Chuggnutt!

Month: July 2005

  • Munch ‘n Music

    So on the spur of the moment this evening we decided to go to this year’s first Munch ‘n Music and have dinner. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be any good website source for Munch ‘n Music, so for those of you not from Bend, here’s the three-second explanation:

    Thursday evenings during the summer in Bend, free concerts in Drake Park are accompanied by food and craft vendors, and a beer garden. Parking is hell.

    This was the first one we’d been to in years, so the beer garden was new to me. We didn’t stay for the full concert—we never do, really, with young kids—but we did enjoy Pilot Butte Drive-in‘s cheeseburgers and fries. We hadn’t had them since forever and they were utterly delicious. It’s the only place you can get Pilot Butte after lunchtime these days! Score! The kids had Pizza Mondo. I was totally jonesing for some elephant ears, but the line was too long and we were on the way out.

    My wife got a new toe ring and the kids got an ice cream bar and cotton candy. It was a fruitful trip.

    One of these days we’ll try staying for the full concert. And I will get some elephant ears!

    Update: My wife found the website… it’s www.munchandmusic.com. Go figure. Couldn’t find it on the search engines, so that’s saying something.

  • That figures

    I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised when the oddball stuff happens around here anymore, but… Bend.com is reporting that during next week’s Great North American RV Rally in Redmond, participants will attempt to build the world’s largest s’more.

    The S’more will consist of about 40,000 marshmallows, 40,000 graham crackers and 14,000 chocolate bars, and it’ll be built by volunteers on Wednesday, July 13, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Construction is expected to take approximately three hours, with the final product covering 1,600 square feet. The World’s Largest S’more is sponsored by Reserve America, and is expected to break the current record of 1,600 pounds, which was established in May, 2003….

    People from as far away as Florida and Nova Scotia are expected be on-hand to construct, watch and maybe even eat the S’more.

    The world’s. Largest. S’more.

    Sigh.

  • Fantastic Four

    Okay, I admit that since I saw the trailer for it at the beginning of Star Wars, I want to see the “Fantastic Four” movie. Even though, as my brother seems to think, it will likely turn out to be desperately bad. But with today’s CGI and effects technology, even the desperately bad can look good—or at least the trailers can.

    The qualm I do have about the movie is one I share with my brother—the rubbery-looking costume for the Thing. I hope the final version looks a lot better, because right now it looks like, I don’t know, Meat Man or something. This is supposed to be a character who’s mutated into orange rock or somesuch, not latex. Couldn’t they have done an all-CGI Thing?

    I don’t have a problem with casting Michael Chiklis in that role, though. It seems appropriate. Peter David, who’s doing the novelization, made a comment about this: “If I had to guess, I’m thinking Chiklis’ Ben Grimm is going to be the character everyone’s talking about.” So there’s hope. Maybe.

    Of course, when there’s an article on Wired about all the hype and hooplah the studio’s going through to promote the movie, that just seems to be that they’re trying too hard. The movie will look good—mostly—but it’ll likely be another Hulk.

    And in related news: Defamer reports that a skywriter promoting the movie messed up by drawing the “4” backwards. Nice.

  • Our Fourth

    It started with housecleaning, since we were hosting a party at our place. We managed to finish up in time to go to the Pet Parade, which is always fun (though, as someone was telling me later, is just crazy with too many people compared to four years ago). The highlight of the Parade worth blogging about was the flying dog. Someone had harnessed up a little rat dog of some kind to a bunch of big helium balloons, and had it tethered on a leash at about four feet in the air. My thought was, if they drop the leash, the dog is gone—I hope they have a pellet gun!

    For the balloons. The balloons. Yeah, I know what you thought I meant the gun was for.

    Oh, we saw Shannon in the Parade, as well. And apparently Chris was in it too. A fake monkey? What?

    We fought our way to Drake Park where my wife was looking for toe rings and I bought the kids each a beanbag snake. This was the “old fashioned celebration” part of the public festivities they were advertising, I guess—craft vendors and food, though we didn’t make it as far as the food.

    The party at our house was pretty good. We had my family, old family friends, Shannon and Simone for a little while, a friend of my wife’s and even some of my coworkers. The best part of course was the fireworks, especially for the kids. I set off a lot of them, and we were treated to just as many (legal and otherwise) from elsewhere in the neighborhood.

    And this was the first year we let the kids stay up until 10 to watch the Pilot Butte fireworks show (which according to the news this evening is the largest in Oregon. Who knew!). We have a nice view of Pilot Butte from our yard, so it was a treat.

    The only downside was going back to work the next day (today)… unpleasant. Maybe I’ll start taking July 5th off from now on…

  • Happy Fourth of July!

    Happy Fourth to everyone, hope you all have a good holiday. We’ll be down at the Pet Parade at 10, then kids’ swimming lessons and a party to prepare for. Plus it’s going to be in the mid-80s today, perfect!

  • Never ending fall

    Check out this Flash animation. It’s creepy and compelling! It’s a mannequin falling through an infinite sky of spheres. Realistic. And you can drag the thing around with your mouse, too…

    Via Boing Boing.