Size Matters?

  • by Drew

Speaking of camping and tents, I’m a smaller tent guy. I mean, not the totally tiny backpack models because I still need to be in the thing with my kids. But a 4 person model with a 9 by 7 footprint or so is totally fine for me. And now, like I mentioned earlier, I have two. I see some families with mega-tents that have “rooms” (separated with a sliver of nylon fabric) and can sleep an entire baseball team with coaching staff. But the fighting and yelling I hear, and all the stress created in setting up such monster tents totally rules it out for me. I mean, if you need power tools and welding equipment to set up your tent I think you might be doing something wrong.

I’d rather just point the doors of my two small tents at each other and call it a day.

Lotsa Camping

  • by Drew

Yup. We’re going to be doing lots of camping this summer. We already had a chilly Cub Scouts overnighter in early May, and there are many more to come. The Parent/Cub weekend is coming up. While I was a little hesitant in the beginning, I have come to really enjoy this two night event. And this year will be the first with both boys.

Boy howdy.

Indeed.

I even bought another tent in anticipation. We’re still pretty low-fi, so we have basic 4 person tent models. Maybe when the older one hits Boy Socuts we’ll start looking at the heavy duty gear like Nemo Tents, but for now, the basics will do.

Worthy Subjects

  • by Drew

Okay, so if the Whites are unworthy of documentary coverage by my reckoning, who should we be looking at? Turn to the work of Errol Morris. Vernon, Florida is a favorite. In this and other documentaries, he certainly outs some bizarre folks with beyond interesting outlooks and/or demeanor. But while we can marvel and even chuckle at their eccentricities, we are not celebrating their anti-social and downright criminal behavior. We are, instead, enjoying their quirks and coming away with a sympathetic understanding of their eccentricities.

No, I’m not advocating pointing fingers at people who are a little different and laughing at them. But by the same token, I have no intention of elevating the awful behavior of outlaws and human pharmaceutical fementers in a pathetic and self-indulgent pretense of folk hero worship. Seriously.

Whites

  • by Drew

One documentary that drove me crazy was the one about the White family in West Virginia. They are basically a family of hoodlums, criminals and junkies that terrorize their county with nonsense. While the documentary (whose producers included Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame) occasionally tries to humanize these awful people, it is far more interested in catching them in ironic contradictions.

Like the new mother who just snorted a crushed Oxycontin pill off the nightstand in the hospital room while her newborn sleeps 10 feet away. In the next scene she is chain-smoking, being driven home after her baby was taken away by child services, crying about someone “strange” holding her child.

Yeah, we get the joke. The filmmakers are laughing at the hillbillies who are too stupid to realize they’re being mocked. It almost makes them seem more sympathetic. And that is just one of the film’s failures.

In the proud redneck wilderness inhabited by these freaks, a dna paternity test is beyond necessary each time one of these delightful ladies gets pregnant, half the time to figure out which distant cousin is responsible.

Right, I know I sound like some Northeastern elitist, but I feel a little entitled. If filmmakers are going to glorify the horrible actions of brutish slobs and continue to foster a culture of personality and false reality, I think I should get on the proverbial high horse and complain.

Documentaries

  • by Drew

With all the exercising I’ve been doing lately, I have plenty of time to browse the Netflix queue. I’ve been on a bit of a documentary kick lately and I’ve seen some good ones. Thing is, documentaries nowadays sometimes remind me of the big coffee table books that collect a particular artists paintings on a theme. If you check the slipcover carefully you discover that such books are often the byproduct of some Fine Arts graduate thesis.

I feel like documentaries are the new coffee table book medium. Some do a fantastic job of making their point and driving their idea while still offering some insight into the full story… so they at least SEEM unbiased. Sure, there’s an agenda, but do they go for full disclosure? If so, I’m alright with it.

I watched a Walmart documentary recently, and while it was fairly interesting and I found myself in agreement with most of the sentiment conveyed by the filmmakers, I felt it lacked some interesting detail. Since it purported to be a far reaching and all encompassing portrait of the corporate behemoth, there were some early innovations and even potential cultural contributions made my the consumer goods giant that were never mentioned. Like aggressive fleet tracking, careful inventory management and early adoption of many technologies, some of which would eventually revolutionize retail.

Sure, you can ask for better or worse? You can wonder how I would be coming out as a defender of Walmart. But there is a reality to the “other side” that was ignored. Ultimately this reduces the effectiveness of the presentation.

 

Semi-hollow

  • by Drew

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, right now, in fact. I’m no stratocaster guy. I’ve definitely had other solid body guitars that I enjoyed playing, but in recent years I am definitely into hollow bodies, or semi-hollow bodies. A chambered body is nice.

I haven’t played too many Fender acoustic guitars, but they certainly have their redeeming qualities. I suppose, as with any mega brand, you have to pay for quality. I mean, nowadays you can buy Gibbies and Fenders in places like Target and Walmart, so… yeah, you have to watch out.

Start with simple guidelines, like if it comes in a shiny box with a clear plastic see-through window, you should probably pass it by.

The busted fridge

  • by Drew

Here’s the voicemail you don’t want to get when you’re helping the comic book store peeps move across the street to a new location: Call me back – I think the refrigerator is dead.

And I know everyone means well, but when they say things like “at least it’s Memorial Day so all the appliances are on sale” it starts to wear on your nerves. Sometimes the bright side is a little irritating.

Everybody else is out there shopping for electric fireplaces and patio bug zappers at holiday prices, but not me, I’m the schmuck buying a french door fridge.

Scouts

  • by Drew

Do I ever mention I dig Cub Scouts? I used to be a little negative on the whole thing, especially considering some of their very public policies about leadership and lifestyle intersections. But lately they seem to have worked through a lot of those issues as an organization, and I’ve found it is much less of an issue at the local level.

And anyway, my kids are totally into it, so I am too. It’s a world of archery and whittling chips, leather dyes and BB gun shooting, arts and crafts and polar bear swims. And camping. Oh man, the camping.

Seriously?

  • by Drew

A while back I helped a dude out with a website. He had nothing and wanted a simple presence for his start up business. At the risk of sounding like a king jerk, it is a pretty unestablished gig, facing major hurdles. I wish him the best, with all my heart. No one loves the little guy more than me, but when I offered to help set something up (because that is, after all, what I’ve been doing for 15 years or so) it turned into major problems.

First of all, I was doing this gratis – you’ll recall my love of the little guy statement a moment ago. Nevertheless, this became a major exercise in designing for the customer of discriminating taste. In other words, designing to the subjective tastes of this particular dude.

This is, of course, fine for me. I have a thick skin when it comes to designing for clients. I learned long ago that only their opinion matters in the long run. If I sell them on something I believe is superior, they must then sell everyone else. But if they honestly believe something is great (regardless of how awful and compromised it really is) they will proselytize to their dying day. So… go with it.

But this guy, who was doing nothing, and only got off his bum because I pushed him and did hours and hours of free work suddenly turned into the taskmaster from hell. All the sudden he’s an expert in SEO and is calling for a webhostinghub review and why can’t we have some Flash?

Are you kidding me? This is a guy so technically challenged that I can actually bitch about him on this blog with no fear that he’ll ever come across it. Sheesh.

Grandparents day gone wild

  • by Drew

It was a special day at school for the boys. They call it Grand friends day – a nicety to deal with the fact that not everyone will have a grandparent show up. My Aunt went once for my older son (technically his GREAT aunt). The purpose, really, is to fill the school with senior citizens. And while you might think I’m poking fun, I totally am not.

My Dad flew up from Miami for this, as he has for several years now. It is always a great day for him/them. But driving home, we encountered some serious road rage. OLD school.

There was a relatively young looking driver in a Jeep SUV behind me, really tailgating. His passenger was clearly elderly. I don’t know if they were arginmax men or what, but they were super aggressive, and finally took advantage of a half dotted yellow to pass me and tailgate the guy in fornt of me. Considering there was a line of at least a dozen cars, I don’t really see what their aim was on this particularly winding stretch of road, but who am I to judge. Maybe there were a couple of sporting ladies down that road waiting for their attentions. Or to take a nap. One or the other.

At least they could call it sleeping together, right?

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