Havasimy

Okay, apparently, I'm looking younger as my birthday nears. Last month, I went to the Styx, REO Speedwagon & Journey concert and the posted alcohol sales policy was if someone looks under 40, they get carded. I got carded 1 out of 3 times. The James Taylor concert friday night was at Star Lake amphitheatre, a place I've been to many times and have rarely been carded. Friday night, I got carded both times I tried to buy alcohol. Then saturday, I spent some time with my parents. We went to the Primanti Brothers restaurant near my house. I've been there more than a few times in the past year that I've lived in my current residence. I've never been carded there. I didn't have my wallet as I had forgotten that I had put it in my car's glove compartment and we drove there in my parents' car. Of course, I don't have my wallet, so I get carded for the first time there. Before this weekend, the last time I got carded was the Styx, REO Speedwagon & Journey concert and before that was the night that Star Wars Episode II came out. So I got carded three times in one weekend when I only got carded twice in the year before. I would have no problems with it if I have had my ID at Primanti's. And to those who says I should feel great that I look young enough to be carded, I don't care how old people think I am. Looking younger isn't neccessarily better.

The place where Steve-O got arrested is close by and is where Tiff and I are going this friday to see James Taylor as well as where Bill and I are dragging Terri and Tiff to see Alabama next month. Somehow, I don't think those concert will have the same problem with male nudity. The Aerosmith/Kiss concert might be a different story, though.

Most of the times, the vanity plates on cars are stupid and/or annoying. Yesterday evening, however, I saw an exception, especially considering the context. I was driving on a back country road on the way to my brother's house. I drove past a big sign that said "No Hunting". Right after that, I got close enough to the car in front of me to notice that the plate said "ELM FUDD". All I can say is that it's understandable that he was driving away from the No Hunting sign.

My Steelers tickets finally came in the mail. Right now, I have tickets to see them play the Ravens on September 7th and the Chargers on December 21st. Thanks to a gentlemen's agreement with a friend, I'll be getting tickets to two other games. I'll find out which two early next week. I usually attend, on average, five regular season games per year. Hopefully, this year, I hope to attend six regular game six regular season games, two post season games and a pre-season game. Maybe this will be the year I'll attend an away game. I would have gone last year if it had been on any other weekend. Unfortunately, the weekend they played the Bungles in Cincinnati was the same weekend as Bill and Terri's wedding and the wedding of two close friends won over seeing the Steelers play. Barely.

I laughed at the trials suggesting in this ESPN Page 2 column, but didn't find it truly blogpost-worthy until I got to the final one. The final suggested trial, I feel, is a must-read for anyone who attends sports events.

This is interesting. I got this link courtesy of my friend Alan, whose blog I just recently ran across.

Tiff and I went to the movies Monday night. First we went to dinner at Steak and Shake. I got a triple cheeseburger, a cup of chili, and a milkshake, so I was hyped up on grease and sugar by the time we hit the theatre. Since Tiff chose the last movies we saw together, it was my choice this time. We went to see The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
We went to the big Loew's theatre at the Waterfront. The movie was showing in a corner theatre. The hallway outside the theatre absolutely stunk. There was an odor that actually seemed to drive people into the theatres. I can only guess that the odor was eminating from the closed down concessions stand. There's a small concession stand at that end of the theatre that's only open on the weekend when the place is busier. My guess is that something perishable wasn't put away properly.
We were going to the 9:45 show of the movie in theatre 9. The digital signs outside of theatre 9 said "Terminator 3 9:15". But it was 9:40 and the movie in the theatre hadn't started, so we figured the sign must be wrong. Besides, we just wanted to get out of the stench. We sat down and the trailer started playing.
Now, I know some of the less-than-ten of the readers of this blog aren't fans of slasher movies, but I am. Of course, these movies are, for the most part, unrealistic, but that's part of the point. I find it a good release of pent-up emotions to watch people die. And the deaths are so unrealistic, that it's not like you're watching somebody really die. I also love to see how many different ways people can die. Whether it's a machete, a party horn or a giant drillbit, I find it fun to see what they come up with next. Finally, slashers, atleast the early ones, are like modern day parables. They are part of a long tradition of stories of what happens to bad little boys and girls.
I wrote that last paragraph because, before the movie, they ran a trailer for Freddy Vs. Jason. I'm a fan of both Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series, so I've been looking forward to this movie. They have a couple known stars in this one, which means they put some money into this one. When the trailer came on, seeing it combined with the recent intake of too much sugar and grease, got me into a wierd mood. I think I actually got giddy. I was really happy. Tiff looked annoyed. Probably because of the big smile on my face and probably because she realized that I might actually drag her to see that movie.
Then the trailer for Jeepers Creepers 2 came on. I really liked the first Jeepers Creepers. It was one of the best new horror films that has come out recently. The second one looks great. Since I was already on some strange high from the Freddy Vs. Jason trailer, I got worse. Tiff got more annoyed.
Okay, on to the movie. I loved the concept of the comic book when I first heard of it and I was thrilled when I heard it was being made into a movie. Then I read the reviews, that got me down because the reviews were bad. I should really stop reading reviews. There were a few things that were completely unbelieveable, but then again, we were talking about fictional characters. The movie was great. Sean Connery was his usual self, which is always a good thing. The action scenes were some of the best I've seen this year. The addition of Tom Sawyer as a token American wasn't as annoying as I thought neither was the thought of Sawyer as a secret agent.
I actually figured out who the main bad guy was before the movie started. Basically, I only know two 19th century super-villains and one of them, Jack the Ripper, never was a "take over the world" type guy. I was just waiting for the main bad guy's arch-nemesis to make an appearance.
Anyway, the movie is a good action movie. The characters are original, for an action movie if not in the realm of all fiction. I hope they take the door they left open for a sequel, although, I don't see how it could be done without Sean Connery's character. They could, in theory, bring his character back, but, from the news I heard on set, I don't think he would want to come back.

I either love or hate this. My guess is the latter. Converse has always been my favorite sneakers. I'm not talking about the Chuck Taylor canvas Converse. I'm talking the leather basketball shoes, like Cons. They've always just been the most comfortable on my feet. I've never even had to break in a pair of Converse. On the other hand, I've never had a pair of Nike sneakers that I could wear. They've never felt comfortable on my feet. It's like I never could break them in. When Converse went down hill and became hard to find, I found other sneakers to wear, but none as comfortable as Converse. Now Nike has bought Converse. I hope that it means that the Converse leather basketball shoes, with Nike's great marketing department, will make a comeback. However, that's doubtful. Nike obvious bought Converse for the Chuck Taylor brand canvas. Why would they put money into the other just to compete with Nike basketball shoes. So, Nike will either kill the Converse leather line or simply stick the Converse name onto Nike sneakers. Either way, it's look like I'll have to find a new favorite shoe.

I'm reading the main page for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. They have short summaries of the articles with links to the full articles. This was a summary for an article:

"Utah officials say the Bosnian-born truck driver charged with causing a crash on Monday afternoon that killed five people in Butler County passed written tests in English for a commercial driver’s license. Pennsylvania State Police say he speaks such poor English that they can’t communicate with him. "

This reminds me of a story that I still have somewhere from the Washington Observer-Reporter about a intersection in my home school district. I can't find the article online, but it had a big picture of a truck trying to make a really sharp turn in the middle of Bentleyville.

See Bentleyville has two exits off of Interstate 70. The east one has a big (and recently rebuilt) truck stop on it. The exit also has a hotel, a gas station, and a few fast food places just off of it. It also has roads designed to handle big trucks. There are no sharp turns and the roads are flat. If you get off of that exit and go past the truck stop and such, the road eventually becomes Main Street, Bentleyville.

The west exit actually comes out on a country road. If you're heading eastbound and get off of the first (the west) exit and make a left off of it, you only have back country roads for a while. If you make a right, you get about a mile of country road before you appear in Bentleyville. This road intersects Main Street at a very sharp angle, such that you have to make a extremely sharp left turn to head to the truck stop and the other exit of 70, but it's a very easy right to go into Bentleyville. If a truck gets off at the west exit, it either has to make that extremely sharp left turn or go into town, on the very un-wide Main Street that are not designed to handle big tractor trailers, and find somewhere to turn around.

Well, back to the Observer-Reporter article. It seemed that a tractor trailer trying to get to the truck stop got off on the wrong exit, despite all the signs that said "no truck" and "truck services use exit B" and such. There are a ton of signs saying for big trucks to go to the following exit. The picture shows the truck do damage to the land around the road while trying to make the left turn and it also shows a local policeman trying to help the truck drivers. Since the turn wasn't designed for big rigs, these turns turn into 100-point turns and the policeman was trying to say stuff like "back up", "stop, you're too close", etc. This was pointless as the truck driver didn't speak english. Of course he didn't. If he had been able to speak english, he would have gotten off at the right exit.

Last year, to avoid events like that happening, they spent over a million dollars to reconstruct that intersection to allow trucks to make that turn easier. Over a million dollars of tax payers money because there are some truckers can't speak english.

Now, as the construction were going on, the road had to be closed. They put up huge signs that said local traffic only. Truckers still went off of that exit. They put the signs so that only one car could fit down that road a time. The truckers still came, sometimes knocking over the big signs. When they got to the closed roads, they turned onto side residential streets which involve steep hills, sharper turns and low hanging tree branchs.

There were a ton of signs going eastbound saying that the truck stop was the second exit. It gives no advantage to the driver to get off on the wrong exit because it takes so much time to manuever through bentleyville rather than go the extra mile to the second exit so the only possible reason to get off on the wrong exit would be if they couldn't read the signs.

Now I'm not trying to say that people who don't speak english shouldn't make a living in the United States. I'm just saying you should know atleast enough English to do your job. If I moved to a non-english speakign country, I would probably have to do manual labor cause I don't know any other language. I would accept until I learned enough of the native language to do something else.

And I'm not saying that truck drivers are bad. Growing up near a truck stop, I've known a few families that made their living driving trucks.

The point of all this is, if you can't read road signs, you shouldn't drive for a living.

The next time you pass or get passed by a tractor-trailer on the highway, that truck driver might not have any commands of the English language. It's not that likely. Chances are he probably speaks better english than you or me, but the chances that he speaks no english at all seems more likely than anyone would hope. Maybe the best thing to come out of that fatal accident might be a fix to that bad intersection or maybe a crackdown on requirements that truck drivers have a working knowledge of English. All I know is, if you can't read road signs, you shouldn't be driving. You definitely shouldn't be driving professionally.

Two more stories from the trip this weekend:
- There was a spider floating in the pool. As followers of my and her blogs probably know by now, Tiff hates spiders. Rather than do the good-boyfriend thing and get rid of the spider, I floated to the other side of the pool and watched Tiff franticly try and splash the spider out of the pool. Eventually, I did come over with the pool-cleaning thingy and threw the spider outside of the pool.

- While on the way home, Tiff suggested we play a travel game. She suggested the "I went to a and I a ..." game. That requires memorizing a long list of nouns in the correct order. I didn't feel like it. My first thought was the game where the players have to keep thinking of songs with a certain word in it, but decided that Tiff would be at too extreme a disadvantage. So I suggested that we go back and forth naming famous people. The catch is, the first initial of the famous person must be the same as the last initial of the previous famous person.
For example:
Barry Manilow
Mark Hamill
Harrison Ford
Fred Gwynne
Gloria Stewart

We played for over two hours and I'd like to say that I was extremely impressed by how well Tiff did. She doesn't follow popular entertainment like I do, but she came up with more than a few names that surprised me.

Occasionally, I did give her clues if she got stuck, but that sometimes had funny results. One time, she needed a name starting with "S". I game the hint: "He was nominated for an Oscar for Pulp Fiction." She suddenly said "Stanley Kubrick". It wasn't who I was hinting at, obviously, but somehow that hint allowed her to access a right answer for the game, if not the hint.

# posted by Tom : 7/07/2003 06:42:00 PM : (0) comments

I'm worn out from spending the weekend in Ohio. I spent alot of time in the pool with Tiff. She doesn't believe in relaxing around the pool. I spent a good amount of time trying to convince her that she couldn't dunk me. The water is only about three and a half feet deep which pretty much puts the entire top half of my body above water. This makes me difficult to dunk, especially with her favorite method being jumping on my back and screaming "your head should be going underwater". It was fun, though. On Friday, we were in the pool and we look up and say "Gee, it looks like it's going to rain". A minute or two later, the rain was coming down such that it felt like hail against the skin and the wind blowing so hard that we couldn't get the pool cover on. Of course, the rain didn't last too long and the weather was fine later on.

I watched Men in Black II. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm glad that I didn't have to pay for it. The first one succeeded on the novelty of its premise. The novelty of it is off for the second one. Plus, the first one was realistic within its premise. The second one had a number of things that I just couldn't buy.

Also, this weekend, I finally got a chance to read. I made it about halfway through Terry Bradshaw's book It's Only a Game. It's a great read for any Steeler fan or any football fan. I rank it just below Myron Cope's autobiography Double Yoi!, which I would recommend to any sports fan because he just doesn't talk about football, but his experiences with Muhammad Ali, Roberto Clemente and sports reporting in years b.e. (before Espn).

But back to Terry Bradshaw, I plan on reading his most recent book, Keep It Simple, after I'm done with It's Only a Game. After that, I plan on reading Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper by Stephen J. Dubner which is about a guy growing up worshipping Franco Harris. I've read a few great reviews of it.

I live on a small road that connects two major roads. Last week, a orange sign appeared saying the road would be oiled next week. The sign is still here this week. I'm not 100% sure what oiling the road means, but I'm relatively sure it hasn't happened yet. This leaves me wondering how long will the road be oiled "next week". Back in high school, a identical sign was up on a road I often drove on for a few months. You would think that they would learn by now that if a sign says something is going to happen next week, they shouldn't leave it up for multiple weeks. Then again, I have worked at PennDOT, so I'm not surprised.

The band The Ataris have a cover of Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" that is getting regular radio airplay. I kinda like it. One thing that always catches my attention is the changing of the line "I saw a deadhead sticker on a cadillac" to "I saw a Black Flag sticker on a cadillac". Usually I hate when lyrics are changed when a song is covered and actually I was slightly perturbed when I first heard it. Then I realized that the change makes sense. The kids nowadays have grown up in a time when deadheads have become executives wearing Jerry Garcia-designed ties. The line, as it was originally done, doesn't have the same effect on today's youth as it did back in the 80's. Now the idea of a Black Flag fan driving a cadillac now can be seen as equivalent to a deadhead driving a cadillac back in the 80's.

The Clarks concert was great. There was no seats at the amphitheatre, so we had to stand the whole time. We got there almost two hours before the Clarks hit the stage, so we ended up standing for about four hours. That's no problem for me since I'm a fan of the band, but it was a little tough on Tiff. I hadn't seen the band since the last album was released, so I heard some of the songs live for the first time. They are my favorite band to see live. It'd be cool to see them hit it big. They sold out the amphitheatre, which is something that the Foo Fighters, who are coming there soon, might not do.

I'm starting to remember some of the stuff I've been meaning to post about. One of the things is that there was a guy at the Styx/REOSpeedwagon/Journey concert with a Motley Crue t-shirt on. It said something like "Fuck you, we're Motley Crue" on the back. He was just a tad bit out of place. I also saw a Poison t-shirt. Otherwise, the concert t-shirts worn were limited to the bands that were playing. I saw guys wearing Journey shirts from previous years. This means that this was the second time they had seen Journey in concert. Is this a fact you would want to advertise?

Also, there was a few high-quality mullets in attendance at that concert. It was like I was back in Pittsburgh.