Friday Blogthing: Edumacation

Today's blogthing comes from my favorite Aussie, Blandwagon, who tipped me to this cute little web widget which purports to show the education level of your blog.

While I'm happy to see that this blog is published at a college level (which is why I have to use words like 'purports' and also why I totally pwnd Joel Mathis in Scrabulous), this reminds me that I might be speaking waaaaay over the the heads of you products of the Missouri school system.

So, for those of you on the east side of the state line, I'll try to start using smaller words.

tagged: Friday, test, blog, reading, level, education, meme, Missouri

Review: Saddle Ranch Chop House

You can really tell a restaurant is going to be successful by how it treats its customers.

And after spending so many enjoyable hours at the Saddle Ranch Chop House last weekend, I can tell you they have a unique approach in generating demand.

The Saddle Ranch, one of the new The Legends theme restaurants, features old-timey saloon decor with a genuine mechanical bull, big-screen TVs, an 8 brazillion decibel sound system and a horses ass sticking out of the wall.

One would think all this manufactured ambiance would be enough to maintain huge nightly crowds of loyal customers. One would be wrong.

Saddle Ranch takes it to the next level. There are several techniques they use to make sure everyone at the Saddle Ranch really really wants to be at the Saddle Ranch.

It starts as soon as you walk in the door and put your name on the list for a table. You see, despite the fact there there are three or four tables sitting empty, they still ask you to put your name on the waiting list and wait (and wait, and wait).

When they finally seat you at the table that's been vacant for the past 40 minutes, they know you're not the type to get all pissy and frustrated and walk out over a little thing like standing around not doing anything.

And this is good, because they want to you stay for a while and have a good time. There's never any rush to, say, get you your drinks, or menus. Once you've ordered, you're encouraged to sit back and keep your kids under control for the next 40 minutes while the servers ignore you and wait for your dinner to arrive.

You can take this time to admire the aforementioned decorations which include servers dressed in supertight t-shirts with even tighter Daisy Dukes. Our server's shorts were so tight you could read the label on her underwear. It read "Thursday" which was strange because we were there on a Saturday.

And kudos to the Saddle Ranch management for making sure you don't have to engage in banal conversation with the other people in your party. Thanks to a sound system blaring the latest hits from the early '90s, you're not bothered with conversational pleasantries with friends that you haven't seen in months.

Finally, when your food arrives, the wait staff makes sure you're really paying attention by selecting a couple of people at your table to receive the wrong order. Of course when you discover this fun little trick, everyone has a nice laugh and your actual order come out only 15 minutes later.

Yes, the staff and management of Saddle Rance Chop House really go out of their way to ensure that you want to be there.

It's reflected in their motto: "If you don't have a good time, it's your own damn fault."

tagged: food, restaurant, review, Saddle Ranch Chop House, Kansas City, The Legends, Daisy Dukes

Random Photo VII: Paris, 2001

Here's another one of my favorite shots from Paris when we traveled there a few years ago. I really found nothing not to like about Paris.


tagged: Paris, France, Europe, Eiffel Tower, photo, Bateau Mouche

Extreme Makeover: Emotional Exploitation Edition

I've always felt uneasy about not liking Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

It goes beyond my distaste for network TV in general and the so-called "reality" TV in particular. I mean, it's easy to hate fake reality shows with amateur actors/attention whores as "contestants" who take direction from lame-ass producers trying to convince us that what we're seeing is totally spontaneous.

The problem with Extreme Makeover is that the actual work they do is good. They identify people who have had a rough go of it and, essentially, build a luxury house for them free of charge.

Good works, right? What could be a better motivation than to help those who are down on their luck?

Except that’s not the motivation.

The motivation is to use a sad story to manipulate the viewing public into watching an hour’s worth of advertising couched in melodrama.

But, you say, that’s what every television program does. And for the most part you’re right. Nearly every program, even sports, attempts to manipulate the emotions of the viewers to get them to keep viewing in order to see the messages of the advertisers.

Then again, most programs (sucky as they are) pay actors and writers to come up with increasingly implausible situations to tug our increasingly jaded heartstrings. In some ways, that seems more honest than the “reality” type shows because everybody – producers, writers, actors and audience – are aware of just what’s going on.

Extreme Makeover, on the other hand, is a bit more insidious. They find a real world tearjerker story and use poignant pauses and emotional music to amplify the emotion.

What could be more gripping than a Marine veteran returning home missing a leg to a house with a leaking roof and drafty windows and, oh by the away, his wife left him and his four kids.

This is a real world tragedy. It requires no emotional amplification and frankly I’m a little offended at ABC for exploiting our neighbors like this. The one saving grace, as I stated before, is that our neighbors are getting some help they haven’t received from our community.

So I guess it comes down to whether ABC’s exploitative motivation cancels out the good that is done to the families in need.

The answer is no.

But I still won’t watch Extreme Makeover or the other “reality” shows because I have a huge pet peeve against people trying to manipulate me.


tagged: Extreme Makeover, home, Ty Pennington, emotional, marketing, advertising, Kansas City, Daniel Gilyeat

YouTube Tuesday: Guitar Zero

I don't know what's more pathetic, being this good at such a worthless pursuit as a video game, or being so proud of being this good at such a worthless pursuit that you allow you roommate to video tape you in a dorm room chock full of latent homosexuality (not that there's anything latently wrong with that) and putting it up on the internet for all to see.

Still, balls to the fake guitar playing.



tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Guitar Hero, dorm, video game, lame

It's a major award!

I was just notified that this digital detritus you're currently wasting your time on was nominated last month for consideration in the highly prestigious and influential 2007 Weblog Awards.

The nominations were opened on Oct. 17, and closed about two days later and this blog was one of about 50 or 60 nominated in my category.

Of course, I'm not going to ask you all to vote for me. I'm not so shallow that I need to shill for some award just to prop up my ego. I mean, how pathetic would that be?

And besides, the all powerful muckety-mucks that run the 2007 Weblog Awards didn't see fit to include me in the seemingly arbitrary finalist selections, so you can't vote for me even if I wanted you to.

Still, it is an honor just to be nominated, particularly when the nomination was submitted by one of may favorite bloggers, John Swift, a very funny writer and one of the best satirist bloggers out there. So I consider this high praise (unless of course he was nominating me satirically, then it's kind of an insult. But I'll take the benefit of the doubt here).

Anyway, the best thing about this is that now I can legitimately use one of the neato banner's proclaiming that I was nominated for a major award, you know, like all the cool kids do. It will go great with my 2006 Time Magazine Person of the Year award.

tagged: blog, major award, Weblog Awards, John Swift, blogging, Ralphie

She's got a great sense of humor

Okay, this post is for the parents out there, which means it's long on sweetness and might make you singles and DINKs puke a little inside your mouths. But here we go...

Lemme set the scene:
It's the evening after our daughter's 5th birthday party. During the course of the party, one of the guests had accidentally yanked the lacy princess canopy hanging from the ceiling over her bed. Now, at bedtime, she wants the canopy back up before going to sleep.

And... ACTION:

me: Sorry, we can't put it back up because the hook got lost during your party.

her: Then what are we going to do? We need to get it back up!

me: Don't worry, we'll get another hook tomorrow at the store.

her: You can't get hooks at the store!

me: You can't? Where do you think you get them then?

her: From a pirate!

And scene.

tagged: kids, family, birthday, humor, party, hook, pirate

Friday Blogthing: No, man, like hey, man. Wow.

Today's Friday Blogthing quiz was involuntarily submitted by (i.e. "blatantly stolen from") John B at Blog Meridian.

I can't complain about the result. I'm just glad it didn't come up as The Manchurian Candidate or Marathon Man or something similar.

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

tagged: Friday, test, movie, Easy Rider, Manchurian Candidate, Marathon Man, meme, blog

For whom the bell trolls

I have implemented a policy on this piece of digital fishwrap to never mention certain names that will go unmentioned.

The rationale is that the organization and family behind this certain name want nothing more than to be named and garner the attention by which such naming is accompanied.

I think that by not naming the heretofore unnamed name, I'm taking away that which allows this organization to keep going - or at least I'm not contributing to it in my own small sense. I've always thought that if we can ignore them long enough, they'll go away.

Having stated that, it is nice to read news stories about the recent legal verdict against this unnamed organization. And even though the $11 million judgment in favor of the father of a fallen soldier will undoubtedly be appealed, it gives me hope that more such lawsuits will be successful.

If nothing else it will help keep the unnamed family tied up in court, devoting more of their financial resources to defending their obnoxiousness instead of perpetrating it.

tagged: funeral, protest, verdict, Topeka, Snyder, emotional distress

Book Report: No Country for Old Men

Title: No Country for Old Men

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Synopsis:
While hunting in the West Texas wilderness, Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon the bloody scene of a drug deal gone bad. Invoking the "Finders Keepers" clause, he claims $2 million in cash (but leaves the heroin). He gets more than he expects when the Mexican drug cartel sends Anton Chigurh - a psychopath who is not quite as dangerous as the Bubonic Plague - to reclaim the money and "product."

My thoughts:
Since reading McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning The Road, I've been working my way through the McCarthy library. My goal was to finish No Country for Old Men before the motion picture release later this month.

It turns out that wasn't a problem. Like The Road, No Country is a very quick read at just over 300 pages. But while the book showcases McCarthy's gift for language, it wasn't as emotionally satisfying as The Road. I wasn't left with the sense of stunned awe after turning the last page as I was with The Road.

That said, No Country for Old Men is still and amazing work. It examines the old proverb that "No good deed ever goes unpunished." When the central character Llewelyn Moss stumbles upon the drug deal gone bad and the accompanying $2 million in untraceable cash (well, nearly untraceable), all he has to do is let a man die alone and walk away rich.

His better angels take over though, and he returns to the scene to give the dying man a drink of water. For this, he is rewarded with being chased through the desert by drug traffickers who have come to collect the money.

This sets up the major plot line for the novel, and McCarthy describes the chase with all the physical and psychological detail to which I've come accustomed through reading his other works (though stylistically McCarthy is in his Hemingway mode rather than his Faulkner mode). Anton Chigurh follows Moss and the money, leaving a trail of blown out door locks and blown out brains across the plains of west Texas, while Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tracks the carnage trying to figure out what kind of person could do such evil but questioning whether he really wants to catch up with the assassin.

I give McCarthy credit for not pulling punches in the story (although by now I know McCarthy pulls no punches when it comes to death and violent imagery). In the end, Chigurh catches up with Moss, kills him, takes the money and gets away. We are then treated to a chilling scene where Chigurh, for no reason other than his demented psychosis, kills Moss's widow because he told Moss he would.

No, it's not a happy ending (Oh, by the way, SPOILER ALERT!!! Heh, little late with that, sorry).

In the denouement, Sheriff Bell retires when he is unable to prevent the bloodbath or bring Chigurh to justice (or even identify who Chigurh is). He retires because it really has become no country for old men. Bell (and McCarthy?) suspects the moral decline and growing violence of the world around him is irreversible.

"It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners. Any time you quit hearin Sir and Mam the end is pretty much in sight."

My biggest problem with the book is that there are a couple of pretty big plot holes. One is, why did Moss, after taking the money, decide to risk discovery by returning to the scene? I suppose it was because he felt conflicted about leaving someone to die thirsty and alone, but this humanitarian action doesn't seem consistent with his later actions. I can live with this since it sets up the conflict and action for the rest of the story.

My bigger gripe is with the Moss's death scene, or rather the lack of one. We are brought to the scene after the fact with the character of Sheriff Bell. I just think that after investing so much to develop Moss's character, he deserved a better, more detailed death sequence.

Still this is a profound and disturbing book, well written and very approachable. I hope the Coen brothers have done it justice (and from what I've read, they have).

Rating: Recommended.

tagged: books, literature, Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men, Coen brothers