

Anyways, it was nice to go see Ms. Underwood. She put on a good show.

I rate it a 3 stars out of 4. Great voice and performance were huge plusses. Cheesy self promotion video and no encore slight minuses. Venue problems not her fault.

Open House

Our across the street neighbors, Mark and Julie, are scraping us off the bottom of their shoes and moving to a bigger house in a fancier neighborhood. They are actually good neighbors but they are leaving and of course we are glad that they are moving up in the world a little a little bit, will miss them, and wish them well.

First however, the neighbors get even by engaging in one of life’s guilty pleasures. We have been looking forward to it all week. Ever since their realtor put a sign out front announcing an open house this weekend. Oh boy, we get to see what they have done to the house, and what kind of furniture they have and how they have decorated. We get to go through the whole house! We even get to peek in their closets.

So we went. The house looks great. Julie has decorated well. The landscaping in the back is great, their granite counter tops in the bathroom look really good.

This is fun, who else in the neighborhood is leaving?

The Eagles are coming! and we are going!


Last week the city announced that the Eagles are opening up the BOK Center on September 6. Soon thereafter my employer announced that they had some $192 seats that they were going to lottery to the employees for purchase. I won! I guess I won. Winning will cost me $192. That will buy a lot of cd’s.

Oh well, it will be a great anniversary occasion.

Note: Photo courtesy of digitalart2 on Flickr under creative common license.

Cradle of Rome

One Sunday our pastor. who is normally a fairly serious guy, especially when it comes to salvation, diverged on a sermon about his addiction to a computer game called “Cradle of Rome.” I had to try it and I became addicted. I told Sweetie about it and she became addicted to it also. We are too cheap to pay for it so we played the crippled free version that took you only so far and graphics are not very good also.

Then Sweetie did a very bad thing. She found a site where you could play for free. Bad news. We would start playing at 8 pm after SuperPizzaBoy went to bed. I’d look up and it would be 2 in the morning. I managed to kick my addiction.

See if you can resist the game. Personally I don’t dare start again.