Lady Di's been feeding me a little too well this Holiday Season. Cherry pie with a crisp buttery crust. Yum! Oh, yeah, and my daughter, Caroline, made us some lovely chocolate macaroon cookies (Diane got a couple of 'em, but you gotta know I did most of the damage). Now, what to do about the four or five pounds I've packed on...
"The King's Speech" is a much-ballyhoo'd critic's darling. Critically acclaimed, sure; but it's also entertaining and emotionally satisfying. "The King's Speech" follows the personal struggles of the man who would become King George VI. Colin Firth plays the stammering George brilliantly. George is pushed by his wife, played by Helena Bonham Carter, to seek the help of an untitled Australian-born speech therapist, played by Geoffrey Rush. Rush turns in an Oscar-worthy performance as a frustrated actor turned speech coach, Lionel Logue, but it's Helena Bonham Carter's work as George's wife that I enjoyed the most (but then again, she makes any movie she's in better: "Fight Club" was the Brad Pitt/Edward Norton show, but without Carter's foil it'd've been a lot less; Beatrix LeStrange in the Harry Potter movies would've been a good role for anybody, but she owns it now). 
"Little Fockers" is the third installment in the Ben Stiller/Robert DeNiro "Focker" franchise. I didn't expect much, and I wasn't disappointed. Projectile vomiting, crotch jokes and broad humor are generally a hit with audiences, if generally not with critics. I'm not sure The Three Stooges ever won an Oscar, but I'd bet you money that more people know Curley's laugh than the name of 
I'm not in any book clubs; Lady Di is in one, though, and I get to feed on the crumbs under their table. She buys the books from Walterboro's Downtown Books, reads 'em (mostly), and discusses them over coffee or wine. When she's done with the selections, I get my grubby little mitts on 'em. Lately they've been on a curious cultures kick: Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larson; The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, and Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian are all good glances into different ways of life.
The plots in Stieg Larson's "Girl" series, feature lots of suspense and action, and conspiracies and subplots galore. Kind of like a Swedish John Grisham, but with less smart-ass dialogue. It makes the "different cultures" list because the sensibility in many of the Swedish relationships in those novels just feel different from American ones: John McEnroe's American hot-tempered tennis star versus the cool resolve of Bjorn Borg. 
Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" (with art by Ellen Forney) was an insightful, personal, and very readable novel about Arnold "Junior" Spirit. Arnold is a kid raised in a loving, but highly dysfunctional, home on Wellpinit, an Indian Reservation in Washington state. He struggles in that community, and in Reardan, the nearby white community where he ultimately attends school, but that the struggle is what molds us. As Arnold observes: 
When Lady Di suggested I read "The Help", I'd categorized it as "chick-lit", and only reluctantly cracked the cover. Author Kathryn Stockett presents the stories from the viewpoints of several different protagonists in pre-Civil Rights Act Mississippi: Aibileen and Minnie are African-American maids- "The Help"- to aspiring writer, "Miss Skeeter", and mean-spirited Hilly, and Skeeter's other white bridge-club friends. I was just born the year this novel is set. The schools my brother and I attended in Florida were segregated until about sixth grade (fifth grade for my brother), though our pee-wee football teams were not. I remember Rosa, my grandmother's maid, and Kathleen, my mom's maid, as people that cared about me and my brother. It never occurred to me to wonder what their lives were like. In spite of myself, I came to care about the characters in "The Help", and felt a modicum of satisfaction at the emotional payoff at the end of the book.
On the first day of Christmas, I'm pretty sure the pear tree in which the partridge perched wasn't a Callery Pear Tree. Sure, Callery Pears are pretty. But if the pear tree that that present presenting personage was a Callery, said dude better've gotten his lady a decent yard-guy to go with it, because those trees are messy. Big time.
I think I moved ten or twelve wagon loads of those stupid leaves. Times like these, I remember the words of an interesting old bloke who owns a jewelry store downtown: "I got no use for anything deciduous". Amen, brother. Amen.
Not counting outside porch-lights, flood lights, and in-door appliance lights, our residence contains 66 lightbulbs. That's a lot of lightbulbs. Most of the bulbs in the house are standard, garden variety incandescent bulbs. Compact Florescent Lightbulbs (CFLs) use considerably fewer watts of energy to produce a comparable number of "lumens". It only takes 13 watts for a CFL to produce 825 lumens of light, which is about equal in brightness to the 850 lumens produced by a standard 60 watt incandescent lightbulb- less than a third of the energy to produce the same amount of light (I had to look this stuff up in Wikipedia. Hey, I'm no math-wiz like my friend Sarah's daughter, Kendall!).
Lady Di has been striving, of late, to render 590 Otis Road a "greener" space, so we used a $25.00 Lowe's giftcard we'd gotten to purchase some CFLs. So far, we've replaced about a quarter of the incandescent bulbs in the house. Why not more? Well, CFLs cost about five times as much. The energy savings will let us recoup that expense eventually, but five bucks a bulb is still a lot of cabbage.
...and they're not that pretty, yet, either. No point in having a nice chandelier if you have to pack it with ugly bulbs! Still, the technology's improving. You can get CFLs to use with dimmer switches now, so it can't be too much longer before they can make them attractive enough to display at dinner parties.
Among some old Christmas decorations that I consigned to the wastebin was this brutal relic. Apparently, some intrepid "Twilight" extra wanted to make sure the undead got their share of toys, and put the bite on the fat man. If a wooden stake is what you need to kill a vampire, then I guess the only way to kill a vampiric Kris Kringle would be with a Kringle kris, like the one at left. Well, that's what it looks like, anyway.
Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, David Banner and I all have alter-egos. The first three assume the identities of Batman, Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk, in order to fight crime and their inner demons. Most years, I assume the persona of the Big Guy, Saint Nick, to entertain at my niece's dance recital (if you want to check out 2007 and 2008, then double-click those years).
The Green Room was abysmal. I've got to get a better agent for these gigs.
The spread also left something to be desired (actually, I'm pretty sure that these goodies were for some event earlier in the day... or week. Didn't taste too bad, though).
Showtime!
Oh, and there was dancing, too. In fact, Niece Allison (second from the right, I think), was in nine different numbers.
Allie's sister was cute as a button.
Consider the Christmas Octopus: A blue one's sure to cause a fuss. Octopi are rarely blue, they're scarcely seen by any sailor. Still, azure is my youngest's hue; so this ornament is meant for Taylor.
Tyler's my twin who likes red; "It's better'n blue", so he said. "My ornament's briny, but it's not so tiny. That it won't pinch off your head!"
I've said it plenty: I've got lots of boys, but only one little girl. Caroline is twenty now, but she'll always be my only little girl.
Diane brought me to Pier One Imports to look at candles last weekend. This is not something I did during my bachelor incarnation. I don't mean I seldom visited Pier One when I was single; I mean that I NEVER during that stretch visited Pier One (or Bed, Bath and Beyond. Or Hallmark. Or any other place where more than ten percent of the inventory is scented candles). Hardee's stock, on the otherhand, has taken a beating since I wed. But I digress... Whilst at POI, we acquired new ornaments to mark our new adventure. This first one reminded me of my oldest son. Kind of goofy, but special. Here's to you, Davis.
Santa and toys got to be a joyful thing, right? Wait... Since when does Santa carry a soldier (toy or not) that's bigger than he is? Times have changed, I guess. If you're gonna be busting in to people's houses, you probably ought to be packing heat.
What's wrong with this one? Well, in a nutshell, I'd say that Baby Huey here is totally lacking in Holiday Spirit. Shoot, he (or she. A blue or pink blanket might've helped here) looks more like Susan Smith's other child than Moses in the bullrushes. 'Course, I've been wrong before. Maybe that's why the Santa Nazi is lurking in the background.
Whoa! Who ticked her off? The idea of an Blonde Alpine skier is not so bad, but she is clearly not in the Christmas spirit.
Well, this one's actually kinda nice. Peaceful looking manger scene. The guys that made this clearly understand the real meaning of Christmas. Wonder who made it?
Oops. China isn't exactly a hotbed of Christianity, with numbers somewhere between 3/4 of a percent and 4 percent of the population, depending on whom you ask. At least they aren't snarling.
I've watched her and her "team piety" (pictured at left from last year) cook ninety pumpkin pies to be sliced and served tomorrow. Lots of folks have already worked hard, and lots more will work plenty hard tomorrow, but without some Chiefs, the Indians wouldn't be able to get the feast to the pilgrims. In military terms, Diane would be a Lieutenant (In cartoon-military terms, I'd be, like, Beetle Bailey). Our leaders are the Doggettes.
There's the Colonel. In Jim Doggette's case, that is not just an analogy: he was a full-bird Colonel in the USAF. He was a test-pilot, flying fast, fast planes for our Country, just like Chuck Yeager. Jim had "the Right Stuff", too, but not as good a press agent.
His boss is his bride, Gale (pictured to the left, next to Lady Di). Talk about a powerful "one-two punch"!
Lady Di, the Twins and I, could not've been hotter for Harry Potter. So we hopped in the car (Charleston's not far), and got tickets for all at the Citadel Mall. Voldemort's won is how it looks (but we're not worried: we've read the books!).
Among the more bizarre fads to which oldest son Davis introduced me was Teen Girl Squad. You can click on the link if you want, but I won't try to explain it. As my Pop used to say, "if I have to explain it, it isn't funny" (Dad had many ways to brush me off. Sending me to the dictionary to look up things like sesquipedalian was one that stuck with me. I ended up learning lots of useless words from Dad's irritation). Anyway, it's been a couple of years since I gave TGS any thought, and it was kinda cool to see the bumpersticker at left.
I'm smack dab in the middle of a two-week term of criminal court, so I've been, you know, busy. Still, I'm never too busy to enjoy a fine meal. Together with the marvelous salmon and beautifully prepared spinach, I supped tonight on Minnesota Wild Rice. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Lady Di cooked up some wild rice, then mixed in toasted chopped pecans, and a saute of onions and sliced mushrooms, and baked it all in a casserole for another twenty-five minutes. Lovely.
The Boro, as I've mentioned many, many times before, is a pretty cool little place. Lots of imagination for a little place. A fund-raiser Lady Di and I attended tonight is a fine example: Empty Bowls. Local churches make various very fine soups. The Colleton County Arts Council has pottery students make bowls. The Arts Council sells tickets. People buy tickets. The Church people fill the bowls. The people eat the soup and keep the bowls. The Arts Council gives the money to the local churches so they can re-stock their food pantries for folks that need help. How cool is that?
My brother, the Amazing AndyMan, is running again. About an hour ago, at seven this Morning (six Central Time), Andy started working the foothills and minor mountains of Northern Alabama in the Pinhoti 100 Endurance Run. Andy's run plenty over the last twenty or so years: scads of five K's and 10 K's, then scads of triathlons, ninety or so Marathons, and dozens of ultra-Marathons, including more than twenty 100 mile races. Still, 100 miles is a very long way to run, even for the Amazing AndyMan. His race number is 630, and you can track him over the next twenty-four hours or so at 
Trying to get back into the swing of things after a couple of lovely weeks hanging around Charleston and cruising about at sea is no easy thing. It ain't all champagne and strawberries out there, you know.
I saw this one outside a store. You've heard of stores, right? It's where they try to sell stuff. This one apparently must not sell much, because they're crowing about one sale. Imagine the pressure on that poor clerk if the customer backs out!
Hey, how'd these folks know I was speeding? Okay, I'll slow down. Is 40 m.p.h. too fast for a parking garage?
Let's see. A beer exchange and you don't have a bathroom? What are you exchanging it with?
If I'm hunting for wading fountains, I'm not sure that I like that rules four and five are merely advisory.
Just got back to the Boro today after a week of lots of sun, fun and, well... fun and sun. Yeah, I know. I said there'd be lots of wedding and Honeymoon photos. That's mostly Facebook stuff, but I'll post something in the next few days ('course, I've got tons of work to get caught up on, but I'll post something). Anyhow, after a memorable and all to brief stay in Charleston, Lady Di and I went cruisin'. 
Which cruiseline? You mighta seen the commercials showing the bright red fin at the back of the boat. No? Well, apparently a smokestack is as good a selling point as any. And it is as fine a looking smokestack as you're ever likely to see. So fine, in fact...
...that they made a mascot out of it. Meet Fun Ship Freddy. Say, that little fella looks familiar. Where have I seen this guy before? Oh, wait. I know.
Hellboy.
My Godfather, Uncle Bob, took this picture at the reception. Lady Di and I are about to go off on our Honeymoon. I rather doubt I'll have time to blog for the next week or so, but I may have some (strickly edited) tales to tell when I get back.
