I’ll admit, I have had my doubts regarding the new Knight Rider movie / series pilot. After having watched it, I found it to be enjoyable. I have some beefs, but nothing can’t deal with. The use of magical nano technology again annoys me, but I guess it could be worse. The biggest offense was a scene where a SUV traveling at high speed crashes into magical nano tech K.I.T.T. and yet K.I.T.T. reacts as if it were a brick wall, with absolutely NO movement on it’s part. That was WAY to unbelievable. I did like the bullet proofing / auto regeneration aspect much better than the original series’ chemically bonded impervious shell thing… The overall story wasn’t to bad, and did a decent job of trying to tie this new version into the old series. The new K.I.T.T. seems a bit uptight, but I think that will probably evolve, and actually seemed to do so some during the life of the movie. My 2nd biggest complaint was the 1st hour seemed to be a big Ford commercial. Almost every car on the road was a ford, and there were CONSTANT shots of the mustang, and cobra logos…
Overall I would certainly watch a new series if it kept the “tech magic” down, and focused on the story line, one man and his intelligent car making a difference.
I have the flu… have had it since Tuesday…
Turns out this years flue vaccine is only about 40% effective because a number of the flu viruses mutated to a form unexpected… yippee…
I was watching the press conference on the shootings and some idiot just asked… “so was there an emergency guide hanging in that classroom? and if so, what page would students have needed to refer to?”
??!!?!?
HOLY CRAP!!! 22 people shot at NIU!!! at least 6 dead… HOLY CRAP!!! Geology class at Cole hall… HOLY CRAP!!! Gunman is one of the dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound. Seems a shotgun and 2 handguns were involved, 1 glock, one unknown. Gunman burst through the door, said nothing, and started firing. Many of the wounds are head wounds.
Professor Joseph Peterson was shot, but is in good condition.
Police response time was under 2 minutes.
18 victims were transported to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb:
- Eight victims are in stable condition
- Six victims are in good condition
- Four victims are in critical condition and two of those victims were transported to regional hospitals
Chicago Tribune is now reporting as of 6:20, that there are now 5 dead.
As of 6:55 the Kishwaukee hospital website had the following details:
17 patients have arrived.
6 – critical condition
2 flown to Saint Anthony Hospital
3 flown to Good Samaritan Hospital
1 flown to Rockford Memorial Hospital
3 – discharged
2 – admitted to Kishwaukee Community Hospital
1 – fatality confirmed, unidentified male (not identified as the gunman)
—-
Update form press conference:
6 fatalities
4 female, 2 male.
Baked Salmon with Dill Mustard Sauce
1 (2- to 3-pound) salmon fillet, 1 1/2-inches thick
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Coarse kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard
2 tablespoons minced fresh dill weed
2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line the bottom of an ungreased broiling pan with aluminum foil and spray broiler rack with vegetable-oil cooking spray. Wash salmon and pat dry. Rub with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse salt and pepper, and place skin-side down onto rack.
In a small bowl mix together mayonnaise, sour cream, parsley, Dijon mustard, dill weed, lemon juice, salt, and pepper; cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.
Bake salmon, uncovered, 8 to 12 minutes or until a meat thermometer registers an internal temperature of 140 to 145 degrees F (salmon will be slightly opaque in thickest part). NOTE: During this time the salmon continues to cook (meat temperature will rise 5 to 10 degrees after it is removed from the oven) and the juices redistribute. Carefully remove salmon from pan and transfer onto individual serving plates. Serve with the cold mustard dill sauce.
Approximately cooking times for salmon:
1/4 to 1/3-inch – 3 to 4 minutes
1/2 to 3/4-inch – 4 to 6 minutes
1 to 1 1/2-inch – 8 to 12 minutes
Makes 4 to 6 servings.
During the pancake breakfast “Black Bart”, “Bilgemunky”, and I approached a table where the kids were dressed in their own costumes. One of the two boys looked like a little napoleon. We immediately addressed him as Admiral. The boy was rather timid, and refused to speak to us at all. Somehow the topic of walking the plank came up. When we hit on that, the kid drew his plastic sword and thrust it towards Ian, then wiggled it to a side. “What? Me admiral? You want me to walk the plank?” The kid nodded. Bilgemunky and I then led “Black Bart” off to walk the plank. After Bart lept, we all three returned to the table. The “Admiral”, now grinning, then pointed his sword at me. I was then led away, as we walked, I noticed the gym floor, it was comprised entirely of wood slats… so I stepped off the rug, and walked as if on a tight rope, balancing upon one row of planks. “I’m walkin’ the plank… yup this is me… plank walkin… oh woe… the admiral made me walk the plank…” After my splashing, we returned again to the Admiral. He then pointed at “Bilgemunkey” motioning for him to now take his turn. “And I thought I was going to get away without having to walk the plank” Ian, and I led Bilgemunky off to his fate, after his “long walk” we returned once again. (Gluttons for punishment) When we returned the Admiral tried to get one of us to repeat the walk, we declined and made our separate ways off to other tables.
I latched onto the “walking the plank” idea, and started wandering the room balancing on the floor planks. With ever few steps I announced what I was doing… “Yup… walkin’ the plank.. this is me.. plank walkin’… look at all these plank’s ta be walkin’…” As I progressed I noticed a number of people smiling and even a few shaking their head in disbelief. Before long though a few of the kids caught on, and followed me along for a bit in a “plank walking parade”
Happy Birthday Richelle and Katie!
On Sunday I was part of the “Breakfast with the Pirates” event. This is basically a pancake breakfast, with pirates wandering around talking to people having breakfast, or sitting with them while eating. This event started off on a sour note for me personally, as the first kid I interacted with ended up scared and crying, fortunately he was 1 of 2 for the entire morning out of probably 50 + interactions. You can’t win them all I suppose… Anyway, after getting to close and frightening the kid I decided I needed something that would work from a distance. I then hit upon the idea of using my telescope. I’ve never actually had an occasion to use it, despite bringing it with me to just about every event. It turned out to be a big hit. I would stand a safe distance away from the table, extend the telescope and aim it at a plate of pancakes… then I would announce “I spy with me little eye… sometin’ pancakey”. It usually got a bit of a giggle out of the kids. I would then move in a bit closer and “ahh yes, look et dat, there be pancakes dere, and over dere, and some dere too… oh wait, nope dat ones gone now…” This also seemed to get a giggle or a smile. Occasionally there was a kid that looked uncomfortable with me getting closer and in those cases I backed off again and moved on. Once I was able to get closer I would comment on how the pancakes were just the right size for the kids, and it didn’t look like there would be any left for me… “wait a minute I got’s me an idea…” I would then spin the telescope around and point it at the kid… “dere we go, no I made ‘em all tinay like and the pancakes all big so now there’ll be plenty left fer me!” I then would raise up my fork and reach in to grab a piece of pancake, and in doing so let the telescope slip from my eye… “oh… rats… now he’s all big again… ” This almost always got a big laugh.
Other times while I was spying pancakey substances… ‘pirate number 4′ AKA Bilgemunky would wander over with his eye patch on… he would then question me as to what it was I was doing. I would explain that I was spying pancakes… “you don’t need a telescope for that, they are right there!” I would respond with “well of course they are, but this makes em bigger!” or some other remark designed to get him to take the telescope. He would then place the telescope up to his eye patch covered eye and state “I don’t see nuttin… all i see is black” “black, are ya sure… i see pancakes…” “not nutting but black…” if the kids didn’t catch on I’d try to prompt them to notice his eye patch… once they did they would inevitably try to explain that he had the telescope on the wrong eye. “Ohhhh the wrong eye ya say… ok hold on…” he would then hand me back the telescope, and take off his hat, and switch the eye patch to the other eye, I would once again had him back the telescope… “Nope, still nuttin but black…” “what are ya kids playing at, he tried the other eye and it still don’t work…” this usually got a at least one kid to to point out the eye patch specifically with, “nooo the eye patch!!!!” “what, oh his eye patch?” oh ya got your eye patch on wrong… of course!!!! try putting it on the end of the telescope then… thats got to work…” the kids would yell “NOOOO!!!” to which Bilgemunky would then either insist I was trying to sell him yet another defective telescope, just like the last 3… or ask if I had recently changed the batteries. We would then walk away arguing over the defective telescope. We repeated this with some variation to just about every table in the place with mostly favorable results. One variation had me spying pancakes while Bilgemunky would sneak up and wiggle his fingers in front of the telescope. When he did that I would immediately leap backwards with a “GAhh!!! Theres some sort of an octopus or giant squid in there.” I would then let a kid look and see if he could see it, they always said no… So then I would take it back and try again, Bilgemunky would again do the finger thing, I would again get startled.. and hand it to him to have him look.. we would then go into the whole eye patch bit. The kids always seems to think it was funny. Sadly, about 1/2 the kids never noticed the eye patch themselves thus requiring some minor adjustments to move along, but it always worked in the end. Over allit was a hit, and my telescope got quite a workout.
Last week as I was waiting for my counseling appointment, the client before me came out in a rather flustered state. She apologized for running over her time and I insisted there was no need to apologize at all. She then began to make out her check, and started explaining to me that it wouldn’t happen again for quite a while at least, because she was having surgery on her foot. She continued on a bit more, and looking into her face I could tell she was really struggling. She finished writing her check, apologized for dumping on me and left. I went in and started my session. As we started, the counselor asked me how I felt about the conversation in the lobby. I said it didn’t bother me, and that I knew she just needed to talk. “well… I can’t tell you anything of course so I have no way of knowing what she told you…” I then explained what I was told. She then said “ahh, ic… I would like to ask a favor of you… but I need you to be completely comfortable knowing you can say no without…” I smiled, “Just ask, it’s ok” “oh ok… uh… well do you think perhaps next week you could possibly give her one of those little stones…” “Of course, It’s not a problem” she smiled, I continued, “do you want me to wear the garb and all?” “that’s entirely up to you…”
Flash forward to tonight…
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This was a long weekend, but it was definitely worth it. I had a lot of fun, and I think everyone else involved did too. I’m going to list the bests and worsts, and then as time permits hopefully relate other stories in additional posts. If any of my fellow pirates have their own best and worsts, go ahead and post them in the comments, I’d love to hear them. If you have an item that you want me to tell more about feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to remember the circumstances.
Bests:
- Ian and I getting dragged up on stage by “Grey Beard” (David HB Drake) to join him for sea shanties Saturday
- Sunday the whole crew getting pulled in for almost a full set by Grey Beard
- “Of Pirates and Sea Monsters” (see previous post)
- Getting to work with the whole pirate group again
- Having the sausage racers request to have a picture with me
- Carving and arguing over the “ice island of mustacheo”
- “Walking the plank”
- Playing craps and not caring about losing “money”
- Saturday night hot tub pirate defrosting
- Sausage Racers taking pictures of us
- Having to develop a characters signature for autographs
- “I spy with me little eye…. somethin’ pancaky” and “defective telescope salesman”
- Ships of the desert, whales, and the ferocious t-rex
- Having my accent placed, again, to the same location, by another British couple
Worsts:
- It’s winter fest, not arctic fest… -30 windchills Sunday
- Really upsetting one kid at the pancake breakfast
- Parading at double time
- Broken spigot on my new barrel
- “R” jokes till I was ready to vomit, especially from drunks…
- Did I mention the weather?
During this past weekend I was working at the “Breakfast with the Pirates” event. While wandering from table to table causing trouble, a shy young girl asked me “how come pirates fight sea monsters?!” As she said it, she had a very somber and sad look on her face, I took it to mean that she felt sorry for the poor sea monsters. (thank you water horse, no doubt…)
oh boy…
“ahh the old sea monster question…”, I stalled
quick John think!
“Well lass, ya see… sea monsters, through no fault of their own, have a real taste for ships… no one really knows why, they just like to munch on them, kinda like you like pancakes… they must just taste good… Well pirates, we like our ships too, not fer eatin of course, we preferr pancakes, and we would rather not have our ships eaten by sea monsters. ya know what happens when our ships get eaten by sea monsters? we have to float all the way back to shore, and that takes a very very very long time ya see, and really isn’t that much fun… I got me oar right her so i can paddle back faster ya see… so anyway… we pirates have to hunt after the sea monsters and k… aarr scold them regularly to make sure they all know it’s not right ta be eating all the ships… (i said scold, not kill… please no crying kid… i didn’t hurt the water horse) that goes for the cruise ships too… see if we didn’t hunt down the sea monsters and scold them, then they might eat the cruise ships too… and all those poor people would have to float back to shore too… so that’s why we pirates have ta hunt sea monsters”
At this the mom jumped in smiling and confirmed my story with her daughter, “see hunny, they are all protecting the people on the ships by hunting down the sea monsters. That way mommies and daddies and families on ships are all safe to enjoy vacations” with the external confirmation the daughter smiled and she seemed much happier about the whole situation and later she even smiled and waved when I came back by their table.
Home safe… Roads were fine… The weekend was a blast.. more later… sleep now…
Last night I was part of a group hired to be pirates for a party in Milwaukee. I left home early enough to account for bad roads and arrived in Milwaukee with plenty of time to spare. Once everyone else arrived we met with our gracious contact for the event. He provided an enormous room to use as a green room, water, and validated our parking. Before we knew it the clock said six p.m. and it was time for us to start.
All together there were five of us, three pirates, “Captain Joe Cotton”, “Scuttle Sally”, “John T. Hawser” and there were two “ladies” as well, “Pandora”, and “Chastity”. We headed into the party and were an immediate hit. The 1st hour of the party offered free beer, which were we encouraged to take advantage of and in my case, I did. (ok, I had 2 beers during the free period) We all wandered the floor playing with people and generally just causing trouble. We continued on until nearly nine, a full hour and a half extra. The organizers loved it, and were very pleased, enough that they comped us dinner too.
Read on for Bests
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Ok so, dong some more digging into the auto payment nonsense… It turns out, it’s not the mortgage company’s fault, nor is it the banks fault. The payment in question actually belongs to the car finance people. I called them and they informed me that the payment due date is the 29th. I explained that I had requested a date of the 6th. They moved the date to the 6th as requested. I then asked if they were going to cover the $30 overdraft fee. The rep on the other end of the line responded with “Sir, we didn’t overdraft your account, you did.” Excuse me??? “I’m looking at the transaction…” “We don’t do that sir” “You took the payment on the 30th, my check doesn’t post until the 31st.” “30th? it should have posted on the 29th” “Ok… still not addressing the problem… when I signed up for auto debit, I asked for it to be posted on the 6th” “Well, your payment is due on the 29th and you have a 10 day grace period” “what does that have to do with anything… the debit occurred on the 30th, my check didn’t go into my account till the 31st… so i have an overdraft fee of $30″ “well sir you will have to talk to your bank about forgiving the overdraft” “…thanks…” “ok sir, will there be anything else?” “no…” I hung up.
What the hell…
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evilviolist
