Monday, April 30, 2007

talk about the weather, making plans together

One of my goals in writing this blog is to avoid repeating stories that I have told on the radio. I have to make an exception in this case for the benefit of the relatives I saw at my cousin's wedding on Saturday. I know they don't hear the show but I hope they do read the blog.

After the wedding reception, we continued visiting with relatives in the lobby of one of Richmond's finest hotels. During our conversation, I noticed several brides and grooms arriving for the first night of their honeymoon, still dressed in wedding gowns and tuxedos. As one couple gave their overnight bags to the bellman, I heard a metallic clanking sound and started to become curious.

There was a little bit of a newlywed traffic jam in the lobby. Three couples were checking in at the front desk. Each couple's luggage was loaded onto a separate cart parked near the one working elevator. At the same time, my mother and grandmother were getting ready to go up to their rooms. My wife went with Mom and Grandma to help. The three of them ended up in the same elevator as the couple whose arrival was marked with the metallic clank.

It would be several minutes before my wife returned to the lobby. My son and I waited for her along with one of my mother's cousins. The four of us were going to walk together to our cheaper hotel a block away. While we waited, we saw the luggage carts near the elevator. One of them held some overnight bags and a heavy duty metal chain that must have been the source of the clanking noise I heard earlier. This wasn't just a bicycle chain. It was a Marley's Ghost type of chain. A cowbell sat on top of it.



My mother's cousin is a delightful woman with a great sense of humor. She asked what I thought the chains and cowbell were for. I replied that the possibilities were endless. The bellman took one of the luggage carts into the elevator after checking a hanging tag for the room number. The cart with the chains was still waiting to go up. As a joke I walked over to look at the room number and I told my son and my mother's cousin that we should just ask the couple how they planned to use the chain and cowbell on their wedding night.

I thought my mother's cousin was changing the subject when she started talking about a nearby room full of old style pay phones. She lead us over to see the room, which also had a bank of house phones. Taking the hint, I picked up a house phone and dialed 7 plus the room number. "Hello?" said a man's voice. "Are you the guy with the chain and cowbell?" I asked. When he said that he was, I told him that I had to know what he planned to do with the hardware. He said the bell and chain was actually part of an odd tradition in his family. His groomsmen wrapped him in the chain during the reception. I pictured his Houdini-like escape as I hung up the phone. I've seen the episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies" about a wedding night shivaree, but the old bell and chain is new to me.

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Sunday, April 29, 2007

hi, is Baba there?

Today was a nice Spring day in Richmond. We needed to put ice in our cooler to chill some water and diet soda for the long drive back to Knoxville. The road out of town had several convenience stores that we don't see in Tennessee. 7-Eleven and Sheetz were enticing but we had to try a Wawa, which I had only seen ages ago in Pennsylvania.

I liked that they offered several diet-friendly choices of salads and fresh fruit but it was something fattening that made me glad I had a camera with me. The sign on the glass door said "Wawa Egg Nog available in half gallons, quarts & pints for the holidays." Could it be left over from Christmas? Or were they promoting egg nog for Mother's Day and Memorial Day? The expiration date on both the quarts and the half gallons was May 18th. To prove that I really did find egg nog for sale on April 29th, I posed with a copy of today's Richmond Times-Dispatch. I might have bought some if it weren't for the long car ride ahead of me and if I didn't still still have some egg nog in the freezer at home.


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Saturday, April 28, 2007

in case you missed it

Tuesday's entry about Tom Carvel has one of those weird titles that made me laugh when I thought of it. The week started off strong with my recap of the Knoxville Yankee picnic. I followed a dragster hearse down Kingston Pike and marked a five year anniversary.

In other news, Michael Silence reports that Bjorn and Brehd have resumed their entertaining writing. Lastly, my thoughts and prayers are with Rich Hailey's family.

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Friday, April 27, 2007

Odessa, Texas... hello...

The cast of "Heroes" finally turned up on "Larry King Live" tonight. They got bumped two months ago due to the glut of Anna Nicole Smith coverage. With each question, Larry made it more obvious that he has never seen the show and probably never will. He kept trying to get one of the cast members to agree that they thought "Heroes" was a crazy idea for a show when they read the pilot script. Like James Lipton, Larry mostly asked about the audition process and the craft of acting. I would have liked to hear more discussion on the issues the show raises about people with different abilities who must work together for the greater good.

A couple named Mark & Rhonda sent me an email asking if this would be the only season for "Heroes." They wondered what would be left for the characters to do after they save the world. Besides, shows that good have a habit of getting canceled too soon. The good news is that the series has already been renewed for a second season. Each season is like a book with a beginning, middle and end with each episode its own chapter. I prefer the one season story arcs on "Heroes" and "24" to the multi-year plan for "Lost." It's easier to kill off old characters and bring in new ones without the negative backlash that "Lost" got for doing the same thing. Of those three shows, I'm most excited about seeing the season finale for "Heroes."

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Thursday, April 26, 2007

sing orff

Two events drew crowds to downtown Knoxville tonight. Scott Miller & the Commonwealth were the headliners at Sundown in the City while the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra filled the Tennessee Theatre. As we walked out of the State Street parking garage, we saw a guy wearing long black shorts, hair cropped close on the sides with a pony tail in the back, a couple of visible tattoos and several big piercings. My son and I assumed he was headed to Market Square and were surprised to see him just ahead of us in the Will Call line at the Tennessee Theatre.

The orchestra played Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 before intermission. It was very nice but we were really there to see my wife and the rest of the Knoxville Choral Society sing "Carmina Burana." The hour long piece opens with the very recognizable "O Fortuna," which only lasts for about two minutes. During the concert I was a little worried that the best part of the show had passed because I like my classical music fast and loud. Had I looked ahead in the program, I would have seen that there is a crowd-pleasing reprise of "O Fortuna" at the end of the opus. The rest of "Carmina Burana" is good too, as you could hear for yourself on Friday night.

In addition to the Knoxville Choral Society, there were some excellent young singers from a local show choir called Sound Company and three talented professional soloists. Because the lyrics were in German and Latin, it was hard to notice that at one point the baritone soloist started the wrong verse and then corrected himself. His facial expression was a dead giveaway though. I doubt
he'll mention it in his blog.

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

casting about

Extras are needed for a new movie to be filmed in East Tennessee. One of the actors in "The Boys of Summerville" is my improv "brother" Brad Bumgardner. The filming will take place during June in Rockwood, Kingston, Caryville and Harriman. Several of the scenes take place at softball games.

According to Terry Morrow
, another baseball themed movie may be "lensing" around here in the fall. Martin Sheen would star in a Civil War drama about some soldiers who settle their differences with a baseball game rather than a battle. It might be more plausible as a hockey movie.

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

corpsie-puss

The email from my friend Bean had the most irresistible subject line. It read: "nothing has ever been more Frank blogworthy than this." He sent me a news blurb about the late ice cream magnate Tom Carvel. Much like the Big Bopper, Carvel's family wants to have his body exhumed and autopsied to see if he was murdered.

Tom Carvel was well known in New York as the voice of his company's radio and TV commercials. Once when I was a kid, I saw him at a street festival in Tuckahoe. He was the emcee of an ice cream eating contest in front of the Carvel store in Depot Square. I also remember my Dad driving us past the site of the first Carvel store and telling us how it was the built on the spot where Tom Carvel's ice cream truck got a flat tire.

Tom Carvel is one of several celebrities interred at Ferncliff Cemetery. If he were still alive, I'm sure he would be busy promoting the discounts available this week as Fudgie the Whale celebrates his 30th birthday.

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personal milestone

Five years ago today I boarded a plane in Burbank. After changing planes in Dallas, I landed in Knoxville, ready to start a new job and a new chapter of my life.

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Monday, April 23, 2007

follow me to Mockingbird Lane

The music at the beginning of "The Munsters" is one of, if not my overall, favorite TV theme songs. As I was leaving West Town Mall today, I crossed paths with a car that reminded me of the Munster Koach. It was headed west on Kingston Pike while I was getting on the Interstate at Montvue. I took I-40 west to the next exit and instead of turning right and going where I needed to go, I went the opposite way hoping to see the car again. As I got to the light at Gallaher View and Kingston Pike, the dragster hearse passed in front of me again. The photo safari was on. I turned right and eventually caught up with it at one of the next stop lights. It wasn't until after I was done with my little detour that I thought gas costing $2.69 a gallon.


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Sunday, April 22, 2007

hey youse guys

The weather was perfect. The people were great. The food was fantastic. I wish we could have stayed a bit longer at the Knoxville Yankee picnic this afternoon. Thanks to Wes and his wife Jenn for organizing the event.



The main attraction was the pizza from Brooklyn's Original Pizza in Lenoir City. The guys from the restaurant and I had a good laugh about the time they thought I was a corporate spy.



Wes' aunt flew down from Yonkers with a load of Drake's cakes, Stella D'Oro cookies and Zurro's bread. She told me that she won't be able to do it again because she's going to move to Tennessee. When I first saw Knoxville Yankee's preview photo of bread from a bakery that started with "Z" and ended with "ro's" I got excited that they might have some corn rye from Zaro's Bread Basket in Grand Central Terminal, a favorite of my family. I have no complaints about Zurro's though. It tasted great. A lot of people were most psyched about the stack of Junior's Cheesecakes. Overall, the highlight for me had to be the Devil Dogs but as I look at this photo, I can't believe I forgot to have a Yodel.

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Saturday, April 21, 2007

caught up in the Internet

This morning at 3:00 a.m Central Time, several people from Wisconsin ended up at my site after searching for information about a Frank Murphy who beat somebody up in the third grade. Of course I never delivered a smackdown in the third or any other grade. My son tells me that there is a scene in the movie "I, Robot" that may have prompted the flurry of web activity. I should watch it one of these days.



A list of predictions from 1900 has been making the rounds on the Internet this past week. Some of the items seem too accurate to be true. I expected to find a debunking of the list at Snopes.com but did not.

Another site making the news is GreatTurtleRace.com. It tracks leatherback sea turtles as they swim to the Galapagos Islands to lay their eggs.

As I read more about the tragedy at Virginia Tech, I stumbled across a cartoon that moved me. It shows the mascots of other Virginia universities consoling the Virginia Tech Hokie. A larger version of the drawing can be found at LansingCartoons.com. When seen side by side with the other mascots, it is apparent that my alma mater needs to update theirs.

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Friday, April 20, 2007

clicking away in Margheritaville

While eating lunch today (five ounces of chicken and a salad), I flipped back and forth between WBIR and WATE. Channel 10 was showing an episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies" I had already seen. Meanwhile on Channel 6, one of the questions on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" asked what type of food was featured on the website SliceNY.com. As a fan of New York pizza, I wrote myself a note to take a look at it when I turned on my laptop. The people who run the site heard about their "Millionaire" mention second-hand.

Slice is mostly about pizza parlors in New York City. So far I haven't found any reviews for Roma or Albanese's, the pizzerias that my family frequented when we lived in Westchester County. Thanks to one of their reader tips, I found a mention of a pizza place in Northern Virginia that I will have to try on my next visit. I wonder if any of our East Tennessee pizzerias will ever make the site. My current top three are Mangia, Brooklyn's Original and Roman's.

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

north and south

Blogger Rich Hailey is organizing another BlogFest at Calhoun's this Saturday. I would like to go but I'll be at work. My family and I will try to attend the Knoxville Yankee picnic on Sunday at Admiral Farragut Park. We can only stay a short while but it will be worth it if I can grab a slice of Brooklyn's Original Pizza and a Devil Dog.

I wanted to go to Market Square tonight to see George Thorogood but I didn't make it. Anybody want to share their photos from the concert? I was at Market Square earlier today to emcee the Mayor's Cup Race Walk, a tongue-in-cheek event to promote alternatives to driving alone. Here's a photo of me with Missy Kane, Mayor Mike Ragsdale, Mayor Bill Haslam and Councilman Chris Woodhull.


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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

freedom and security

Universities all over the country are expressing condolences to Virginia Tech. At my daughter's school they are planning a vigil in their "designated free speech area." It got me wondering if speech can be both designated and free. My daughter and some friends have already made arrangements with student housing to be roommates next fall. She told me today that one of her future roommates lost a good friend (and former high school classmate) in the massacre.

On "The View" this morning, the co-hosts wished that a more extensive background check could have kept the VT killer from buying his guns. On previous episodes, Rosie O'Donnell has made it clear that she is vehemently opposed to that same sort of thing when it is known as the Patriot Act. Rich Hailey makes a good point that the profiling which might have stopped the murderer would have also ensnared lots of other lonely, insecure students.

People everywhere are invited to wear orange and maroon on Friday to show support for Virginia Tech.

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

peace on earth, goodwill toward men

Merry Christmas! This past December I saw a guy on the National Geographic Channel who said that Jesus was born on April 17 in the year 6 BC. He used astronomical calculations to determine that the Star of Bethlehem (a/k/a Jupiter) would have been visible 2,012 years ago today. After yesterday's events we could use some of that Christmas spirit.

Earlier today, my wife spoke with her sister who went to Virginia Tech. Through her we heard about a friend of a friend of a friend who survived the shootings by falling down and playing dead. Meanwhile we learned that the shooter grew up in Centreville, near where another of my wife's sisters used to live.

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Monday, April 16, 2007

awful

The news from Virginia Tech is horrifying. Several of the blogs I try to read daily have featured links to news about the shootings. Check out Collegiate Times, The Roanoke Times and Newschannel10. My thoughts and prayers are with those who are grieving the loss of a friend or family member.

My wife and I know some Virginia Tech alumni, including one of her brothers, one of her sisters and a few of my cousins. Our daughter has a friend from pre-school who is now a student there. She was able to find out that her friend was okay via IM. Several news stories are reporting how news spread over the Internet through instant messages, email and Facebook. Virginia Tech is one of the first schools our son has visited as he begins his college search. He seems to be handling the news of the tragedy but I am concerned about how it might affect him in the future.

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

fluff stuff

An interview with Susan Olsen was posted to the TV Squad site yesterday. In it, she talks about her fondness for radio and acknowledges that her current nickname is "Fluff." I had the pleasure of working with Susan at the short-lived Comedy World Radio Network. Every now and then she will email me marshmallow related links for sites like Bunnyocalypse. Last year I mentioned that the contents of the Marshmallow Fluff jar on Susan's mantle that had started to separate. I suggested she turn it upside down for a while but that only revealed a small break in the jar's seal, creating a sugary mess. Meanwhile, I discovered that her friend, "Fake Jan," posted a link to Susan's blog. I'm sure I will enjoy reading it.

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Saturday, April 14, 2007

hot air and helium

Attendance was light at today's Dogwood Arts Festival Parade, probably due to threatening weather. Except for a little bit of drizzle, the rain held off until after the parade. After seeing Mayor Haslam and his wife, we walked down Gay Street toward the cameras from WVLT's secondary channel, myVLT2.



The crowd's enthusiasm grew when the National Champion Lady Vols rode past. My enthusiasm grew when the Tennessee Traveler SUV rode past. Gordon Boyd was at the wheel with Chef Walter riding shotgun. My camera was pointed at Stacy McCloud.



The backs of Alan Williams and Kelli Parker can be seen across the street behind the Knoxville Zoo float. Seeing local TV news people and giant balloons made the trip downtown worth my while.



I photographed the Garfield and Friends balloon at the intersection of Gay and Union. (Knoxville also has an intersection of Church and State.) The parade ended with a green serpent balloon. I'm pretty sure the PA announcer called it Cecil, as in "Beany & Cecil."



Three years ago, I thought being in the Dogwood Parade would be good publicity for Einstein Simplified's tenth anniversary. We paid the entry fee and got permission from the city to ride in their REO truck. We had signs made for the truck and rented two bullhorns so we could yell at the spectators, which turned out to be a lot of fun. My hopes of being on TV were dashed when they had us roll past the cameras during a commercial break.

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Friday, April 13, 2007

canned laughter

This weekend my daughter is visiting from college. She knows what I will find funny, which is why she brought me a photo of some B&M Brown Bread that she spotted in a Virginia grocery store. There are plenty of jokes to be made just from the name on the can. It must get even funnier once you drop a loaf on a plate.

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

nice to have you back where you belong

Some out-of-town relatives will be arriving late tonight for a family celebration this weekend. We'll probably spend most of the time at home but if any of our house guests are looking for something to do while in East Tennessee, there are plenty of choices this weekend.

The Mystery Mine officially opens at Dollywood tomorrow, which is Friday the 13th. Dolly Parton herself will be on the premises to do a satellite TV interview with "Fox & Friends." For fans of musical theatre, a touring company of "Hairspray" is at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium. A show Saturday at the World Grotto called "Night of 1,000 Dollies" will combine aspects of the two with a DP drag show assuming it doesn't get shut down by Dollywood's lawyers.

Of all the events this weekend, the one I'm most likely to try to attend is the Dogwood Arts Festival Parade. It's supposed to have a giant helium balloon or two.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

by a wide margin

The big news out of Burbank is the election of my friend Anja Reinke to city council. There were four people running for two open seats. Anja and a local restaurant owner each got about 6300 votes. Anja will become one of many St. Finbar parishioners who have served on the council. She should get to take a turn as vice-mayor and then mayor eventually.

The other two candidates, who happened to be a married couple, got about 3300 votes each. Their unsuccessful campaign was endorsed by a soap opera actress whose reading skills I coincidentally featured in my blog last December. At least George Takei loves her.

Anja supports a ban on smoking in places like public parks and restaurant patios. The losing candidates gave an overly wordy answer to the same yes/no question. Maybe someday Knoxville will become more breathable for the non-smoking majority via a sales tax increase or a ban on public smoking. WATE had a town hall meeting on the topic tonight.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

avoid rubbing

Tonight was the first time I had to miss an Einstein Simplified performance due to illness. More on that later.

As an improv fan, I like the concept of "Thank God You're Here" but I didn't love the execution. The celebrity who walks into a scene had to completely improvise but the rest of the cast stubbornly stuck to their scripted outline even if it meant denying the improviser, a cardinal sin of the genre. I started liking the show a little better when I began to think of it as a fleshed out version of an improv game called "Every Other Line." A reviewer for TV Squad pointed out several specific examples of the denials that drove me crazy.

Since I was at home tonight, I watched "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" in real time. That reminds me, what were Lance Bass and Alfonso Ribeiro doing together in the audience during Monday night's dancing show? Maybe they were doing some belated joint promotion for their 2005 made-for-TV movie "Lovewrecked." I did a Google Blog Search and found only one other person in the blogosphere who also noticed them. During tonight's Big & Rich performance (with special guest Drew Lachey), I called WATE to complain that the broadcast was not in HD. Like any red-blooded American male, I wanted to see Cheryl Burke fill the screen. A nice man in the control room told me it was not his fault, it was a network problem. Nobody else could see the show in HD either. While I had him on the phone, I got a chance to mention a pet peeve. I told him that I didn't like the way they always switch back to SD a couple of seconds too soon before airing local commercials during "Lost."

During the commercial breaks in tonight's shows, I sent invitations to join LinkedIn to a few people whose email addresses I didn't have handy when I first registered with the site. I now have 39 connections. But I also have 179 outstanding invitations.

Yesterday my wife, our son and I rode the Mystery Mine, the fantastic new roller coaster at Dollywood. After the ride, we had lunch and then went to see "Rhythm of the Dance" in the same theatre where I had seen the Fercos Brothers last July. There must be something soothing about the sound of pounding Irish feet because just like when I went to see "Riverdance" in LA, all I wanted to do was relax and go to sleep. At the end of the show, I could barely get my eyes open. That's when I first suspected that I had the pinkeye!

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Monday, April 09, 2007

eggzactly

The White House probably has the most famous Easter Monday festivities. Perhaps it could become an Easter Monday tradition for me to post a photo of the Easter Eggs we decorated over the weekend. I hid the eggs I decorated under the ones my wife and son did. In an attempt to be clever, I used the clear crayon to write "Blue Egg" on one and dropped it in a cup of what I thought was blue dye. It was actually purple. My son used the real blue dye and a Q-Tip for his annual "Earth Egg," which is positioned front and center. My wife's "Mosaic Egg" is hard to see toward the top of the photo.



Speaking of eggs, where's Vincent Price when we need him?

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Sunday, April 08, 2007

peepalicious

Happy Easter! Here in Knoxville, it's colder than it was this past Christmas. That's why I'm wearing the thermal "Chillin' With My Peeps" shirt made by Trau & Loevner that my wife gave me for Christmas. It's just like one that was sold on eBay.

Every year around this time I enjoy getting emails from friends who think of me when they come across a link about Marshmallow Peeps. My friend Bean wants to know why I'm not headed to Sacramento for next weekend's annual Peeps eating contest. He's seen the old photo of me stuffing my face with Peeps. The architect friend who invited me to join LinkedIn sent me a link to a page about Peeps in a college library.

Last month I told you about a Peeps art contest for readers of the Seattle Times. Today is the day for several newspapers around the country to reveal the winners of their Peeps contests. We'll go ahead and start with the Seattle Times. I don't know which is weirder, "Peep CSI" or "Borat Peep." My sister's husband tipped me off to the Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest. I liked the Batman & Robin scene, which is number 3 in their slide show.

Several other newspapers are on the Peeps bandwagon.
Of the artwork submitted to the Ocala Star-Banner, I like the Peep magician best. The St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Camden Courier Post both have many fine submissions. The Ann Arbor News set their slideshow to music. Don't forget the Binghampton Press & Sun-Bulletin or the Miami Herald or the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Columnist Lisa Ramirez of the Middletown Times Herald-Record spells out the differences betweens Peeps people and Cadbury Creme Egg people. Oh yeah, her paper had readers submit Peeps photos too. All of this Peep Culture will help us get ready for next year's Peeps documentary film, "Power of the Peep."

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Saturday, April 07, 2007

the vigil people

The Easter Vigil is the most important Mass of the year in the Catholic faith. I go to All Saints Church, the biggest parish in the country's most vibrant diocese. A major factor in our parish's success is the constant influx of new converts (not to mention the hot wax and holy water). Naturally, the Easter Vigil at All Saints is focused on the candidates and catechumens who are joining the church. In addition to receiving the sacraments, the new Catholics proclaim all the Old Testament readings and the Epistle.

For the past few years my wife has sung the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil. Hearing her sing it reminded me of our old parish in Burbank. Attending the Easter Vigil each year at St. Finbar got me more interested in my own Catholicism. My wife would often sing the Exsultet, my son would be one of the altar servers and I twice served as a sponsor for new Catholics. As I continue to think about St. Finbar Church, I miss the way all the ministries were included in the biggest Mass of the liturgical year. At St. Finbar, the readings were proclaimed by five of the best lectors in the parish.

The music during the Triduum at All Saints is excellent. Tonight I got to hear one of my all-time favorites, John D. Becker's "Litany of the Saints." My favorite piece at St. Finbar was a Taizé arrangement called "Stay With Me" that would be played on Holy Thursday. I wish they played it here too.

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Friday, April 06, 2007

tonight on CSI: Toontown

While at Walt Disney World this past weekend, I noticed something in a gift shop that might make a perfect present for the couple who have their wedding or honeymoon at a Disney resort. I suggest a full set of plates from the "Dismembered Mickey" pattern:


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Thursday, April 05, 2007

there's waldo

The challenge was a tough one. Did you find the little mountain chorus frog in yesterday's photo of the leaves and rainwater on my pool cover? In case you had trouble, my son used Microsoft Paint to draw a circle around the frog for you.


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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

where's waldo?

Today turned out to be the annual tadpole rescue day at our backyard pool. Because the frogs seemed to start "singing" later this year than last year, I had thought that maybe there wouldn't be as many tadpoles to save. Also, I scheduled the pool opening for a week or so earlier this year in an effort to give the frogs less time to get all romantic on my pool cover. It didn't matter. There were still plenty of relatively large tadpoles for us to collect in a bucket today. In previous years my son and I had unsuccessfully tried to see the parent frogs in the accumulated rainwater. Today we spotted two and put them in the same bucket as the tadpoles. See if you can find the frog in this photo:


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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

jedi mind trick

Air Supply had their sixth and seventh consecutive top five singles on the music charts in 1982. It was only fitting for them to perform at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Children's Miracle Network last night at the Coronado Springs convention center at Walt Disney World. Seeing them in concert reminded me of my Air Supply story.



About once a quarter, Kevin & Bean host a singles party for their listeners. Tickets are given away during their morning show, making sure that there will be an equal number of men and women at the party. During the time I worked on the show in the mid '90s, we had singles parties with various themes including an Oktoberfest, a beach party and a losers singles party on Valentine's night. For the losers party, we found a VFW hall and served macaroni and cheese. David Millman, then a publicist from one of the record companies, suggested we try to get Air Supply to perform. They were on his label. All I had to do was sell Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell on the idea.



I drove to a recording studio in Glendale for my big meeting with Air Supply. I explained that even though KROQ was known for groundbreaking alternative music, many morning show listeners would have listened to their songs when they were kids. Because it was a "losers party" I suggested that Air Supply could be in on the joke rather than the butt of it. Russell and Graham could call in to the show and offer to play at the losers party. They could even record a little blurb for a promo that would run for a couple of weeks while we gave away tickets. Either Air Supply has a good sense of humor about themselves or I did a pretty good sales job because they agreed to perform an acoustic set at the party. Their call-in to the show went well and the promo turned out fine. They must have started listening to KROQ during the next two weeks because I started getting phone messages from their people. Instead of an acoustic guitar, could Graham bring his electric guitar? Sure. A couple of days later they asked if they could bring a keyboardist. No problem. How about a drummer? Before long I had agreed to a full backline. It was worth it. Air Supply rocked the house that night.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

io, io, it's off to work we go

Of all the celebrities appearing at the Children's Miracle Network convention, I've been most looking forward to meeting Charna Halpern. I had read her book, "Truth In Comedy," when I first joined Einstein Simplified. The attendees at today's improv training workshop were split up into several smaller groups of about 25 each. My group's teacher was Joe Bill, co-star and co-creator of "Bassprov." The session was terrific. We played some improv games that will help us do better interviews by working on our listening and reacting skills. The similarity between improv and radio is one of the first things I wrote about when I started building my website in 2001.



I had a chance to ask Charna about the skull of Del Close, her late partner. While many people donate their bodies to science, Del wanted to donate part of his body to art. After his death, Charna was to give his skull to a theatre that would cast him as Yorick in "Hamlet." Charna told me to look up an article in "The New Yorker" in which she admits that she couldn't find anyone to remove Del's head and
skeletonize it. Instead she gave a replacement skull (stunt double?) to the theatre. I told her how I wished she could have sent Del to Knoxville to decompose at our famous Body Farm.

Just like last year, a few other familiar faces were spotted in the hallway today. I saw Levar Burton, John Schneider and Mary Lou Retton.



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Sunday, April 01, 2007

no fooling

After last year's trip to Walt Disney World, my family decided that if we returned, EPCOT would stand for Experienced People Can Omit This. We were fortunate to be invited back to the Children's Miracle Network Celebration, which begins tomorrow morning. Over the weekend, we visited the Magic Kingdom, Disney's Animal Kingdom and Disney-MGM Studios.

I was enjoying the Kilimanjaro Safaris ride at Animal Kingdom until the end when the natural beauty was spoiled by some corny storytelling. I have no problem with the ride's anti-poaching message, it's just that the mannequin in the airplane and the fake elephant in the truck detract from the experience. The fictional story tells you that a real animal has been injured. If they want to add entertainment value to the safari, use some retired jokes from the Jungle Cruise like "I don't recognize those animals over there behind the baby giraffe, they must be gnu."



We planned yesterday around attending the 10:00 p.m. show of "Fantasmic," which was a favorite of ours at Disneyland. I remember hearing some stories about people fleeing the previews of the show in 1992 because they didn't expect to get soaking wet. Last night, many people seated in front of us ran for higher ground once the water started spraying. We were seated in row M and still got wetter than we would have liked. Perhaps the seats in the splash zone should be painted with a warning, like at Sea World. The flash on my camera illuminated the water in the air:



The show has been updated somewhat since we last saw it in Anaheim. Unfortunately the updates are no improvement. Many of the most well known characters have been removed and replaced by a long segment with the villain from "Pocahontas." He leads a group of extras in a song about digging ditches. Nothing says fantasy like digging ditches. Why did they have to insert a history lesson into "Fantasmic?" It's supposed to be escapist entertainment about the battle between good and evil inside Mickey's imagination. If Ratcliffe stayed on any longer, I was going to suggest Mickey get a prescription for a good anti-psychotic from his psychiatrist.


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