Reverse Chron

I know you guys could keep commenting on Sonic's Pickle-O's for another couple months - don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying that - but here's some new stuff to discuss, all in reverse chronological order, the most popular way to blog:

Television

Kelli wants me to review "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy." Ok, I will. It's a fabulous bit of television, a bright shining star in the summer schedule. Does the fact that I haven't actually seen the show disqualify me from writing a review?

Camping

We went camping in the local mountains last weekend. We were far enough away from Los Angeles that the sky was nice and dark and full of stars. You may have heard that Mars is closer to Earth right now than it has been in almost 60,000 years. I can attest to the fact that it is Extremely Bright right now. If you happen to be away from the city lights you should look up – that insanely bright star thingy, second only to the moon in the night sky? That’s Mars.

In other news, this weekend Cameron discovered one of the simple pleasures of being a boy. When we were hiking, he needed to go to the bathroom – and so he learned how to “water the trees.” He was most pleased. So pleased, in fact, that he asked to do it again when we got back to the campsite. Which was fine, except for the part where he needed toilet paper. To wipe his bottom with.

Yes, The Boy took a dump in the woods. Standing up. Yes, I did almost die laughing.

After this episode we took a moment to clarify what you can and can’t do when you’re “watering the trees.”

Pulp Fiction

Back to Mars. Mike is a big fan of Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars series. He finally printed me a copy of the first book, A Princess of Mars – it’s available at Project Gutenberg – and I was immediately hooked. It’s great anachronistic sci-fi fun, especially if you like swashbuckly heroic type stuff - and the first book would make a fabulous summer action blockbuster movie.

Missed It

I was in New York City last week for three days of meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Fortunately, we got out of town the day before the blackouts. Unfortunately, we got out of town before the blackouts – talk about bloggable moments. Mike and I would have probably just emptied out our minibars and headed across the street to Central Park.

It was a good trip – we had some great dinners and I dragged everybody down to Nat Sherman’s so I could pick up some cigars. (Rich Schmeltz gets the big shout-out for turning me on to Nat Sherman cigars.)

While we were in New York we happened to tour the set of John Edward's show “Crossing Over.” What a charlatan. I refer you to this clip, which summarizes my thoughts about Mr. Edward quite succinctly.

My favorite show on TV Land

As a broadcast television engineer, this is my favorite program on Nickelodeon’s TV Land. Hum along with the theme song while you browse the episode guide and the list of actors and characters for this compelling bit of television.

Roger Daltrey at the Bowl

A couple weeks ago some friends of ours took us to the Hollywood Bowl to see a production of My Fair Lady. The cast was fabulous – among the luminaries were John Lithgow as Professor Henry Higgins, Paxton Whitehead as Colonel Hugh Pickering (You may remember him as the snotty British business professor from Back to School), and Roger Daltrey as Mr. Doolittle, Eliza’s father.

It was a fun evening – we had box seats, which are considerably more comfortable than the bench seats from a few weeks ago – and I had the foresight to bring an extra bottle of wine. And now I can tell people that I saw Roger Daltrey perform at the Hollywood Bowl, even if Pete Townsend was nowhere in sight.