what am I doing in the Midwest in winter?

Click on this picture and repeat "Monet's Garden, Monet's Garden, Monet's Garden....."

an old man's restaurant review

My personal favorite in Bbrg: Boulder Creek
Why? On a winter day, if you ask the hostess to seat you in a warm spot they can actually do it.
Their salads are the most interesting of anywhere within a half hour radius.
They have the best pizza outside of the Cheesecake Factory.
They have the best atmosphere in town and great service

Best pulled pork: HogHeads
Only problem is, it never seems like they warmed the meat up enough.

Best Mexican food: I'm sorry about this but Taco Bell still beats all the other more authentic places I've eaten at. Their Chalupas are the best. I'm still looking though because of, read on...

Dirtiest restaurants in town: Taco Bell and Burger King. I won't go back.

Most interactive restaurant: I like ringing the bell (for good service) at Arby's

Second best restaurant in Bbrg: Sal's Famous Pizzeria.
The food is great, the decor and atmosphere will bring a smile to your face, it's a family operated restaurant, it's never crowded. It needs more customers to give it more background noise.

Best Breakfast: Flapjacks
Nothing else even comes close. The pancakes are great, the skillet is a meal that will last all day, great coffee. They give you a lot of food, but if they cut back on the way they package their breakfasts and offered a good $2.00 breakfast Monday through Friday they would make a killing.

Honorable Mention: Sweet Home Chicago.
The mention is for the Walter Payton memorabilia on the walls.

where have all the Whigs gone?

I feel cheated. I haven't heard of any Whigs in public office in my lifetime and I'm being cheated out of a whole list of words that would be fun to say if there were Whigs in Washington or anyplace else.

I was looking in my Websters and serendipitously came across this list of fascinating words:

Whiggamore, a Scottish Presbyterian opposed to the English court party: used in contempt.

Whiggarchy, a government by Whigs.

Whiggery, the principles and practices of the Whigs.

Whiggification, a rendering Whiggish.

Whiggish, pertaining to or like Whigs or their doctrines.

Whiggishly, in a Whiggish manner.

Whiggishness, the quality of being Whiggish

Whiggism, the doctrines and principles of Whigs, especially of English Whigs.

Whigling, a petty Whig: used in contempt.

We don't have anything fun in politics anymore. Democrats and Republicans aren't nearly as interesting as Whigs.

I wonder, if I was to run as a Whig if anyone would vote for me. TWH, a middle aged Whig, spoke in Whiggisms today, to the cheers of many Whiglings. There has been growing interest in Whiggishness despite fears of a Whiggarchy and charges of a Whiggification. Stay tuned for breaking news and expert interview on Whiggishly behavior on college campuses.

...and Mr. Beaver said,"...

For me it's about dialogue. When I go to a movie, I enjoy seeing the bad guys get beat up, I like a good chase scene, special effects and all the usual bells and whistles. Above all else though, give me good dialogue. Give me lines to remember and quote. Give me thoughts to ponder, words to interface with my life.

I like John Grisham's books because of the great dialogue. He knows how to make people talk to each other. If you want to make a movie from one of Grisham's novels you'll be smart not to mess up the dialogue.

I liked the new Narnia movie. I give it two thumbs up in many ways. I will probably buy it when it's available. But while I give the movie high praise I was a little disappointed with the dialogue. The negative remarks I'm about to make don't go very high on the complainometer. On a scale of 1 to 10 my criticism is mild. If 1 is low my criticism is a 3.

Maybe nobody else feels this way but two of my favorite sections of dialogue in the book are first, when the professor gives Peter and Susan a lesson on logic as pertaining to the truthfulness of Edmund and Lucy; and second when the children are being filled in on Aslan by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. Disney had an opportunity to present some great dialogue there. They made a stab at it but unfortunately they botched it, muffed it, fumbled the ball, lost the game and got thrown out of the dialogue league.

The other area of disappointment was the dialogue that Disney added. I'll give two examples. After the children meet up and say goodbye to Father Christmas (who was very bland compared to the way the book described him) Lucy turns to Susan and says, "See I told you he was real." Hold on a second, Lucy doesn't say that. This is not Ralphie, this is not some prooftext on whether Santa Claus is real or not. After that comment you might expect Santa to warn Susan not to shoot her eye out with her bow and arrow. What an uninvited invasion into Lewis' very unique treatment of Father Christmas.

Another dialogue addition was in the scene where the professor is talking to Peter and Susan about whether Lucy or Edmund was telling the truth. They have the professor end the discussion with trite moralizing about how the children ought to start acting like a family. What a disappointment. He is supposed to leave the children puzzled and mystified, not shamed.

I know that I am the type of person who always thinks the book is better than the movie. A vivid recent reminder of that is "Seabiscuit." If you liked the movie you'd love the book. Hopefully people will like "Narnia" and it will draw them into the books for a real treat.

things I'm glad I got to do in my life

love and be loved by a beautiful, smart woman
raise three boys and see them love and serve God
experience having a grandchild
have unselfish parents who put God first
have a brother and a sister

go to the top of the Eifel Tower
wink at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris
walk where kings walked in Westminster Abbey in London
see where my ancestors farmed in Wales

shoot a deer with a bow and arrow, butcher it myself and eat it
call in a wild turkey
get two college degrees

learn to ride a motorcycle
wreck a car
see people's faces when they're under water during their baptism (they look like angels)

live in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas
milk a cow
fall asleep on the platform during church

the mother of Aslan

Yesterday someone handed me a program from a local church service. The picture on the front of the program showed a night sky with the profile of what appears to be buildings. On the right there was a prominent star in the sky like what you see on a lot of Christmas literature. On the left and dominating the scene was the face of a lion. The lettering underneath said, "The Chronicles of Bethlehem." Further down on the page was the sermon title for the day, "The Lion's Mother: Mary."

I immediately felt revulsion. The feeling was similar to how I feel when I walk into a restaurant and see a "jackalope" hanging on the wall. You know, a stuffed jackrabbit's head with some deer antlers stuck on top. Ha ha ha that is so NOT funny. Also coming to mind are memories of a stuffed frog standing up on it's back legs holding a banjo. It's disgusting and unnatural.

I really don't like someone tampering with literature that I hold as precious. I know that with the new Chronicles movie coming out there is a great opportunity to get into discussions about Christ so I'm not against an Aslan outreach per se. I'm also not against using illustrations from the Chronicles of Narnia. What I am against is dissecting the family pet to "get to know it better."

I like what Walter Hooper, literary advisor to the Lewis estate, wrote, "Another reason for their success (Chronicles of Narnia) is what is popularly referred to as the books' "many levels of meaning". By placing his adventures in fairyland, beyond contamination by our usual prejudices, Lewis catches us off guard and helps us to attend to things which matter most in this world. By degrees which are often unnoticed by even the most cautious atheist, we progress from a love of Narnia, to a greater love of Aslan himself to a sharp regret that there is no Aslan in this world, to a sudden recognition which makes the heart sing that there is an Aslan in this world-- and then, if my own experience is any guide--Narnia and this world interlock and Aslan and Christ are seen as one.

I think we are ill-advised to short-circuit this process by handing these books to children with a string of explanations about who is what. The books do this so much more effectively on their own."

I may be way off base in my negative reaction. I probably should toughen up since I'll probably see a whole lot more of this kind of stuff in the near future.

I'd be interested to hear what some other people have to say.

forget "birth order", it's "bath" order that's important

Growing up in Kansas and Nebraska in the fifties there were times when water shortages required that bath water got used more than once. Yes, more than once by actual living people. And I'm not talking about grey water being saved to water the bushes out in the back yard either. This was before landscaping, before people cared whether or not their bushes lived.

The way the weekly bath worked was that generally the cleanest person, which was mom, would take a bath followed by dad and my older sister. I was the kind of kid who usually had been playing in the dirt, had snot runnning down and partially hardened on my upper lip and smelled like smoke because I was a firebug. Guess who went last? It really wasn't all that bad. Just wait long enough to let the bigger chunks of dirt settle down to the bottom from the last person, and then don't dip down too deep into the water when you rinse. The only thing I didn't like was stepping into and sitting down on that gritty bottom of the tub. I still remember that feeling today.

Sorry, no pictures to go with this one.

I say, "no" to sissy mugs

Can a guy drink his coffee out of a sissy mug? Recently all of the mugs that I generally use were dirty and I wanted some coffee. I went to the cupboard and looked and looked but the cupboard was bare and devoid of manly mugs. Oh, there were 89 mugs with lacey designs, birds, flowers, kittens and "World's Best Mom" but there were were no masculine mugs.

I decided against coffee. My wife (the world's best mom) asked why I wasn't having coffee. I told her that the only mugs we had in the cupboard were sissy mugs. She looked at me like I was insane, although she later admitted that when she has a hot beverage her favorite mug is always the Santa Claus mug whether it's the Christmas season or not. My son, TRH, said that he would drink out of any of the mugs but his first choice would be his Starbucks mug and if it wasn't available he had other prefered mugs that I would describe as manly mugs.

Are there guys who like drinking out of sissy mugs? I hope not. My preferences are as follows:
the Harley Davidson mug
the Gatorland Zoo mug (the film site of the Indiana Jones alligator scenes)
the black labrador mug (an honorary mention since I broke it last week)
the mug that depicts a dark cloud with Jesus on the cross but when you pour hot water in it the cloud disappears and reveals an empty tomb. (I like making Jesus rise from the grave)
and finally, the two question mark "Evangelism Explosion" mug (it's an odd shape)
if I can't have a manly mug I'll choose another beverage or if I'm desperate, yes I'll wash the Harley mug but I won't drink out of a sissy mug.
Predictable maybe, but true.