Listened to Duma Key by Stephen King and it seemed to take forever...

I used to listen to the Howard Stern radio show all the time. So much so that Laura would yell at me to get the headphones off and 'engage' as she put it. I don't know why, but listening to every second of that show made me feel better and made the time pass when I was doing house work a lot faster.

So I started to listen to audio books starting with the Harry Potter series. I listened to both the US and British versions of the books more than once. I've also branched into other books, mostly on the humorous side.

But I also started listening to books from Stephen King. Back when I was in high school and wasn't working every single day, I had time to read his books. Now I have little time to sit down and read, let alone write. So I've started listening to books that I've wanted to read of his because of the lack of time.

One of them is one of his most recent books called Duma Key. Duma Key centers around a guy named Edgar Freemantle, who after getting injured in a horrific accident in which he loses an arm and suffers major damage to every part of his body after a crane backs over his truck on a job site, loses his wife to divorce and most of his friends. He leaves his hometown to get away from it all and ends up at Duma Key in Florida.

Once there, he takes up drawing and then painting. He also starts to rehab himself by walking up and down the beach. He finally meets up with a man named, Wireman, who is damaged like himself from an accident in his life. He and Edgar bond. Wireman is taking care of an old lady named Elizabeth, whose father owned most of Duma Key.

It's right around here where Duma Key starts to go from interesting to tedious. Because we're dealing with the narration of characters that are an old southern lady and a hispanic man, it really slows the book down. The whole audio book is over 22 hours long and boy does it feel like it. Wireman constantly calls Edgar "Muchacho" and "Amigo", which really got on my nerves. I mean Wireman was a great character and I grew to like him, but every time he used those two works, I wanted to scream.

Also, the narration of Elizabeth is done rather slow in that southern drawl, but only slower. I got tired of the slow pace 6 hours in and edited the file so it was 10 percent faster, which brought the total time of the book to under 20 hours.

After that, the book literally flew by!

What was irritating about the book, even with the speeded up voices, was the tone and pacing. For the first 3/4th of the book, the plot is a little weird, but not weird enough. Edgar paints like a genius, but it's not overly creepy. The book needed more strange stuff happening to him. By the time weird stuff does start to happen to him, I think most impatient people might have given up. I almost did!

The first half just felt like the Shawshank Redemption in the Florida Keys, but the second half suddenly ramps up with the undead, ghosts, giant frogs, a bouncing lawn jockey, murderous paintings, possessed people, blood, vomit, salt and sand.

It was a decent listen, though. I guess I'd recommend it if you like Stephen King and have the patience.

My favorite Bea Arthur moment

Bea Arther died yesterday at age 86 of cancer. While I wasn't a huge fan of hers, I had seen her many times on television while Laura was watching the Golden Girls.

My favorite moment of hers was when she was on the panel of roasters for the roast of Pamela Anderson. In this not safe for work clip, she reads excerpts from Pamela's recent fictional book.

We get outed as the Easter Bunny...

There was an episode of a show Julia watches called the Fairly Odd Parents that was about lying and it made me lie to her.

The show is a cartoon about a kid named, Timmy, who has two Fairy God Parents. They grant his every wish, but most often, his wishes go horribly wrong and he has to scramble to fix the messes he made before finally wishing that everything was back to normal. One such episode featured Timmy realizing that his parents had lied to him. He asked them, "Have you ever lied to me?" after wishing that they couldn't lie to him anymore. Of course, they had to answer 'Yes'.

He storms out all upset at his parents. Feeling guilty, they decide to go through all their home videos to write down all the times they lied to Timmy. Right off the bat, the very first tape has Timmy asking, "Where did I come from?"

His Mom answers, "The stork."

"Wow!" his Dad says. "That didn't take long!"

While watching this, Julia turned to me and asked, "Dad, have you or Mom ever lied to me?"

I gulped, paused and said, "No, of course not."

I thought to myself, "Unless you count just now and all the other times I lied to you."

Parents have to lie to keep their kids happy. You have to lie about tons of stuff on Christmas by telling them that an old man will enter your house while you're asleep, leave presents and fly away with the help of his magic flying reindeer and weighted down by a bottomless sack of gifts made by elves.

Then they lose teeth and you have to tell them a magical fairy is going to break into your house, steal your tooth and leave you money.

Along comes Easter and a bunny breaks into your house, doesn't shit in it or chew anything up, but manages to leave you eggs, candy or whatever gift he feels like.

One time, we actually forgot to leave money for Julia's tooth. I woke her up for school and she looked at me like I had just spit in her face.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

She flipped up her pillow and said, "The tooth fairy didn't come for my tooth."

Doh!

We assured her that the tooth fairy must have been very busy. Sure enough, the next morning arrived with a note apologizing for the busy night and double the money. Crisis averted!

Friday, like a Dateline episode about a guy living a double life, our lies caught up with us.

I was Spring Break for Julia's school. I was at working from home on my computer, so Julia was fending for herself.

She asked me to come upstairs and help me get an Easter basket she saw on the top shelf of the closet, which I did. Later, Laura came home to find that basket and a bunch of Easter eggs scattered all over the floor. These were Easter eggs that we were going to have the Easter bunny give Julia.

Laura asked, "Where did you get these eggs, Julia?"

Julia said, "In the closet in the guest bedroom."

Laura checked out the guest bedroom and found her worst fears confirmed, that Julia had found the stash of Easter goodies that she was supposed to get from the Easter bunny, which also included a package from Build-a-bear.

Laura called me from upstairs.

"Umm... Bob! Can you come here? We have a little problem!"

I ran upstairs and found her in the guest bedroom. Julia was sitting on the bed near hear.

"Julia found the Easter stash, which includes the Build-a-Bear."

I looked over to Julia, who was trying not to smile too big, but you could sort of tell that she was caught halfway between excitement and dread. I think she was waiting for a punishment of some sort.

"Julia," Laura asked. "Did you find see what's inside the Build-a-Bear box?"

Julia said, "Yes. I did. I saw it in the closet and I was like 'I wonder what's in there?'. When I saw that it was a Build-a-bear, I got really excited because I love Build-a-bear. So then I was thinking 'I wonder if they're going to give that to me for Easter'. So are you going to give that to me for Easter?"

Laura said, "Well, yes. You were going to get that for Easter, but it was supposed to come from the Easter bunny."

"Uh huh."

"And who do you think the Easter bunny is?" Laura asked.

"Umm... You guys?"

"Maybe. Are you okay with that?" Laura asked.

"Sure," Julia said.

Laura frowned at me. I could see that she seemed a little sad that Julia no longer believed in the Easter bunny. I didn't feel bad at all. She is almost 8 after all. And I don't think that I even believed in the Easter bunny when I was growing up. Santa Claus? Sure. But a bunny that hops along, manages to get into your house and leaves without waking everyone from all the hoping he does hiding eggs? I didn't quite buy it. Besides, Easter wasn't really that big of a holiday for us. Yes, I got a small Easter basket, but I never got presents. Nowadays, kids get a gift, which boggles my mind.

Later, we're driving in the car on the way to the YMCA.

I started asking a few more probing questions.

"So Julia. When I was working downstairs did you start exploring because you were looking for something to do?"

"Yes."

"And that's why you stumbled upon the Easter stuff?"

"Yes."

"Oh," Laura retorted. "You mean Daddy ignored you while you were upstairs by yourself all day?"

"Yep" Julia responded way too quickly for my taste.

"Hey!" I exclaimed. "I had to work!"

So we still have the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus to fall back on.

As luck would have it, she lost a tooth that same day. She was obviously expecting her pay out from the Tooth Fairy. Seeing as how we screwed up once before, I'm bound and determined not to let it happen again. I insisted that she put it on the desk next to her bed. I explained that it would be easier for the Tooth Fairy to get in and out. Thankfully, she bought it...

I'm having a GREAT time being a kid...

So here I am again apologizing to the handful of people that actually read this blog. Again, I'm sorry that I have no motivation to post because I keep thinking of other things to do and feel that I don't have time to keep up with this blog. I was also thinking that it was only two weeks since I last posted. I didn't realize that it was almost four weeks!

So anyway, I do have some things that I'm working on, but in the meantime, here's a quick one.

We've been trying to appeal to Julia to eat something that isn't popcorn chicken, chicken nuggets, chicken tenders or chicken strips. We do occasionally get her to eat ham, though. Now in the other food groups, we do get her to eat watermelon, grapes, strawberries, oranges, pineapples, green beans, corn and broccoli. So I guess that we could complain about more.

I think that Julia just likes to be in control, so whenever we've tried to get her to eat something, it usually involves a lot of tears on her part and anger on our part. We try not to be angry, but it's so irritating for her to not even try something.

So Laura was trying to appeal to her kid nature.

She said, "Julia, are you going to be eating nuggets when you're a grown woman?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you could be eating things that kids eat like spaghetti, pizza, hamburgers. I want you to eat these things while you can and have a good time being a kid."

Julia looked at her and said, "Listen, I'm having a GREAT time being a kid."

Mini Laura rocks and rolls without studying...

Julia is in first grade and as such, she thinks that she now knows everything. I think the success has gone to her head. She recently got a certificate from her teacher proclaiming her a dynamite speller. I think that has gone to her head, or she's just starting to figure out the politics of school.

You see in her class there are two lists for the students. They all take List A as the pretest. If you do well on the pretest, you have to take the much harder List B words at the end of the week. Julia grumbles about that big time because they are much harder.

Last two quarters of school, Julia was diligent about studying her list of words for the Friday test, but I've noticed that she's been a little lax about it.

Last night, I asked her at dinner how she did on her spelling test. She got an 8 out of 10.

I asked, "Eight out of 10? Didn't you study?"

I mean, not to put any pressure on her, but she usually always gets 10 out of 10.

Julia sighed and said, "Look Daddy, I don't need to study because I rock and roll better on the spelling tests without studying."

Laura had to suppress a laugh at that.

"You 'rock' and 'roll' on the spelling test?" I asked.

"Yes!" she exclaimed. "I'm good at them. And I don't have to study."

"Well, I got news for you, kid. The spelling words are just going to get harder, so you have to keep studying so you know how to spell correctly."

I forget what she said next, but I'm sure it came with an eye roll and a sigh.

Mini Laura loses a tooth...

Laura tells me that at work, they call Julia, Mini Laura, or Laura's Mini Me because she has a lot of the same mannerisms as Laura.

I've kind of noticed that myself. For a seven-year-old girl, Julia talks rather grown up sometimes.

The other night, Julia was messing with her loose tooth. It's one of the top, front teeth. I suggested that I try to yank it out, but she wouldn't let me near it. Finally, she relented, but when my big tug didn't pull it out, she screamed and forbade me from trying again.

The next day, it came out when she was at our after-school care provider's house. Michelle, the provider I mentioned, told us that Julia was playing with the loose tooth and offered to pull it out for her.

Julia told her and I quote, "Listen. You don't understand. I have an issue with this. I don't like pain."

3-d movies

I have a soft spot for 3D movies. I remember the first time I went to see a 3D movie, it was for the third part in the Friday the 13th series called Friday the 13th 3D.



I was handed my glasses and sat with my brother, Bill. We were just in 5th grade and were tagging along with my older brothers to this R-rated movie. The screen went dark and the first sequence where the credits came out of the screen in a 3-D shadow effect blew me away. The letters seemed to be coming out of the screen and I could almost touch them.

Throughout the movie, various objects came out of the screen: popcorn, a tv antenna, a pole, a spear, a knife, an exploding eyeball and various other objects. Besides the gratuitous violence, I was hooked on the 3-D effect. We went to see part 4 of the movie series with some friends when we were in junior high, but it didn't really have that same excitement as the 3-D did.

From that point on, Bill and I made a point to see pretty much every 3-D movie that came out. Some were memorable. Some were so unforgettable that I can barely even muster a few seconds of recollection.



Treasure of the Four Crowns - I would describe this plot, but I can barely remember the film. The only thing that I remember was the constant barrage of 3-D effects that came at the screen. There were so many of them that you could barely keep up with the plot, which had something to do with a missing treasure. Basically, it was a bad Indiana Jones rip-off. Plus, I remember that the 3-D effects were subpar. There was a sequence where all these birds flew at the screen and the effect split as it was coming off the screen, which ruined the 3-D.



Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone - I would describe this plot also, but I can barely remember seeing this. All I remember was that nothing flew out at the screen, it had Molly Ringwald in it and it was boring as hell.



Jaws 3-D - The movie that broke the back of 3-D movies for those of us in small town Grand Island. After this one, we didn't get a sniff of a 3-D movie for years. Bill and I had seen Jaw and Jaw 2 and liked them, but what really drove me to see Jaw 3-D was that it was in 3-D, of course. Were we ever disappointed. Again, there seemed to be a lack of things coming out at the screen, which seems to be the whole point of a 3-D movie. When it finally did, when the shark seems to come out of the screen, it was so brief and fake looking that I almost laughed. I was really disappointed. Besides the fact, the story was horrible and made no sense. So these are the kids of Brody from the first film, one of whom was just a kid and now he's in his 20's less than 10 years later? Oh and a giant shark can practically hide in a Sea World-like place without anyone catching on? Right...



Honey I Shrunk the Audience - It wasn't until December of 1994 that I finally got to see another 3-D movie. This time, it was at Disney World's Epcot Center. This movie still plays today and it still looks good, if not dated since the film is over 15 years old now. The short film centers around Rick Moranis's character, Dr. Wayne Szalinski, from the film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids getting an award for scientist of the year. It's hosted by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame. When the award show starts, Wayne isn't to be found, but then he shows up in a hover craft. He soon loses control of the craft. Through a series of thing that go wrong, the audience gets shrunk. Then while tiny, a dog sneezes on you, a snake hisses at you and the ground shakes. It's a great film, but I wonder how much longer it's going to last. I've seen it about 5 times now over the years.

Muppets 3-D - This was another 3-D movie that we saw at Disney World. It's very dated, but it's still pretty good. The 3-D isn't nearly as good as current movie technology, but it's still cool. Laura and I saw this on our honeymoon and again when we went again when Julia turned 6.

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over - This is the third movie of the Spy Kids franchise. I hadn't seen the first two films, but considering that I love 3-D movies, I had to see it. It really wasn't that good, though. The plot made no sense and you had to watch the whole thing with the red and blue glasses, which gave the film a redish-blue tint through the whole thing. I was baffled that they would use the old red/blue glasses, but I was even more baffled by the plot, which didn't make any sense. It was painfully bad.

The Polar Express 3-D - I saw this one at the Imax theater at the zoo in Omaha. I wouldn't have gone to see it because it didn't interest me, but since it was in 3-D, I suggested that Julia and I see it. Julia enjoyed it and I thought the 3-D effects really enhanced the movie. For example, in the beginning when it was snowing, you could see the clear separation of the snow flakes. As for the story, I was not blown away at all. The movie involves a kid that doesn't really believe in Santa until he's whisked away on a train called the Polar Express that takes certain kids to the north pole to see Santa off before he starts his Christmas Eve run. It was okay. There was some typical Hollywood detours where the kids get lost at the North Pole and have to circumvent a bunch of stuff that would kill somebody if they were to fall, but it seemed tacked on to make the movie longer. Also, the kid that doesn't believe gets the right to get the first gift from Santa over the poor kid that has never had a Christmas present. I was like, "WTF? Why does the spoiled non-believer get the gift?" Also, Tom Hanks does three of the voices: the train conductor (which he's good at), the train's hobo ghost (which he good at, but it's like 'Oh, now Tom Hanks is the hobo) and Santa Clause (which he's okay at because it's like "Okay... now Tom Hanks is trying to talk like an old Santa). I'm not sure why they thought that Tom Hanks had that much range, but it was distracting for me.

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D - I saw this one by myself when both Julia and Laura were out of town. I've had some neck and back problems over the years, so I have muscle relaxers for those times when I feel my neck start to tighten up from hours of staring at a computer. I wanted to relax for the movie so I took one muscle relaxer. When the movie started, I didn't really feel it kick in, so I took another one. So I remember a lot about the first part of the movie, but the second part was a blur. I remember it ending, but I couldn't tell you what happened from the middle to the end. I drove home in a daze threw off my clothes and fell asleep. 10 hours later, I woke up with all the lights on upstairs and the bedroom tv blaring. Here's a tip: Don't take more than a recommended dose of a muscle relaxer until you are sure how you'll react to them. You just might miss something. So I bought this movie when it came out on 3-D and it is pretty good. Granted, the home edition is with the red/blue glasses, but that's the only way they can release 3-D movies now.

Bolt 3-D - Julia and I saw this. It's a pretty good movie. I thought it would be a lot funnier and the plot bothered me. The premise is that this dog thinks that the show he's on is real life because they do everything in one take, but then I started thinking that this would be absolutely impossible considering the show that they are trying to shoot is a massive spy adventure type show with tons of chases. Then again, I didn't have a problem that the animals can talk to each other and think like humans, so I guess I need to take it with a grain of salt. The 3-D effects were awesome, though.

So this brings me to My Bloody Valentine 3-D, which is a sort-of remake of the original, which wasn't in 3-D and made in Canada. It was one of those slasher movies jumping on the bandwagon after Halloween and Friday the 13th hit it big. The original movie was pretty decent for that type. I remember it shocking me when I was a wee lad of 11 and it was on HBO. The new movie's premise is a little similar in that a guy dressed as a miner with a gas mask is killing people, but that's about it. I'd go into the plot, but it's filled with cliche'd characters: the bitter ex-girlfriend, the rich kid that hasn't been seen for 10 years since the first murders, the young sheriff in over his head, the shady deputy, the grizzled old sheriff, the new sheriff's pregnant lover, and a whole cast of fairly pretty people. I'm serious. For a mining town, the people there look like they've been primped and preened like they were getting ready for their publicity stills. Every scene includes extras that look like they were pulled out of a casting call for the other characters. So the plot, which I said I wouldn't explain, starts 10 years after the insane miner escapes from police custody after coming out of a coma and kills a bunch of people. Now people are dying again. Most of them seem tied to the old cases. Because it's 3-D, there are a lot of things being thrown onscreen at you: guns, eyeballs, other body parts and lots and lots of pickaxes. And because it's a slasher movie, there are a lot of red herrings and people too dumb to call the police instead of running and trying to escape out windows. One scene in particular has two people trying to barricade themselves in an office, but fail to call for help on the office phone and then they finally trigger the security alarm. I commented to Laura, "Oh, now you pull the alarm?" All in all, it was a decent 3-D movie. It was on the new all-digit theater complex here which I read has a special silver screen for 3-D and movie is shown at 100 frames a second to achieve the crystal clear 3-D effect.