Okay, it has been a while, the holiday season approaches. I think it is safe to say that anyone that knows me will tell you that I am a fan of movies. So for the next three months I will suggest movies that go along with the current holiday season. Of course the first on is Halloween, I have never been a big fan of gory movies so there may be some movies that are not on the list. Movies that turn the stomach are not my bag, there will be no references to stuff like Hostel or any of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes. It seems like these "new" horror films only want you to vomit in your mouth, so this may not be your list.





These are in no particular order but if you like feeling on edge in the month of October I think you will enjoy these:





The first three Hannibal Lecture movies The Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. Watch them in that order, yes Silence of the Lambs started it all but it is hard to beat them in order, they were done well, Hannibal being the worst of the three, Jodie Foster did not like the book, that is why she was not in the last.

Keeping with the serial killer theme, Seven, I have not talked to anyone that predicted how that one ended. Notice how they never identify what city it took place in and the credits roll backwards.

For the dark comic fans I suggest Underworld and Hellboy, great action and as far as Underworld, Kate Beckensail in a skin tight leather suit, enough said.





Bram Stokers Dracula, awesome and spooky. I know Kneau Reeves, but you get past him pretty fast, Gary Oldman steals the show.





Here is a sleeper, Exorcist 3. George C Scott is reason enough to watch this, but the nurse walking through the empty halls because she hears a noise, well you will jump. And the old woman crawling across the ceiling like a spider, damn.





Interview with a Vampire, great vampire tale.





Here's an oldie, John Carpenter's The Thing, remember this movie was very early 80's. Awesome special effects and a great story, dog lovers may not like this one, Wilford Brimley is not selling diabetes products either. Or oatmeal for that matter.





I will recommend the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I write this only because the movie theater in Kinston showed this one night in high school and I was the only guy out of all my sister's hot female friends. The girls were spooked and I was like John Wayne to this bunch so I was protecting them. During the chase scene an employee of the theater ran down the aisle with an actual chainsaw, I screamed like a girl and stepped on all of their feet as I scrambled to the wall. No chance of getting laid that night.





Okay, I guess these are in order, the original Halloween 1 & 2, watch these on the same night. This series started it all, these movies would have been 10 minutes long a piece if Micheal Myers would just have ran instead of walking, but this is why they are so good.





So turn the lights off and enjoy.

Be careful

This is more of a cautionary tale, I have been selling stuff on E Bay for the past five years. I think it is a great way to get rid of the stuff you no longer need or use and a good way to make a little money. I from time to time sell stuff for my friends, I take a small percentage, usually just enough to cover my costs. I was recently sent an offer to join the E Bay Seller's Lounge. Sounded pretty groovy, I envisioned a smoke filled bar with jazz in the back ground, hanging out with a bunch of cool cats talking about E Bay. Now I do not know how affiliated this entity is with E Bay, I e-mailed a complaint about this organization and it is the only time they have never responded to me. Anyway, the membership comes with a disc, I quickly realized that I did not need this "mess" and cancelled the membership. Problem solved, right?? WRONG!!
Somehow my information was passed along to the Product Resource Network, if you go to their web-site you will see E Bay logos all over the place. They send an e mail saying that you have to cancel your membership or your credit card will be charged. You have to call a number, which I did. One of the first things they ask for is account information, I thought it was a scam and hung up. A few weeks pass and I notice a charge, a little over thirty bucks on my account. I call my bank and got a number, which I called and cancelled the account. "Your refund will be posted in 5-10 days," I was told. WRONG!
Now I consider myself to be pretty on line savy, I do a lot of business on line and it is very safe but Product Resource Network is a scam and it looks like they have managed to drag E Bay into the mud with them, buyer beware.

Has it been that long??

I was recently reminded by a good friend that I do have a blog post, it has been well over a month since I have posted anything. The truth is I have been writing, just not here. Oh, before anyone gets distraught, I thought I heard a resounding gasp out there, I do not have any other blogs out there. So to the tens of people reading this around the world, calm down.



OK, funny and true story. I recently visited my grandparents the other day and it reminded me of a story about my grandfather. For three and a half years I worked in Raleigh, from '04-'07. I would frequently visit my grandparents and spend a lot of time on their farm. When the season was in I would hunt when the season was out I would work or just mess around. This day I was "messing" around with a .22 rifle and saw a carpenter bee hovering about 10 yards away. I raised my rifle and waited for the bee to hover into my cross-hairs and fired....spilt the bee in half. I half to admit I was feeling pretty good.
Thinking it may be a fluke I returned a few weeks later and missed every bee I shot at. While this was going on my grandfather was bush hogging around the farm. (that is cutting grass with a really big mower, for those of you north of the Granville Co. line)
He finished and slowly walked over with this "what the hell are you doing?" look on his face. I explained the earlier kill of the bee and my desire to prove that I could do it again. "Oh." was his reply. He then noticed a bee hovering beside his head. With the speed of a ninja, this 85 year old man jerked his hat from his head, slapped the bee to the ground, and stepped on it. He then placed the hat back on his head and said, "And my way is quieter."
I put the gun in its case and never fired another shot. We then sat under the old stick barn and talked for the better part of the afternoon. A good day.
That one is for you Barb.

How stupid are we?

I am sure we all have asked ourselves that question at one time or another. Usually right we have said or done something that was pretty dumb. Okay for those of you asking, this is where I am going with this.

I received the mangled mess of glossy advertisements today in the mail. They arrive every Wednesday just like clock work. Pizza coupons, Arby,s(I sometimes use those), the usual. I happened to notice the advertisement for Family Dollar. With the holiday approaching, Independence Day, (see previous post) I saw that they were advertising a charcoal grill for twelve dollars. It looked like, well, a twelve dollar grill. The picture showed the grill with three burgers and four hot dogs. At the bottom of the picture in fine print it read, "food not included."

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Are we as a society that stupid, do we need to be told that? I know that all of you are thinking of a similar situation that you have seen or heard. And as a person that once owned a business and had to do some advertising, I bet I know why they put that disclaimer on the ad. Somewhere a person walked in and purchased an item, not necessarily a grill, but the ad showed food in the picture, and they asked where was the food.
Like someone walked into Walmart and bought a frying pan and got home and was mad because the two over easy eggs, that were pictured in the pan on the outside of the box, were not in the pan! It happened, I bet it did.
So that being the case I guess society is that stupid, wow. I would love to have been the guy in the store that day when it happened. We have all had those moments when we get that incredibly stupid question lobbed to us.
Jonathan Brooks and my self were cooking pigs one time for a fraternity function. As the time approached to flip the hogs we opened the lid and got some help. One of the helpers stared at the pig lying skin side down spread out on the cooker, and then it happened. "Brooks is that a whole pig or a half a pig?" The look on his face was priceless, I gave him the look of, yes he just said that. Jonathan took a moment, "No (the person will remain nameless), a whole pig has eight legs."
Caption under that story *brains not included

Happy ID

As the holiday weekend approaches it make me wonder about "Independence Day". You always hear people ask "What are you doing for the fourth?"
One of the most important days in the history of this country has just turned into a number. You never hear someone say "Merry 25th" or "what are your plans for the 25th?" And have no doubt July 4th is one of the most important days in the history of the United States.

Some others come to mind; July 20th(moon landing), June 6th(D Day), September 11th 2001(terrorist attacks for those who may have forgot), April 9th 1865(Lee surrenders), January 14th 1972(first episode of Sanford and Son) just to name a few.
You have to give Independence Day its props. This always reminds me of one July 4, I mean one Independence Day many years ago when a friend of mine showed up to help me get ready for the first of many Independence Day parties. It was late in the morning and he walked in my front door laughing. as he was holding a Hardee's cup he told me of his drive thru experience. This was the old Hardee's on the corner of Charles and 10th. After ordering he proceeded to the window where he wished the young girl a happy Independence Day. She said thank you. He then asked her what did Independence Day mean to her. Her reply, "Ya know Geor Washenton an shit."
I erupted in laughter, still do to this day.
So keep the meaning for this important day in mind, pass on what it really means, not what the hippie teacher said in the movie Dazed and Confused. ".....that a bunch of rich, slave owning, white men didn't want to pay their taxes."

Happy Independence Day.

Who loves you baby?

In the past few days I have been talking to my friend Watson about a rafting trip that we took over twenty years ago. We have discussed the possibility of a reunion trip. I do not know if this will happen, probably not but it has sure stirred up some memories. Our week in the mountains was beyond fun but there were a few moments where I realized that God loves me and looked out for me and my friends.

The line up was Watson Sutton, Brad Pollock, Darryl Tyndall, Mike Stainback, Warren Dubose, and myself. Warren's grandmother was kind enough to let us stay in her families' cabin just outside Franklin NC. All of us had hung out a lot that summer and we were all going off to college. I know Mike was already in college but someone had to buy the beer.

Now I had never been rafting before or sense, for a reason. And I think none of the rest of the group had any rafting experience either. The smartest thing we did was to get our feet wet(insert rim shot here) on the Nantahala River. That was more like an angry creek. I could write forever how beautiful it was but that is not why I am writing.
We stopped at a store to get breakfast and found out through a conversation with the owner that he also rented rafts, first problem solved. So we tied it on the back of Brad's Toyota and off we went. Technically it was a roomy four man raft that we managed to fit six people in and two coolers of beer.
We had a ball and the only "rapid" we encountered was at the end of the trip. There was a footbridge right after the spot where you were supposed to pull off to the side. We missed that spot. Warren, Mike, and Darryl bailed out. Still laughing at the sight of Warren trying to hold a raft that was full of three guys and rain water, oh yeah, it had started raining.
Hanging from the bridge and from ropes across the river were these sticks. Well not knowing what they were for Watson, Brad and myself kept laughing. I then noticed the look of horror on the faces of the people eating at the restaurant on the river bank. I then noticed a man scaling down the river bank carrying a rope gun. Then I heard people yelling for us to grab the sticks.
I stood and grabbed the last stick, no joke. We spun around and Watson hopped out and was in knee deep water. Crisis averted.
Drying off by the restaurant, rope gun man walked up and began to cuss us out, we were still laughing. "Ride down that road about a hundred yards and see if you think it's still funny." He said. So we got in the car and drove a bit and got out. Many years ago the Army Corps of Engineers had dynamited the river and it dropped like over fifty feet, maybe farther, and there were jagged rocks at the bottom.
We stood there for a few minutes, silent. Then with the swagger that all of us had at eighteen, hell I was still seventeen at the time, someone said, "We could have made it."
Erupting in laughter we turned to go home. That was the beginning of the week.

Operation Downfall

I am guessing that most of you have never heard of this. I was aware of what it was but never knew the name. After watching some of the D Day commemoration activities this weekend and then a documentary on Pearl Harbor Saturday night......Okay, yes I watched a documentary on a Saturday night! This put me in mind of a few things.
Some of you may not know about Operation Overlord, it was the name of the invasion of France, D Day. Operation Downfall was the name of the invasion of the islands of Japan. Just to give it some prospective, the number of troops and support personnel for D-Day was around 300,000. The number called for to take Japan was around 4.5 million.
US casualties were estimated as high a a million, Japanese casualties would have been much, much more. Japan was training its civilians, including children to fight to the death, encouraging them to commit suicide rather than surrender.
The documentary, giving all sides, suggested that the United States decision to drop the A bomb was retaliation for Pearl Harbor. That decision, in my opinion served two purposes, the first and most important was to save American lives. For example, preparations were being made for this invasion. One of these preparations was the minting of Purple Heart medals. So many were minted that we are still using those medals today. And unless there is another wide scale conventional ground war we may never run out.
Second, because we knew that the Japanese would not surrender from our countless battles like Iwo Jima and Guadacanal, we were going to have to break this army's spirit, take them out of that frame of mind. How do you truly defeat an enemy that will not surrender? An enemy that thinks it is divine to kill themselves while killing their enemy. You, unfortunately, have to convince that enemy that you have the means and the will to completely erase their existence from the face of the earth.
Before anyone launches themselves from their seats remember the one thing that has bothered me since I was old enough to understand history; we had to drop that bomb twice. Japan decided not to surrender after the first one.
The use of those bombs were indeed a tragedy but necessary. In comparison, the Japanese civilians that died during those bombings and afterwards is nothing compared to those who would have died had we invaded.
The only alternative I could think of was to detonate the bomb on a remote island in front of Japanese generals, but because they did not surrender after the first bomb it would not have worked.

Ask a veteran who was in or on their way to the Pacific during 1945 if they think we should have used it, veterans like my grandfather. They were the ones who would have paid the price. Ask them quickly though, their numbers get smaller every day, D Day was 65 years ago. I don't know about you but I am glad there is only one invasion ceremony.