How Do You Make A Wookie Dance?

Being a big-time Star Wars junkie and fan of 80s music, I just had to repost this.



I stumbled across the Dance Off With the Star Wars Stars 2008 video this morning on The Comedy Feed, and laughed so hard the guys in the next office came over and asked what was going on. So I showed them the video. I'm still laughing.

Both this year's and last year's competition are on YouTube. Here's the 2007 contest for your viewing enjoyment.

Lasagna and Longevity

When I pick up the Sunday paper, the first section I start hunting for is the Comics. Right past the A Section, Sports, Classifieds and Lifestyle sections, straight to the Comics. Once there, I hunt for one thing: the Garfield strip.

The very first thing I read in the Sunday newspaper is the Garfield comic strip. I get my daily Garfield fix with my Garfield IGoogle widget -- right there, center stage beside my news feeds on my homepage every day when I first load up my browser.

I'm a Garfield addict. I used to collect the Garfield comic strip compilation books. I kind of got out of that a few years back, but I still have all the ones I did purchase readily accessible so I can thumb through them from time to time. I have all of the main Garfield characters as stuffed animals on a shelf in my office at home.

Today is Garfield's 30th birthday. June 19, 1978 was the day of the first Garfield strip. He's slimmed down since then; but personality-wise he's still pretty much the same.

Garfield and I have grown up together and are a lot alike. Our favorite food is lasagna. We both love to sleep in and both hate Mondays. We both have an affinity for the remote control. We both like to make smart-ass remarks. And we both love junk food.

Garfield's creator, Jim Davis, obviously has an awesome sense of humor. To consistently come up with new material on a weekly or daily basis for 30 years, you have to have a great deal of talent. Jim is up near the top of my list of people I'd like to meet.

I don't quite recall how or when I first got into Garfield, since I was only four when Jim first put the orange ink on the paper to draw the lasagna lovin' cat. I have a feeling my dad turned me on to Garfield.

But I know I've been actively reading Garfield comic strips for at least 25 of the 30 years he's been around. Garfield is one of the constants in my life.

As long as Garfield is published, that will be the first thing I look for in my Sunday newspaper.

So Happy Birthday, Garfield. I hope you're around for another 30 years.

A Consumate Journalist

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press via FoxNews.com

Over the course of the weekend since Tim Russert passed away on Friday, I've been reading and watching a lot of news articles about Mr. Russert.

I was a big Tim Russert fan. One of the things about him that I really was impressed with was his impartiality -- he went after Democrats and Republican alike, with the same vigor. He wanted to make sure Americans had all of the facts about the issue(s) at hand.

One person, I can't recall who, said in an interview that Tim ran "Meet the Press" like how a football game should be run. It was meat and potatoes. It was in your face journalism. These are the facts. These are how the facts affect ordinary Americans. Now how are you going to address these facts?

I'm sure some people were shaking their head in puzzled amazement at his whiteboard presentations during the 2000 election coverage, when he kept saying "Everything is going to come down to Florida." You may have been thinking "Wow, this guy really knows his stuff" or "I've never quite seen this approach before." I was thinking a little of both.

I remember talking with Congressman Graham after his first appearance on "Meet the Press" in the late 90s. He told me that he felt that he had to be more on his game when being interviewed by Mr. Russert than with any journalist. I'm sure over time, Lindsey and his fellow politicians who had developed a professional rapport with Tim still felt some anxiety before going on his show.

Despite how aggressively he would press someone on an issue, he always did it with a smile. And he and that person would usually end up laughing over something before the interview was over. He had a visible energy about his work.

Tim was a consumate journalist, from humble beginnings.

If you read or listen to his colleagues that have commented on his life over the last three days, they're saying things like, "He remained true to his beliefs, his family, and his roots his entire life," "He never backed down from a challenge," "He valued hard work," or "He was a family man."

I haven't had a chance to read Tim's books "Big Russ & Me," written about his father, or "Wisdom of Our Fathers." But I've heard both being talked about extensively over the last few days and seen some footage of Tim discussing them. I need to go pick up copies of both.

You could tell he had a great love of family and an amazing repsect for and admiration of his father. In one of the interviews I watched, he says something to the effect of, "I wrote Big Russ to show how we each stand on the shoulders of our fathers. I stand on his. My son stands on mine."

It doesn't get any more truthful than that.

Godspeed Tim Russert. We will all miss you. Rest in peace.

The Last Hurrah of the Rabbit Ears?

My wife and I have never had our cable TV or internet with our current provider go out due to an electrical storm. On the random occasions when it's been out, they've never really given us an explanation.

We had gotten out of Praise Team practice at our church this evening about 8:30 when it started to thunder and lightning pretty intensely. We hadn't eaten dinner so we decided to stop by our favorite local meat&three/grease joint. As we were eating, the lightning was getting closer and the thunder was getting louder. Then here comes the local fleet of fire trucks barreling down the road past the restaurant in full response mode.

"There goes Scott," I said to my wife. Scott is a friend of ours from church who is a member of the local fire department.

Knowing some nasty rain was about to start dropping, we hurried up, got in the car and headed home. It poured for about half of the way home and then stopped, along with the lightning and thunder.

"Crazy Upstate storms," I thought.

When we got in, we turned on the TV to check the local weather -- and we saw snow. I went into the office to check the Internet connection. Nothing.

Called our cable provider's service line. They said the electrical storm had knocked out service for a large part of the county, and they would call us when it was restored. I still haven't received that call.

Top Chef was about to come on, which we both wanted to watch. Now we couldn't. Neither of TVs were picking up any air signals on their own.

Then my wife asked, "Don't we have a box somewhere of all kinds of wires? Can't you rig something up?"

Yeah, sure. I'll McGyver something together. So as I hunted through our storage closet, I found the box I was looking for --- and inside was the set of rabbit ears that that my dad had bought probably 20 years ago or more at Radio Shack and I had taken to college. Sweet, let's give these a try.

I was hoping they would come out of the box with a coax adapter attached. No such luck. I did some more rummaging and found one. I did a little bit of repair work on one of the wires, crossed my fingers, and connected the rabbit ears to the TV.

Snow.

Ok, time to pirouette with the antenna, bend over backwards, point my finger in the air like John Travolta and see what we get. After some manuvering of the antenna to and fro, turning of its dial back and forth, and bracing one of the ears on the window curtain, we were set.

They picked up pretty good -- all of the immediate local channels and even, to a degree, the ABC signal coming down from the mountains of North Carolina.

"Enjoy it while it lasts honey," I said, "Next year this time, this isn't going to work."

H-Day. Feb 16, 2009. The day when all the TV stations are to have stopped broadcasting analog signals.

Maybe the the first electrical stom to take out our cable will end up being the last time I take out the rabbit ears. If that winds up being the case, they just got their last 75 minute hurrah.

I'll keep them around until then. But I'm not sure if after that February day next year I'll keep them stuffed in that box or throw them out. I really would have no reason to keep them around, other than as a prop for a forthcoming "When I was your age, I didn't have millions of little 0's and 1's coming down a beam of light into the TV. I used this baby right here to pick up TV signals" anecdote to be told to my yet-to-be-born children.

To Vote or Not to Vote

I hadn't planned on voting today in the primary.

There were 14 people running in primaries today for county level positions in Greenville County. Our local U.S. House district had three candidates on the Democratic side and two on the Republican.

There were four positions on my Republican primary ballot -- county sheriff, state senator, U.S. House representative, and U.S. senator. I voted for all four incumbents -- I personally know two of them. Aside from the fact that I honestly know my one puny vote doesn't really mean squat when it comes down to the final numbers and I don't totally agree with everything they've done, I feel both of them have done pretty good jobs and wanted to show them my support, so I voted Bob Inglis for U.S. House and Lindsey Graham for U.S. Senate.

I didn't know hardly anything about the incumbents' challengers -- or any of the people running for our county council (although my county council district did not have anyone on the ballot today anyway).

I know that I myself am to blame to a large degree for my own ignorance of those candidates' platforms. I haven't really taken the time this election cycle to research them - which is something each voter is obligated to do.

Can ignorance really be bliss? When it comes to who we put in public office, I don't think so.

Frankly, I also put a great deal of blame on the candidates themselves, the media, and the party leaders for not getting adequate information out to the public.

The daily newspaper I used to work for several years ago would always make it a point to do side-by-side profiles of all the candidates, whether for city council or U.S. Senate, on the local ballots. I can remember several times putting those together. We did that because we felt it was our responsibility to our readers.

Both the local Democratic party and Republican party in the primary county that newspaper served are very active and make it a point to support all of their candidates and educate the local voters through a variety of methods.

Having moved to Greenville County a little less than three years ago and not really knowing any of the local players, it's a different ball-game now. I really feel out of the loop.

From what I've seen, the Greenville County parties and the major local daily have a lot to learn about educating the public.

I've been a political junkie pretty much since I got into college.

From being in the Clemson University College Republicans; to volunteering on Lindsey Graham's first congressional campaign; to writing a weekly point-counterpoint column against a very tree-hugging, liberal fellow reporter; to actively working on getting a good friend elected to Congress (including long sweaty days of driving through five counties, digging holes and putting up 8' x 4' campaign sides and even carrying campaign materials to rallies that he wasn't able to attend), I've gotten to work with and know some people who are now in some pretty powerful positions.

But that's just me.... then there's the general public.

There are a lot of people that don't know a thing about the people who are deciding trash pickup fees or property zoning issues -and in turn don't feel right about going out to the polls and making an uniformed decision.

Admittedly, that was my pseudo-dilemma today.

Registered voters have at least made the conscious decision at some point that voting is somewhat important to them. If you are registered to vote, there is no excuse for you not to - unless you have an emergency come up that prevents you from getting to the polls.

I had to tell myself that today on my way home. I know I would have been guilt-tripping myself until November unless I voted today in the primary.

Of course there are a lot of people who don't feel it necessary to vote at all (or even register to vote). Voter dissatisfaction or apathy can be very powerful forces. But there are people in those groups who then turn around and bitch about what's going on when their city council, county council, school board, or their state and federal legislators do something they don't like.

If you don't like what your elected officials are doing, then get off your ass, fill out your registration (you can do it online now) and go to the polls.

I really can't wrap my mind around why people wouldn't want to take advantage of their right to vote.

I've voted in every election that in which I have been able to since turning 18. I've cast most of my votes based on my knowledge of the candidates' platforms. There have been a few instances in which I have voted against someone based on interaction with them. And I have voted for a few Democrats: case and point, in 2006 I voted for incumbent Grady Patterson over Thomas Ravenel in the SC Treasurer's race. We saw how well having Ravenel as treasurer turned out.

They're saying that the turnout in some of our county's precincts today was as low as 10 percent. That is truly pathetic.

We as voters may not always put people in office who in the long run are good for our city, county, state, or country. But we do have that right and responsibility to vote. Voting is the cornerstone of a viable democracy. It is the duty of each and every American citizen to register to vote, educate themselves about the candidates and go press that button on election day. We owe it to the people who fought for us to have that liberty.

So I'm making it a point between now and November to become as knowledgeable about each and every candidate that will be on my ballot as possible.

Going Out Into The World

There is a sno-cone stand not too far from our place that my wife and I frequent. I would venture to guess it's one of only a few, if not the only one in our county, as I've never found another one around here. This particular sno-cone stand has been in operation at the same location for 21 years, and opens usually in late April. I think it's family owned.

Right now, it's about six weeks or so into its summer business season and my wife and I have been there at least once a week. The first couple summers we lived in this area, the same girls were there each day, each summer, making the sno cones. This year, there are a couple new girls working there. After about four weeks of us going there this year, finally one day the girl who is there the most says to me, "Same as usual?," before I even get up to the counter.

So we struck up a conversation. I found out her name is Amanda and she'll be going to college this fall at the college that my wife works at. I told her, "Well, my wife and I will be coming by alot this summer so you might as well know our names too," and I told them to her. Friday evening I went by there to get a sno cone and as I made my way up to the window she excitedly says, "I got my diploma yesterday!!" and I congratulated her.

We found out the other day (the idea hadn't really registered with us at any time before now) that the flower girl at our wedding (who was six at the time) is graduating from high school this weekend. She'll be going off to college next year and that is making my wife and I feel really old.

Then there's seven kids at our church that graduated high school this week. We've only been going to our church for about three years, but these kids have been fun to watch mature. Last weekend, we had Senior Sunday and they led both of our services. They're a complete trip -- some are really shy and nervous when speaking, some are comical - and one of them, Patrick, a drummer in our Praise Team who was presented his Eagle Scout award that same Sunday, performed a song that he wrote about what our church means to him. I was really impressed.

Everything with my high school graduation happened so quickly it's really hard to remember all the details of it. Frankly, I wasn't too concerned about anything that day other than getting that diploma in my hands and being totally done with high school. I was ready to move on to college.

I remember my grandparents shouting in excitement as I got my diploma, chuckling under my breath, and really wanting to call my principal something not so nice as I shook his hand. I probably exchanged more words that day with the girl sitting beside me than I had with her our entire time in high school. And one of my best friends was the only one to toss his graduation cap into the air -- all because we had been warned not to by the aforementioned principal.

Having a passing interest in politics at that point, I didn't really give too much thought to the status of the political landscape at that point or my role in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, I could get on a soapbox if I really wanted to ... but I didn't really get into politics really heavy until college.

The world has changed a lot even in the 16 years since I graduated high school. We didn't have cell phones or the Internet; music videos, television shows and movies weren't rampant with sleaze and violence (Ok, we had some); we didn't have presidents having affairs with interns, congressmen having bathroom trysts with members of the same sex, or governors getting it on with call girls (OK, we probably did, but we didn't really know about it); we were playing Zork and had never heard of anything called Grand Theft Auto; we couldn't even imagine someone flying aircraft into skyscrapers and killing thousands of people; Ecstasy? GHB? What's that? - we were just then starting to hear about crack. Kids and families are facing problems and issues now that even in 1992 it would been difficult to imagine, let alone in 1952.

People give the current generation of students alot of crap, saying they're lazy and lack dedication, moral character, and discipline.

It's hard for me to make that type of generalization, or stereotype, if you will, regarding this generation considering my job. I see every day at the college I work at the determination of this generation. There's a few that I just shake my head at sometimes because they're immature idiots, but they're college kids and that's what college kids do.

There are so many factors with every generation that mold each individual and help define their characater, whether good or bad. Yes, there are some bad apples among those individuals, but there's also the shiny apples.

There's a student that just graduated from the college I work at who came from a horrible family situation -- she and many of her 14 siblings were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their father. The children are now scattered across the state, either in children's homes or foster care. As the oldest, she just became the first of her family to graduate from college. While she was at our college, she was active in more than a dozen activities or groups. And now she's off to another school to complete a Nursing degree.

I do wish all of this year's graduates good luck and success in the future; and I wish for them to develop into strong leaders with a passion for what they do in their careers and their personal lives. They've got a mess on their hands with a broken economy and a country that has lost alot of faith and trust in its leadership at virtually all levels. Hopefully they'll do a better job when they get into those positions than the vast majority of people running this country right now.

Dairy Queen is King

They reopened the Dairy Queen near where I work. When I read about the reopening in the newspaper, I was admittedly really excited.

I was pumped last week to be able to go grab a DQ burger for lunch. This same restaurant shut down a little over a year ago. Around that same time, the other two DQs in our general vicinity closed also. I was livid.

DQ is tops on my fast-food burger list, followed by Wendy's, and then probably Steak and Shake. All the others are pretty much tied for nasty.

So a coworker and I went and grabbed some DQ that day last week when I found out about its reopening. He and I wolfed down our burgers. Then it was ice cream time -- we were literally like 4-year olds in a candy store. Peanut buster parfait, oh yeah - that thing has my name on it. So good....

The thing that is so awesome about DQ is the soft serve ice cream. My wife thinks traditional ice cream is the best. So we really don't see eye to eye on ice cream preference. I love soft serve ice cream. McDonald's is alright in a pinch. But Dairy Queen is King.

Plus I have an affinity for DQ (well, soft serve ice cream as a whole) that goes back to probably when I was four - maybe earlier. An acquaintance of my dad's from long ago, in the age before the Atari, ran a DQ in their hometown. The cool thing about his franchise location was that he had an Apollo command module parked out front. I used to love going to get an ice cream cone and check out the CM. Of course, we had another favorite ice-cream stand along the main highway running through town that had soft-serve. One of my favorite things about road-tripping during the spring and summer was stopping there. That ice cream stand has long since disappeared, but the memory of it remains.

Fast-forward to today... as I'm leaving work, it was just hot. Sweltering. Something had to be done. As I'm about to pull out of our main parking lot at work and go straight to the road across, something told me to turn left instead and take my secondary route home. I wasn't quite sure what caused me to do that.

So to the left I went. Was going down the road, and then I came up to the turn to the DQ. It was then that I knew why I made that left turn -- it's ice cream time, baby.

Three minutes later I was going down the road with a vanilla ice cream cone in my hand. DQ soft serve ice cream -- so good.