Pearl Harbor 68th anniversary

Today is the 68th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

My wife forwarded this e-mail from a friend. Out of the thousands of anonymous informational e-mails I've looked at over the years this is one of the best, so I'm enclosing it here, just as I received it.



Isn't is amazing how film could last so long in a camera without disintegrating?

Fantastic photos taken 68 years ago. Some of you will have to go to a museum to see what a Brownie camera looked like. Here is a simple picture of what we are talking about.

These photos are absolutely incredible. Read below the first picture and at the end.

PHOTOS STORED IN AN OLD BROWNIE CAMERA

I thought you might find these photos very interesting; what quality from 1941! These Pearl Harbor photos were found in an old Brownie stored in a foot locker and just recently taken to be developed.

THESE PHOTOS ARE FROM A SAILOR WHO WAS ON THE USS QUAPAW ATF-11O.

PEARL HARBOR

December 7th, 1941

On Sunday, December 7th, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise attack against the US Forces stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. By planning this attack on a Sunday, the Japanese commander, Admiral Nagumo, hoped to catch the entire fleet in port. As luck would have it, the Aircraft Carriers and one of the Battleships were not in port. (The USS Enterprise was returning from Wake Island, where it had just delivered some aircraft.. The USS Lexington was ferrying aircraft to Midway, and the USS Saratoga and USS Colorado were undergoing repairs in the United States.)

In spite of the latest intelligence reports about the missing aircraft carriers (his most important targets), Admiral Nagumo decided to continue the attack with his force of six carriers and 423 aircraft. At a range of 230 miles north of Oahu, he launched the first wave of a two-wave attack. Beginning at 0600 hours, his first wave consisted of 183 fighters and torpedo bombers, which struck at the fleet in Pearl Harbor and the airfields in Hickam, Kaneohe and Ewa. The second strike, launched at 0715 hours, consisted of 167 aircraft, which again struck at the same targets.

At 0753 hours the first wave consisting of 40 Nakajima B5N2 'Kate' torpedo bombers, 51 Aichi D3A1 'Val' dive bombers, 50 high altitude bombers and 43 Zeros struck airfields and Pearl Harbor. Within the next hour, the second wave arrived and continued the attack.

















When it was over, the U.S. Losses were:

Casualties
US Army: 218 KIA, 364 WIA.
US Navy: 2,008 KIA, 710 WIA.
US MarineCorp: 109 KIA, 69 WIA.
Civilians: 68 KIA, 35 WIA.

TOTAL: 2,403 KIA, 1,178 WIA.
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Battleships

USS Arizona (BB-39) - total loss when a bomb hit her magazine.
USS Oklahoma (BB-37) - Total loss when she capsized and sunk in the harbor.
USS California (BB-4 4) - Sunk at her berth. Later raised and repaired.
USS West Virginia (BB-48) - Sunk at her berth. Later raised and repaired.
USS Nevada - (BB-36) Beached to prevent sinking. Later repaired.
USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) - Light damage.
USS Maryland (BB-46) - Light damage.
USS Tennessee (BB-43) Light damage.
USS Utah (AG-16) - (former battleship used as a target) - Sunk.
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Cruisers
USS New Orleans (CA-32) - Light Damage.
USS San Francisco (CA-38) - Light Damage.
USS Detroit (CL-8) - Light Damage.
USS Raleigh (CL-7) - Heavily damaged but repaired.
USS Helena (CL-50) - Light Damage.
USS Honolulu (CL-48) - Light Damage.
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5) - Destroyed. Parts salvaged.
USS Cassin - (DD -3 7 2) Destroyed. Parts salvaged.
USS Shaw (DD-373) - Very heavy damage.
USS Helm (DD-388) - Light Damage.
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Minelayer
USS Ogala (CM-4) - Sunk but later raised and repaired.
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Seaplane Tender
USS Curtiss (AV-4) - Severely damaged but later repaired.
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Repair Ship
USS Vestal (AR-4) - Severely damaged but later repaired.
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Harbor Tug
USS Sotoyomo (YT-9) - Sunk but later raised and repaired.
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Aircraft
188 Aircraft destroyed (92 USN and 92 U.S. Army Air Corps).

Handymen

A few years ago we got news stories linking creased earlobes to heart problems. I looked at my own earlobes and saw creases. They are deeper now, but whether or not they have anything to do with the state of my heart I can't tell you.

Now we have stories about finger length in men. There's never been a secret that men with a ring finger longer than their index finger can be more tempermental, competitive, more aggressive, more macho. Studies with primates seem to back that up, but human beings are much more complicated, and live in a complicated society. The studies indicate that men with the longer finger had more of the hormone androgen while they were in the womb. The studies are a little blurry when it comes to direct cause and effect in aggression, sexual and otherwise, such as competition.

I looked around at some pictures of men. Most often it's hard to tell. Men usually don't stand with their hands out so you can readily see their finger length, but I was able to see the longer finger in pictures of Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan. It's hard to find a more macho character than the one they both played, James Bond.

OK, so what about my finger length? I have the longer ring finger, which meant I got an extra dose of androgen from my mother, but as to whether it's made me more aggressive, macho, or competitive, I'm afraid that despite the longer finger, I come up short in all those categories.

Oh yeah, temper. Well, I've never been short of temper, although it's caused me enough problems that at the age I am now it's been beat out of me.

Sorry, I pirated this article from a newspaper article on the Internet, but its attribution has been lost.

You've probably heard the joke that starts "Guys with big hands ..." But ever hear the one about people with long fourth fingers having huge tempers?

According to studies, a hormone known as androgen, which affects masculine traits like aggression and strength, can affect finger lengths during a baby's development in the womb. When there are high levels of this hormone, an individual's fourth finger becomes longer than his or her second finger.

Backing their research up by studying monkeys, the scientists from the University of Liverpool have found that species that have high levels of androgen (like baboons) have a tendency to be more competitive and promiscuous while monkeys that don't have as much are more monogamous and aren't necessarily in it to win it.

So the next time you meet a new guy, don't be afraid to grab a hold of his hand and make the comparison. It may just be the quickest way to find out whether or not he has a short ...fuse.

English is a crazy language

I don't normally reproduce e-mails I get, but I found this one more interesting than most. It's something of a followup to my post the other day, about how words change their meaning over time. It's a subject dear to my heart, the English language and how screwy it is. It's no wonder people from other countries have trouble learning it. When they do, god bless 'em. It seems harder than learning rocket science. So many lookalike words without the same meaning or pronunciation.

You think English is easy?

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce .

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row .

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line..

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

21) He wanted to entrance the girl who came through the entrance.

English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?


You lovers of the English language might enjoy this .

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ?
Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?
We call UP our friends.
And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UPthe leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.
We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning.
People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can addUP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many waysUP is used.
It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP .
When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP...
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........it is time to shut UP!

"In what furnace was thy brain?"

The tiger has sunk back deep into his lair.

Tiger. Handsome, athletic, a champion. Rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Could what I heard be right? Nike alone pays him $30 million a year for endorsements? ...and all the ballcaps he can wear? Whew. A guy like that, traveling all the time, winning tournament after tournament, living in hotels, meeting beautiful women who are throwing themselves at him. What man could resist? At the same time the wife and kids are home. A man would feel safe, powerful, immortal, nothing could touch him.

Oops.

Like several other high profile men this year Tiger Woods has, in the immortal words of my old first sergeant, "stepped on his dick." He's decided to go low profile on the whole affair, which leads one to ask the question, if one or two women have come forward to say they had affairs with him, how many women are there who haven't as yet said anything?

This story may be around for a while. Tiger will come back from it, I'm sure of that. He hasn't won all those tournaments by being timid. He will figure out how to answer the charges and his true fans will stick by him, his detractors will have their fun. In the end he'll still be Tiger, winning a boatload of trophies and millions of dollars. He takes his caddy with him on the golf course. What I suggest is that while traveling and going out in the evening he take a lawyer along with him. If he can't resist temptation, then any affairs should be conducted only after the partner has signed a non-disclosure agreement.

The Tyger (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake (1794)

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The gay junkie

Monday meanderings...

The English language is fascinating because it is constantly changing. Words that meant one thing in one era can evolve to mean something else.

"Junkie" and "gay" now have meanings they didn't have in 1939, when the September 2 issue of Liberty magazine was published. Reading through this entertaining 70-year-old letter column I find one letter in which "junkie" was what we might now call a junker, an old car, rather than a person addicted to heroin.


"Gay" didn't mean homosexual in 1939. The Webster's Dictionary from 1940 defines the word as joyous and lively; merry; happy; lighthearted. Reading this letter about "gay parties" in the current sense of the word gay gives an entirely different meaning to what the letter writer originally intended.

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I liked Bruce Springsteen's performance on the HBO Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Special Sunday, November 29. Besides collaborating with people as different in style as Billy Joel, John Fogarty and Darlene Love, he did two songs I like from Born To Run, the title song and "Jungleland." I haven't been a Bruce Springsteen fan, but I'm a fan of an artist who gives everything he has to an audience. Springsteen left it all on stage.

There aren't any videos from that set available yet, but this is a performance from Madison Square Garden in 2000 that shows the level of devotion Springsteen gives to the material and to his audience.

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This Target commercial with Maria Bamford is calculated. Advertisers don't spend millions of dollars on a campaign without knowing what they're doing. She's so excited and whoops! premature ejaculation. That's not even subliminal porn...that's overt.

Watching Watchmen

I waited months to see Watchmen because of the negative reviews I read on its theatrical release. I wanted the furor to die down.

When the movie was released I read that it was too long, too much back story, exposition, talking. As I watched the DVD of Watchmen I thought, "Too long, too much back story, exposition and talking." Guess I should have paid more attention to the reviews.

I read the graphic novel when it came out in the 1980s and I remember being impressed by what seemed new and inventive. Writer Alan Moore (who had his name taken off the movie) and Dave Gibbons, the illustrator, had produced an epic. Not only that, but the characters were one-and-done...they appeared in that novel and they weren't used again. I liked that because too much of one thing becomes boring.

The strongest point of the graphic novel was the flawed character Rorschach, whose story was the most interesting.

The weakest point of the graphic novel was the ending, which was too much like an episode of The Outer Limits twenty years earlier. The movie changed that ending but in a bizarre bit of business a postscript showed a television playing the Outer Limits intro. Was it a nod to what I had noticed or just coincidence?

The high point of the graphic novel was halfway through when the psychotic Rorschach is put in prison. In the graphic novel it seemed reasonable to me, but in the movie it seemed glaringly strange he'd be put in with the general population, since as one character put it, "Fifty percent of the people are in here because of you." The New Mexico prison riot of 1980, with prison informants cut apart by acetylene torches wielded by other inmates, was the inspiration for the scene.

What the movie also reminded me of is that comics exist in their own cartoony world and don't always translate into live action movies. The costumes for the most part look silly, especially Silk Spectre, who wears high-heeled boots. It looks great in the comics but in the film you wonder how much her feet hurt chasing down villains.

The costumes are well done, but when put in juxtaposition with the real life eye of the camera they come off as stagy and odd. At least Rorschach, who wears a trenchcoat and fedora, with a full head mask that is a moving Rorschach blot, looks more real than someone like Night Owl, whose costume is so elaborate it must take him two hours to put on. On the other hand the only affectation the Comedian has, besides body armor, firepower and his cigar, is a pasted-on mask, which would fool exactly nobody.

The music was pretentious. "The Times They Are A'Changing" by Bob Dylan is not about superheroes being banned, it's about a major shift in the social order. Using "Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel is a puzzler, but the outright howler is having "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen as the soundtrack to a softcore sex scene.

The last thing I want to mention is that often the dialogue spoken by the characters sounds like it should be in speech balloons over their heads. It's pure comic book at times, not speech that would be spoken aloud by normal (or abnormal, or even supernormal) human beings.

I give Watchmen two-and-a-half stars. It cost a lot to make and I see the money on the screen, but it didn't need all of what it showed. It could have been edited down to make it leaner and faster paced. As it was, by the ending I was bored.

Here's your Christmas fruit basket

Thanksgiving is over. It's time to start the Christmas celebration. To kick it off here's a story from the school district I retired from:

Jim G. was the head of the Food Services department of our school district. The district has 100 schools and the District Kitchen serves over 30,000 meals a day. Jim was short and pudgy. He struck us all as someone who had been teased as a youngster and was taking it out on other people. If he'd been in the military he'd have been a martinet.

Several years ago in December Jim sent my coworker, Barry, to pick up a load of produce from a local produce company owned by Gene R. When Jim sent Barry he gave him instructions. "I want you to tell Gene I didn't get a fruit basket from him this year. Tell him I'd like my fruit basket. We do a lot of business with him, and the least he can do is give me a fruit basket."

Barry, being a dutiful employee, was on the loading dock of Gene R.'s produce company, and Gene, a gentleman if ever there was one, was helping him load the boxes of vegetables and fruit onto the truck. Barry said, "Oh, by the way, Jim G. said he didn't get a fruit basket from you this year."

Gene came to a complete stop and looked at him.

"Jim said what?"

"He said he didn't get a fruit basket from you this year. He said we do a lot of business with you and he'd like a fruit basket."

"Oh. He does 'a lot of business' with me and wants a fruit basket."

"Yes."

"He wants a fruit basket. OK."

Gene went to a big stack of bananas, pulled one off, took his Magic Marker and wrote, Merry Christmas, Gene.

"Here. Tell Jim this is his fruit basket."

Barry went back to the District Kitchen and was unloading the produce. Jim G. approached him, "So did you get my fruit basket."

Barry went to the cab of the truck, took out the banana and handed it to Jim. "Gene said this is it."

Jim stood looking at the banana, mouth agape, skin turning various shades of red and purple, then turned on his heel to go to the telephone. Barry said Jim slammed his office door but he could hear a lot of yelling from his office, Jim telling Gene R. what he thought of him.

The school district continued to do a "lot of business" with Gene R., because it's a business of low bid, after all, and Gene was very competitive. But according to Barry Jim never got a fruit basket from Gene R., not from then right up until a few years later when Jim G. died.

"For Christmas I want a gun, hon!"

I got this advertising postcard in the mail the other day. I thought of doing what it says, "leave this where your wife pays the bills!" right amongst the gas and electric bills. Then I remembered we pay those bills online.

I love the ribbon. "Ah, honey! Just what I wanted! I can't wait to show off my new Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum!"

Utah has one of the more liberal gun carry permit laws in the country. If you don't have a criminal record or history of mental illness you qualify to pack a gun. You can conceal the weapon, or wear it openly. We're real liberal here when it comes to packing heat. People from other states regularly apply for concealed weapons permits in Utah. I'm not sure how it works if a person from a state with more restrictive laws applies for a Utah permit and produces it for a police officer.

A look at Utah gun laws shows that if you want to carry a weapon you have the law on your side in Utah.

Carrying a Gun in Utah

In Person

It is unlawful for a person with or without a firearm permit to carry a firearm in the following locations:

1. Any secure area in which firearms are prohibited and notice of the prohibition is posted
2. A secure area of an airport
3. Any courthouse, churches if posted, mental health facility or correctional facility that may provide by rule that no firearm may be transported, sold, given, or possessed upon the facility. At least one notice shall be prominently displayed at each entrance to a secure area in which a dangerous weapon, firearm, or explosive is restricted.

A concealed weapon permit is not a defense to prosecution for any person who carries a weapon while under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance.

It is lawful to carry a firearm "capable of being concealed" in one’s home or place of business without a permit.

It is unlawful to carry a loaded firearm on any public street without a permit.

It is unlawful to carry a firearm while under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance with or without a permit.

Carrying in Vehicles

A person may not carry a loaded weapon in a vehicle unless they have a valid permit to carry or:

They are at least 18 years old and

Has lawful possession of the vehicle or consent of the person who has lawful possession of the vehicle and

The weapon is not a rifle, shotgun or muzzle-loading rifle

It is lawful for a person with a concealed firearms permit to carry a firearm into a bus terminal.

It is lawful for a person with a concealed firearm permit to board a bus or a train or enter a terminal with a firearm upon their person or effects. This also applies to law enforcement officers or commercial security personnel with firearms used in their employment.

It is lawful to carry a firearm in a vehicle without a permit if: the firearm is unloaded; securely encased (not including a glove box or console box) and is not readily accessible for immediate use.

Laws governing the use of concealed firearms differ from state to state. It is important to understand the laws to ensure that your actions are in compliance with Utah law.

Sources: 53-5-704 Division duties - Utah Code §§ 23-20-11 et seq., 24-2-17, 76-10-301, 76-10-501 et seq.

Boofheads

I started noticing the retro-'60s look a couple of years ago. Since I notice fashion trends just about the time they're going out, I supposed this look would be quickly gone but a look at an ad with Penélope Cruz shows that it's still here.

Penélope, like Amy Winebottle here, is going for a look that was popular twenty years before they were born.

Winehouse's hair reminds me of the urban legends of beehive hairdos hiding spiders. I don't want to get too close lest one of them jump on me.

Cruz just doesn't look right in a blonde wig. It's too Marilyn Monroe, and Penélope is beautiful enough with her Mediterranean looks.

Jane Fonda to me epitomizes a tousled, sexy '60s, more than the early '60s tough girl look on Winehouse. And unlike the retro look, Fonda's is contemporary, from the '68 movie, Barbarella.

Occasionally my wife Sally and I see a woman who has kept the same hairstyle since the '60s, a woman who goes to the salon every week for a shampoo and set. Sally calls them boofheads, for bouffant. For some this style never went away. It will probably have to die with the wearer.

Scam I am

Andy Warhol. The man. The scam.

In 2006 the website Pyramid Scheme Alert gave Utah a special designation as "the scam state." Not exactly something to be proud of, but round these parts you've got to be wary of smooth talking con men using church connections. Many of the frauds start amongst the LDS faithful, although certainly not all con games are played with Mormons. There are plenty of other yokels waiting to be had.

Consider a story from the November 18, 2009 Salt Lake Tribune, which tells the tale of a 65-year-old con man and his 29-year-old female accomplice who were charged with attempting to sell six bogus Andy Warhol artworks to a man for $100,000. He paid $25,000 down for a print of Matthew Baldwin, one of the famous family of actors, and signed 1996. The man, hereinafter referred to as the mark, took it to an art appraiser in Los Angeles who told him that not only was there NOT a Baldwin brother named Matthew, but artist Andy Warhol died in 1987.

Well.

Real Warhol.

The man took the artworks back and wanted his $25,000. The couple wanted to exchange the artworks for a painting the con man claimed was worth $70 million. That should have set off a fraud alert right then. An art appraiser said the painting was worth $1000. Back went the mark to the couple who wanted to give him a Warhol lithograph of a pink cat to "pay him back." They claimed the litho was worth $30,000. When the man took it out of the frame he discovered it was cut from a newspaper.

Wow. You'd think the guy would've learned the first time, eh? It took three separate incidents for him to realize that these folks weren't on the level.

Not a real Warhol; this is a photo done in Warhol's style on PhotoShop.

Ironically, the subject of the scam, Andy Warhol, tried to pull a scam in Utah himself. As told in this excellent blog by reporter Peter Rosen, in 1967 Warhol sent a man posing as him to a lecture at the University of Utah. They were caught for that and Warhol offered to come to the University himself, but University officials decided that one Warhol was enough and they rejected the offer.

So what does all of this teach any of us? Don't believe anybody who wants to sell you something. Or if you're a con man and want to find easy pickins, come to Utah, where every day people are buying gold-painted bricks, prime real estate in Florida and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Leaf me alone!

Yesterday I was in my front yard with my lawn mower. The grass hasn't grown a millimeter in weeks, but the lawn is covered in leaves. I made a couple of circuits with the mower, picking up the leaves as I went, when a man who was walking on the sidewalk stopped.

I saw he wanted to talk to me so I stopped the mower.

"Are you cutting your lawn? What are you doing, getting an early start on next year?"

I looked at him. He was a man roughly my age. I didn't know him. "No," I said. "I'm picking up leaves with the mower." I went to turn it on when I saw he was making arm motions. He was pantomiming a raking motion. "This is what you should be doing," he said.

"I'll rake if I have to, but as a last resort."

"No," he said firmly. "You always rake as a first resort." He started to walk away. "I mean it."

Well, pardon the hell outta me! I'm sorry that using my lawnmower to pick up leaves offends you, or that it isn't in line with your way of thinking. What are you doing walking past my house in the middle of the day, anyway? Are you out catching people not using the proper methods of getting leaves off the ground?

Sheesh. I continued on with my mowing, and when I was done and had picked up all the leaves I could with the mower, I took out the rake and used that to get the stragglers. I looked up and down the street to see if he was in the vicinity. Damn Nosey Parker. I'll show him!

Happy birthday, Diana Krall

Diana Krall is 45 years old today. Did I say old? Does this woman look old? She doesn't look much different to me than when I first saw her 10 years ago.

Le jazz hot has produced one cool chick. Diana can sing, play jazz piano. By golly, I'll bet she's popular at parties, too!

Here are some songs by Diana I like. The first is an upbeat number she opened her Paris concert with, then from the same show a string arrangement on "Love Letters," the classic Nat King Cole song.

Diana, you've got the talent, and we've got the Look of Love from looking at you. I'd love to hear your arrangement of the classic "Happy Birthday" song. I'm sure no one could sing it to you as well as you.

How much time do I have left?

"Do you want to live forever?" is a cliché used in war movies when the sarge exhorts his troops to go over the top. He doesn't want any cowards.

Well, of course we're all cowards. Nobody wants to die; we all want to live forever. Or at least we want to live out our lifespan. It seems unfair if that lifespan gets cut short. For me the ideal would be to live long enough to outlive everyone who would come to my funeral and say, "Man, I'm glad I got a chance to see him dead."

Or we might think we still have unfinished business. I woke up this morning thinking of some things I'd like to do yet, time permitting, and it seems that no matter how late in the day it gets the major projects are unfinished. That's because I'm a procrastinator. I like to think--or fool myself--that I have a lot of time left in order to accomplish the things I want to accomplish.

To that end I took an Internet test to determine my "real age," and also to see how long I have to live. You can take the same test, and then come back and we'll talk about it a little bit:

Your Virtual Age

Does that make you feel better? It did me. What a relief it was when I found out that my virtual age is 49, not the 62.5 actual years since I clocked in on this planet. I'll live to be 91.6 years old, which gives me approximately 29 years left. Or maybe you noticed they even included the days. In my case it was 10,800. Since I took the test a couple of days ago I guess it's now 10,798.

I haven't gone back to see if I can add a few years to that total. Since I didn't use those two days I just mentioned to get anything important done I'd like to get them back. Maybe I shouldn't have clicked yes on the question of whether anyone in my family has died of a heart attack. Maybe I can squeeze out a few more days, months, or even a couple of years if I'd lie about my family's general health.

I got lucky because the test didn't ask if I'd ever had cancer. Yes, I've had cancer but it was removed and so far there's no sign it's come back. If there had been a question about cancer I would have answered yes and they might have chopped a decade or more off my longevity, giving me even less time to procrastinate.

So, I think I'll just be happy with my 10,798 days and go with those. I've already lived 22,812 and 1/2 days and not gotten done what I've wanted to get done, so maybe it's a wake-up call, time to shake a leg, as they say.

In the meantime, here's the procrastinators' theme song, "Mañana" by Peggy Lee. Peggy is gone now, and I hope she got done everything she wanted to get done before she left.

Gentlemen Broncos

I love movies made in Utah with Hollywood actors, because often they don't understand the quirkiness of the place where they're filming. They especially don't understand the quirkiness of the culture, even if the filmmakers do.

Gentlemen Broncos* is a movie about a depressed home schooled youngster, Benjamin (played by Michael Angarano), who writes science fiction, and shares the movie with some very odd characters. The movie was written and made by Jared and Jerusha Hess, who made the hit sleeper comedy Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon was filmed in the Mormon town of Preston, Idaho. The Hesses know the Mormon culture, and it seeps into their movies. For instance, Benjamin's mom, played by Jennifer Coolidge, makes modesty lingerie. When I read a local review of the movie the reviewer called it that, but outside reviewers call it "ugly" or "hideous" clothing. The filmmakers presented it without explanation and let everyone watching sort it out in their own way. The Hesses know what modesty clothing is.

Besides the oh-yeah-they-nailed-it thrill of watching the culture I grew up in portrayed in a funhouse mirror, there were a couple of other things I really liked about the movie. One was Jemaine Clement as the egotistical Dr. Ronald Chevalier. Anyone familiar with HBO's Flight of the Conchords knows of this New Zealander actor/musician's gift for deadpan comedy. It is in full view in this movie. No matter what is going on around him Chevalier keeps his expressions the same, whether accused of stealing Michael's unpublished novelette Yeast Lords, or standing in front of a writing group explaining suffixes for alien names--easily one of the most droll and hilarious bits of comedy I've seen this year.

The other parts of the movie I loved were the inserts of fantasy sequences depicting both Benjamin's version of Yeast Lords, as a science fiction homage to his late father, Bronco, and Chevalier's rip-off called Brutus & Balzaak (a pun, "ball sack," referring to Bronco/Brutus' gonad, which is stolen). Sam Rockwell portrays both Bronco and Brutus. In Benjamin's story Bronco is a wild-haired, full-bearded mountain man-styled hero, whereas in Chevalier's Brutus is over-the-top swishy and effeminate. The sequences are out-and-out bizarre, funny, full of cheesy science fiction effects.

Maybe this is something the the audiences don't get. The movie is deliberately made to look low budget. For instance, Benjamin has fallen in with a couple of wannabe filmmakers, Tabatha and Lonnie, portrayed by Halley Feiffer (daughter of cartoonist, novelist, playwright Jules Feiffer), and the toothsome Héctor Jiméniz (Nacho Libre). They make yet another version of Yeast Lords, with the mind-boggling vision of Jiméniz as the female lead. Their video version of Yeast Lords is completely amateurish, but its creators think of it as being on a level of a Hollywood movie. Maybe that's why Gentlemen Broncos was so funny to me. At various times in my life I've known all these people. I just didn't have the foresight to put all of them in a movie together.

Gentlemen Broncos is having a tough time right now. It was going into national release, then the release was canceled. The next day the release was back on. Fox Searchlight, who released the film, probably just doesn't know what to do with a movie that is getting such wildly divergent reviews, which swing from "worst movie ever," (or as one semi-illiterate commenter to the Fox Searchlight site said, "What a waist of time") to reviewers who actually understood the humor and point of view. The one thing that's true is that it isn't making any money. My wife and I, who attended an afternoon screening, were the only two people in the theater.** That can't be good for the future of the film.

Fox Searchlight should take a cue from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I can see Gentlemen Broncos going into the midnight theater circuit. The '70s rock score--the title song is "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans--is very apt for the movie, and I see this movie picking up a cult status. It's strange, it's of Utah--I recognized several locales, including a high school I used to visit every day on my job--and it's funny. Jemaine Clement is an exceptional comic actor. So are Héctor Jiméniz, Halley Feiffer and Jennifer Coolidge. Michael Angarano, who played Benjamin, plays the straight man in the group, but he's a fine actor. Where the casting people found the odd extras who are populating this movie I don't know. I've lived in Utah for decades and have never seen such an aggregation in one place. The Hesses have a gift for the bizarre, perfect for the cult movie crowd.

*They might want to consider changing the title, which is baffling, even to those of us who know that "Bronco" is a character in a movie within the movie.

**Speaking of bizarre, when we bought our tickets we had to buy reserved seats. We had a computerized seating chart and we picked out our seats. We went into the theater when it was still dark and found our seats with great difficulty. We watched the movie from the first row of the second tier, surrounded by 1,000 empty seats. In retrospect, considering what we had just watched, it seemed appropriate.