Ronnie James Dio Dead At 67

Dio has been making music for a long time. The Rock and Roll Geek Show played some of his first records - from 1957. I was one year old then.

Link To MTV Obituary

Link to Rock & Roll Geek Dio Tribute Show

Oh Vicki

Link to article on People Like Us (Vicki Bennett)

Tom Cap & Gown Photos

Art Auction at Patapsco High School

Natalie and I went to an art auction at Matthew's high school last night. It worked like a lottery or raffle. You buy a ticket, look through the art, and pick out a group of things you like. Then they put all the tickets in a hat and picked names at random. I got my first pick. It's kind of hard to describe but part of it is a photo of the general who defeated the British at North Point. Natalie picked an oil painting of tulips. There was also a silent auction and we put the only bids in on two oil paintings by a senior at the school. It was fun.

It's A Major Award! (Part.1)

On Friday, Tom went to the Migration Skate Shop in Belair and entered a "S.K.A.T.E." contest. He broke his board in the final round but the shop lent him a board so he could finish. He skated the last round against a friend of his and Tom won. The prize for 1st place was a new skate deck.

Tom and his prize.

It's A Major Award! (Part.2)

Matthew and Natalie went to White Marsh mall last Saturday and this skateboard shop called Zumies was having an art contest. You had to paint the front of a hat and include the name of the store in it. They grabbed a blank hat and came home. Matthew painted a snow scene on it and they took it back to the store. A couple of hours later the store called and told him he won 1st prize - a $100 gift certificate.

Matthew accepting his award.

The Hat

Of All Things, Maggot Brain.

I taped "House" for Natalie Monday and when it was almost over and the patient was dying, "Maggot Brain" started playing on the soundtrack. I couldn't believe it - Maggot Brain! Some great guitar playing there by Eddie Hazel.

Click on the album cover for Wikipedia's entry about the title song. Some creepy stuff there.

YouTube Downloader

I'm going to try this freeware out. It seems pretty straight forward. I used KeepVid a couple of times but it didn't work last time I tried it.

Download.com's video about the YouTube Downloader.

Downloaded and installed YouTube Downloader and it works as advertised. I used it to download videos and convert them for an ipod. There's an option for setting the quality used for the conversion. I used "Optimal" for my stuff. Below is a table listing the settings with the resulting file size.

• Original - 18 Meg
• High - 29 Meg
• Optimal - 11 Meg
• Medium - 6 Meg

The Road to Knoxville

VH1 Reality Show Bus Crashes In California Causing Major Slut Spill

Good Old Mae

Upgrading to Digital with Mae Laborde



Digital Conversion Update PSA

Tom Graduation Pix

2008 Photos Now Online

I've put my photos from 2008 online at Picasa Web Albums.
Here's the links:

2008 Photos Pt.1

2008 Photos Pt.2

2008 Photos Pt.3

New Family Member

Javier Oscar Torres

Stacey and Oscar's baby - born July 19th, 11:52 AM. He weighed 6lbs, 13oz and was 21 inches long. Stacey was in labor for 34 hours.

Artscape 2009

Natalie and I went to Artscape on Saturday and Sunday this year.

Saturday we got there around 12 and saw the band "Fall Back Plan" on the Main Stage. They're a talented band but a little generic for my taste. The lead singer was really good. She reminded me of somebody, Gwen Stefani maybe. The parade of Art Cars came by around 12:30, always a high point. We wondered up Mount Royal Avenue, checking out some of the artists booths along the way.

There was an exhibition of Sondheim prize semi-finalists at MICA. That was really interesting. Natalie liked the art that was made up of all these little pictures from the newspaper transferred to the canvas with clear tape and masking tape. There were marble statues of Mario, Kermit the frog and the lego man, and this installation type thing that was kind of creepy. There was a bed or futon in it and all these strands of plastic bags blowing around while a spotlight at the top slowly changed colors.

From there, we headed up past the Art Cars to the Midway on Charles Street. It was packed by then, single file, shoulder to shoulder. Natalie got a little freaked out by the crowd. We did make it up to the Charles Theater area and picked up some stuff from the Free Store in the parking garage. That's when the kids called and told us they had managed to lock themselves out of the house. So that was that.

Sunday we got down there around the same time - noon. That's the best time to be there. We heard an organ concert at Corpus Christi Church that was great. We also tried to go to the Lyric but that was a fiasco. We went right in but instead of Irish dancers there were African dancers on stage. So we left and that was our mistake. When we tried to go back, the place was full. Nobody was leaving and they weren't letting anybody in. After waiting about 20 minutes, I saw the Irish dancers on a monitor in the lobby. So that was a waste. They are going to have to open up the balcony next year.

We wondered around a little longer then went to the Owl bar for a couple of beers. We would have liked to have gone to Brewer's Art but they don't open till 5:00 on Sunday.

Souvenir Bat Night

WASHINGTON—Attendance may be down, but the fans at last week's game didn't care—they were too busy enjoying the stadium's new Fuck-Cam.

"We've been really surprised and delighted by the crowd reaction," said Washington Nationals public relations director Janine Perry, who started the Fuck-Cam program that has since been emulated by every other ballpark in the major leagues, except Miller Park in Milwaukee. "Apparently, people who like watching baseball games also really enjoy watching other people have sex. And not just between innings, either. If the action on the screen is still going when the play on the field resumes, they'll still watch. The Fuck-Cam has been quite a phenomenon."

Major League Baseball estimates that more than 700 people have had been featured on the Fuck-Cam since its introduction. The first Fuck-Cam couple, Gary Kochalk and Kim Dahle, have been guests on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. And a montage of legendary Fuck-Cam performances is one of the most viewed clips on YouTube, featuring such great Fuck-Cam moments as the man who hasn't realized his partner has fallen asleep; a would-be suitor who goes down on one knee, produces a ring, and is flatly denied; an overweight couple who is booed off the JumboTron by the crowd; and a good-natured if somewhat clumsy performance by the Fox Sports broadcast team of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

"It's at the point where some people come to the ballpark with the idea of getting themselves on the Fuck-Cam," Perry said. "They dress up for it, wave signs, even start fucking with two outs at the bottom of an inning in the hope they'll get noticed, the whole thing. The buzz has been awesome. Of course, we'd rather people come to see our beloved Nats, but our attitude is, if people having sex in the seats gets people to come to the park, it's good for baseball."

Perry refuses to take credit for the concept, although she did make it official by adding the subtitles and frames now associated with JumboTron displays of crowd sex. Instead, she credits the Washington fans themselves—"the greatest and most sexual fans in the world," she said gratefully—with the spontaneous invention of the Fuck-Cam.

"The Nats were getting blown out by the Dodgers in an early May game, and the camera guy went to the kiss-cam early and often," Perry said. "Well, he lingered a while on the same couple, and they just got into the spirit of the thing and started fucking like you wouldn't believe. It was great, but I really didn't think much about it until the next morning when someone told me it had been mentioned in the news, and later that day it was No. 3 on SportsCenter's Top 10 Plays."

By June, Fuck-Cams were in use at Baltimore's Camden Yards, Detroit's Comerica Park, Yankee Stadium, and countless other major- and minor-league ballparks. The promotion has been a hit at every stadium in which it has been introduced, although the process has not always been smooth.

"You want to be careful," said Wrigley Field cameraman Greg Somerset, who noted that he "gets" an average of four couples a night on his Fuck-Cam. "Sometimes you can have good luck with a guy and a girl who are just sitting next to each other, but other times it doesn't work at all. A couple who's fighting may or may not have great makeup sex while you're watching. Getting two guys on the Fuck-Cam, well, it may work or it may not, and the crowd may or may not like it. The time with two guys and a girl, that was a mixed reaction."

"Also, I just want to forget about souvenir bat night," Somerset added. "You just can't tell with some people."

"The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla"

Earl Weaver Tirade

Mike sent me this link an audio clip of Earl Weaver going nuts on "The Manager's Corner" radio show. I can't tell if Weaver's serious or not but it's funny.

Click on Earl's picture to go to the website and hear the audio.

First Orioles Game of 2009

My Mother, Mike, Tommy, Matthew, Jocelyn and I went to our first Orioles game of the year tonight and - surprise, surprise - we won, beating the Seattle Mariners 3 to 1 and breaking a five game loosing streak. The Orioles pitcher, Bergesen, went eight scoreless innings and Nolan Reimold had two rbi's, including a homer. It was a fun game - Matt Wieters popped up to the right of the pitchers mound and with four players watching it, it dropped in for a hit. Unfortunately, he tried to stretch it out into a double and was thrown out at second. It was Melvin Mora tee-shirt night and he hit a ball in the first inning that almost went out of the park. In fact, it was initially scored a homer but after instant replay, it was changed to an out. That's the first time I've ever seen instant replay used in a game and it took forever. There was a picture on the front page of the Sun's sports section the next day and it was obviously fan interference. Some drunken moron, wearing a Melvin Mora tee-shirt, stuck his hat right into the Seattle outfielder's glove. Nitwit.

Me and the little darlings

Bergesen delivers.

It poured right before the game and the sky was extremely nasty looking.

First Trip To The Bengies in 2009 - Memorial Day Dusk To Dawn Show

Matthew and I went to the Bengies for the first time this year for the annual Memorial day all-night show. We both made it through until the sun came up and D. played the national anthem to end the show. We evening stayed awake through "Obsessed".

The Line-Up:

Coraline - Really good and the best movie of the night. In the vein of "Nightmare Before Christmas" and "The Corpse Bride" but better. And weirder. 4 Timmyheads.


Star Trek - Not your father's Star Trek my ass. A steaming pile of lameness. The only cutting edge thing about it was Eric Bana as the Bad Ass and his summary execution (not shown) of the captain of the Kelvin. Matthew liked it though.


Obsessed - Another winner from Beyonce (remember "Goldmember"). Only lots, and lots of T&A could have saved this one.


Knowing - Pretty good but kind of weak towards the end. Reading up about this one is what convinced me to go to the all-night show. Real Sci-Fi, not "Gossip Girl" in space.

Tradition! Dusk 'til Dawn ALL NITE Show

Original email message from the Bengies Drive-In

Dear GREAT Patrons of the Bengies Drive-In Theatre,

We are NOW OPEN on FRIDAY, SATURDAY & SUNDAY!  

DUSK   'til   DAWN    

THIS weekend is Memorial Day weekend, and our 53rd* ANNUAL all night shows in the drive-in tradition! 
We WILL be open all 3 nights BUT the Dusk to Dawn shows will ONLY play on Saturday and Sunday.

(53rd*Ken noted, this is actually the 53rd, BECAUSE the Bengies did not open until JUNE of 1956, so there was no Memorial day show. The Labor Day weekend D to D will be the 54th in this 53rd Anniversary Year of the Bengies.) 

3 of the 4 titles ARE in W I D E  S C R E E N, showing  EDGE TO EDGE on the biggest theatre screen in the *USA!*  Saturday and Sunday is the traditional...

DUSK   'til   DAWN  

"STAR TREK" rated PG13, is HOLDING, because it is way too much fun, but mostly because we have seen an increase in interest both from fans who wish to see it again, BUT AMAZINGLY, from the folks who were never Star Trek Fans.  It is important to note here, that you do not have to be a fan or even ever had an interest in "Star Trek" to enjoy this fine feature.

Showing all 3 nights with the VERY fast paced "STAR TREK" is the top rated thriller, "OBSESSED" rated PG13. An unhinged stalker  threatens to destroy a happy family and career.

We will begin the ALL NIGHT program (Saturday into Sunday, and Sunday into Memorial Day Monday) with the HIGHLY ACCLAIMED, one-of-a-kind animated feature "CORALINE" rated PG.

The program will also include a sci-fi thriller, "KNOWING" rated PG13.  Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times, says: "...among the best science-fiction films I've seen..."

CONNECT with us:

Twitter    Facebook   Myspace    RSS web browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari

For feature synopsis and more visit:

 http://www.bengies.com 

 http://www.giantoutdoorscreen.com

 http://www.allamericandrivein.com

 http://www.driveinnights.com

Or just click on the BENGIES banner below 

---

Bengies Drive-In Theatre

3417 Eastern Blvd. Baltimore, MD 21220 Since 1956
Feature & Show Time Information: *NEW* 410 391-1956 OR the Good 'ol Original: 410 687-5627
Box Office OPENS THIS Fri. At 7pm, Sat. & Sun. At 6:45pm.
The Show CURRENTLY Starts ALL 3 NIGHTS At Sunset, Now Occurring At 8:30pm

Slugger

From Mike Kelly

I just heard from Jocelyn's coach at Harford Community College that she was nominated for the All Conference and All region XX teams. Both teams will be announced after the region XX tournament.