“Splinterheads” the Geocaching Movie

Splinterheads is a new movie coming, maybe. It might be the fifth best movie ever made. I’m pretty sure of that even though I’ve never seen it. (Chinatown, Cars, Down With Love, and Dr. Zhivago hold down the 1 through 4 spots, forever.)

I am not even sure this movie will even make it to Tulsa.
I don’t care, its going to be great, trust me.
You know how I know?
Because it involves Geocaching.
Here is a Teaser.

It is about more than geocaching. Here is the trailer.

The secret is out now. The reason I love geocaching has nothing to do with being outside and using gadgets that get satellite signals to find stuff. Its all about the women taking their clothes off in their lust to find caches. Its all ruined now. I’ll have to take up scrap booking or something like that. Do they still have lessons on that.

Check out the web site. Who knows what the distribution plans are?

Reading a Book a Day

Do you like to read?

Do you like to read a lot?

Could you read a book a day?

Could you write a review a day for the books you read?

For a year?

Longer?

Nina Sankovitch can and does. Look at her blog. Read All Day. It is simply amazing.

What hooked me on her blog is this, excerpted from her September 20, 2009 update about what makes a good book:

“I usually know within the first few sentences of a book that the writer has the magic to hold me tight while transporting me far away; I know almost right away that I will stick with this author — or NOT — through the whole book, that I am sunk in good and hard no matter whether I am made ecstatic with the journey or uncomfortable with the truth or sad with the reality or turned on by the randy bits and disgusted by the yucky bits, I am there for the duration, and beyond.”

That’s me exactly. I can tell right away if I am going to like a book. I may decide to read it even if the first few sentences grab me, but I won’t like it very much.

What about you? Can you tell immediately if you are going to like a book or does it take a while for you to decide? Tell us!

When I am sick, or on a beach vacation, I can read a book a day. Nothing else is happening though.

I have enough OCD that if I got started I could keep going.

I wouldn’t be messing with Facebook anymore. Boy that would be a big loss. Right? Wrong.

I wouldn’t watch the Dallas Cowboys any more. Yeah, I’m trying to think what I would miss from that.

It would be the only thing I blog about. Don’t laugh!

No more geocaching. As Sweetie cheers.

How about you?

Could you do it?

Would you want to do it?

What would you have to give up?

When are you going to start?

“Backspacer” by Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam, that old grunge band from Seattle released Backspacer September 20. I went ahead and bought the thing without knowing any of the tracks and have been playing it over and over.

It has a couple songs that I really like “Unthought Known” and “Force of Nature.” There are not any songs that I dislike. The cd just doesn’t have anything that makes you want to play a song over and over again. You can go to the bands web site and listen to 30 second samples of the songs.

A “Making of Backspacer” video on Youtube. Pretty interesting.

My negative comment about the cd is the quality of the recording. The music is mushy and not very clear. I use the same car cd player that I use for everything else. The same mush quality comes through on the web site when I play the samples. What’s the deal?

All in all this is a sound but not spectacular rock CD. I give it two stars out of four. Which is still good. Better sound quality would have made it a 2.5 star cd.

LJ and Chrissy Go at it

We have a male cat, LJ, about a year old. He is the bottom critter on the totem pole in the Yogi household. He is the only male animal we have and he struts around and tries to boss the ladies around but they ignore him. He tries to take one of them down every once in a while, especially Chrissie, our Main Coon who is the Queen Critter of the house.

Here is there latest battle of the cats.

Better luck next time LJ. You need to get a little bigger. She has too much leverage on you.

“Fearless” by Taylor Swift

Sweetie and I went to see Taylor Swift in concert a couple weeks ago. I didn’t recognize many of the tunes because I didn’t have the latest CD “Fearless.” So I bought the CD and the songs are great but I swear I hadn’t heard many before except the melodies are similar.
You see her show is a Rock Concert!! and the CD is Pop. So even if you have the CD you have to go see the show.
Her voice was a lot more full and dynamic live. On the CD she sounds quite frankly like a whiny 18 year old girl singing clever but whiny songs.
I give the CD 3 stars out of 4. Which is still great, and she is only going to get better as she gets older, if she keeps her head on straight.

“Fresh Horses” by Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks has been retired for some time now in a suburb of Tulsa. There has been lots of Garth sitings in and around town and all the people I’ve talked to that have run into him describe him as totally unassuming and friendly. So I’m happy that he has retired. I suspect though that he has just a twinge of anxiety, not much, but just a little itch that he can’t scratch. He can rest easy now.”
I heard that just a few minutes ago he bust into his house with the big news:
“Hey Tricia darling, guess what, Yogi finally reviewed my Fresh Horses album from 1995 and he likes it! He gave it four stars of four!” “Yeah, he liked ALL the songs.” “I was so worried little Darlin.” “Now I can quit for good. My whole life has merely been preparation for this positive Yogi review. My life is fulfilled.”
“I know he’s a nerd twerp, and he bought the cd used, but he is cheap darling, he won’t buy my new ones so he bought an old one.” “Ah forget it Tricia, you just don’t get it. He couldn’t borrow the cd from a friend because he doesn’t have any friends.”
You cannot live in Oklahoma without loving Garth Brooks. He is a heck of an artist and a very generous person.

Parallel Play: Growing Up with Undiagnosed Asperger’s by Tim Page

Those of us who are parents of children who have Asperger’s Syndrome, a variant of autism, have lots of worries. We worry about their social life and fret about their friendships. We worry about their education (boy do worry about their education!) We worry about the various therapies that are available and whether we have made the right choices. Parents of children who have special needs of any type worry a lot. And that’s on top of all the normal worries that any parent has about their children.
Most of all we worry about how they are going to make their way in the world once we are gone. We want them to be financially secure, fulfilled in their work, and happy. We worry about what they are going to do.
We hear that various historical figures may have had Asperger’s Syndrome like Ludwig van Beethoven, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, and Jonathan Swift. That  lifts us up but how does fascination with Bakugan and Sponge Bob Square Pants translate into being the next Albert Einstein? Most of us don’t expect Einstein we just want them to have a job and be self supporting. A spouse would be great, kids would be wonderful.
Some of us parents hunger for stories of those that have made their way. Tim Page is one of those guys. He is in his mid 50’s and he didn’t get diagnosed until a few years ago. Tim is a Pulitzer Prize winning music critic. He has written a  book that talks about his life from early childhood until he got out of college.
He had it kind of rough. He had no social skills or instincts at all. He never felt connected to his peers or his family. He didn’t do that well in school in fact he got thrown out of one. He made it though. It wasn’t pretty. He consumed lots of acohol, smoked dope, dropped acid but he still made it. He had an intense interest in music.

He started by playing his parents records over and over and learning all about them. And it went from there. He also made home made films as a child. He had a creative spark and drive and he never gave up.

This book is great. It is not a “pretty” story about how overcame his disability by hard work and help from  teachers, pastors, sunday school classes, the Bible, boy scouts, sports, and a paper route. It is about a bewildered kid trying to figure out why he didn’t fit in and who had a passion for music and pursued it. He had loving but also bewildered parents. He had various adults take an interest in him but Tim Page made it on his own.
How much better can we do now that we know how to diagnose and treat youngsgters with Asperger’s Syndrome? A bunch I hope.
This is a great book. If you want to read the story of somebody who has Asperger’s Syndrome this is good. He doesn’t provide any great insights into therapies or advance any theories he just tells his story. The book is well written and compelling. It is short. I read it in two days. Sweetie is reading it now.

Whip It – The Movie

I had last Friday off and so after we dropped  SuperPizzaBoy off at his school we ate breakfast and then went to see Whip It. It sounded mildly interesting to me but I really wanted to see Zombieland. I mean Drew Barrymore as a director. Cmon.
Well we made the right choice. The movie is great. Ellen Page plays a lonely little slacker girl who resists the beauty pageant ideas that her mom has. Somehow she ends up at a Roller Derby tryout and makes the team. Then it turns out that she is good at it.
Ms. Page does great but the Roller Derby girls are the stars of this film. They strut, swagger, swear, cuss, drink, and fight. Drew Barrymore even has a roleas a skater and it looks she is having fun!!
The movie makes a head fake towards a cheap teenage romance, coming of age type thing, but gets back to the skating.
I rate it four out of four. Go see it. Check out the web site. You can find out what your roller derby girl name is. Mine is “Valentine Thumper.” You can get a roller derby poster made with a picture you upload but I couldn’t get it to work. “Ugly fat guy detection software” in place?
This movie is fun. If you like football and hockey, you will love this movie. If you like to see girls fight, you will like this movie.

Perfect Pairing – “I’ll Fly Away”

I love weddings. The brides are so beautiful, happy, and radiant. The bride’s parents, different story. They are stressed. They are also considerably poorer.  The groom, they look happy generally, most of  the time anyway. Modern weddings take considerable time, money, and attention to detail. I try and pay attention to the little things like the altar flowers, and the pew flowers and the little details. Somebody sweated bullets and paid a fortune for them and so I try and take notice. Anyway, weddings, I love’em.

A week or so ago Sweetie, Nana, and I went to a wedding. Sweetie and Nana were friends of the brides parents. I had met them but didn’t know them really. I had never seen the bride or groom.

The wedding was beautiful. These Generation Y weddings, what can you say about the Groom and his groomsmen? Nice guys, I like the fist bumps they gave each other as they came up one by one. The bridesmaids were grinning ear to ear. They were pretty also. I mean, pretty as they could be in the dresses they had to wear. (Just kidding, the bridesmaids really were very pretty.)

This wedding had something a little different. I had never seen it before. Afterward they left for the reception in a helicopter. No lie!!! I was there to document the whole thing.

Here they come:
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Here they are at the chopper. Notice the bride has changed to her cowboy boots. I got into a discussion with a lady next to me who claimed that the bride wore the boots during the ceremony. I respectfully told her that nope, the bride wore appropriate shoes for the occasion. I saw them. She disagreed, She’s wrong.

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Off they go, we saw them later at the reception.

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Anyway, I’m going with another hymn on this perfect pairing. Instead of using an out of context Bible quote. I’m going to use an out of context hymn: “I’ll Fly Away.” Lucky for you Allison Krause is going to sing it instead of me.