Funnel Cakes and Fair Food

This weekend was the medieval fair.

There is nothing quite like hanging out with a bunch of dorks dressed up like their favorite characters from Lord of the Rings. It's wonderful to hear them refer to themselves with their made up medieval names. "Sir Grubinground: Captain of the Rolariand Fleet."

Dorks will normally leave to alone in the real world, but once to step into their territory they get all cocky. They will yell at you and demand you play their ridiculous impossible to win games. "Throws some balls at some stuff, and if you can knock down all 54 targets with 3 balls we will give you this cheap nick-nack that we got for a quarter at the Food Lion. Don't miss out on this opportunity to waist your money."

Me and my family went on Saturday. My better half was trying to advise me to eat before we went. My response was, "Half the fun of going to the fair is eating the food." I am not the only one who thinks this way, my mother also shares my opinion. But once I got to the fair I realized that most of the food they serve is made by the shadiest of people. They don't wear hair nets at the fair. I didn't see any health inspectors coming through. I did see long haired ho-bo's making my french fries.

"So, what do you do when your not slinging overpriced grease?"

"Oh, I sit on the interstate on-ramp and try to bum a ride."

"Fantastic. By the way, your mullet is dipping into the funnel cake mix."

I had the "fish and chips." Which by its self, not that bad. My problem was the rabbit turds in the bottom of the malt vinegar. But hey, "When in Rome, eat and don't ask questions."

I think the only thing worse than a chili dog from Krystal's, is a funnel cake. I know they will make me sick, but when someone offers a bite, I can't help but to indulge myself. Funnel cake is like a sponge. When you cook fries in a deep fryer, you are usually left with oil in the fryer. Not funnel cakes. Drop a funnel cake in and all the grease that was in your cooker is now on the inside of that carbohydrate H-Bomb. Don't believe me! Ask your self this, what color was the powdered sugar on your last funnel cake? I know is wasn't white! Remember what they say about yellow snow? Well that applies here.

Funnel cakes aren't like Krystal's. You can get away with eating one bite of a Krystal burger and not get sick. With funnel cakes, one bite is enough.

"Honey, I am feeling a tingling down my arm."

"Me too, but my hair is also falling out by the handful, damn funnel cake!"

A funnel cake is like a pancake, inside a waffle, inside a doughnut.

Oh, I imagine the next time I go to a fair I will get some food from some shady vendor. I am just going to try and stay away from the turducken of pastries.

All Kinds Of Stuff

I would like to apologize first off for the lack of blogging goodness. It has been a weird month. Plus, I have been watching 24, and that just means it's very difficult to get around to blogging.

Job

I got a new job... again. This time I think it is a good one. I will be sitting on my sweet cheeks and answering phones to talk people into buy stuff. It finally happened, I am a salesman. No, I am not a telemarketer, so just calm down.

I will be only fielding unsolicited calls. To those of you I will be talking to in a couple of weeks, I promise to do my job, without annoying the crap out of you.

I went to the companies job fair to get an interview. Little did I know that they would be testing me.

They gave me a personality test, which they say you can't fail. But, if it look like you fit the personality of an ass, you failed.

Then they gave me a vocabulary and math test. I did well on the vocab, but the math test was timed, and they took away my calculator. This is the year 2007, who uses their brain for math anymore? They gave me 3 minutes to do 40 problems, I got through 4. I HATE MATH!

Luckily, that didn't stop them from hiring me after my amazing interview. 5 minutes in a room with me, who could resist my charm and charisma?

Little Miss Sunshine

My wife borrowed a copy of Little Miss Sunshine from a work associate a few days ago. She knew I was going to try to rent it from Netflix.

It's hard for me to think of all the movies I saw that came out in the year 2006, but I think I can safely say, this was the best.

Hard Science Fiction

I love Sci-fi novels. On occasion, I enjoy a fantasy novel. I have always said, I hate Hard SF. I started reading a book by Jack McDevitt called Deepsix. It is Hard SF, but it is great! (so far)

I am starting to wonder if my problem isn't hard SF stories, by hard SF writers. My biggest problem with hard SF is that the writers are way too heady. They use big words, that I don't care to learn. I don't want to read about a bunch of scientist doing math. I HATE MATH!

About a month ago, I was talking to my friend, Shane, about fiction books. I told him, "I just don't like the hard sf."

He reminded me that Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card was hard SF.

Speaker is one of my favorite books, not because of the hard SF elements, but because of the incredibly well written characters. The story centers around a dysfunctional family. I remembered that most of the members of that family were scientist. I came to the realization that scientist are people too, and Jack McDevitt knows it too.

That's why I am enjoying Deepsix. I love SF, but if the characters aren't well drawn, then I have a hard time reading it.

I Will Try to Spare You

I feel like blogging. I just can't think of anything to sit down and write about.

Usually when I get like this, I end up writing something I regret.

So here are just some quick observations by me,

• I like the show 24.
• The weather here is weird.
  
• Sleep is great, I try to do it once a day.
• "Stool" is a weird word for poop.

There, I blogged and nobody got hurt.

Loss

I am not going to say much, other than we lost our cat Thursday morning. He had a heart attack and died in his sleep.

We miss him, but at least he is not in pain anymore.

The Greatest and Best School in College Sports

The Gators are national football champs once again. The University of Florida is the first school in NCAA history to hold both the men's basketball and football championships in the same year. We are the greatest university in all of college sports.

Gainesville is celebrating, but all I am reading on the sports sites is, "What if Boise State got a shot?"

Boise State didn't get a shot, and it's too late to sit around crying.

What about when Bowing Green went undefeated? What about when Utah went undefeated? They didn't get a shot.

BSU deserves a shot, but the Gators deserved it more. If Florida played BSU's schedule we would be unbeaten too. So would USC, Michigan, Auburn, LSU, and maybe even Kentucky. BSU played one game this year. Florida won the SEC, going through LSU, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee, all finishing ranked in the top 25. How many teams in the WAC finished in the top 25? BSU and that's it. Even the pancake teams of the SEC had good years. Not to mention that we spanked the "number one" team in the land.

On a good day, BSU can beat anyone. But can they do it all year against great teams? If they weren't in the MAC or the WAC or the BUTTCRACK... whatever that conference is called, then they would have a legitimate argument.

I want a playoff system. Then BSU would have to play 3 or more great teams straight. If they run the table and get there, great! Teams get hosed in the NCAA, but this year, I think they got it right.

Thr3e: A Movie & Book Review

Thr3e, as a book, awesome. Thr3e, as a movie, cheap.

If you are a Christian, like I am, then you have probably heard the phrase "Don't cast your pearls before swine." If you have something good, don't let some turd with a camera ruin it.

Book: Thr3e the book is fast paced, keeps you guessing, and leaves you satisfied at the end. It is a great story first. At no point during the book do you stop and say, "OK, this is unrealistic, that dialog is cheesy, what the crap was the author thinking." It is just a fantastic novel, regardless of your stance on Christianity. My sister doesn't claim to be a Christian and she thought Thr3e was great, she read it twice.

Movie:While the movie doesn't suffer from trying to be too "Christian", and it never really gets preachy, it just sucks as a movie. The movie was made by Fox Faith, the same people that made a train wreak of a film known as The Visitation (based on the novel by Frank Peretti). Robbie Henson directed both of these movies and is currently working on another movie called House, based on the novel by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti. House will be a one of a kind film, but more on that later.

The movie suffers most of all from the makers and the actors trying too hard, and sometimes not hard enough. Pretty much every actor in this movie does a piss poor job of delivering a believable performance. If there were any good actors in this film, I couldn't find them. They must have been given bad lines and poor directing, there was certainly plenty of both going around. Not to mention the over acting on a character named Princess. The movie tries to portray Princess as she is in the book, but sometimes you have to tone that stuff down for movies. No matter how serious a moment in a movie, when a old women with too much make-up and a tiara bust on to the screen, it's going to get people to snicker. Then the actress drives it home with an overdone performance.

Most of the Dekker fans I talk to say that Thr3e is there favorite novel. I think it is the best piece of fiction he has done, just because I think anyone could read it and wouldn't have to try to get around a bunch of preachy digressions. It's is also just a great read from start to finish. That being said, why would you give it up to some low budget film makers? Christian movie studios are about 10 years behind in there technology and experience. They are a one way ticket to ruining your story.

Left Behind is the best selling Christian novel of all time. Don't quote me on that, but even if you are not a Christian, you most likely have heard of it. You might have even read it. It had the best chance of turning into a huge Hollywood production. After the success of Passion of the Christ and Narnia, movie studios are more open to doing Christian films. The problem is it is hard to get Christians to go to the movies. Fiction isn't a huge success in the Christian market as it is. There are a handful of novels that have the following that would allow them to be made into a mainstream film. Left Behind would be number one on the list of books that a movie would work for. But, there won't be a good Left Behind movie made. Why? Because the rights have already been sold to a small Christian film company, Cloud Ten Pictures, that put out three sub par films.

If the authors would have waited, and sold there movie rights to a major film maker they would have made a great deal of money. I think it would attract the same crowds that went to see Passion. Most likely not the same ticket sales, but it would be a successful film.

Honestly, Dekker would have probably not been approached by a major company. Even though his books sell well in the Christian market, he doesn't even make a blip on the secular radar. This may be the best version of a film version of Thr3e we could ever hope for. This is the state of Christian media. We write our stories for Christian publishers, we make our movies through Christian companies, and for the most part, the only ones that notice are Christians.

My sister was reading the user movie reviews that were on Fandango. All 15 or so users rated it a must see. I am willing to bet that they are all part of Dekkers "street team". What happens on these street teams is this, lets say Styrafoam releases a new album called "Disappointed Yet?". Then we would get on our myspace and tell all of our friends to go to Amazon.com, where we are selling it, and post a butt load of positive reviews. Now all of the sudden people who just happen upon our crap CD, see all these great reviews.

Granted, there are some people who genuinely like Thr3e the movie. That's cool, whatever. But, the people actually making these movies are convinced that they are producing films every bit as good as the stuff in Hollywood.

Now onto House. House is a book written by two of the premier Christian novelist, Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. A recipe for a great novel. Only problem is that they have two completely different ways to approach writing a novel. Peretti likes to research his books for months before he even begins the actual writing of the story. Dekker, on the other hand, gets an idea, then he just starts writing, letting the ideas come to him as he writes. While Dekker said in Pages Magazine that he would love to do a sequel with Peretti, Frank said he would never do another collaboration. The fruit of their works ended up being an utterly confusing story that just left me dumbfounded. My sister compares the book to a Sci-fi original movie meets a competitive eating contest. Anyway, the story is weird, and would be very difficult to turn into a movie. But, why would you want to? House the movie is going to be like Baby Geniuses 2, but way more confusing. It will truly be a unique film if nothing else.

I can't wait to see it!

Quick Rapid Fire Updates Aimed at Your Head!

• Christmas was good.
• Our cat is sick, pray for him.
• We got a new king size bed!
• For the first time in a long time, I fell asleep before midnight on New Years Eve.
• I have no visible rashes.
• I won my fantasy football league.

That's it. Hope your face is OK!