2025 Birthday Gifts

Once again, my wife has been very generous and creative with her gift giving during my birthday month.  A big thank you to her for making it a nice month-long celebration.  Here is a list of this year’s gifts:

1 – The Bourbon Bible book about bourbon

2 – A tie multicolored with flowers

3 – Shemp! A biography about Shemp Howard

4 – Shark razor blades

5 – Black Four Roses bourbon long sleeve tee shirt

6 – Weber Charcoal heat controller for slow cooking on kettle grills

7 – Woodford Reserve Double Oaked Bourbon

8 – Woodford Reserve Bourbon Caramels

9 – Collar stays

10 – Taylor of Old Bond Street sandalwood shaving cream

11 – Sampler case of root beer

12 – Weber’s New Real Grilling Cookbook

13 – Hard Wood The later features of Ed Wood Blu-ray

14 – Weber Connect temperature monitor

15 – Pistachios

16 – Green tie

17 – Barberry Bay Rum After Shave

18 – Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother Zeppo Marx biography

19 – Weber grill gloves

20 – Super Soul Brother and the Films of Rene Martinez Jr. Blu-ray

21 – Four Roses Single Barrel OBSF Bourbon

22 – Cast iron grate for Weber kettle

23 – XGMI MoGo 2 Pro portable projector

24 – stand for XGMI projector

25 – Taylor of Old Bond Street scent sampler

26 – The Atlas of Bourbon and American Whiskey book

27 – Weber’s Way to Grill Cookbook

28 – Cruzan coconut rum and pineapple juice

29 – Red Four Roses Bourbon tee shirt

30 – Blue tie

31 – Weber Rotisserie basket

My Christmas Movie Guide

We watch a lot of Christmas movies and television specials every year, usually starting on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  I frequently make posts to Facebook when we watch some of these.  Some of my friends asked me to post a list of our Christmas movies and this is a response to that request.  This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of Christmas movies. There are many other Christmas movies and shows worth watching but are not on our radar. 

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The Worst Afternoon Movie Program

I grew up watching movies on TV on weekday afternoons.  One of the stations in our area had a good catalog of films to draw from and showed classics in their time slot from 3 until 5.  Another channel in our area tried various afternoon movie strategies to varying degrees of success.  The worst of these times is the focus of this story.

My earliest memories of their weekday afternoon programming included the Sherriff Big Jim Show.  Groups of kids like Scout Troops would appear on the Sherriff Big Jim Show where they would drink Big Red Soda, eat McDonalds hamburgers, and watch Roy Rogers and Gene Autry westerns.  After a while, they dropped Sherriff Big Jim and the kids and just showed the westerns.  This was always fun to watch.

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Why Judd Nelson Scares Me

Back in 1991, I heard about a movie called The Dark Backward.  In this movie, Judd Nelson plays a garbage man that moonlights as an unfunny stand-up comic.   His act career as a comic picks up a little when he grows a third arm out of his back.  How would I not be interested in this movie?  Is it a surprise that this film didn’t see a wide release? It went to video soon after it was released and developed a cult following.

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Why The Hideous Sun Demon Scares Me

I was at work when I received a call from home.  I talked to my wife for a little while and then my oldest daughter wanted to talk to me.  She was about 4 years old at the time.  We didn’t talk very long. As we wrapped up our conversation, she said, “Daddy, do you know what I want to watch when you get home?”  I said “What” and she replied, “The Hideous Sun Demon.”

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Why Frogs Scare Me

The movie Frogs was released on my birthday in 1972 when I was turning 10 years old.  I didn’t see it during its original release.  But I remember seeing commercials for it on TV and ads in the newspaper.  All the ads for the movie featured a frog with a human hand hanging out of the mouth.  This ad campaign has to be one of the all-time best for a movie.  The movie isn’t as good as the advertising, but it is a fun nature-gone-wild movie.  I probably saw it for the first time on TV on a channel that had a creature feature time slot.  I liked it from the very first time I saw it, but I have come to love it over the years.

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Why Anitra Ford Scares Me

I loved watching television game shows in the early 1970’s.  In 1972, CBS started showing The Price is Right, starring Bob Barker.  This was an updated version of a successful show from nearly a decade earlier.  Contestants guessed the prices of various products and some of the prizes they could win. I enjoyed seeing the attractive models who posed with the products being promoted. My favorite model was Anitra Ford. I found out a few years after this series started that Anitra Ford also appeared in several movies around the same time she was on The Price is Right.   I would not see most of these until many years later. My favorite that had her in a primary role is Invasion of the Bee Girls.

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Elvis Week 2024 – Same As It Ever Was

It’s now or never
Come hold me tight
Kiss me my darling
Be mine tonight”

These were the words I heard being sung while I was standing at a urinal in the men’s room in the visitors center soon after I arrived at Graceland.  But it wasn’t just Elvis singing.  A guy standing at another urinal just down from me was singing along with Elvis. If I wasn’t at Graceland during Elvis Week, I would have thought this was unusual.  But I see people singing along everywhere at Graceland.  When I exited the restroom, I stuck up a conversation with the singer.  Lou is from New York.  This is his 6th time visiting Graceland and his 3rd Elvis Week.  He has a TCB tattoo on the palm side of his left forearm.  He’s there with his girlfriend Jen.  He asks me for advice on good places to get ribs in Memphis.

With singing Lou, restroom is behind us

My trips to the Candlelight Vigil have always been about more than people watching.  Meeting people has always been more interesting than just watching them.  I’ve always been willing to talk to people and ask them about their Elvis connections.  Interesting people sometime have the most interesting stories.

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