Another Survey Meme Thingie
Courtesy of SamuraiFrog via Byzantium's Shores, it's -- you guessed it! -- another pointless meme!
February 12, 2008
July 5, 2007
Meme of Five
I hope everybody made it through Independence Day with their original factory-issued number of digits, limbs, and accessories. Had a pleasant Fourth myself, but my Fifth... whoo, boy. I'm wondering tonight if a middle-of-the-week holiday is even worth bothering with; all my various accounts at work tried to push a schload (that's a technical term, don't ya know) through the mill the day before the holiday, and now comes the day after the holiday and everyone is trying to catch up. Which means there's been another schload crossing my desk. Which makes for a lack of blog-time and a very stressed-out (and grumpy) proofreader.
I did manage to check in on a couple of my usual reads, though, and I learned that I've been tagged by Jaquandor to participate in the latest meme floating around the 'net. I'm a sucker for these things, of course -- curse you, Jaquandor, you've discovered my secret weakness! -- so my responses follow the cut:
April 19, 2007
Yet Another Silly Quiz
Originally an email quiz, now gone to ground somewhere in the vast, vast Internet:
February 23, 2007
Don't Be Skeered, It's Just My Beard
I've worn a beard for about 17 years now, not counting one horrible week following a misguided attempt to "update my look," only to discover that I'd, ahem, put on a few pounds since I was last bare-faced. Let me tell you, I wasted no time at all re-growing my time-tested fuzzy accoutrement. I probably would've grown it back anyway, though, even if I didn't need the camoflage for my unfortunate double chin, because I just plain like it. I think it lends my face some character, and, in my mind at least, it signifies both my masculinity and my individuality. And it doesn't hurt that The Girlfriend likes it, too.
However, it hasn't always been easy to be bearded here in arch-conservative Utah, where the preferred look of the predominant cultural group (that would be the Mormons, kids) is decidedly unfuzzy. Before I made a love connection with the current Girlfriend, I heard from more than one young lady that I was not suitable dating material because of the beard, and I also know that I've lost a few job opportunities because I refused to shave it off. Some would call my defiance of the local norms foolish vanity, but I've never understood why, if you keep it clean and trimmed short (as I do), so many straight-laced people find facial hair repellant. (Incidentally, I really dislike the term "clean-cut," because it suggests that its opposite -- i.e., bearded or otherwise hirsute -- is unclean, complete with all the moral intimations that word carries.) And so I have soldiered on through the years, convinced of my own righteousness and determined not to let The Man force me into drab conformity. I've persevered long enough that the beard has largely ceased to be an issue for me -- I've finally found success in love and work without having to compromise my self-image -- but it would've been so much easier if I'd had some kind of support group. Perhaps even an entire web site dedicated to the proposition that beards are cool. But surely there couldn't really be such a thing out there on the vast, vast Internet... could there?
Well, duh...
Oh, and in case you're wondering, the title of this entry comes from an old George Carlin routine called "The Hair Piece." It's reproduced for your amusement below the fold...
September 15, 2006
Happy Birthday to Me... and to the Armored Cavalry
Today is my 37th birthday, an event I've been anticipating with about the same degree of enthusiasm I usually reserve for defrosting the fridge. Yes, I realize that I just dated myself terribly, since I don't know anyone who's actually needed to defrost their fridge in years, but I'm feeling pretty dated today anyhow, so what the hell. (Incidentally, I apologize to any youngsters out there in the InterTubes that don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Not to worry, it's just grown-up stuff.)
Continue reading "Happy Birthday to Me... and to the Armored Cavalry" »
September 14, 2006
Saying Farewell
The past few days have been absolutely gorgeous here in the SLC, like a soft, sweet goodbye kiss from your summertime love before she heads back to school. Monday was especially lovely. It was the sort of day that convinces me that God must own a ragtop -- the sky was tall and clear, the details of the Wasatch Mountains stood out in sharp focus, and the southerly breeze puffed gently instead of gusting. As luck would have it, I wasn't at work on Monday... but I also wasn't where I wanted to be, driving the valley and canyons with the top down and the tunes cranked. Instead, I spent much of the day under a blankie on the couch, suffering from my annual change-of-the-season head cold. A miserable waste of a nice day, even if I did get to watch seven hours of Northern Exposure. That kind of DVD marathon is a rare luxury these days, and aside from not being able to breathe and the occasional coughing fit, I enjoyed it.
There was one other good thing about being home sick on Monday: it gave me the chance to see my parents' old truck and camper leave the Bennion Compound for the last time.
July 19, 2006
Bush's First Veto
When I was 16 years old, my uncle Louie was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS is a neurological disease that causes the myelin sheath coating the body's nerve cells to deteriorate. Think of this sheath as insulation around an electrical wire; when the myelin goes, the nerve short-circuits and ceases to function. The victim first loses strength in affected areas of the body, then loses control over them altogether. In time, the effect of the disease spreads throughout the body and, as the muscles receive less and less stimulation from the deteriorating nervous system, it begins to atrophy. The victim essentially wastes away.
April 28, 2006
Sears Wishbook
Courtesy of Boing Boing, I've just stumbled onto an absolutely amazing time-capsule: somebody with lots of time on their hands has scanned what looks to be the entire 1983 Sears Wishbook for our Friday viewing pleasure.
I used to love the Sears Wishbook when I was a kid, as well as a similar catalog published by a local Utah retailer called LaBelle's. (I think LaBelle's was local -- I don't recall ever hearing about it being in other states -- but I'm not sure. I may not even be spelling the name correctly. The company carried appliances, electronics, impractical gift items, and fancies for the home; it folded sometime in the late '80s, as I recall.) Reviewing these doorstop-sized paeans to materialism was practically an autumn ritual at my home; I can remember sitting by the fireplace with my mom around Thanksgiving time, paging through the Wishbook and the LaBelle's catalog and circling all the must-have Christmas items with a red Magic Marker. Naturally, I was most interested in the toy pages, especially when they featured some new Star Wars figures, but looking at this online archived version today, I find myself gravitating toward the items that no one really thought to hold onto or collect, the everyday goods that remind me of what it was really like to live in 1983. Seen through my usual haze of nostalgia, twenty years ago doesn't seem that far away to me, but so much of this stuff looks so archaic when you really look at it, especially the electronics with all their tacky, faux-woodgrain cabinets... wow. My late grandmother's antique '30s-vintage radio (which now resides in my living room) actually looks more timeless than that stuff.
Here are some highlights:
April 24, 2006
My Goal List, ca. 1992
Writing last week about my Cambridge adventure reminded me of something I ran across as I was cleaning up after The Great Water-Filter Containment Failure and Basement Flood of 2006. It's a padfolio, one of those cheap vinyl folder-thingies that you sometimes get as freebies at business functions, the ones that contain a mini-sized legal pad, a pen, and a pocket for miscellaneous papers. This particular padfolio is a souvenir of "Cinemark Customer Service University," a corporate training session I attended during my old multiplex days. Yes, it's true -- my minimum-wage, name-badge-wearing joe-job at the movie theater required me to attend a half-day company pep-relly on how to become a better ticket-taker. As I recall, the path to usher's nirvana basically involved more diligence in between-show lobby cleaning and never, ever questioning theater management about anything. As I further recall, this propaganda session and its breathlessly enthusiastic mantra of total obeisance to people who didn't have as much on the ball as my pet duck was one of the final straws that convinced me it was time to start looking for a more grown-up occupation. (True story: the day I finally quit, I had to explain to my manager what I meant when I said, "I tender my resignation." He'd never heard that expression before. And this was the guy I was supposed to bow and scrape to because he was my "superior." Oy.)
Sour grapes aside, I'm not one to throw away free stuff, so, naturally, I used the padfolio and, naturally, I've still got it. And I'm sure by this point you're all muttering under your breath, "Yes, fine, Bennion, we all know you tend to horde crap, but what has this got to do with Cambridge?" I was just getting to that...
March 16, 2006
The Last Moviehouse
According to Sean Means of the Salt Lake Tribune, the old Avalon Theater in South Salt Lake is being converted into a live-music venue. I haven't been to the Avalon in years -- I think the last film I saw there was a documentary called Microcosmos about a decade back -- and I didn't even realize it had closed, which, apparently, it did some time ago. Still, I mourn its passing. If I'm not mistaken, the Avalon's repurposing leaves the Tower as the only single-screen theater still operating in the Salt Lake Valley. And I find that terribly sad.
February 14, 2006
Don't Mention the Hair...
If you, like me, are showing the world more and more of your skull with each passing year, through no desire or action of your own, and you're not terribly happy about that state of affairs, fear not, for Bruce Willis knows your pain:
You've all seen it, you've all read it, you've all seen the little things trying to make you feel less of a man because you're losing your hair, but they can all suck my... you know what I mean? I'm a man and I will kick anybody's ass who tries to tell me that I'm not a man because my hair's thinning.
I try not to be too self-conscious about the hair-loss thing -- God knows plenty of other men in my age demo have the same issue these days -- but every once in a while it feels really good to ball up my fist and let out a defiant shout, you know?
February 7, 2006
Consolation Prize
Hey again, kids. Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Hope you haven't missed my sterling prose too much. I've been working on a nice long recap of Anne's and my Yellowstone snowmobiling adventure, and I was planning to post it tonight, but...
There's always a "but" when computers are involved, isn't there? In this case, the "but" refers to the way I somehow lost three-quarters of the entry when I tried to e-mail the part I wrote at work this afternoon to myself so I could finish it tonight here at home. I'm hoping I can recover it tomorrow when I get into the office. If I can't, I'm going to be a very unhappy blogger, because I thought what I'd done was quite good. For a change. I haven't been terribly proud of my recent writing here at Simple Tricks; this entry, however, seemed to be going very well.
In any event, I'm long overdue to give you guys something -- I'm surprised my three loyal readers aren't banging their tin cups against the bars by this time -- but about all I have to give you tonight is another of those e-mail survey thingies that occasionally makes a circle of the 'net. You know, those long lists of random questions that try to elicit trivial responses. It's kind of lame, I know, but it's quick content, and you may learn something interesting about moi. Hopefully, I'll find my travel piece waiting for me tomorrow and I'll be able to finish it and get it up to you before tomorrow night. In the meantime, enjoy the trivia...
December 30, 2005
The Bureaucratic Mentality Vs. My Mother's Trumpet Vine
At the conclusion of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Dr. McCoy remarks that the bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe. It's taken me years to completely figure out what he meant, but I think I finally get it. What old Bones is saying is that the world is filled with small-minded, mid-level-management types whose only purpose in life is to squash the unorthodox and ensure that everyone does everything "by the book." These gray-skinned, unimaginative little beings live and die by their rules, their time clocks, and their almighty god, Procedure. Their thought processes are inflexible and binary in nature; they think in terms of black and white, on or off, one way or the other. They abhor the idea of a third possibility or an exception to the rules because it overloads their limited minds and interferes with their hardwired purpose, which is to use what little power they've been granted by the greater beings above them to enforce their mindless and impersonal regulations.
So, you're wondering, what's got ol' Bennion riled up today? Nothing, except being awakened by the raspy buzz of a chainsaw, which was busily mutilating this wonder of nature:
Continue reading "The Bureaucratic Mentality Vs. My Mother's Trumpet Vine" »
December 26, 2005
Meme of Fours
My employer has generously given me the week off, so between now and New Year's, I hope to clear the decks around here by blogging about a whole mess of topics and links that I've been gathering over the past few weeks.
First up is another of those list-style memes I occasionally run across, this one based around the number four. For your post-Christmas, Monday-morning amusement, I present the following bits of trivial information about yours truly:
November 25, 2005
Homemade Toys
A week or so back, I followed a link from Boing Boing to a wonderfully nostalgic LiveJournal entry in which the author recounts how he saved a beloved childhood toy from the junkheap. This particular toy was made for him by his father some time in the late '60s; it's a spaceship control console, probably inspired by Star Trek or Lost in Space, built of plywood and decked out with knobs, toggle switches, big ol' throttle levers, and, best of all, working lights and motorized, spinning "scanner screens." The entry includes several photographs of the console, and it's truly a beautiful relic of a time that now seems impossibly remote, before Xboxes and iPods and all the other things that kids think they need these days to have a good time.
November 19, 2005
A Movie Producer, Slasher Flicks, and a Good Friendship
The news is over a week old now, but I'd still like to acknowledge the recent death of Moustapha Akkad. He was the producer of the Halloween movies, the man who made certain that "the boogeyman," Michael Myers, kept coming back time and time again, long after the character's creator had moved on to other projects and the series itself had become something of a joke. Some would say that's nothing worthy of commemorating -- heaven knows I've done plenty of my own grumbling about endless strings of sequels that diminish the strengths and reputations of their original films with each new entry in the series -- but if it wasn't for Akkad's periodic trips back to Myers' well, I very possibly would not have met one of my best friends.
Continue reading "A Movie Producer, Slasher Flicks, and a Good Friendship" »
November 14, 2005
Franklin? Who the Heck Is Franklin?
I loved the Peanuts comic strip when I was a kid. I had -- still have, somewhere in the depths of the Bennion Archives -- a dozen or so paperback compilations that I carried around in my back pocket all through my elementary-school years. I practically had those books memorized, I flipped through them so frequently. I identified with Charlie Brown's insecurity and I thought the World War I flying ace was the coolest. But as I moved into middle school, I came to realize that I didn't think the strip was very funny. It was gentle and wise, as its fans so often claim. It was also stodgy and old-fashioned, sometimes preachy, occasionally heartwarming or cute, but it was never funny. I can't recall ever laughing out loud at a Peanuts strip the way I did over Bloom County or Calvin and Hobbes or even the early, pre-sell-out Garfield, and I honestly can't remember the last time I actually read a Peanuts strip.
Still, I do have a soft spot for the characters of Charles Schulz -- they were very important to me when I was very young and memories of them linger in my heart, like kindergarten friends you haven't seen in decades -- so I couldn't resist taking the latest personality quiz that's circulating through the blogosphere, the Which Peanuts Character Are You? test. Here is my result:
You are Franklin!
Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
I guess this is an accurate enough description of me. Funny thing, though: I don't remember this character. Not even a little. I find that odd and more than a little disturbing, considering how obsessive I used to be about this strip. Who is this guy? And what does it say about me that my Schulzian personality match is so forgettable?
November 4, 2005
Why Do I Stay Here?
From time to time, well-meaning friends who have escaped the protective dome that seals off my home state from the rest of our sinful planet ask me why I stay in Utah. Their implied suggestion is that I, with my unorthodox (for Utah) interests and attitudes (not to mention my somewhat scruffy looks), might be happier if I lived in some place a bit more... cosmopolitan. I don't deny that they could be right. After all, I am an unmarried, childless, socially liberal, anti-authoritarian agnostic who enjoys the occasional distilled beverage and generally doesn't care what people do (or don't do) with their genitalia. My out-of-state friends are not misguided to wonder what could possibly keep me living in a place that is notoriously conservative, religious, provincial, family-oriented, and hostile to dissenters -- in short, about as opposite from everything that defines my life as you can get. Nevertheless, my response to their concern is usually just a shrug and the somewhat lame proclamation that, "this is home."
November 3, 2005
The Halloween That Never Was
I don't know about you, but I thought Halloween was a bit of a bust this year. The month of October came and went so quickly for Anne and myself that we never quite managed to get into the spirit of things. Neither of us found the time to decorate our places, and when my favorite holiday arrived, it may as well have been any other sleepy Monday night in The SLC. We received a grand total of two trick-or-treaters at her apartment, a far cry from our remembered childhood times when the doorbells rang until well after the candy buckets were empty and the grown-ups were down to handing out Ritz crackers and the Tic-Tacs they scavenged from the car seats. Ah, well, c'est la vie, I guess. There's always next year, when we'll be sure to do something really cool.
Or maybe not. In my experience, making plans for holidays to come is often a recipe for disappointment. Allow me to illustrate...
September 16, 2005
Friday Quiz Time
This morning my friend Jen posted up the results of one of those automated Internet quizzes. This one is supposed to tell you about the meaning of your birthday, and, given that yesterday was my birthday, I thought it would be fun to give it a whirl. Here are my results:
August 12, 2005
Friday Afternoon Reading
I'm a shade too young to have owned the famous poster of Farrah Fawcett (or, as I believe she was known at the time, Farrah Fawcett-Majors). It was originally released in 1976, and I wouldn't become interested in hanging my first girlie poster until sometime in the '80s. Nevertheless, anyone who was alive and had their eyes open during the late '70s surely knows that image of Farrah: the billowing mass of blond hair, the red swimsuit, the big, scary, "say cheese" smile. It's an icon of its age, so much so that movie-set decorators often use it to help evoke that long-lost time when collars were wide and sex was just good, clean fun.
It turns out there's an interesting story behind the poster, a tale of two brothers who started small, made a fortune, then lost everything, including each other. If you don't have much on the agenda today and need something to while away your afternoon, check out this article about Mike and Ted Trikilis and their one time poster-publishing empire, Pro Arts Inc. It's a pretty long piece, but I found it fascinating. It's also rather sad, but then, many of the best stories are, aren't they?
(For the record, the first pin-up to grace my bedroom wall was as much an icon of the '80s as the Farah shot was of the '70s, specifically that one of Heather Thomas in a pink bikini. Don't know who Thomas is? She used to provide eye-candy for a TV series called The Fall Guy. Which, oddly enough, starred Farrah Fawcett's ex-husband, Lee Majors. Hmm. There's gotta be some kind of cosmic symmetry there, don't you think?)
August 8, 2005
Well, Now, This is Pleasing...
Hey, kids, it's time for another one of those silly Internet quizzes, because I know how much you all love 'em...
This one determines which Looney Tunes character you are based on the usual bizarre, somewhat personal, and seemingly irrelevant questions. You know the drill. Honestly I don't know why I fool around with these things, since the results almost always disappoint me. Almost inevitably, I'm told that my personality traits most closely align with the lamest, most uninteresting whatever of the available categories. I'm never Han Solo, according to these things; I'm Threepio, or Uncle Owen, or Red Six. I'm never Captain Kirk, I'm always Transporter Chief Kyle. In the universe of these quizzes, it appears that most people are sidekicks and background characters, not heroes. So when I settled in to take this one, I figured I'd be assessed as Sylvester the Cat, or Elmer Fudd, or one of those no-name, one-off characters like Sylvester's creme-colored doppelganger, Claude the Cat. So imagine my surprise when I got these results:
July 13, 2005
My Babies
I've always had a thing for a car without a roof. There's nothing I like better than driving through a balmy summer's twilight with the top down and the wind fluttering through what's left of my hair.
I come by it naturally enough, I suppose. My dad is an Old-Tyme Car Guy who still gets a kick out of souping up engines and burning rubber. He's owned motorcycles, hot-rods, antiques, classics, and clunkers over the years; I grew up surrounded by his collection and not realizing that it was unusual for one family to own a dozen or more cars. I never did acquire Dad's passion for tinkering -- I'm sorry to say I'm the sort who doesn't like to get his hands dirty -- but I love driving a stylish car and, thanks to my dad's collection, I've been fortunate enough to have access to some very stylish cars indeed.
July 7, 2005
Oh, London...
I was planning to write a brief, light-hearted entry today to explain why I haven't been posting much this week, but that doesn't seem terribly important after seeing the headlines about the London terror attacks. This kind of madness makes me sad no matter where it occurs, but seeing it blacken the heart of one of my favorite places in all the world really hurts.
July 1, 2005
The Demolition of the Hand-Me-Down World
I see in the paper this morning that another local landmark, the old Geneva Steel mill, has fallen in the name of progress.
Now, before you start thinking my unquenchable sense of nostalgia has finally gotten the better of me and caused me to abandon all sense of perspective, let me state for the record that I'm not especially sentimental about decaying old industrial sites. Geneva was ugly when it was in operation, filling the skies of Utah County with orange haze and dumping god-only-knows into Utah Lake, and it was twice as ugly after it ceased operation and commenced to rotting. In addition, it was located in the next valley south of mine, so it's not like I was seeing it every day and acquiring the affection that comes through constant familiarity. Still, it was familiar, if not intimately so, and its demolition is just one more step in the on-going process that is erasing the landscape I grew up with.
Continue reading "The Demolition of the Hand-Me-Down World" »
June 26, 2005
Congratulations to Keith and Danielle
I've just received word that one of my oldest friends in the world -- by which I mean the friends I've known for the longest time, not those friends who are actually old -- became a father last weekend. Keith Jensen's daughter Aubrey Elise entered the world on Saturday, June 18, and she and Keith's wife Danielle came home the following Tuesday. Presumably mother and daughter are both doing fine, and in the photos he e-mailed me, Keith himself looks like a new daddy should -- somewhere between busting with pride and wondering what the heck he's gotten himself into. (Just kidding! Mostly he looks very happy, and I'm happy for him and Danielle.)
June 13, 2005
When Fanboys Go Bad
From the Department of Amusingly Daft Things That Total Fanboys Do on Larks (DADTTTFDL) comes a report that someone has stolen a Dalek from a British tourist attraction and is holding it for ransom. Daleks, in case you're not geeky enough to know, are the arch-enemies of the cult TV hero Doctor Who. A race of cyborg mutants encased in rolling shells that vaguely resemble giant fire hydrants, the Daleks are basically stock sci-fi villains in that they're always trying to take over the universe and kill any life-form they deem inferior to themselves (that would be all of them). (The Wikipedia has an insanely detailed entry on Daleks that includes photos, history, and social commentary on the "Dalek phenomenon," if you're interested.)
According to the news story, the missing Dalek is supposed to be an original prop from the BBC series and could be worth thousands of pounds. The "kidnappers" removed one of the prop's "arms" and left it on a doorstep with a ransom note that says they are "awaiting further instructions from the Doctor." Hopefully they're just kidding and don't really expect to be contacted by a time-travelling goofball... although that may happen, too, since the news story linked above notes that:
Former Dr. Who actor Colin Baker has been in touch with staff at the attraction, and may be asked to send a message to the kidnappers.
Could this all be an elaborate ruse cooked up just to meet a celebrity? Hard telling... I'll keep you posted with any follow-up news on this critical situation.
(Incidentally, I used to be a pretty major Who fan back in high school, and I actually met Colin Baker at a "meet-and-greet" autograph session way back in the glorious '80s. Charming fellow, very tall...)
May 18, 2005
My First Experience with "Spoilers"
It was the springtime of 1980, and the future was bearing down on me like a runaway bantha.
I was ten, the school year was winding down, and very soon the fifth grade would be behind me. So would elementary school. Come fall, I'd be spending my days in that great, fog-shrouded unknown called middle school. I'd been hearing rumors about what I could expect when I got there, and frankly I wasn't looking forward to it. No one could tell me the point of changing classrooms and teachers multiple times during the day. There were stories about massive amounts of homework. Some said they held activities where they made you dance with girls. (I was never one of those stereotypical boys who disliked girls on principle, but the thought of dancing filled me with terror.) Then there was the transportation issue. My elementary school was within a stone's-throw of my house, and I'd always walked to and from home; now I'd have to take the bus, one of those big, rattling, smelly yellow things that you always had to worry about missing. And what was this nonsense about having to take a shower... with other boys... at school? Revolting!
Thankfully, though, I had things to distract me from my middle-school anxieties. There was a whole three months of summer vacation coming up, and with them was the promise of all the bike-riding, Slurpee-swilling, and treehouse comic-book reading I could stand. My parents were planning to take me and my cousin Stacey on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon as soon as school was over. And, oh yeah, there was a new Star Wars movie about to premiere.
I could hardly wait.
May 12, 2005
A Wallet Full of Bread Cards
I was seven years old in the summer of 1977, the prime age of susceptibility to a story featuring young, swashbuckling heroes, strange-looking creatures, and scary -- but not too scary -- villains. (See also Potter, Harry, modern kids and.) I'm sure I must've seen a few movies on the big screen before then -- I vaguely recall a couple of early-70s live-action Disney films about people in really bad polyester knits -- but the first truly memorable film I saw in a theater...
Wait. Stop.
I'm not going to continue with that thought. My experience of seeing Star Wars for the first time couldn't have been much different than a lot of other people's. We were all kids, we'd never seen anything like it, we stood in lines that went around the block (literally, in my case -- I saw the film at the long-lost Centre Theatre in Salt Lake; there was no lobby to speak of, and the only place to queue up was outside, on the street), big spectacle, big excitement, tiny little brains melting, lifelong obsessions forming, blah blah blah.
We were all there, weren't we? And those of you who weren't have probably heard about it from someone who was. It was the defining communal experience of our generation, at least until the towers fell.
But here's the thing that was unique about my personal experience: I didn't actually want to see Star Wars. I had no interest in it whatsoever, and, in fact, I remember being frightened of it. I don't recall why, but something in the TV ads gave me a major case of the willies.
May 8, 2005
Happy Mother's Day
My mom is out of town this weekend, so no fancy brunches or breakfast in bed for her today. I'd still like to do something special for her, though, so I thought maybe I'd give her a little taste of immortality, in blog form, by relating a few anecdotes that may illustrate her innate coolness.
May 5, 2005
E-mail Questionnaire from Anne
I'm pretty ruthless when it comes to screening my personal e-mail. Commercial spam, of course, is at the top of the "delete" list, but I also have little patience for all the crap that people forward because they think it's fun or somehow useful to me: the jokes, the heartwarming "true stories," the calls for boycotts on this or that, and, worst of all, the "public service messages" that nine times out of ten turn out to be urban legends. (Actually, I sort of enjoy those, because then I have the pleasure of debunking them for whoever sent them. But I've noticed that people don't much send them to me anymore, probably because my debunkings take the fun out of it for them.)
All that stuff that eternally floats around the comm channels wore out its welcome for me very soon after I started using e-mail. All except for the questionnaires. I still like those. You know, those lists of random and essentially superficial questions that are supposed to provide insight into our friends.
I got one from Anne awhile back, the first one I've received in a long time. Considering that these questionnaires are essentially the same thing as the LiveJournal memes I occasionally put up (and the fact that I don't have anything else ready to post today), I thought I'd reproduce it here, along with my sure-to-be-fascinating answers:
April 27, 2005
Home Theater Fantasies
About fifteen years ago, I was working at a nine-screen multiplex in Sandy, Utah, running projectors and dreaming of the day when I'd have some kind of theater set-up in my own house. This was a common fantasy among my fellow minimum-wage-earning, popcorn-sweeping work buddies. "The Dudes," as we called ourselves, were all, to one extent or another, movie fans and movie collectors, and we all had unique ideas about what would comprise the perfect private screening room.
February 23, 2005
Ten Things
A few days ago, John Scalzi posted an entry on his blog called 10 Things I've Done You Probably Haven't. As he explained, this is another of those LiveJournal triggers, or "memes," that are supposed to get you thinking about your life. In this case, you're supposed to list ten experiences or accomplishments that are unique to you. Presumably this exercise is intended to help you realize how cool you really are, or at least give you something to write about.
Since I'm always on the lookout for new blogging inspirations -- that is, I'm a copycat -- I figured I'd take a stab at this one myself. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. It turns out that a lot of the cool things I've done aren't so very different from things I know my friends have done themselves. For example, most of my really memorable experiences are somehow related to travelling, and I know that several of the folks who read this blog have travelled to the same or similar places that I have. In some cases, my friends were actually with me and shared my most memorable experiences, so I can't really say that all of the things on my list are unique to me. But I gave it my best effort and I think I came up with a few items that most of my readers probably haven't experienced. In any event, here's my list, presented in no particular order:
January 12, 2005
Five Things
My friend (and frequent Simple Trick commenter) Jennifer Broschinsky maintains a blog/diary over at LiveJournal, where she occasionally posts up one of the personal surveys that make the rounds of that online community. For the journaler/blogger, the point of these exercises is to reveal things about yourself that you might not think to write about without prompting. The point for the reader is to gain some insight into what makes your friends tick. Think of these surveys as the online equivalent of the handwritten notes we used to pass around in boring high school classes, the ones that asked embarassing questions and which we always hesitated to return because we figured we'd look like a dork whichever way we answered.
A while back Jen put up a collection of topics that all began with "Five Things You May Not Know About..." I thought her answers were pretty interesting, and the questions that prompted them fairly stimulating, so naturally I nicked the thing for my own blog. Below are my answers to the "Five Things" survey. Enjoy!
January 6, 2005
Eisner and Freas
Two more notable figures have left us: comic-book writer and artist Will Eisner and illustrator Kelly Freas, both of whom died earlier this week.
December 25, 2004
Bennion's Christmas Eve Movie List
My little family doesn't have much in the way of Christmas traditions. There are a lot of reasons for this, most of them involving the dysfunctional dynamics of my extended family and one too many of what my friend Jack accurately calls "family hostage situations." Without delving into the gory details, I'll just say that circumstances prevented my folks and me from developing any annual rituals of our own, and now that I'm grown and haven't yet produced any children for Mom and Dad to spoil, Christmas tends to be a pretty dull affair for the three of us. In recent years, December 25th has consisted mostly of my nuclear trio shuffling around the house and trying to think of some way to tap into the joyful zeitgeist everyone else seems to enjoy, while grumbling quietly to ourselves that there really isn't much difference between Christmas and any other day off from work. (Like I said in the previous entry, I'm not very sentimental about this particular holiday.)
Even though I don't share any particular tradition with my parents, however, there is something I personally do every year. Every Christmas Eve, I make it a point to sit down, have a glass of eggnog and watch a Christmas-themed movie. Sometimes one or both of my folks join in, sometimes Anne is there, but even if I'm the only one in the room, the lights go down and the DVD starts to spin right around the time little children are imagining they hear sleigh bells overhead.
November 15, 2004
E-Mail Personality Quiz
I'm sure everyone has received those chain-letter quiz thingies that float around the e-mail channels. I'm talking about those long lists of questions that function like the literary equivalent of cocktail-party smalltalk by letting your fellow correspondants learn some trivia about you. (Just to show you how far down the road to grumpy old coot-dom I am, I can remember when these things were written on actual paper with actual pen-and-ink and passed around classrooms. I imagine school kids today probably send them over their cellphones.)
I usually delete these things from my inbox on sight -- I figure I've already got plenty of distractions with which to waste my time -- but as the last couple of posts have demonstrated, I'm in a fairly trivial mood today, so when I received one such quiz this morning, I went ahead and filled it out. I've decided to share my responses with you fine folks out there in Internet-Land. Enjoy the bitter knowledge of my inner workings that you never really wanted to possess! Bwa ha ha!
November 5, 2004
Interlude: Something to Raise the Spirits
Let's take a break from politics for a moment, shall we?
Does anyone remember Dynamite magazine? This was a fluffy little publication aimed at school kids back in the '70s. It contained articles about celebrities and the fads of the day, comic strips, humor columns, and "fun stuff" like mazes and crossword puzzles. If I remember correctly, it always came in conjunction with those Scholastic Book Club newsletters from which you could order cheap paperbacks, if you could talk your mom into giving you the money (mine was always a pushover when it came to buying me books). I recall that each classroom received one copy of the mag, which would get passed around until the pages were grease-stained and as soft as an old t-shirt from the constant handling.
Continue reading "Interlude: Something to Raise the Spirits" »
September 29, 2004
SpaceShipOne: One Down, One to Go...
It's been an exciting day for spaceflight enthusiasts, almost like the one 24 years ago when my dad woke me at the crack of dawn to watch the first launch of space shuttle Columbia. That day so long ago was one of the rare bonding moments I shared with my father as I was growing up. Dad worked odd shifts at his job and I rarely saw him when I was very young; to this day, we don't know much about each other and it's difficult for us to talk, something we both regret. On the day of Columbia's first flight, Mom had told us not to wake her until T-minus thirty, so it was just us boys, sitting in front of the old console TV with the clunky manual knobs, suffering through interminable countdown delays while we waited for that gleaming white fantasy-machine to hurl itself skyward. I remember that Dad fixed me my very own cup of coffee that morning. It was more milk than coffee, and I'd had the sticky mixture before so it wasn't any big coming-of-age ritual or anything, but it was a rare, precious experience to be dunking coconut-chocolate chip cookies and drinking coffee with my dad as we impatiently waited for something to occur.
August 16, 2004
Movie Review: Alien Vs. Predator
As I mentioned in my review of Spider-Man 2, I like comic books. I've been reading them fairly consistently throughout my life, with the exception of a few years in my mid- to late teens when I thought I was too grown-up for such things. (Ironic, since the teen years seem to be the time of life when most comic fans are most heavily involved in the scene, but then I've always tended to be out of synch with whatever my peers are doing.)
My interest in the medium was rekindled while I was a student at the University of Utah. It happened almost by chance: I was passing through the Student Union one afternoon when I spotted another student setting up a table in the large open area between the video arcade and the food court. People were always selling items there of one sort or another, and sometimes those wares were actually kind of interesting, so I stopped to see what the guy had to offer. It turned out that he was a comics fan who'd decided to liquidate part of his collection. I wasn't too interested -- I figured comics were something I'd put behind me long ago -- but one title caught my eye before I could walk away: Aliens vs. Predator.
July 6, 2004
Big Announcement: Warbirds Over Utah!
As I mentioned a while back, I've got a passion for World War II bomber planes. I think they're beautiful in the same way that antique cars, boats, and trains are beautiful. They were designed according to the aesthetic and engineering standards of another era and, for whatever reason, I admire those standards. In many cases, I admire them more than current standards. Machines from the mid-20th Century are not primitive so much as simple, and they are authentic and unique in a way that most modern machinery is not. (Can you tell the difference between the vast majority of modern cars unless you're close enough to read the markings? I know I can't, aside from a handful of exceptions.)
Even though the vast majority of warbirds were broken up for scrap or otherwise removed from the earth a long time ago, it is still possible to see one outside of a picture book. There are airplane museums all over the United States that have at least one or two of these craft in their collections. Here in Utah, for example, the museum at Hill Force Base in Ogden contains a number of large warbirds, including a B-17 Flying Fortress (like the Memphis Belle), a B-25 Mitchell, and a B-24 Liberator. However, seeing airplanes in a museum is something like viewing a stuffed bear. You can study the size and shape of the animal, but you won't see it move. You won't understand its essence. Museum planes are dead things, mounted and displayed behind velvet ropes, dusted by attendants, lovingly preserved for the ages... but they're cold and emptied of their spirit.
A far better option is to try and see one of the handful of warbirds that is still flying. When you see a "living" warbird "in the wild" you can hear the roar of piston engines that don't sound like any engine made today. You can see the sun glinting off wings and plexiglass nose bubbles. You can feel the wind of the plane's passage and smell the exhaust. Watching a warbird pass overhead, it is possible for one brief moment to imagine what it must have been like on a sunny English morning in 1943, when the skies were filled with machines and the combined sound of their engines made the ground hum beneath a man's feet.
If you live in the Salt Lake-Provo area, you're about to have the chance to see not just one but two "living" warbirds. The Collings Foundation "Wings of Freedom" tour, which consists of a B-17 called the Nine O' Nine and a colorful B-24 known as The Dragon and His Tail, is coming to our area. The planes will be in Heber City on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then they will fly down from the mountains into Provo on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. At each stop, walkthrough tours will be available (a very reasonable $8 gets you into both planes) as well as flight opportunities.
That's right, you will have a chance to go for a ride on an authentic warbird. The price for a ride seems pretty steep at first glance -- $400 for approximately twenty minutes in the air -- but I can tell you from experience that it's worth every penny. My father and I rode on The Dragon during last year's Wings of Freedom stop in Heber, and I can honestly say it was one of the coolest things I've ever done. The cost is tax deductible, the money goes toward keeping the planes flying, and you will be able to tell your friends that you've done something few other living people have.
Even if you don't have the scratch to go for a ride, I urge anyone who is remotely interested in seeing authentic living history to try and get out to one of these two tour stops. The Foundation's mission is to keep these machines in the air where they belong, and they need your help to do it. And for you, this really is a rare opportunity -- there are a mere fourteen B-17s still flying in the United States, and only one single B-24, The Dragon and His Tail. How often do you get to see a one-of-a-kind anything these days? Go on, see a piece of history, and know that your support will ensure that others will be able to do the same, hopefully for years to come...
June 15, 2004
What is it about Star Trek?
Today's post is going to be another of those minimal-content quickies, for which I sincerely apologize. I don't mean to keep teasing you loyal reader types. However, I do want to draw your attention to a nice essay that was referenced today on Wil Wheaton's website, which is one of my daily stops on this Internet crazy train.
Wheaton, as you may or may not know, played Wesley Crusher in the first four seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The piece that he references, A Love Letter to Star Trek, is another blogger's thoughts on Trek and the effect it has had on her and her young sons.
June 8, 2004
Trolley Corners closes
I'm still working on a couple of additional entries about CONduit, but I wanted to note that the last of the Salt Lake movie theaters I remember attending as a kid, Trolley Corners, quietly closed its doors on Thursday after 27 years of business.
May 19, 2004
Captain of the Memphis Belle
[Ed. note: Yesterday I was gushing enthusiastically about the futuristic concept of human spaceflight. Today I'm going to wax nostalgic about ancient airplanes. Hey, it's these little contradictions and paradoxes that make people interesting, right?]
Among my assorted interests, enthusiasms and oddities is a love of old propeller-driven airplanes, especially the "warbirds," the combat aircraft of World War II. People who are familiar at all with that term usually think of the fighter planes of the era, but in my usual non-conformist fashion, I prefer the bombers.
May 14, 2004
One Step Closer to the Stars
One of my earliest ambitions was to be a Starship Captain. At some point, however, I realized that the human race was still a helluva long way from building anything like James T. Kirk's USS Enterprise, so I lowered my sights a bit and decided instead that I would become an astronaut. This was around the time that NASA was glide-testing its newest toy, the space shuttle Enterprise (which was named after the fictional Star Trek vessel), by taking it aloft on the back of a 747 and releasing it to fly, unpowered, back to the ground. It was an exciting time for a young boy who was interested in space, but too young to remember the Apollo missions. It seemed like we -- the human race in general and Americans in particular -- were on the verge of Great Things. I used to imagine myself piloting (or at least working aboard) a second-generation space shuttle, commuting between a busy spaceport on Earth and a wheel-shaped station in Earth orbit. I didn't think this was a mere daydream. I was convinced that it would happen. It seemed inevitable that human beings would one day answer the same siren song that has always compelled us to see what was over the next hill, the same call that caused us to walk out of Africa and go sailing across the uncharted oceans. I used to believe that humans would go to the stars simply because they're there, and that it would happen in my lifetime.
April 21, 2004
Old Friends
When was the last time you thought about the person you called your best friend when you were in the fifth grade? If you're mid-way through your thirties, as I am, you probably don't think about your grade school pals very often at all. Maybe once or twice a year. Maybe less than that. It was so very long ago, after all, and a grown-up life is so very busy and filled with distractions. It's hard to find time to think about your current friends, let alone those you haven't seen in decades.
April 12, 2004
Guinness Research
Great news for fans of stout! It seems that the old advertising slogan is quite correct: Guinness is good for you.
Among other benefits gained by choosing this hearty Irish brew instead of lighter and less-manly beers are "less alcohol, fewer calories, fewer carbohydrates and, to top it off, protection against heart attacks, blindness and maybe even impotence," according to the article I linked to above. Hell, the stuff even seems to improve bone density -- take that, milk drinkers!
February 19, 2004
Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself
I’ve been thinking that since this site does not have an “About Me” page, I probably ought to offer up a some kind of profile of myself. Although I’m 98% certain that the only folks who are reading this blog already know me, I am out there on that InterWeb-thingie now, so you never can tell. Besides, my friends (and you know who you are) might not know some of this stuff. So, without further ado, I offer up the following list of autobiographical tidbits: