Attack of the 50 Foot Blog – Page 2

Marlo Thomas Ran Over Me

When I was in elementary school, I took voice lessons from a man named Joe Kincaid. Joe gave these lessons at the school where I went. He was also the band director. There were many kids from the area that took lessons from him, several that didn’t attend our school. He had success with several soloists and vocal groups at area talent shows. Several times during the year, he would put on shows with all his students. The shows would usually begin and end with a larger production number where all the students sang together. Around 1970 when I was in second grade, the show included the medley Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In from the musical Hair. The recording by The 5^th Dimension was a big hit at that time. Everyone in the show dressed in hippie costumes for the production.

Celebrities

Meeting Happy Hal

When I was a little kid, I watched several kids shows on TV that featured cartoons. One of these was called The Happy Hal Show. It was hosted by a man named Hal Miller. He had an odd puppet called L’il Bow that he talked with on the show as he introduced the cartoons. One of the reasons he appealed to kids like me was his pleasant demeanor. He also talked a lot about toys. In addition to hosting his show, he also ran a chain of toy stores in Memphis. There was even a rack of “Happy Hal” toys at the pharmacy where my family went in the small town where I lived about 2 hours away from Memphis. I remember most of the toys on this rack were small enough to ask for as an occasional treat during a shopping trip. I don’t remember anything on the rack being big enough to make a Christmas wish list. I remember the Happy Hal Toy Rack probably better than I remember his show.

True Stories

Another Successful Diet Plan

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date November 22, 2023
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I recently shared a story about losing 100 pounds. In that post I shared that Slimfast was the main tool that I used for my weigh loss. This was not the first time that I have lost a significant amount of weight although it is the most that I’ve ever lost at one time (Its probably worth noting that this was a time when I had the most to potentially lose). It was the first time that I had used Slimfast. During previous diets I’ve lost 40-60 pounds depending on what I weighed at the time. On those earlier diets, I had a consistent plan that had me losing weight at about 2.5 pounds a week, the same that I saw on Slimfast. I thought I would share the details of that diet plan here as an alternative to my most recent success.

True Stories

How Beautiful Heaven Must Be

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date November 15, 2023
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Dream about heaven

Andrea and I were in heaven. I’m assuming we died and went to heaven. It wasn’t like we got a free pass to preview heaven. We were there under what would be normal circumstances. I don’t know how we died. If I dreamed that part, I don’t remember it. And I assume that we died at the same time. Anyway, we were in a room that appeared to be like the lobby of a church but was about the same size as our living room. There were people milling around in that room and we could see people in a hallway outside of the room we were in. I didn’t recognize anyone there. We were sitting on the floor against a half wall. There were no chairs in the room. Apparently, there are no chairs in heaven. The walls were a grey color. And they were playing contemporary praise and worship style music. I don’t really care for most praise and worship music. I was not enjoying the music I heard. I was thinking “Who programs the music in heaven?”

Halloween Scary Stories

Why Knife-wielding Maniacs Scare Me

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date October 28, 2023
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Back in the early 1980’s, I discovered the Golden Turkey Awards books and my search for bad movies began. It was also around that time that video stores began popping up. Before the days of Blockbuster Video, it seemed like you could go to these smaller video stores and find many of these Golden Turkey award winners if you were willing to search hard enough. Those stores were looking for any kind of content to fill their shelves and these stinker movies were often just the right thing to pad their number of movies. For someone like me who loved these movies, a film with the title The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies was a must find.

Halloween Scary Stories

Why Caretakers with Big Knees Scare Me

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date October 24, 2023
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Anyone hardcore fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 should be familiar with the film Manos: The Hands of Fate. Manos is considered one of the worst films that ever appeared on the series. The premise of the show is that mad scientists have captured a test case and show him bad movies. The test subject and his robots make fun of the movies. Manos was the only film that was so bad, the scientists apologized to their victim. It is also considered one of the best episodes of the series.

Halloween Scary Stories

Why Corn on the Cob with Green Frosting Scares Me

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date October 15, 2023
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During the early 200’s, my family and I discovered a new group of bad movies. This group of movies was labeled as “so bad they are good” to differentiate them from the films labeled as Golden Turkeys in the past. One of the first of this group was a Film called Troll 2.

While I won’t try to share all the details of Troll 2, I will try and share enough to let you know why this film is so beloved by its fans. First, there are no trolls in Troll 2. There are goblins but no trolls. Next you should know that Troll 2 is not a sequel to the film Troll. Troll 2 was originally titled Goblins, but the distributors wanted to market it as a sequel to Troll. The movie was filmed by an Italian production company in Utah with an Italian-speaking crew, working with an inexperienced English-speaking group of actors. They were working with a script written in Italian and poorly translated into English, making the dialogue of the film one of the sources of humor.

Halloween Scary Stories

Why Giant Apes Scare Me

In 1982 the film It Came From Hollywood was released. It is a documentary film with a compilation of clips from “Bad Movies” drawing heavily on the book The Golden Turkey Awards. There is a short clip of a film not covered in the book that I was unfamiliar with that featured a giant ape being attacked by helicopters. The man in the ape suit is slapping around toy helicopters on strings, knocking them into paper mache mountains. This was a low budget version Korean knock-off of what the Japanese had been doing much better for years with the Godzilla series. The highlight from the clip of this battle is when the ape flips the bird at the camera. He’s not flipping off the military, he’s flipping off the audience.

True Stories

Losing 100 Pounds

I have lost over 100 pounds. I weigh over 100 pounds less than what I weighed in January of 2022. The weight loss was intentional. A lot of friends have been curious about what I’ve done to lose weight, especially those that are interested in dropping a few pounds. Below I will take you on my weight loss journey, sharing changes to my behaviors and what motivated me to commit to this task.

January of 2022 was a time to consider New Year’s resolutions, which almost always include a weight loss goal. While I wanted to lose some weight, I hadn’t committed to any plan of attack. At that point, my strategy was to weigh myself every morning and hope that my weight was less than the day before. Since I was recording my weight regularly in my phone, I was able to look back and see that my highest recorded weight was 296.5. But I know that there were some days that my weight was higher than this, but I didn’t have the heart to record the actual weight. There could have been some days where I was pushing 300 pounds. My routine then is like it is now where I weigh myself in the morning with no clothes on, right before I take a shower. I do this hoping to catch myself when I am at the lowest weight of the day. I’m sure I was over 300 pounds at this time with clothes on and a full belly when I was asked to step on the scale at the hospital on the evening of January 18, when I broke my arm.

Elvis Week Graceland

Elvis Week 2023 – Elvis Makes Friends

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date September 4, 2023
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I was about to leave the visitor’s center at Graceland, and I held the door open for a group of four women to exit before me. They all said thank you or said other words of appreciation. The last lady in the group was using one of those walkers with the wheels on the front and a place that can be used as a seat. It took her a little longer than the rest of the women. As she passed by me, she looked me in the face and said, “Elvis would be proud of you.”

This would not be the only interesting thing that I heard during this year’s visit to the Candlelight Vigil. A young woman in the parking lot was having trouble keeping up with her mother as they approached the complex known as Elvis Presley’s Memphis. The mom was encouraging her daughter to pick up the speed to which she replied, “If Elvis was alive, he wouldn’t pick up the speed.”

These two stories show the difference in the types of encounters I have each year at Graceland. Sometimes you get a story by talking to someone, other times you get a story by just listening to others.