Now and Then....

For the latest edition of Now and Then, I present you with a picture of me in the famous rack in Liberty Square at Walt Disney World. The recent picture of me was taken on September 7, 2008. The picture of me and Julie was taken in January of 1986. Enjoy.

Now and Then...

I grew up with the best neighbors that anyone ever had. John and Marion were kind of like my grandparents, and still are to this day. John had this great porch swing on his patio that me and my sister would love to sit in.

So for this edition of Now and Then, I give you a picture of me and Hanna in the famous swing, circa June 2008. And below, me and my sister Julie in the same swing in 1982.

Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?

Sesame Street was a part of my daily life from my earliest memories up until around the second grade. Grover, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Bert, Ernie, and Oscar were all as real to me as my Mom and Dad and little sister. I have vivid memories of learning about vowels and numbers and punctuation from the likes of The Count and "real" people like Bob, Gordon, and Maria.

However, my love of Sesame Street was severely tested by one particular segment. It was a short segment which would run occasionally during the show. It was an animated story of the Fox and the Crow, which is an old Aesop's Fable. To say that it freaked me out would be an understatement. I would start crying and shaking and my heart would race uncontrollably. My poor Mom thought I was going to have a heart attack at the ripe old age of 5. There was no rhyme or reason to its inclusion in an episode. It wouldn't air for months, lulling me into a false sense of security...and then BAM!!! There was that creepy fox and crow back to give me nightmares. Thanks to the wonders of YouTube you can view this short video for yourself.

See? Isn't that creepy? I think today I find it even more terrifying. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent here...

So as I was saying, I loved Sesame Street with a passion (minus The Fox and the Crow) until I was 6 or 7, and then I slowly began to grow out of it and moved on to other things. I would still see it occasionally as my younger sister continued to watch it, but after she got older and stopped watching I pretty much lost track of it.

When I was in high school I rediscovered the Muppets thanks to the release of The Muppet Christmas Carol. I started collecting all of the Muppet movies and shows (first on VHS, later on DVD), and occasionally a Sesame Street character would make an appearance in those movies or TV episodes and it would briefly remind me that I loved them as a kid. And of course the Elmo craze of the 1990's reminded me that Sesame Street was still on the air, and this new guy Elmo was the new king of the block apparently. Remember the Christmas frenzy for Tickle Me Elmo?

Anyway...fast forward 10 years. SpongeBob and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse are my daughter Hanna's favorite shows. She loves them. One morning after those shows are done, we are flipping through the channels and....wait! Hey! That's Big Bird! And he looks and sounds exactly the same as I remember him. Hanna was transfixed. We continued to watch the episode and she loved it. And I found that I really enjoyed it as well. Bob, Gordon, and Maria are all still there (and Gordon looks amazingly the same as he did when I was a kid). For the past few months we have been recording the show and watching it together in the evenings. There are of course new characters and cast members. But all of the old faces are still there as well. Some of the characters sound a little different now. Jim Henson passed away in 1990, and his Ernie and Kermit are missed (however Steve Whitmire does a perfectly fine job in the roles). The great Frank Oz retired from Muppeteering in 2000, so Eric Jacobson now provides the voices of Cookie Monster, Grover, and Bert. And remember how I said Big Bird sounded the same as he did when I was little? Well that's because Muppeteer Caroll Spinney has voiced and performed Big Bird (not to mention Oscar the Grouch) since 1969!

Sprinkled throughout the new episodes are segments from older shows that still have Henson performing Kermit and Ernie and Frank Oz performing his characters. I think it's great that they are still showing these older clips mixed in with the new stuff.

Sesame Street has been on TV continuously since 1969 and after 4800 episodes it is one of the longest running television programs in history. I get great satisfaction in seeing Hanna enjoy it as much as I did. With all of the terrible kids programming that has come and gone since I've been a youngster, there is something reassuring and comforting in the fact that Sesame Street is still the most popular children's show. I'm happy to say that after about 30 years Sesame Street is once again part of my daily routine.

But they better not bring back The Fox and the Crow.

Me, Bert, and Ernie back in the 1970's. Hanna and Elmo today.

Now and Then...

Up top, we have a picture of me, my sister Julie, and Eeyore in front of the Newsstand at the gates of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, circa January, 1985. Towards the bottom of the page, we have me and Hanna, circa July 2008, in almost the same location, some 23 years later.





















Of course, most folks have pictures of themselves in front of the Castle at various times during their lives, but how many can say they have a picture in front of the Magic Kingdom's Newsstand? I betcha not a whole lot!
I enjoy these kind of photographic time capsules. I hope you do too. Expect more in the future.

The Saga Begins

I get asked all the time how me and Terri met. People who haven't known us for very long assume we met at HSN, which is where we are currently both employed. Our story did not begin at HSN, although it did begin in the workplace.

The picture on this page is of Kroger, a grocery store chain that is prominent across the southeast. Specifically, this is Kroger Store #513, on Clinton Highway, in Knoxville, TN. Or more accurately, it is what remains of Kroger #513. Last week we spent our vacation in Tennessee visiting our folks, and as we drove by this sorry-looking structure I had to snap a picture. Kroger #513 was an old store, which had stood in this spot ever since I could remember. I started working there in 1991, and continued there until we moved to Nashville in 1998. Kroger paid for college through its scholarship program, it paid for my car, put me in the middle of a real-life stick up (no kidding!!!), it taught me how to unload an 18-wheeler with a motorized jack, and so many other great life lessons (such as how to fudge the expiration date on the milk so you can get rid of the old stuff before stocking the new stuff).

And of course it was where I met Terri. She started in November of 1994. And, well, I guess it was here at Kroger that my life changed forever.

As I pulled into the cracked ashpalt of that parking lot and snapped off a few pictures, it was interesting to think that if not for this old building, that I wouldn't have been sitting in the car with the woman who was my wife and my beautiful young daughter. Putting it in perspective like that, it made it a little sad to see what had become of the once-bustling with activity #513.

And then I remembered having to clean those bathrooms and all the warm fuzzies went away!

Good luck, old friend! May you be spared the wrecking ball and turned into bright and shiny retail space once again.

If adventure has a name...

For a geek like myself, few things get me more excited than seeing a beaten-up Harrison Ford in a dusty fedora, desperately escaping impossible situations. Indiana Jones is probably my favorite fictional character ever. I've seen the first three movies countless times, own all 40 hours of the Young Indy television series on DVD, played all the video games, and have read all of his adventures in novels and comics. I'm something of an Indy scholar. Scholar sounds better than nerd (but who am I kidding?).

I was certainly not disappointed as I watched "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" at 12:10 AM on Thursday morning, May 22.

The last new Indy film I saw in theaters, like most people, was "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" back in 1989. My Dad and I went to see the movie at Carmike Cinemas 6 on North Peters Road (at one time my favorite theater, now sadly demolished). That was nineteen years ago! That doesn't seem possible.

So before the lights went down on that night, me and the group of friends that I was with recounted events that had happened in our lives since last we saw Indiana Jones grace a movie screen. In my case, I had moved about 5 times, graduated high school, graduated college, gotten married, relocated to Florida, and had a child. So there was quite a bit of water under the bridge since I had last visited with Indy in a movie theater.

And what about Indy? The new movie is set in 1957, exactly 19 years since we saw him in "The Last Crusade", which was set in 1938. The movie opens not to the familiar "Raiders March" by the incomparable John Williams, but to "Hound Dog" by Elvis Presley. Elvis opening an Indiana Jones movie? Who would've thunk it? But it works, and it serves to give the audience a sense of time and place. It's not the 1930's anymore.

This isn't a review of the movie in the Roger Ebert sense of the word, but suffice it to say I really enjoyed it. Thus far I have seen it twice, and the second time I enjoyed it more. It's like breaking in a new pair of shoes...I'm sure it will just get better with repeated viewings.

And Harrison Ford can take a beating at 65 years of age better than most movie stars a quarter of his age! Bring on Indy 5!

The Empire Strikes

It’s been a week since the first post, and I know you have all been waiting with baited breath, wondering if I ever got my Star Wars sheets.
The answer is yes. One beautiful day in 1980 the sheets finally arrived. I slept on those sheets until 1998, the year I was married. Yes, that is a fact. 18 years of use (of course, they were in a rotation with other sheets. I didn’t sleep on them for 18 years straight…just so you know). Sadly, they had to be retired when Terri and I purchased a queen-sized mattress. And the only reason I don’t have a set now is because I can’t find a Star Wars sheet set in anything larger than full-size. But enough about the sheets.

1980 was also the year that The Empire Strikes Back was released. I remember seeing commercials and becoming quite excited. Now I could go to the theater and watch a real-life movie about the toys that I was falling in love with! I remember cutting out the ad for the film that had appeared in the newspaper and taping it to the wall in my room.
One early Saturday morning in May of 1980, my Dad and I prepared to go see the movie. We were going to Powell Cinemas to catch a matinee. The thing I remember most about this day was getting to the theater and being told that the movie had sold out. I felt as if the world had collapsed around me. My Dad, being the very smart civil engineer that he is, did something ingenious. He did something that I would not have thought to do in a million years: he bought tickets for the next show. Despite my Dad’s heroic save, I still remember being upset that we had to wait another 3 hours for the next showing. (This was long before the days of 20-auditorium multiplexes, where the same movie begins about every 10 minutes).
The theater was not too far from our house, so we drove home to wait for the next show. I recall it being the longest wait of my young life, but the time finally arrived to get back into the Monte Carlo and head back to Powell Cinemas. We entered a crowded auditorium and took our seats.
What followed was a pivotal event in my young life. It had ramifications that continue with me to this day.
Still to come…the aftermath of Empire, the best Christmas ever, and Return of the Jedi. See you soon!