Summer in Florida

It's hot. Really hot here in normally warm Florida. And the official start of summer isn't until June 21st. Everyone talks about Florida in the summer and how miserable it is. And guess what? Their right! Imagine walking into a giant oven that's preheated to 300 and that's bout the way it feels. Summertime in Florida means when you have something to do outside then you get up and you go out early, usually before ten to do whatever it is you have to do. Anytime much after that and you start running the risk of having heatstroke. 100 percent humidity insures that your clothing will be drenched with sweat in a few minutes. But we Floridians are a tough bunch when it comes to heat. It can be 110 out and we can't let on to fellow Floridians that we think it's hot. We always have to wait for whoever we are with to say it first, like it would be perceived as a weakness for us sun loving people. Put ten of us together and we can be outside and we can talk about sports, politics, whats going on around town and other topics of conversation and when the first person mentions something about how hot it is then we all chime in. Yeah, its pretty dang hot. We just can't be the first to say it. If there's a northerner in the bunch or around us we will NEVER admit it. Hot? This isn't even close to being hot! We still have ten or fifteen degrees to go before its hot! That northerner will have sweat pouring out of every pore on their body and literally be melting before our very eyes but we can't let on like its hot. I get a kick out of being at my job at Disney and you see these red faced guests panting and chugging along. When they ask "How do you stand this heat", we always answer with "what heat"? This is nothing. You should have been here last week. It was hot then. Yes, its mean but we delight in it. Why? Because we like to brag to all of those northern friends and family in the wintertime whens it 10 degrees and there's 2 feet of snow on the ground up there about how we are laying around in our shorts thinking about going and jumping in the pool. We always have to add during the conversation what OUR current temperature is and yes there is a almost a perverted joy we get when we do that. Northern friends post pictures taken outside their homes on Facebook after a big snowstorm and complain that the forecast is for another six to eight inches in the next 24 hours and then we comment with some kind of sentence designed to inflict even more despair and agony on them. Posts like "Wow, and I just got back from the beach". Or "Just finished cutting the grass and dumb me, I took off my shirt and now I have a bad sunburn". Or the real mean one of "And I was just thinking about turning on the A/C". We are a cruel bunch of people down here. But let me let you non Floridians in on a little secret. It gets hot here in the summer. Really hot. And we pay a big price for calling Florida home in the summertime. We are acclimated somewhat and we can probably take a little more heat then non Floridians but we get hot just like everyone else. And we do pay a price for living here in the summertime. When we are outside here in the summer we are always on the lookout for a shady spot to stand under or somewhere else to get out of the sun. If we don't we better have some sunscreen on cause we will get burnt! We get up and get out early to get our chores done and then we search out the A/C till the sun goes down. Darkness provides some relief but you dare not go outside in it or you'll be eaten alive by mosquitoes that look like their more in the horsefly family then the mosquito family. Six bites from these guys and you will get light headed from the loss of blood. Then there's the forest fires that always start up around mid May or so right as we wind down from our dry season. Every year somebody will toss out a cigarette butt and it will roll onto the dry, thirsty grass and ignite a patch of said grass and before you know it you have a 40,000 acre wildfire burning out of control. That fire starts other fires and the process just keeps repeating itself until half of the states woodlands and scrubs are burnt or burning. You can smell the smoke, sometime you see the smoke if there's one burning nearby, which there almost always is. A few weeks ago they had one burning right outside of Disney's property up by the Magic Kingdom and for a week solid the smoke would start rolling in and the guests would ask "Whats burning" and "Should we be concerned"? "No", we would answer. Just a raging, burning wildfire. And they all have the same distinct smokey smell. It's like nothing you've never smelled before but once you do there's no denying what it is. They all get extinguished here very shortly as we enter the rainy season. And calling it the rainy season is a mild way of putting it. When one hears "the rainy season" you would tend to think of a time of the year when it would rain off and on every few days or so. Steady, ground soaking rains that lasted throughout the season of rain. Right? Well friends that's far from it. Typical day here during the rainy season is like this. Sun comes up. By 9 am it's 80 degrees. Noontime it's 90. Humidity is at 100 percent. Suns blazing down, withering anything dumb enough to be out under it. Around 2ish the sky starts getting dark. Dark turns to ugly, scary looking black. Then the sky explodes as the upper air currents coming in from over the atlantic ocean and the gulf of mexico collide and if your outside you better seek shelter. All that humidity that's been building over the course of the day comes pouring out of the heavens in the form of raindrops so big and falling so fast that they actually hurt when their falling on you. Loud thunder rips and echos and the sky comes to life with some of the most amazing lightning bolts your ever seen. Witness one of these storms and you'll know why central Florida is called the lightning capital of the world. At night the weather forecasters will tell you about the days storms we have had and they actually count the number of lightning strikes per storm and the numbers are always in the thousands. A bad one averages 14,000 to 20,000 strikes per storm. I remember when I moved here in June of 2000, right before the start of the rainy season. When it did start I was completely blown away by the force and the intensity of these storms. I remember thinking to myself this isn't normal weather. At least not any I was used to. Once a few years back I got caught outside in one of these storms as I was going into work. I worked at the Magic Kingdom and we had to park a half mile or so it seemed from where we were to report. Anyway, I was almost there when a storm popped up and the winds and the rain and the thunder and lightning started. I had my umbrella because I knew by the storm clouds that it was coming, I was just hoping to beat it. I didn't. I opened my umbrella and tried to shield myself from the onslaught of rain but I was losing the battle. Suddenly, I felt the hairs on my neck and body stand off straight and I felt a funny feeling in the air. The next instant a lightning bolt struck somewhere very close by me and I literally felt the ground shake. I heard the electricity travel through my umbrella and I took off running, scared out of my mind. I ran and jumped onto one of the parked Disney buses and as soon as I got on there my umbrella just fell apart into pieces. The electrical surge had actually blew it apart. Thankfully it had a wooden handle and I saved that handle for a reminder of what had happened. From that day forward I gained a whole lot of respect for lightning and what it can do. But anyway. that's a typical rainy day here in Florida. It will blow, bang, beat, rain buckets and then after about thirty minutes its over. Usually the sun is back out soon after it stops and it's just as hot and then even more humid then before. So you see friends, yes we love to brag in the winter when we're here and your there. But make no mistake about it, we pay our price in the summertime.

Friday Nite Video (Def Leppard)

Hi all. Tonight we're gonna talk about one of my favorite bands from back in the day, Def Leppard. These British rockers busted out on the scene right around 1981 when they released the album High 'n' Dry. It had a couple good songs on it and they started getting some radio play. They had a edgy sound to them and I thought they were great! Me and my friends listened to them and blared their music from our car stereos but two years later in 83 after they released Pyromania EVERYONE was Def Leppard fans. I remember going to Ryans Gems and Junk on the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach and getting a sleeveless muscle shirt with a Def Leppard decal ironed on it and thinking I was the man. Not many muscles to show but I was sporting the look anyway haha. They were riding high and then the following year tragedy struck when the drummer Rick Allen wrecked his car and lost his right arm. Everyone pretty much thought that was going to be the end of D.L or at least having Allen as their drummer. But they surprised everyone when they announced they would be keeping Allen and they were going to have a custom drum set built so Allen could play with his feet in addition to his one arm. In 1986, D.L started doing some live shows again. Allen never missed a beat, his drumming was as good as ever. The boy's were back in business. The following year D.L released their most successful album to date, Hysteria. That album was a huge smash and I think every song on that album had a run in the top 100 at some point. D.L sealed their legacy as musicians with that album. Which brings us up to tonight's video. What better song to feature from Def Leppard then the title song from their hit album Hysteria. Sure, it's not got the hard edge that their earlier music had but it's a great song nevertheless. From 1987 its Hysteria from the boys. Enjoy!

Wizard of Oz remake

I was reading recently and stumbled across a article that was talking about some of the movie studios in Hollywood were throwing around the idea of remaking the Wizard of Oz. I almost choked on the coffee I was drinking! Are they completely nuts?? How dare them to even consider fooling around with a classic like the Wizard of Oz! Most remakes usually stink and they never live up to the originals. I remember as a kid growing up in the days before VCR's and DVD's where we had to WAIT for the yearly showing of the Wizard of Oz. They would start advertising it a few weeks before the air date and boy would we be exciting as we counted down the days. Ahh, the things you remember when you were a kid. That's why I almost choked when I read that they were really thinking of tinkering with a masterpiece. I was pretty steamed for a minute but then I thought now wait a minute, could Hollywood even remake that movie now in 2011? I don't think that they could.
Why not? Here's just a few reasons why.

-First off, Hollywood 2011 would have to explain why Dorothy is living with her Aunt and Uncle. Did her father have a illicit affair with another women and maybe even bore a child with her while trying to keep the affair a secret until one day the lover tells Dorothy's mother about the affair and the child she had with her husband, causing her mother to spiral down into a world of drugs and alcohol as she tried to cope with the betrayal of her husband. The father leaves one day with his mistress and the state finally has to remove Dorothy from her alcoholic and drug addicted mother and then place her into the care of her aunt and uncle. To much juicy story to just leave out.
-Next thing, everyone knows there are no family farms left in Kansas. They were all bought up or run out of business long ago by the mega government sponsored farming operations. The ones that the US government subsidizes and pays them to NOT plant crops and work the thousands of acres they have. There wouldn't be a pig pen for Dorothy to fall into because all the pigs are now raised at the giant swine plants where right after their birth they are placed on a steroid based diet to get them to slaughter weigh in about six weeks.
-So say just for the sake of the movie they do have a small family farm that Dorothy lives on. They wouldn't be able to have Hunk, Hickory or Zeke working there. No self respecting American would stoop that low to perform such menial labor now a days. More then likely it would be three illegal Mexican immigrants. Probably named Pedro, Jose and Juan.
-Then there's the nonsense about the elderly Almira Gulch rushing to Dorothy's house on a bike. Really? Today Almira would drive something there or ride on her Dan Wesson if you qualify for Medicare then I guarantee I can get you approved for a motor scooter from the scooter store electric chair.
-Almira takes Toto. Dorothy runs away. She comes across a out of work fortune teller. He invites her into his wagon read her fortune. HELLO!! She must have never heard the don't talk to strangers sermon. Anyway, as Dorothy's trying to make her way home a tornado springs up. She's fighting the wind, trying to get back home. 2011 and she could have just hopped a ride with one of the many storm chasers whooping and hollering as they followed the funnel, trying to get as close as possible. And what about Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel? Surely he and at least a few more reporters would be on the scene and be able to help Dorothy out.
-Then she wakes up in Oz. She goes outside and sees all these little people and they call themselves munchkins. Sorry, that's not going to work. It might be upsetting to midgets, dwarfs and just short people in general. They would have to be called something like the vertical challenged kins. Or the Not Really that Tallkins.
-Next we discovered Dorothy's house landed on the bad witches cousin, the wicked witch of the east. She's wearing expensive shoes . Red ruby slippers. Today? It would have to be a pair of Louis Vuitton red pumps with maybe a matching handbag. Definitely makes the value of the ruby slippers look pale in comparison.
-Dorothy heads out for Oz. First she meets the scarecrow. That's plausible enough. But the tin man? No way. Standing beside the yellow brick road "frozen". He would have been in the recycle bin a longtime ago. Or picked up by a couple of old guys and taken to the salvage yard and turned in along with some stripped copper wire and aluminum cans for a quick buck. The cowardly lion? He would be praised and loved for being in touch with his sensitive side and his refusal to use intimidating tactics and his passive aggressive tendencies.
-Then they all get to Oz and knock on the massive door so that they can go inside. Dude opens door, looks them over and tells them to leave. Wrong! 2011 Dorothy and gang marches down to the courthouse and files a discrimination lawsuit against the gatekeeper for gender, animal, metal and straw discrimination. Gatekeeper would be sued and then fired after being publicly humiliated.
-Oz tells the gang to go kill the witch and bring back her broomstick. On the way there the witch sends the winged monkeys to get them in the enchanted forest and bring Dorothy back and destroy the others. Now, in 2011 we all know we descended from monkeys so chances are they won't hurt their own. Plus, Peta might threaten a boycott if they think the producers are trying to portray the monkeys in a bad light.
-Dorothy ends up at the castle and her friends arrive and try to find her. They sneak in with the guards and soldiers and precede to look around for their friend. But wait, 2011 Dorothy still has her Verizon smartphone on her so she secretly sends her location to her friends phone in the form of a text message AND a pix of the room just in case, saving her friends from having to search room by room and risk getting caught.
-As is in the original movie, Dorothy and gang get chased through the castle and when finally cornered, Dorothy throws the bucket of water on the witch as shes trying to put the fire out on her friend the scarecrow. Like the original movie, this results in the witch melting but in the remake they add the dialogue of Dorothy explaining to everyone that it wasn't the water that melted the wicked witch but it was the contaminates in the water that got there by mans assault on our natural resources and his blatant disregard for the environment.
-In the old version Dorothy is sad and disappointed when she misses the hot air balloon ride back home to Kansas but cheers up when Glinda explains that all she had to do to get home was at anytime tap her heels together three times while saying "there's no place like home". In the new version Dorothy goes postal when told this and has to be restrained by a large number of Ozians who grab her ankles and click her heels for her while they chant "there's no place like home".

And these are just a few reasons why I don't think they will ever do a Wizard of Oz remake.

Friday Nite Video (Prince)

Hi friends. Can you believe its June already? Pretty shocking for me to think that the year is halfway over. Time flies doesn't it? As for me it's been a interesting week since last last Friday night. I made a new friend. Almost lost a good, longtime friend. Did lose the new friend. Then made up with the old friend (thankfully!). Usually I have these posts always done in advance but not this one! The roller coaster of life was a crazy ride this week. But anyway, back to tonight. I'm taking it back tonight to one of my favorite performers. That would be the entertainer known as Prince. Prince's video The Beautiful One's was the second video I did for Friday Nite Videos. I love the guys music. Always have and always will. He had started out early in the 80's and with 1984's Purple Rain he just took off from there. Every song on that album is great and each one has a different meaning. I like tonight's live performance of one of those songs, I Would Die 4 U! I remember when this video was shown on TV back after it was recorded although I don't remember which channel showed it. I thought it was great then and its still great now. The words to the song are great and as usual Prince sings them with passion and emotion. That's what makes Prince such a special Performer. He puts everything into his music. I like how this performance starts out with Prince shouting out I Would Die 4 U and then screams the name Lisa! He would be referring to the girl in his band The Revolution. He then goes on to name several others including Shelia. That would be Shelia E! The lady that can beat a drum as well as anyone can. Enjoy life and it ups and downs. We only get one and just like it's June 3rd already, it goes all to fast! From 1985, it Prince and The Revolution and I Would Die 4 U. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Joel Wharton!

Hey you old Fart! Halfway to 50! Happy birthday to my best friend!

Friday Nite Video (Michael Buble and Laura Pausini)

Hi all! First off, thanks to everyone for checking out these videos and posts that I put on here. Because you do I recently had my 3000th hit! That's incredible and I'm glad you all like it as much as I enjoy writing it and posting those videos. I started this blog on Jan 5th 2010 not really knowing what the heck I was going to write about but I've always wanted to be a writer and I think I have a pretty good sense of humor so I just started writing. Some of it's serious, some of it's funny and some of it's just completely off the wall. I got the idea of showing a video on Friday nights one day when I was thinking back to my teenage years (yes, I can remember that far back) and about this show that would come on TV late on Friday night called, strangely enough, Friday Night Videos. I think it was around 12:00 or 12:30 and it always featured the videos to all the hit songs that were popular that week. So I got to thinking, wouldn't it be neat to do my own Friday Night Video? Except instead of showing videos of songs popular today, I'll show videos that were popular back in MY day. Hence, Friday Nite Videos. I actually always referred to it in the beginning as the Friday Nite Old Skool Video but I think everybody gets the idea by now so lets drop the Old Skool. Now that brings us to tonight. Since I'm dropping the old skool part of the name we're going to cheat a little. Tonight is a new version of a old classic. In 1976 Lou Rawls released You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine and it became the song he was known for. That song sealed his future as a soulful superstar. His version was great and he did a good job on it. But tonight I'm showing a remake that does Lou's version proud. It's a duet from that old favorite crooner of mine Michael Buble and the Italian singing sensation Laura Pausini. It's hot, it's sultry and it's sexy. If you don't know anything about Laura Pausini then check her out on Youtube. She can definitely sing and has a wonderful voice. She's released songs in English, Italian, AND Spanish, French and Portuguese. She's won awards from albums released in each of the languages she knows. Michael was recording a concert for a PBS special back in 2005 when Laura joined him on stage and they sang this. Together, they nailed it. So check it out and see what you think. Enjoy!

Friday Nite Video (Simply Minds)

Alright. It's friday night. Sooo that means Friday Nite Video here at Just My Thoughts. Welcome! Tonight I thought I'd feature another cool band from the 80's era, Simple Minds. Not to be confused with that other band Simply Red. Simple Minds were cool. Simply Red? Not bad but Simple Minds blew them away. It's funny but back in the day I actually wore my hair for awhile like the lead singer of Simply Red, Mick Hucknall. He had long curly reddish hair like I did and he liked to grow it long in the front and let it hang down in his face. I thought that was pretty cool back then so I adopted that style for awhile and soon my friends were calling me Simply Ren! Pretty catchy huh? If only I could sing! Now old Mick and his band could certainly croon out a decent song but they were too mushy for me. I was more of a Simple Minds kind of guy. Their songs were more upbeat and rocking then Mick and co. The Minds were from Scotland and they got together way back in 1977. They released a few albums but they hit gold in 1985 (again, another great year lol) when they recorded the single Don't You Forget About Me for the soon to be released movie The Breakfast Club. That single forever cemented Simple Minds as a 80"s icon. The movie was a huge smashing success which carried Simple Minds along with it. You couldn't turn on the radio without hearing the song. They played the video nonstop on music shows and stations (MTV, back when they used to be about music). After that song started to cool down some everybody wanted more of the Minds and their music. They weren't ready to release the album they were working on so they quickly put together a song and released it as a single. And that's the song I wanted to show tonight. I actually liked it better then Don't You Forget About Me. It's a great song and a great video. Simple Minds kept recording and touring but they never reached that plateau that they were on back in 1985. They were on top of the world. Maybe that was their subliminal message they were trying to convey in the video. Their high atop a mountain performing their song looking out over the world. So without further delay, from 1985 its Alive and Kicking by Simple Minds. Enjoy!

This Day In History

This day in history.


1 year ago today- 13 year old Johnny BoJack Jr turns the world of competitive swine showing upside down when he wins the coveted blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair, narrowly beating out 6 time defending champion hog raiser Norval Tucker by three votes. Even more stunning was the fact that Johnny's winning sow, Barbie Q, was a crossbreed of a Duroc and a Chester White. Barbie Q wowed the judges with her loud and pronounced OINK, which she did at Johnny's command, her straight walk with snout held high and her clearly feminine attitude in a sport that's usually dominated by the males. Afterwards, in a interview, Johnny Jr credited Barbie Q's success to a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Never fed slop. Giving her a warm bath each night to keep her bristles soft and her hide free of any bacteria and her sleeping on her very own mattress covered by a 500 thread down comforter.


5 years ago today-Floyd "Baby Boy" Jackson wins the golden gloves gold metal at the 2006 United States Special Olympics at Brinson, Ga. Jackson captivated the crowd as he viciously knocked out all twelve of his opponents, eight of them in the first round.


20 years ago today-Vanilla Ice wins the award for Best New Rapper Who is Here to Stay at the BET music awards show broadcast from Madison Square Gardens.


30 years ago today-Employees of Ma Bell make the first cell phone call ever made. The phone, developed between a partnership with Ma Bell and GE, weighs one hundred and twelve pounds. Unfortunately, after the call is made the phone loses the signal and drops the call as the four men move the phone around in an attempt to pick the phone up and place it next to the callers head.


80 years ago today-Researchers at the newly formed tobacco company Philip Morris begin testing mass produced cigarettes on a group of chimpanzees at a research facility in Roswell, New Mexico. Researchers were puzzled to find that the chimps with the darker fur preferred the menthol cigarettes as opposed to the regular ones and that all the monkeys immediately would light up after mating or picking and eating bugs off of their partners. After the six month study started to wind down and the researchers then confidant that the mass produced cigarettes posed no health issues and were not addicting they stopped giving the chimpanzees the cigarettes to prepare them for their reintroduction back into the wild. Three days later, co-workers entering the facility were horrified to find the mutilated bodies of their associates and the monkeys all laying around having a smoke.


On this date in 1783-The first daily newspaper, The Pennsylvania Evening Post, starts production in Philadelphia. One week later, widowed plantation owner Louis Tench takes out the first newspaper personal ad. In it Louis describes himself as a loving, carefree guy who enjoys quiet walks on the beach, outdoor activities, intimate candlelight dinners at the Coats and Arms Tavern or just staying in and snuggling. He does not receive any replies.

Friday Nite Video (Dokken)

Tonight we'll be returning back to the Power Ballard theme and we've gonna do it with one of my favorite 80's big hair bands Dokken. Remember talking about the Power Ballard last year? All the heavy metal big hair bands of the 80's had one. It was a unwritten rule that every metal band had to have one and most all of them did. I always liked to throw in one of my Dokken tapes when I wanted to rock out! They formed in the late 70's and had released a couple albums but 1984's album Tooth and Nail was their big breakthrough album. It had several hit songs on it including their required power ballard. Whats really neat about this video is that apparently Dokken was fans of the old Dukes of Hazzard show! Watch in the beginning at the 25 second mark. Someone walks into a motel room and there on the TV is a clip of the good old General Lee racing down a dirt road. And I was just talking about the Duke boys in my last post. Also check out the guys in the band. Pure 80's all the way. You have the ripped clothes, the big, tall hair, slow motion shots of them head banging along to the music, the fans pumping upheld fists. Classic 80's! Like most of these 80's bands that became successful Dokken later split up after everyone in the band started fighting and arguing about the best ways to keep the money flowing in. They broke up in 1989. Since then they have reunited and split again several times with the most recent reunion tour just last year in 2010. They say the might do another one in 2011. I personally haven't been to any of these bands reunion tours but who knows, maybe one day I will. I just think it would be kinda sad to go see some of these aging rockers that are old enough to be my dad up on the stage trying to relive their glory years. For now, I'll stick with the videos. From 1984 its Dokkens power ballard Alone Again. Enjoy!

TV

I used to love watching TV. Not anymore. I just don't enjoy the shows on these days. I think all the reality shows are crap. To me, there's not ten cents difference in any of them. I don't like the sitcoms on either. Most of them feature a dysfunctional family where the Dad is is always a clueless idiot. The mother is the only one in the family who has any sense. Reality? Far from it! They just don't make good shows like they used to when I was a kid. I mostly remember Friday night being the highlight of the week for great television viewing. CBS ruled Friday nights in the early to mid eighties. The Incredible Hulk started off the night at 8:00. I can do this day recite the opening monologue. Dr David Banner. Physician, Scientist, searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have. I loved that show. Remember whenever he would get angry he would turn to the Hulk? Today he could have signed up for some anger management classes or wrote himself a prescription for a mild sedative. Each episode would always feature David getting involved in some kind of illegal activity or plot as he hitchhiked mindlessly around to town after town. He would end up working some menial job to make a few dollars, probably to pay for all the clothes and shoes he destroyed each time he would change into the Hulk. I never understood why he wouldn't quickly pull his shoes off and rip off his clothes whenever he felt "the change" coming on. There were always two metamorphoses each week. Usually the first one was David getting roughed up by the shady characters that were involved in that weeks shady deal David had gotten involved in. The second one was always near the end. David would turn to the Hulk and beat the daylights out of the bad guys and save the damsel in distress and end whatever plot of evil had been cooked up that episode. Great entertainment! Next up at 9:00 was The Dukes of Hazzard. Now I know a lot of you reading this are rolling your eyes but hey, this show was every young guys dream show! Each week there were car chases, car crashes, dumb a&& cops, leggy cousin Daisy who always wore high heels and shorts that barely qualified as being shorts. Bo and Luke Duke and Daisey lived with their Uncle Jesse and like the The Incredible Hulk featured some kind of far fetched plot each week where the boys would get into trouble, usually trying to help out a neighbor or friend and save the day at the end of the show. The opening song and the narrating during the show was done by country Waylon Jennings. Bo and Luke would race around in the General Lee, their customized 1969 Dodge Charger. How cool was that when Dodge reintroduced the Charger and few years back. Whenever I see one I'm reminded of the General Lee. Roscoe P. Coltrane, the dimwitted sheriff , would always end up being in hot pursuit of the Duke boys or Daisy and he would usually crash and total the cop car. I couldn't figure out why Boss Hogg didn't fire that idiot just on reasons of totaling so many police cars. It certainly kept the town mechanic Cooter busy! Then to end the evening at 10:00 was the ongoing nighttime soap opera Dallas. Now that show featured a family that would make you feel good about yours! Sure, they had money but man o man did they have problems! The three sons, J.R, Bobby and Gary, were as different as night and day. J.R was a conniving, under the table dealing, wife abusing, sell his soul to the devil for a dollar, egotistical bad guy. Bobby on the other hand was kind and trusting. Gary stayed mostly out of the family business dealings and pursued other interests. They all lived under on roof at the Southfork ranch and mom and dad Jock and Miss Ellie tried to keep sanity among everyone but it just didn't happen. You almost needed to keep a journal to keep up with all the illegal business dealings and affairs going on each season. Dallas aired for thirteen seasons and always ended each season on some kind of big cliff hanger, the most famous one being when bad brother J.R gets shot in his office while working late. All that summer people wondered "Who shot J.R"? Articles were wrote about it. Gary Burbank recorded a song that asked the question. People wore shirts that said "I shot J.R". Finally when the next season started it was revealed that J.R's mistress Kristin Shepard (who was played by the hot Mary Crosby) had done it. Those three shows were just Friday night! Other favorites of mine were Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man. From that was the spin off of the female version The Bionic Woman with Jaimie Sommers. Throw into the mix Gunsmoke, Wonder Woman, and The Waltons and that's why I don't like watching television today.

Lorenzo

Lorenzo and his "Serious Guy" look













That's better son!









Me and Lorenzo at San Jose in Clermont, Cinco De Mayo 2011

Friday Nite Video (Lost Boys)

Hey all! Happy Friday Nite! Tonight I thought it would be fun to do something not yet done on FNV and do a video of a song from a old skool movie. And what better movie to feature first on FNV then that 80's classic The Lost Boys. The Lost Boys came out in 1987 and it was a pretty good and popular movie. Now most people reading this more then likely have seen the movie but in case a few of you didn't here's the brief story. This family moves to Santa Carla, California to start fresh only to discover the town has a vampire problem. The vampires run around in a gang and their leader is David, played by Kiefer Sutherland. Well pretty soon David and his cohorts are chasing the new kids in town, trying to indoctrinate them into their gang. Really cool movie but what was just as cool was the soundtrack. I remember going out and buying the soundtrack soon after I had been to see the movie. My cousin Shawn Whaley and I would ride around jamming out to music from the Lost Boys. Most of the songs were older songs that were covered for the movie by modern artist like, for an example, the old Doors hit People are Strange. Echo & The Bunnymen redid that one and did a good job. But I think my favorite song from the movie was the one that opened it. Cry Little Sister was the song that started playing at the beginning of the movie and it set the stage for the whole movie. After that movie whenever we would pop The Lost Boys soundtrack in the old stereo we were transported back to Santa Carla, the town that was overrun with vampires. It's one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite movies. Irishman Gerard McMahon (who?) recorded the song and did a darn good job. From 1987 it's Cry Little Sister from the movie The Lost Boys. Enjoy!

Technology

I took my son Lorenzo into Best Buy today and wow! Ive always considered myself a pretty hip up to date kind of guy but I think I'm starting to fall behind. We were looking at laptops and the sales associate was kindly explaining the differences between models such as dual verses quad processors. RAM memory bits. Mega-bytes, mega-bits and pre installed Intel technology and 64 bit verses 32 bit. Me, not wanting to appear to be a total idiot, just kinda nodded and added a few ahhs and ohhs all the while nodding my head as if I completely understood everything he was saying. Then the questions started. What mattered most? Speed? Storage? Memory capacity? I was gonna say price mattered first but I held that one in. And I gotta admit, that voice of materialism started whispering in my head. "Get the one that will make him the envy of all his friends". The one that will have all his friends drooling and wishing they had a dad as cool as he did and was as willing to spend the Bens as I was. You ever hear that voice? I'll go years in a raggedy pair of shoes that are falling apart but I want the kids to have the cool in style pair. Anyway, we ended up getting a very good one that was on sale at a very attractive price and he was ecstatic. We had gone there "to look" but he didn't expect me to buy him his first laptop. Every now and then I surprise them I guess. But before and while he was looking at the computers I was looking around the store and started thinking how much technology had evolved in the past twenty or so years. I don't consider myself old by any means but when I was a kid we didn't have ANY of the things out nowadays. When I was a kid it was all about having a decent bike. We used to get a new kite a couple times a year. We played outside. I could climb any tree that was planted in the ground. Technology for us back then was a telephone in the house. A huge TV enclosed in a wood cabinet that got three stations and that was if it was a clear night and it wasn't raining or stormy. Dad had a big antenna screwed on a telephone pole outside the house with a big rotor dial control thingy by the TV that when you turned the dial the antenna would rotate in the direction you turned the dial. Some nights the picture was clear and sharp. Some nights you couldn't get rid of all the snow and all the characters had "ghosts' around them. And that was about as tech as we were growing up at my house. When we got a little older I remember my best friend Joel Wharton and his family were on the cutting edge of technology. His dad Ronnie was the first person I knew that bought and had one of those monster sized NASA looking satellite antennas installed in their front yard and boy was that thing off the charts! It picked up over a hundred channels! I would spend the night there and we would stay up all night watching movie after movie, show after show. It was like OD'ing on television! Soon after that they got one of those new gaming systems that you hooked up to your TV and could play video games. An Atari! That thing replaced the television viewing for quite awhile. We would play frogger, missile command and space invaders for hours! I would beg and plead my parents for one of them but they never bought me one. But I vowed to buy myself one when I had saved enough money which I did a few years later but then the Atari had been replaced by the Nintendo system. I bought that first Nintendo and literally stayed up all night for a week until I beat that dang Mario Brothers game that came with it. My love of video games stuck and the Super Nintendo followed, then the Nintendo 64. Then it was the Playstation 2. They are my weaknesses. I wanna upgrade again but to what? Now there's XBox, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3. I just don't know. I feel like I should get a big flat screen when I get my new system and that's something else I've been putting off. I still have my Magnavox 27 inch full size TV that would probably kill someone if it fell on them. It's old and heavy and if you try to pick it up to move it or dust under it and you don't use the proper bend knees and keep your back straight while slowly exhaling you WILL pull a muscle in your back but hey, it still works! I remember when my older sister Joy and her husband Gary bought one of those new gadgets called a VCR that actually played copies of movies. There was one place in my hometown that you could go and rent a VCR tape of a movie. They called it the video barn and it was a small portable shed will shelving added on the sides and they had maybe twenty or so movies to chose from. Joy and Gary would invite us all over and it was just mind blowing to be able to put a tape in that thing and watch a movie of your choice on the TV. It even had a twenty foot cable with a remote control on the end that you could use to rewind or pause or stop or fast forward the movie. It was amazing to our technology starved generation. Then today while in Best Buy I was looking at all the different kinds of 'Smart' phones. Do people really need phones that surf the web, send and receive emails, let you post on Facebook and Tweet? I don't, or I don't THINK that I do. Then again, I swore I would never own a cell phone and I did good for several years but I finally succumbed and bought one and now its pretty much a extension of my body. Where ever I am, my phone is beside me. Even typing this, it's two inches beside my computer. Just while typing this post I've received and sent a couple texts. My alarm went off a few minutes ago to remind me of something I had to do. My phone is part of me. If I was to lose it I'm sure I would go into full panic mode. Could you imagine a kid today trying to think back to ancient times when cell phones didn't exist? Like most other kids, both of mine have and have had cell phones. They can't imagine life without one. Last week when Emily was here her phone never left her hand. Constantly texting. She could probably text a sentence faster then I could say it. I got mad a couple times. "Put your phone down and listen to me", I would bark and she would but she would have it in her hands again within a few minutes burning up the keys. Today while looking at the phones in Best Buy I realized my basic flip phone and her sliding keyboard phone is nothing compared to some of the higher end phones. But do we really need it? Again, I don't think I do. Talking and texting keeps me busy enough! I don't need to be able to do banking or watch You tube videos on my phone. Looking at all the new products in Best Buy made me realize how behind the times I have fallen. 3-D TV's with built in WiFi. Computers that can download videos and movies in blazing speed. Phones that can do anything a computer can do. Blu-Ray players ( I'm just getting comfortable with DVD). Iphones, Ipods, Ipads. Gaming systems that you can go online with and play with people halfway across the planet. It's all to much for me to keep up with but hey, if I'm not sure about something or a certain product I can just ask my kids. I'm sure they will know!