BILL LAMBERT
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Wednesday, March 31. 2010
Call in the Militia
Ancient Italian Wisdom: "Even the best cheese freakin' stinks." LUCKY INSECT: Domestic Cockroach
Some of your neighbors will plan to overthrow
the U.S. Government and replace them with
camouflage-wearing inbred morons with bad teeth.
Tuesday, March 30. 2010
Check That One Off the List...
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Looks like we can put a big check mark next to, "Select a College and Get Admitted" on Marii's never-ending TO-DO list. Roger William University, Bristol, Rhode Island is the place she'll be, the deal sealed after a family jaunt down there last weekend for "Accepted Students Day".
I'm proud of our daughter, how she went about getting to that choice, all told. A very short year-and-a-half ago, I would have never believed it.
I've been driving Marii to school most mornings for the past two years; part of the deal we made early in junior year after too many missed school busses. Occasionally we talk, overcoming the parent filter permanently attached to every spare teenage ear. I've watched her ideas develop over time, from patently clueless in the fall of 2008, to a lot more focused and decisive now.
Well, I've had little or no experience with college admissions, since I've never attended a day of it. As a kid, the only folks I knew who were college graduates fell into three major categories: priests, teachers and medical professionals (though I never really thought of the priests as 'college guys'). Only one neighbor I can recall: an ad salesman for a local billboard company, and the dad of just one among dozens of friends, a small businessman running a mickey-mouse phone answering service... and badly, too. Not many role models; the folks around us toiled in the factories, shops, and the trades, solidly lower-middle class at everything they did, including a strict avoidance of a higher education.
Going away to college seemed like an unattainable dream to me then, since at the time there was no money to pay for it. Anyway, I didn't want to be no freakin' lawyer... or anything else, for that matter.
Another story, but I've had no real experience and Marii's Mom went to a top women's college in Japan but doesn't know the system here. She would have Marii in one of the Seven Sisters based on reputation, at least until she got a load of the tuition costs. We were the blind leading the blinder at first. Fortunately, Marii took up a lot of the initiative in driving the process and in the end, did it quite well.
Sometimes our children will suddenly and sneakily mature on us and we hardly notice.
As the old song says, "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?"
Since Roger Williams never sat for a portrait and no surviving likeness remains, the artist who made the statue that centers the RWU campus used Red Sox slugger Ted Williams as the model.
Thursday, March 25. 2010
Alice in Wonderland
| I had just entered the theater and began looking around for a seat. The onscreen message was already telling us to put on the 3D goggles and I thought the feature was about to start, but the glasses were for the coming attractions for four different animated films, all in 3D, all four entertaining and fun to watch.
One was a new Toy Story from Disney, the other three based on popular children's books. In a preview of an animal animation featuring talking owls, the level of detail blew me to a new place in film watching experience. Totally absorbed with its artistry and beauty, it reminded me of the awe I felt at my first 'Cinerama' wide-screen event back at age ten. It was that good. This is the near-term future of film, I guess... the big bold immersive experience of 3D; an edge the large-screen metro-plexes still have over home theatre. |
Johnny Depp's insane clown stare will haunt many a contemporary childhood nightmare, but flesh and blood was outdone by the animated characters, most notably Helen Bonham Carter voicing the clueless Red Queen. |
It just makes sense that animated films are pushing the 3D tech envelope, though James Cameron's Avatar 3D digital camera innovations will undoubtedly raise the future quality of live action fare. Animated films are adapted to 3D much easier than live action cinematography, which requires special cameras and complex set-ups and have certain limitations in quality of the final cut 3D effects. With animated imagery, stored as digitized frames and layers, the secondary image required for 3D can be generated algorithmically using a digital post-process that will vividly render 3D with a depth and range live-action camera technology inherently lacks.
All this geeking on graphics technology finally brings me around to Tim Burton's and his silly movie, Alice in Wonderland. There wasn't much of a story, of course none of it makes sense. The comedic tone was often uneven. Johnny Depp's Matt Hatter fright face filled up the screen way too long and way too often.
All that said, there was plenty of eye-popping candy for everyone. This film earned its three Fat Laughing Golden Buddhas because there was nothing particular you needed to think about while every thing in sight was way fun to watch. The animated characters are so well done, you truly do forget rabbits can't talk, playing cards can't walk, cats can't fly, and you couldn't care less.
Rating: 3.0 out of 5.0 acid-tripping
Fat Laughing Golden Buddhas
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Tuesday, March 16. 2010
A Nice Start for the Mosquito Breeding Season
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How nice it is to step outside and bask in the warmth of an early spring sun. During the peak of the deluge, we had a wide rivulet cascading over the top of our driveway. There are now five small running streams within 100 ft. of the house and Lake Lambert, our experimental mosquito breeding facility, has been nicely topped up.
As far as I recall, this is third time we've had an incident of driveway river in the ten years we've been here in Carlisle Woods. This year was by far the worst, though.
Should be a real bumper crop of mosquitos this year: Global Wetting.
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