I've Seen Fire & I've Seen Rain

So tonight I was unloading the pics from my camera with the idea of putting together a post of the younger's birthday celebration from last weekend. Those plans have gone awry for now.

Instead, you get this!!! A pair of shots from the night before the event, and a few more from today. The night before, I had been doing a bit of painting in the bathroom, and as I headed outside to wash up the brushes, I saw the chopper I'd been hearing for a while but hadn't even really registered. Looking around (namely at where he was training his spotlight) I located the flashy lights of several fire trucks and the glow of the fire.

My younger & I headed over a ways closer, then up the hill to try and get a better look. A bit hard to tell exactly where it was at in the dark, and we didn't get that close. Sadly, one of my neighbors, a World War II veteran, died in the fire.

The weather changed this week, and we were told by the local media hype that we would all be swept away by buckets of the hard rain that was gonna fall. The first wave swept through on Wednesday night while we all slept, and it was bright & clear the next morning, which of course made my commute take roughly twice as long. Almost no rain that day, and Friday morning there was a light drizzle coming down as I left the house. It picked up once I was to work, but then was dry enough that people were eating lunch and taking breaks outside. Saved it up for the afternoon and today.

This afternoon it was actually coming down pretty good for a bit, as well as having some nice long rolls of thunder. I had my camera ready at this point, and took a few shots of it coming down good, making the canyon and gutters into raging streams. Near the end of the time I was shooting, it was letting up and the sun was glinting off the waters.

Pictured in a couple of the shots are some block retaining walls. The last shot has the latest one I had put up, just a couple weeks back, or more to the point, just in time. Upon having returned from our weekend in Carpinteria, we discovered that a few of the cement slabs had slid forward and a good amount of dirt had come out from between them. The slabs were looking quite precarious, and I took several out and dug some out from behind them until I could get the guy out to put a wall. Naturally, I got busy and it took a while before I dug up his number. He did a great job again, only as you can see, it tends to pool water behind it. I dug out a drainage channel when the rain had let up a bit.

All these great picture opportunities, and I get to title a post with a James Taylor reference!!!

The Pre Oscar Post

Hey, has it been a while since I've posted here or what??? Always doing something else these days, it seems.

Here's an idea I had for a post around the beginning of the year, and being the day before Oscar, thought it'd be a good time to finally do it!!! I don't see a whole lot of movies in theaters, so I thought I'd do a recap of what I'd seen in the past year. I think I've got them all here.



I put the images in in random order, and The Box came at the top. It actually happened that I was thinking about this movie the other day, and couldn't remember what it was (or even what the MacGuffin was), then happened to look at the top DVD rentals for the last week and there it was!!! One of the top five I saw all year (actually, one of the top three, I really liked all top three about equal), very clever. I also liked that it was set in 1976. I suppose it could work fairly well in just about any modern day, but '76 it was. The premise is that a box is delivered to a couple. If they open it and press the button, they get a million dollars, but somewhere a complete stranger dies. The fact that I completely forgot about that plot device underscores the layers to this film.



Jennifer's Body wouldn't have been my first choice, but my wife and I were going for our anniversary evening, and this was her choice. She enjoys a good horror movie. I don't know that this was a good one, and it comes out at the bottom of my list. I think a lot of the trouble with it is it couldn't make up its mind which way it was going to go. It has a bit of scary, a bit of funny, and it seemed like it was trying a bit too hard to be hip. Too soon after the Great White Station fire??? I think so. I liked the visual effect of Devil's Kettle. I also liked the apropos naming of the co lead actress' character, Needy. Some hot girl on girl action is always nice, and this had a bit but could have used a bit more. From the title, it could have used more of Jennifer's body. It made a great explanation of the success of boy bands, and I did like the ending.



The older boy and I went to Inglorious Basterds. Quentin Taranteno never fails to deliver, and this is no exception. From the trailers, I was expecting a lot more Nazi killin'. That's not to say that there weren't many killed and good action, but I was surprised by how many and how much time of the move was spent in non action sequences. Not to say I was falling asleep during these portions, quite the contrary!!! These scenes were so tension filled that I was figuratively on the edge of my seat for almost the whole movie!!! Well done!!!



Appropriately, the final movie on here was the must see of the year, Avatar. The day after Christmas I took the family to see this at Universal Citywalk's IMAX theater in 3D. We took the train out there, as usual for visiting the Universal area. Just outside the train station was a hot dog vendor with giant dogs at reasonable prices, and we dined sumptuously before heading up the hill. We made it to the theater a very short time before the showing, and thus there was limited seating, and we ended up fairly close to the front.

As has already been widely reported, the effects were amazing, total eye candy. The story line is nothing you haven't seen before, but it was played out quite well, and overall made for a great movie going experience. The 3D gimmickry was pretty good, I'm not sure if the total package of that and IMAX justified the price tag for the whole day, but oh well. I liked the way the subtitles were rendered in 3D. One of my favorite moments came a few weeks after, when I read in the paper that Republicans don't like the movie because it stands for everything they're opposed to.

I don't follow awards shows, but I would be surprised if Avatar takes the top prize, the story just wasn't that original. Inglorious Basterds maybe, but I haven't seen much of the nominees. I did see Up on DVD, and it's another I'd be surprised if it took a top award, also. From what I've heard of a few of the other contenders, probably none of what I've seen.

Worrisome

The top picture is from the top of my street on Thursday. On my drive home that evening, it seemed like almost every freeway I was on had smoke billowing up at the end of it. The sky was otherwise completely clear, just smoke filling the northwest. On the second to the last freeway, I could actually see flames. Not a good feeling, looking at fire rising from directly behind where your home is. It's actually quite a bit farther away than it looked, but still too close.




On Wednesday morning I could smell it inside the house, and it was like walking into a light fog bank when I walked outside. Funny thing, that fire was since Wednesday, but there wasn't a whole lot of coverage until the last couple of days. A fire breaks out in Palos Verdes, and it's top story. More yellow journalism, I tells ya!!! Friday evening we were out, and you could see the red glow rising from the hills. I found a map tool that shows the size and scope of the fire, since they weren't showing one on any of the news channels. They'd show aerial views and say "This will give you an idea of the size and scope of this fire", but there are no points of reference.

The weather hasn't been helping. The humidity has been low and the temperatures have been high. I think it's the hottest and most sustained it's been all summer. On the plus side, the wind hasn't been that high, although these fires create their own weather.



Final shot is from Mount Wilson's webcam, where much of tonight's coverage is of the transmitter towers being threatened by this fire.

Seems To Me...

Now, I'm no financial genius, but it seems to me...



The thing to do here, is to NOT do one of these, and the other is pretty much taken care of!!! Both of these headlines were on the front page of two different sections of the paper over the weekend. I wonder if it was a test to see if anyone was paying attention!!!

In somewhat related news, there was a California tax protest over the weekend. 15,000 citizens were in attendance. This same paper had no coverage of the event, and when questioned, responded that it wasn't a relevant story. Typing in "Fullerton tax revolt" on YouTube netted 44 results, as of yesterday. Can we officially say that this particular print media is, in fact, the one that is not relevant??? I'm thinking yes, as well as thinking of canceling my subscription.

Naked News

I have much within me, I could probably go random easily, but I think I'll just stick to two topics. Oh yea, if you don't know, there is a website out there with the same name as the title of this post. This is mostly unrelated.

This was a story on the news last night. They had video of of a car chase, with the car driving at high rates of speed with no lights on. At the end, the driver loses control and crashes, rolling the car several times, whereupon the police discover that she is naked. Insert "driving without headlights" punchline here. I've been trying to find out more information on this story, and so far, it's just not out there. There were several discrepancies in the story as I've gone through, too.

The pursuit began in Pasadena, and the helicopter reporter had been saying that it ended on the 5 freeway just before the 110. That is very near my home, and I would have gone and seen myself if I had known, but I didn't hear any helicopters all night. Turns out it wasn't the 110, but either the 170 or the 210, depending on the source. Either of those makes more sense.

What precipitated the chase??? The audio on one of the video clips I've found has the helicopter pilot on the line with Pasadena PD, and the story he came back with was that she had broken into a property, and as she was leaving ran over a motorcycle (hopefully just a parked motorcycle!!!) The much more prevalent story, however, was that she was vandalizing a car. No matter the case, my question, was she naked when committing the original crime??? If so, and the crime was the latter, what kind of vandalizing was she doing??? Is that a euphemism??? If not, how talented is she to be able to drive at that speed and strip naked???

Something I only heard one time, on the television broadcast, was that she threw her purse out of the car during the pursuit.

I heard the car described as a 4 door Acura. The only way they could have gotten that any more wrong was to say that it was painted black.



For such a titillating story, it seems to be near impossible to find any pictures or revealing video to answer the question, is she anyone that you would want to see naked??? I found this picture on one website, but it doesn't say if it's really her or just a stock photo. Looks like what little you can see from the video capture I got.




I once again bought gas for Baby today. That second half of the tank always goes so quick!!! This time, I travelled 301.6 miles on 10.41 gallons, for an average of 28.94 MPG. By my calculations, that puts my average at 29.55 MPG. Still pleasing. Did I make mention that the factory driving lights weren't working??? Can't remember, but two weekends ago, I checked the fuses and found them to be fine. The other day I pulled the cover off the console (which is where the switch for the rear defroster and driving lights are, go figure) and sure enough, the plug to the back of those switches was disconnected, and lodged behind the radio. Looks like only a few screws to get that free, maybe tomorrow. But for now, I must get to bed. Recharge the super zapper.

Media Bias

This was in the paper today. I thought that the underlying comment on media bias was delicious!!!

Photo by Mel Melcon