Category: Fun

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Nothin’ but Star Wars…

Star WarsFour or five nights ago, we came across Revenge of the Sith (Episode 3– or is that 6?– of the Star Wars saga) on HBO. We all watched it and a good time was had by one and all. Then, Will decided that we need to watch the next three (or is that the first three?), which we have (all three, that is) on video. As I type this, the Ewoks are doing their stupid little song and dance routine at the end of Return of the Jedi. It’s been an interesting viewing experience since it’s been a while since I’ve seen all of these films. A few thoughts:

  • I still think the same thing that I’ve thought for years: The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the lot. Of course, I’m biased because this movie came out at a time (1980) where nothing was available on video (certainly not like now) and so me and my friends went and saw this in the theater like 25 times.
  • The original Star Wars— oh, excuse me, Episode 4, A New Hope– is a close second, and, if you want to be all sentimental about it, I suppose you could argue it’s the best one. It’s interesting the extent to which this is a “B” movie compared to the rest of them though.
  • Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith, is a darn good movie and a solid #3 in the series for me. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the first two episodes (that is, movies # 4 and #5), but I still feel comfortable in ranking Return of the Jedi if for no other reason the awful AWFUL Ewok song at the end of it all. I am certain that music will haunt my dreams tonight.
  • Thing #1 I hadn’t noticed before: besides the obvious improvements in special effects technology, the biggest difference for me between the first one and the last one is the light saber battles. While the fights in the newer ones are great, the big light saber “show down” in the original Star Wars is completely lame, as if they just handed the actors a couple of sticks and said “okay, don’t hurt each other out there.”
  • Thing #2 I hadn’t noticed before: R2D2 (who is really the star of the series since he’s the only “character” who witnesses the whole thing and who doesn’t have his memory erased– sorry C3PO) is the ultimate computer hacker. Plug him into anything and he gets the answer/the job done.
  • And, of course, I kept wanting to hear Bill Murray’s “Star Wars song,” and to see (maybe) The Star Wars Holiday Special. (Least you think this YouTube video is a goof, read this review of the 1978 TV show).

So, may the force be with you. Or whatever.

Two things I forgot to mention before that I’ll mention now:
First, Annette (who, truth be told, is almost as geeky as me and Will about these things) pointed out that the newer prequel movies come after the successes of movies full of really REALLY elaborate martial arts scenes like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So they couldn’t very well just hand two actors sticks and say go at it.

Second, Will and I spend a fair amount of time correcting the inconsistencies between the original three and the new three prequels. For example, “Obi Wan wasn’t trained by Yoda! He was trained by Qui-Gon Jinn. Duh!” Annette loved this.

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Blog post for the road: Steve and Will as Superheroes

It turns out the Fort Meyers airport actually has free wireless internet access. Sweet! So what to do with this unexpected free access? Take a superhero quiz, of course!

Here are my results:

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man
75%
Superman
60%
Green Lantern
60%
Iron Man
50%
Hulk
50%
The Flash
50%
Robin
48%
Supergirl
48%
Wonder Woman
38%
Catwoman
35%
Batman
35%
You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.


Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…

Here are Will’s:

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman
60%
Robin
55%
Hulk
55%
Supergirl
53%
Green Lantern
45%
The Flash
45%
Iron Man
45%
Spider-Man
40%
Batman
30%
Wonder Woman
28%
Catwoman
25%
You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.


Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…

Pretty impressive, if you ask me…

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Christmas in Florida (part 4): Sandcastles

To close up our Florida Christmas, we spent some time the last two out of three days at the beach. (And, besides that, events included a trip for Will to a wolf sanctuary and a children’s dinner theater, a shopping/lunch trip for Annette and Steve to a nice Italian place, and nice dinner for one and all at a place called the Waterside Cafe). When in Florida, one should go to the beach, right?

A couple days ago, we went to the Vanderbilt beach in the afternoon and I was actually quite surprised by the crowds. Some of it might be the result that this area of Southwest Florida is just getting more and more crowded, but a lot of it was we were there in the afternoon, which is not a usual Wannamaker time for beach-going.

This morning, we went back to a different beach (this one closer to the Naples Pier), and Will and I worked for quite a while on an grand sand castle. Now, when it came time for Annette to take pictures, she had a slight, um, malfunction. Basically, the camera was set to capture video and not still images, but Annette didn’t realize that.

So, the bad news was we didn’t get any good still pictures of the castle and the construction process. The good news was we got this sort of odd movie out of the whole thing, accidentally made by Annette and narrated by Will and myself (about 8 MB). (BTW, I tried to upload this to YouTube, but it was taking too long. Maybe later; when it shows up, it show up right here:).

Anyway, here’s the even more cool part:

We got home about noonish or so, and then hung around the house, packed for the trip home tomorrow, etc. Annette’s parents went out to a previously planned event, so Will and Annette and I went to a Naples Art Fair (kinda lame), out to dinner, and then back to the beach. Will and I wanted to see if our castle was still standing. And you know what? As the picture at the top of this page suggests, our castle survived all day! Makes me want to go back tomorrow and see if it’s still there. But alas, we’re back to Michigan then….

Be sure to check out the other pictures at my Flickr set for Christmas 2006 pictures.

Oh, one last thing:
Just to let you know about the latest trends, it seems like the most popular accessory down here in southern Florida is a little dog. Seriously. We saw this phenomenon a handful of times in both South Beach and here in Naples. I can only assume this is the evil influence of Paris.

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Christmas in Florida (part 3): South Beach

Annette and I took an overnight trip to the South Beach last night. There was some good news, including the fact that this meant we weren’t on our way to the annual MLA convention (more good news below). The bad news was bad weather and our shitty hotel.

First the hotel stuff.

We made reservations at the Winterhaven Hotel quite a while ago, in part because of a recommendation from a friend. Well, we showed up and discovered the place was under fairly dramatic construction:




Annette took one look at this and said “oh no, this will not do.” Now, in hindsight, we perhaps should have at least looked at the room. But at the first twitch of complaint from us, we were immediately told that we could check into their “sister” hotel, the Blue Moon.

What a freakin’ dump.

Okay, to be fair: there are a lot of good reviews on Google here, so maybe we just got them on a bad night. And the room itself was nice enough. But we found it to be a run-down and smelly place, and our individual room placement was just horrific. Here’s our view:

Nice, huh? What really makes matters worse is that those doors you see there lead to the bar area, and right outside of our window seemed to be a popular place for hotel staff members to sit around and bitch (loudly) about stuff going on. We were kept up last night because of a “party” staffers were conducting in the bar, one that ended only after we dressed and went down to the front desk to raise a stink. We tried calling, but no one answered– I guess they were at the party.

Anyway, for those of you coming across this site as a result of a search: The Blue Moon Hotel in Miami Beach (on South Beach and on Collins) sucked. Hard. The Winterhaven Hotel in Miami Beach (on South Beach and on Ocean Drive) sucked, if for no other reason because this was the place that sent us to the Blue Moon.

Okay, enough about that.

The other problem was the weather was pretty crappy, at least for south Florida. So, for example, strolling and bar-hopping along Ocean Drive was pretty much out. Even the “sunny” weather of this morning (that’s when I took the picture at the top and many of the pictures on the Flickr site) was pretty darn chilly. As we were out and about, Annette first bought a scarf and then a sweatshirt and then some socks. At this point, fashion was less important than basic warmth. So, someday, we’ll go back to South Beach when the weather is nicer. And when we do, we will stay at a much better hotel. Not the Blue Moon.

Why would we go back? That’s the good news.

I have to say that even with bad weather and REALLY bad hotel experiences, we had a good time. A few highlights:

Our afternoon started at a cheeseburger place that is actually in Hawaii too (we ate at the one on Waikiki Beach), which for me included a fine cheese and bacon burger and this entertaining card someone dropped off at our table:

I contemplated a Brazilian wax, but just for about 10/15 minutes.

Annette enjoyed shopping, especially for cheap jewelry.

Oh, I almost forgot: we wondered into a really cool art space called ArtCenter/South Florida and we looked at the current exhibit, which is all about pop surrealism, which, Annette and I both decided, is now our favorite kind of art. Check out the Flickr set for a couple of pictures, or see this book or check out this link, too.

We had dinner at a place on the Lincoln Street Mall called Rosinella, which we (and these people here, too) thought was excellent. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it most certainly reminded us of a lot of places we ate in Florence. Great food.

And then, before we left this morning, the sun came out! That’s when I took the picture at the top of this entry and a few others (see the set on Flickr). It is also as close as I came to a “hot chick” in a bikini on this trip– no photos of that, unfortunately. So, we’ll go back to SoBe at some point, though we’ll probably either go back to Key West or some other locale around here.

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Christmas in Florida (part 2)

To be honest, I have nothing really to share here that’s too interesting. Since my last Florida Christmas post (which included details on our trip into the the Everglades), I’ve left Annette’s parents house/neighborhood compound only a handful of times. Annette and I went out to dinner at a very nice place one night (on a gift certificate from her parents– thanks again!), and then we wondered around the fancy-pants area of third street. We all went out to a fine restaurant that was an Italian place and sushi bar (a better Italian restaurant than it was a sushi bar, but still…), followed by a night of looking at “tacky” Christmas lights in a neighborhood known for them.

Christmas eve is the traditional family night with the Wannamakers, and we did the usual things followed by watching commie propaganda filmIt’s a Wonderful Life. Tonight, we had a lovely dinner and were joined by a local friend of the in-laws in good and festive fun.

To be honest, most of my time (other than what was mentioned above) has been spent working on things for school– progress has been made, but much more has to be done.

Oh, and I am no officially sick of Christmas music. The station we’ve been listening to here for our Christmas music needs seems to have a tape loop and/or iPod-type shuffle set-up with a fairly limited selection. I think I’ve heard the Bruce Springsteen version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” about 15 times.

Anyway, as the season comes to a close, feel free to visit these fine list of links at boing-boing, here and here. Annette and I are going for an overnight get-away to South Beach, so I’m sure I’ll have pictures and stories to report in a couple of days.

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Christmas in Florida (part 1)




Christmas in Florida

Originally uploaded by steven_d_krause.

Christmas in Florida is always a somewhat odd time because, well, it’s Florida (southern Florida at that), so seeing Christmas-y type stuff is always a little out of place. Like seeing ornaments hanging from a palm tree, for example.

Still, I’ll take this over the snow and/or rain and/or general ickiness that is going on in Ypsi right now.

Anyway, I have created a flickr set for the trip I am sure I’ll be adding to periodically. The link to it is right here.

Right now, most of what is there are photos from our trip to the Billie Swamp Safari, which is on the Seminole Reservation and run by (guess who!) the Seminole Indians. I must say it was quite the hoot of good ol’ boy Florida redneck fun. We went on an airboat ride (earplugs required), a swamp buggy ride (which was this bus-like thing about 10 feet off the ground), and saw a “critter show” that included Will holding a baby alligator. Ironically enough, after the show, we went to the cafe they have on sight and sampled some deep fried alligator nuggets, which Will in particular found to be excellent.

Oh, and Will and I visited with the swamp version of Santa. All in the pictures. Go and check ’em out.