05 June 2011
04 June 2011
03 June 2011
02 June 2011
01 June 2011
06 May 2011
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
It’s that time, not only of the year, but of my life. The time is, high school graduation. For the past almost 30 years I haven’t given two shakes about high school graduations. I knew they happened. They talked about them on the news. A few weeks before we knew to stay in as prom season rolled into full-swing, and the restaurants were full of pimply faced teenagers trying their darndest to act all grown up, dressed to the nines and wining and dining their dates.
But this year is different. No. 1 Son is graduating from Topeka High School – my alma mater. Two days ago he played his last band concert during the annual “Dogs on the Lawn” band fund-raiser. At the end, they had the Seniors step to the front, and us parents join them, and we sang the school song, and the school fight song. It has been nearly 30 years since I sang either of those, but they came back to me just like it was yesterday. Amazing really.
I’m not sure I’m ready for the boy to graduate high school. Hell, I’m not sure he’s ready to graduate. He’s the emotional type. He looks at high school graduation not as the end of the beginning, but rather, as the beginning of the end. He is kind of lost (as I was at his age) in that he doesn’t really know what he wants to do with his life. It’s a hard time for kids that age, looking back, all I knew was that I was glad to be rid of school, and I went to a college nearly 400 miles away just to get away from the ‘rents. But he’s not like that. He has no interest in putting any distance between us and him. We joke that he’ll be 40 and living with us. Sometimes…just sometimes…I wonder how far off we are on that mark.
15 March 2011
Only in Kansas
13 March 2011
Movie Thoughts: Sunshine Cleaning
Amy Adams and Emily Blunt portray sisters who start a bio-waste & crime scene cleaning service as a way for Adam's character to send her child to a private school (after having been expelled from his regular school).
One of my long time favorite favorite actors, Alan Arkin, plays the role of the women's kooky off-beat father.
All in all, it was a fun movie to watch, with a couple of laugh out loud moments.
Movie Thoughts: Daybreakers
I will say that lately I've been avoiding vampire movies - pretty much since the Twighlight movies started up. Those simply can't hold my interest. As someone said - the Twighlight movies turned vampires into sparkly faggots. A sentiment with which I agree.
Daybreakers, however, returns the vampire monster to it's rightful place a something to be feared; but with a Wall Street corruption kind of twist.
Set in a world where vampires have become the norm, and humans have become an endangered species, a small group of humans search for a way to survive, even as the supply of human blood dwindles to nothing.
Daybreakers isn't really a horror film so much as it is a well plotted and well acted thriller. Ethan Hawke, Sam Niell and Will Dafoe star.