Wednesday, December 30, 2009

She's back!

There are several writers that really are very good at telling stories, several of them are blended in over there on the right side. One that supposedly quit writing a while back I haven't looked for in a while, but she is writing again. It's FirstNations. Now her style might not suit some of you, but go back and look at some of her stories in the past and see how well she can describe a situation. Yea!

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Christmas in Vegas 2009

Thought I’d show you what Vegas looks like at Christmas. This year we didn’t get any snow, or rain but a lot of wind. The leaves have finally fallen off of most of the trees out back.


We decided to do a short Christmas Eve trip down to the Strip just to walk around a bit. We parked at our usual location in the Fashion Show Mall and encountered a lonely Santa awaiting customers. The mall was fairly empty, especially so close to a big giving holiday. Perhaps everyone was home getting ready for family.


We shopped a bit, and stopped for coffee at our favorite chain and watched people getting massaged.


We went outside and crossed over to the Venetian to see what they did to their mall, this is looking west down Sands Boulevard across Las Vegas Boulevard.


In the Palazzo they continued with their imitation of a smaller Bellagio with some bears, these made of poinsettias. We’ll visit the Bellagio Conservatory next week, their bears are made of carnations.


They also kept that big vine strip, but changed over to red with twinkling lights.


Back across the street we stopped in at the Wynn resort. For some reason no one was in the pool, even though it was nice and sunny. I guess it was the 55f temperatures.


There are two small areas with artificial trees that were decorated,


And a trio of traditional trees were by the main entrance.


Crossing back I almost missed a shot of my favorite Las Vegas visitor, the bride in wedding gown. I really will have to pull all of those together for a brides page.


No fashion shows this week at the Fashion Show Mall, but the runway was used for their big Christmas Spectacular, ten dancers with long legs and Santa. I hope some of the girls from the closed shows found at least temporary employment here.


And lunch at our favorite place, the Nordstrom’s CafĂ©, with the tomato basil soup and walnut pear salad.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

More holiday music

This one thanks to Pamela


I love her voice for the old quiet songs (yes, I have some of her recordings), one of the slides showed this version, so here is an alternative



Oh - and Kevin, thanks for the reminder of what Christmas really is about

Monday, December 21, 2009

More religions

In an effort to promote more something, another variation




Friday, December 18, 2009

Other holidays

Sorry, didn't mean to ignore other religions by only showing Christmas songs.

E Friday

In following the tradition of Clare we return again to E Friday, where I post photos of my darling granddaughter E, because VG really likes to look at these pics.

Whenever E comes down to visit she seems to want to play with the grandparents. The two favorite activities are swimming in the pool and having granddad push her on the swing. Inside Grammy seems to come up with a variety of things to do. Sometimes they involve complex things, like building forts from sheets and chairs.


That’s my wife B on the left. I usually don’t get her to pose for pictures but snapped this one without her knowing.


Here she is in the pool, I think it was take just before the laughing one posted a few days ago. Probably Granddad told her a joke, and here she has to think about it before laughing. At least I hope that’s why she was laughing.


This was waiting impatiently for the swing to be cleaned off or adjusted. Time not swinging in the sunshine is time lost.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Must be Santa

Oh, thanks Lisa, I hadn't heard that one. At least Bob has funny hair, kind of like George but not.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Christmas music

Sorry, with this being the season I should be posting holiday videos. OK, here from the past


Oh Georgie, I still love the hair. (never had enough to do it like that, or the time to want to) OK, not seasonal but we can keep it with Wham Rap.


Yes, a younger Goerge with less hair and cropped pegged jeans that even Kevin might like.

Monday, December 14, 2009

I've got a feeling

Sorry, it’s been busy around here just before Christmas. I’ve been supporting a manufacturing company that moves 90% of its annual sales during December, which leads to 13 hour days 7 days a week. But it’s a short term contract, finishing up Dec23 so I’ll be back on the job market soon. Ah well, that’s how things go, at least it’s better than sitting at home.

Some assorted things today, first an amusing video parody that lead to lots of discussions. First the original video by the Black Eyed Peas. They’ll be in town for two shows on New Year’s Eve.


I watch it and wonder why my wife doesn’t wear underwear like Fergie. Then I have to admit that she does not look like Fergie walking away (how many women do? Maybe it’s the heels. OK, probably you Heather but to be sure I’d have to do a more thorough inspection), but I love her anyway. It looks like a fun party, but at the end people are still falling down drunk, which lead to this version of the morning after. Sorry, no embedding, so you’ll have to click on Song parody. Go ahead, please, you’ll find this amusing. Was that like your college days?

After the Peas spent how many thousands of dollars creating the song and video, what does it take to make a good sounding parody? Well, you can pick up the Karaoke version someplace on the internet, or free software will pull out the vocals from almost any song so you can have the original music to sing to. Then you can get a free version of AutoTune to sing into, and you end up with a song that sounds pretty good. A not very expensive digital video camera and editing software which probably comes free with your computer and a few hours of fun with your buds, next thing you know you have your own video.

With Christmas coming up, please pay attention to the message in this video


And, just because I missed Friday for a while, here’s favorite granddaughter


And if you’re feeling cold, back in August the water temp in our pool was 93f

Monday, December 07, 2009

old cartoons

A little change today, instead of music I thought we would try some cartoons instead. Way back when I was a kid I loved watching Saturday morning cartoons on TV. I’ve frequently turned to the network stations on recent Saturdays and have not found anything that matches the fun I used to have. Searching YouTube for some of these old gems led to finding a few.
Back before my watching was the first made for TV cartoon: Crusader Rabbit.


Created by Jay Ward, who also was behind many others that I really liked, including Rocky and Bullwinkle and friends. This episode seems to have just about everyone, including Boris and the moon men:


Hanna Barbera created a lot of early cartoons. One I really liked was Ruff and Ready


Along with Yogi Bear and Deputy Dawg. Beany and Cecil the seasick sea serpent were also up there


We used to get tv stations out of New York, and as most big cities did, they employed local announcers to introduce the cartoons, and to stretch out We had Ray Heatherton as the Merry Mailman and Claude Kirchner as a ringmaster. There were also a few shows that were more live action, one I always watched was Andy’s Gang, with his gremlin pal Froggie. This was the standard lead in:


This was brought to you by Buster Brown shoes, filmed in Hollywood supposedly before a live audience, though some of the gags seem to be too involved for live tv. That’s why we named our brown dog Buster.


Let’s not forget Howdy Doody.


I think that was Bob Keeshan, who moved on to be Captain Kangaroo.

When I got older I moved to more sophisticated comedy, like the Soupy Sales show. Regulars on the show were Pookie and White Fang, along with other unseen cast members, always filed with corny jokes that kids found hilarious. Soupy always ended up with a pie in the face, which eventually resulted in a lot of celebrities coming on just to get the pie.


A lot of the show was spend conversing with his regular cast of puppets. You can tell this was live and the staff always seemed to have a good time.


So, what did you watch when you were a kid?

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Bohemian pole dancing

A sad change for those of you that wander the Strip late at night; the mobile strippers are no longer driving up and down Las Vegas Boulevard.


Since attendance at adult clubs has been declining due to the lower number of tourists in town and the restricted amounts of money they have to spend, a few clubs got together and had a special vehicle built. It looks like a box truck, kind of like a small UHaul rental truck, but the back has glass sides. A pole is mounted inside the back and scantily clad young women dance back there as the truck drives up and down the Strip. They were only active between 10pm and 2am, so as not to offend younger people that might be out and about.


But our county commissioners have decided that the truck is too much of a distraction and are in the process of passing an ordinance banning the truck from driving around town. Letters to the editor in our local paper just suggest that the police department start enforcing seat belt ordinances, but our prudish commissioners feel they need to become involved. I am still amazed at the dichotomy of attitude here, where it is ok to drink and gamble and look at semi naked people but for some reason nudity or making things obvious instead of hidden is bad. OK to drink and lose all your money, but don’t touch the girls.

On other fronts, for those of you old enough to remember Queen


The most viewed video on YouTube is a Muppet version of the same song.


If the embedded link is taken down you can go see the official version.
(Yes, I know it's not Video Monday, but NZed discussed this and it seemed to cute to wait until next week)