Adventures in Jewelry Repair, Oddly Worded Advertisements, and Flaming Lean Pockets!

When I sat down to start writing this entry, I looked back over my posts from the past because I thought I had begun using a specific title for submissions like this one which are a big bag of randomness with no real cohesive core topic other than that they're all my personal life experiences or observations made during said experiences. Low and behold, I apparently never came up with a recurring title for this sort of thing. I need to work on that - I have my Movie Review Round-Up series (which is more than likely MIA for the time being seeing as how the Summer movie season is over), and I know I'm going to have future publications that fall into this category of being completely disjointed in nature, so it only makes sense to try and develop a moniker to label them as such. They would seem to play into the title of this here blog, Redbeard's Rambling. Rambling for the Sake of Rambling? Random Rambles/Rambling? I like both of those but I'm going to see what else I can come up with; if you, my dear reader, have any suggestions feel free to contact me with them. But for now, on with the show!

Adventures in Jewelry Repair

When I purchased my wife's engagement ring and wedding band from Reeds Jewelers, I popped for an optional extended warranty plan along with it. I figured if I was already paying close to $2,000 for a piece of jewelry I might as well take a few extra steps to take special care of the thing seeing as how it's a big investment in my eyes, albeit one that is physically very small. The warranty covers more or less everything under the sun when it comes to repairs, however it does nothing for us regarding replacement were it to be lost or stolen. The way it was described to me, the warranty is so thorough that if the rings were shattered into pieces so long as we could return the stones and metal they would be able to make the ring whole. (Trust me, I'm in no rush to test that claim.) Other items also included on the coverage were resizing, rhodium plating, cleaning, and the like. General maintenance, in other words, all things geared towards keeping that rock on my wife's finger shining like it were brand new.

And it's a good thing that I did choose to purchase this warranty because my wife managed to dislodge one of the stones from the setting of her engagement ring not long after I'd given it to her. How, I have no idea - I just remember the day it happened as being full of tears (for her) and thoughts along the lines of (earmuffs, kids) "Well, what the f#&^ am I supposed to do now?" from me. Fortunately, by the grace of the good Lord above, she found the stone and we were able to get it repaired. What's more, the jeweler at Reeds who did the repairs went so far as to modify the ring so that the stones were, as he put it, "sitting in a basket".

My wife's ring, prior to getting its "basket" modification

"Basket" sounds better in this context as opposed to cage or box, I guess, right?

The one oddity to the warranty is that it requires us to bring the rings into a Reeds location once every six months so that it can be inspected for any potential issues. They even gave us a little pamphlet to keep up with as the clerk performing the inspection notates their having seen the ring in it. My wife and I have been married for more than 3 years now and we've been faithful to that requirement as every six months I find myself having to wander into a store that is essentially a mine field. "We're just here to get the rings checked", I say to myself while we're there. "Keep her on track and don't let her wander around, lest you find yourself dropping another couple grand on overpriced baubles..." Don't get me wrong - it's not that I don't want my wife to have nice things, I just know that there are a lot more useful things in this world than jewelry that could be purchased with that same money (this logical approach to spending brought to you by my overwhelming sense of buyer's remorse).

Low and behold, we were due to bring the ring in this month so the wife and I made our way to the nearest Reeds Jewelers, that being the one within Columbiana Centre near the Harbison Boulevard area of Columbia, South Carolina. (Side note: A fascist was clearly involved in the organization of this mall, else "center" would've been spelled correctly.) It's an okay mall as malls go (very glamorous, lots of white and tile surfaces and plenty of shops smelling of wretched colognes with EDM blaring over their sound systems) but I haven't had much use for shopping malls since video arcades went the way of the Dodo bird. Nevertheless, the mall serves a purpose, and for us on this evening it was to facilitate the continued brilliance of one piece of jewelry.

We entered the store (which is conveniently located near one of the entrances to the mall) and my wife handed over her rings to the nearest clerk who was a young Caucasian woman, more than likely in her early 20s, with brown hair just past her shoulders. She looked like your typical college-aged girl, one who'd probably played sports at some point in her life. She was wearing a low-cut, somewhat tight-fitting dress with white, yellow, and blue stripes that ended just where it would have to in order to defend her modesty.

Why did I go into such detail in describing this clerk? Because quite honestly I'm old enough and wise enough to know a gimmicky retail trap when I see one. Stores like this don't hire girls like her because of their abilities in salesmanship, they hire them because they know some poor schmuck is going to buy something he can't afford because the pretty girl behind the counter told him it looks nice. I saw it happen myself when my wife and I were shopping for her ring. We were in a different store but it was the same set up; attractive girl leaning over jewelry displays showing ample amounts of cleavage gets a guy to buy, you guessed it, a high-end engagement ring and all the while he's staring at her chest like his life depended on it. It's hilarious while it's also demeaning - such is life.

My wife has passed off her ring and the clerk has taken it into the repair shop area of the store for inspection. A few minutes later the clerk returns. Much to my wife's dismay, she informs us that one of the stones is loose and the ring will need to be serviced. Wifey doesn't like to be without her bling, you see, and I don't blame her. Be that as it may, I'm not worried because we've done what we were supposed to and this is exactly the sort of thing that the warranty is supposed to catch. Then the clerk says something along the lines of "There will be a charge for this kind of service..."

Despite what Tits McShortdress believed to be accurate, there would be no charge for tightening the setting. It took a few extra minutes and the assistance of an older, more experienced member of the sales staff (who was a guy - I point that out just because) to verify what my wife and I already knew. I somewhat had the impression that they thought they might be able to get one over on us - no dice, I'm afraid. As it stands, we'll be able to pick the ring up soon and I'm sure it will be immaculate. If it isn't, lets just say I've been playing enough Grand Theft Auto 5 lately to know how to handle the matter.

Oddly Worded Advertisements

Generally speaking, I loathe advertisements. As in to a point where while I'm watching TV I will change the channel from a program I enjoy just to go to another channel with a show I have little to no interest in for the mere fact that they aren't running an ad at the time. This strategy doesn't work consistently, though, because those sneaky networks are in cahoots with one another in that nowadays they all seem to go to commercial at the same time. Hence the reason why I keep my phone or tablet nearby so that I can browse Facebook or Twitter - where I get a completely different set of ads, which I can at least scroll past with haste.

Speaking of online ads, YouTube and Hulu Plus present their own set of annoyances when it comes to the forced consumption of advertising. Hulu Plus is a paid subscription-based service, yet users are still subjected to ads and I have no idea why; you would think since people are paying to get to their content the need for ads would've been eliminated, but no, you still get ads. What's unique about Hulu Plus is the fact that when you're watching via their website and an ad comes on you have the ability to tell Hulu Plus whether or not the ad is pertinent to you. I find this hilarious because I click "no" every time purely out of spite - it hasn't yielded any real change in things, but it does make me feel better, if only for a moment, about having potentially influenced their system.

I tend to watch a fair amount of random videos via the YouTube app on one of my mobile devices. Typically there will be one or two ads per session that get tacked onto the opening of whatever clip it is I happen to be watching. These ads are usually short in length but they are incredibly redundant. I am not kidding when I say that I have been served with the same Booking.com ad no less than 50 times here lately. I would never in my life use Booking.com, simply because of having been inundated with their crappy ad.

I'm going to assume that my brain is an advancement in the continued evolution of our species seeing as how I have the innate ability to not permit advertising to influence my buying habits. I've searched my recent memory and the only product for which I've willfully submitted to allowing its corresponding ad to influence me is that of Dollar Shave Club, which is a product line I actually recommend highly. Great razors at a low cost shipped to your home every month - what's not to love about that?

I've turned my dislike for advertising into an opportunity for humor here recently as I've begun noticing that companies are using adjectives in their scripts that strike me as being too odd to ignore. For example, why is it that suddenly so many fast food chains are obsessed with making sure that you know they're using "real" ingredients? I guess recent revelations that "beef" from eateries like Taco Bell and McDonald's is more akin to Soylent Green than legitimate beef has made them paranoid. As if that's supposed to make customers feel better about eating a highly processed food product loaded with preservatives and additives. What's funnier to me are the ads for products like iced cream or breakfast bars - they contain "real iced cream", "real oats", and "real fruit". As opposed to what, exactly? Fake iced cream? Fake oats? Fake fruit? Have things gotten so bad in our culture that we now have to be convinced as consumers that we're not ingesting flavored plastics or something?

Flaming Lean Pockets

I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've eaten a Hot Pocket over the course of my life. I've eaten plenty of food items that have had the distinction of being nuked in a microwave instead of cooked by more traditional means, but Hot Pockets were never one of those go-to things that ranked high up on my list of instant eats. For one, they aren't exactly appetizing to me - the dough is nothing like a pizza crust and the contents are so hot your palette can't process what their flavor is. I'm not one to eat something merely because of convenience, so just the fact that they can be ready in a hurry does nothing for me. Does that make me a snob? Maybe, but at least I can say with satisfaction that I'm unwilling to compromise certain things, one of them being what I decide to shove into my pie hole.

That said, earlier this month prior to heading out to attend a local independent professional wrestling card (see blog entry "WrestleForce Presents Fall Brawl 4 - A Date with Fate") I wanted to get a bite to eat but I didn't want fast food and I didn't want to engage in a full sit down meal. We tend to keep a fairly well stocked pantry at home but there wasn't a whole lot therein this day that struck my fancy either. I remembered that my wife had recently picked up a box of Lean Pockets (pepperoni pizza flavored, I believe) and I figured "Why not?"

I retrieved one of the Lean Pockets from the box in the freezer of our refrigerator. I put the box away then realized that there were no instructions on how to revive the thing from its cryogenic slumber printed on its individual packaging. I will fully admit that I didn't want to have to dig the box back out of the freezer - it wasn't that I was in a hurry or that the box was buried deep within the chill chest, I was just too lazy to go look at the instructions on the box myself. So what did I do? I asked my wife, "Hey, baby - how long do you have to put these Lean Pockets in the microwave?" She's cooked several of them since buying that box so I expected her to have that information.

"I don't know...", she said. "7 minutes, maybe? Look at the box!"

In hindsight, I should've known better than to go along with anything she said that followed "I don't know". Not doing so was the first mistake I made that day. Nevertheless, I put the Lean Pocket into the microwave, set the timer for 7 minutes, and turned it on then walked back to our bedroom to chat with my wife while it was warming up. That was the second mistake I made that day.

I was in our bedroom maybe 3 or 4 minutes before I went to walk back towards the kitchen. Our home is laid out in such a way that there's a hallway which leads from the front of the house where the living room/kitchen are to the back of the house where all the bedrooms are. When I came out of our bedroom and looked towards the kitchen, all I could see was a plume of smoke pouring out of the kitchen and into the living room...

I run to the kitchen and immediately open the door to the microwave. There was so much smoke that I couldn't tell when I got near it whether the light inside was from the bulb that illuminates the interior of the device or if the Lean Pocket was on fire. Fortunately, the pastry wasn't ablaze however it had been cooked to the point of being not much more than a charcoal briquette shaped like a Lean Pocket.

The aftermath of this incident has been lingering for more than a week now as the smoke got into every room of the house but especially the kitchen and living room. We attempted to air out the space as much as possible by opening up the windows and back door as well as turning on all the fans, including that of our air conditioner. I was trying to aid matters by using a beach towel to fan the smoke out the windows - I don't know how much good it did but the haze did eventually go away. The smell has dissipated with time and a lot of air freshener but we get treated to a less than subtle reminder of my folly whenever we use the microwave as the exhaust fan belches out air that's scented with smoke.

I learned two things from this experience.

1) Never walk away from food that you are in the process of cooking, regardless of whether you're using a stove, microwave, or any other implement of food preparation
2) Never rely on your wife when it comes to accurate information regarding cooking times for microwavable products

I'm sorry, honey - it's going to take a lot for you to re-earn my trust, because of course this wasn't my fault.

WrestleForce presents Fall Brawl 4 - A Date With Fate

I don't get out to as many independent professional wrestling cards as I would like. ("Independent" pro wrestling, in case you weren't aware, being the so-called minor leagues of the sport where guys and gals either working as weekend warriors or hoping to someday earn a living off wrestling hone their craft.) If I had it my way, I'd go to one per week but I admit that that's an unreasonable desire. Even though there are typically a couple of shows going on in the Carolinas each week, they always seem to be held in far off corners of the region that make getting to them without dropping an arm and a leg on gas money and associated necessities rather difficult if not impossible. Fortunately, the Internet has made things a bit easier as I can read results and check out photos online - be that as it may, I still miss sitting in an old gymnasium or armory, hearing the clang of steel on steel, eating crock pot hot dogs with slightly warm sodas, and watching the show unfold live before me.

A few years ago my then-girlfriend, now-wife and I were driving from our home in Orangeburg, South Carolina to Charlotte, North Carolina every two weeks for shows by a now defunct promotion called NWA Charlotte. We had a good time with those but the expenses (monetary and otherwise) of going up and down the road became a real burden (expenses - and other matters - were an issue for NWA CLT as well seeing as how they closed their doors less than a year after opening). Getting to the show I attended this past weekend didn't pose any of those challenges (the traffic-related headache caused by the South Carolina State University/Benedict College football game notwithstanding) as it took place a mere 30 minutes up the road in Columbia, SC at The Loose Cockaboose Bar & Grill (located in the shadows of Williams-Brice Stadium) where WrestleForce presented Fall Brawl 4 - A Date With Fate.

Three things I will mention right off the top in talking about this event:

1) Yes, this show was held at a bar.
2) Yes, the matches took place outside.
3) Yes, it was raining that evening.

Only in the world of independent pro wrestling will you ever see those three factors meet up and still yield what was a successful and mostly entertaining event. Here are the results and my thoughts on each match.

Match #1 - Eric Bradford defeated Brandon Paradise

If you watched the first season of Redneck Island on CMT, you've seen Eric Bradford before as he was one of the members of that cast. Only people who are familiar with the Carolinas wrestling scene will get this reference, but now that Bradford has longer hair he has a rather striking resemblance to a slightly chubbier Zack Salvation.

Pretty good opening bout. Both of these guys have been around for years and they're plenty capable. Bradford got a heel's reception even though his gimmick has him playing up his past as a cheerleader for the University of South Carolina. I've mostly only seen Paradise work in tag team matches; that scenario favors him as he's a skilled athlete but he doesn't come off as being naturally charismatic.

Match #2 - Anthony Henry defeated Josh Magnum

Henry was originally supposed to have had a match with former ECW/TNA star Christian York but York was unable to make the event. Henry came out and demanded a match, going so far as to begin calling out people from the crowd for a challenge. Low and behold, Josh Magnum just happened to be in the crowd - and wearing knee pads under his blue jeans, no less.

Magnum is known in the Carolinas as being a daredevil when it comes to his willingness to put his body on the line for the sake of his matches, and that mentality hasn't left him even though these days he's more or less retired from active competition. Henry got the best of him as a failed swanton bomb off the top of a nearby rooftop proved to be Magnum's undoing. This was one of the better (if not the best) matches on the card, in my opinion.

Match #3 - Hammer defeated Hexx

I'm not completely up to snuff when it comes to WrestleForce's storylines, but I gather these two were in the past aligned together as members of a faction called the Twisted Metal Rebels. I've seen Hexx wrestle in the past when he was doing a masked gimmick where he called himself Hexxon - that character was kind of a knock off of a character like Abyss from TNA, and ironically enough people in this crowd were heckling him for his current look being a knock off of that of Necro Butcher.

Hammer won via disqualification when Hexx brought a chair into the mix, violently whopping Hammer repeatedly across the back with it. Not a whole lot else to write home about here as this was definitely a piece to an evolving story that served its purpose in extending the feud.

Match #4 - Sixx vs. Cerebus ended in no contest

This was a match billed as being a battle of monsters. Sixx has long terrorized the Carolinas as a masked fiend, wreaking havoc upon any who would dare get in his way. Cerebus, also known as "The Lycan Assassin" (he was also previously known as Wolfie D from PG-13 and Slash from The New Church - talk about an identity crisis), is in a similar category as he's a sizable man who comes to the ring wearing armor and appears to have fangs.

I can't not mention that Cerebus' "armor" looks more like something that would've been worn by a villain from a 1980s laser tag TV show thanks to the blue light-up piece at its center. These two characters are from the goofier side of wrestling, where the gimmick is of the utmost importance. I don't have a problem with wrestlers using stuff like this these days, but at the same time it's difficult to ignore the corniness of it.

That said, I like matches like this because they wind up being brawls. They're fun to watch because of their unpredictability, even though in this case it didn't actually have much of a point seeing as how within 10 minutes the two of them disappeared behind the curtain never to be seen again.

Match #5 - WF Tag Team Championship Match (held under elimination rules): Steven Walters defeated Judgement (Crimson & Jon Malus), The Flock (Sick Boy & Lodi), The Fortunate Sons (Billy Brash & Jesse Windham), Playboy's House of Style (BJ Hancock & Michael Frehley), and Brady Pierce & Jake James

There was a lot going on here, suffice to say. The order of entry was: 1) Pierce & James, 2) Playboy's House of Style, 3) The Fortunate Sons, 4) Judgement, 5) The Flock, 6) Steven Walters.

Steven Walters and John Skyler were crowned champions after Walters defeated Crimson & Jon Malus on his own; Skyler did not appear until after the match was over. Walters & Skyler had been gaining some notoriety as a tag team attraction, working under the team name of The Love/Hate Machine, but I've noticed that they've been doing an angle very similar to this in just about every promotion for which they've been employed. They're obviously splitting up, and that begs the question - who's Shawn and who's Marty (here I go again making a wrestling reference that not everyone will get)?

I'd like to say this next bit as an aside to this match because of one of the involved competitors. There are those in the wrestling business who make a big deal out of steroid usage and how those substances should be frowned upon because they provide an unnatural edge in an industry where success is as much about physical appearance as anything. I tend to agree with this sentiment. Even though wrestling isn't a legitimate sport like football or baseball, steroids can be dangerous when used improperly. What's more, while they can make a guy who has a few physical gifts look like a younger version of Randy Orton, they can also make that same guy look like a walking advertisement for acne medication and male breast augmentation. Please lay off the gas, kid - I'd be fine if I never saw another bleeding pustule on some guys back for the rest of my life.

Match #6 - Triple-Threat Women's Match: Nita Monet defeated Mia Svensson and Pandora (with Reby Sky as referee)

Female wrestlers don't always receive the same level of respect and attention that their male counterparts get, and that's upsetting generally speaking. There are some very talented wrestlers out there who just happen to be women and the fact that audiences dismiss their additions to this great form of performance art is troubling to me.

I got the impression that that's what happened with this match as the crowd was not at all buying what these three ladies were selling. The biggest draw to the contest seemed to be the presence of Reby Sky, former Playboy model and fiance to former WWE Superstar Matt Hardy (who would be appearing later on the card in the main event). Truth be told, the rain had been coming down at a slight drizzle up until this match as it began to fall harder and with increasing volume. That coupled with the fact that the show had been going for close to 3 hours probably lead to the crowd being less than interested in a match that was ultimately not much more than a special attraction.

To make matters worse, the day was giving way to night and darkness was enveloping The Loose Cockaboose. There appeared to be lights available outside the club but none of them were used, for whatever reason. So not only are we, as fans, now watching wrestling while sitting in the rain - we're watching very poorly lit wrestling while sitting in the rain.

Match #7 - WF Championship Match: Chase Stevens (champion, w/Judgement) defeated Matt Hardy

The show began around 5 PM and by the time the main event rolled around it was almost 7:30 PM. Not exactly a late night but as I've stated before now, it was raining off and on the entire time and the precipitation was increasing. The worsening darkness wasn't helping matters at all. I don't mind sitting in the rain, personally, and the only place I was going after this show was Taco Bell for a late dinner so I have nothing to especially complain about (forgive me if my commentary makes it sound that way; I'm merely setting the stage, as it were, in describing conditions). However, I'm going to look at this from the perspective of a typical wrestling fan, one who potentially has never been to a WrestleForce event previously. I'm wet, it's dark, I'm in a bar, and all I want is to see Matt Hardy wrestle - was this worth my $10 and whatever I'm out in terms of the cost of getting to/from the event? More importantly, have I seen anything here this evening that is going to make me want to see another WrestleForce show?

Regardless, this bout was fairly basic in that it had all the makings of a classic wrestling scenario involving an outnumbered good guy in the form of Matt Hardy facing seemingly ridiculous odds but coming out to face his adversaries (those being Chase Stevens flanked by Jon Malus and Crimson) with the courage of a lion nevertheless.

I will say this about Matt Hardy, not that it hasn't been said elsewhere obviously - he throws a fantastic punch! This is an aspect of pro wrestling that goes overlooked so often but the ability to do little things well, like delivering a realistic looking punch, can turn an average wrestler into a star. Hardy throws them like few others I've seen and I admire that a lot.

Chase Stevens is one of a lot of guys who are out there working independent shows right now who could realistically be in a promotion like WWE or TNA but isn't. He's got a good look, he's got charisma, and he's got talent. There's not much I don't like about him or his work as I've seen him around the Carolinas going as far back as 2007 when he and Andy Douglas were still working as a tag team in the form of The Naturals. They had some really great matches back then, most notably against the likes of Team Macktion (Kirby & TJ Mack) as well as the Elite Icons (Jake Manning & Joey Silvia).

Overall Thoughts

As indie shows go, this one wasn't too bad but it was plagued by a lot of things that took away from the experience in general.

For starters, The Loose Cockaboose is a good watering hole to go watch a game, but it's a small bar with limited parking. On a day like this one where there was an event being held at Williams-Brice Stadium, parking was more or less nonexistent as there were folks going to the game making use of the spaces to which TLC patrons would've normally had access. Had I not arrived as early as I had, I wouldn't have had anywhere to park. There's no signage directing traffic to one lot or another, and I wasn't out there to check but I somehow doubt there was ever an attendant in the lot to direct people on where to go once the lots near TLC were at capacity.

I don't get having the show at a bar. It's not that I'm against night clubs or establishments like TLC (trust me, bar shows can be a lot of fun), it's that the environment can be more than a little off-putting to the core audience wrestling shows should attract. Women and children should be the first ones off a sinking ship - likewise, they should be your target audience for an event like this. Why? Because if the kids want to come to the show, they have to bring their parents and you know they're going to want a drink or snacks; you increase your ticket sales and invite opportunities for concessions. Similarly, women (and some guys) want to see sweaty, glistening, muscular, attractive men (don't be shy, ladies, it's okay to admit it); even if they're married or dating a guy, if there's a dude on a show they have the hots for they're going to come to the show. There were a few kids at Fall Brawl 4 (which was odd because, again, this was a bar) but I can't help thinking there would've been a much larger crowd on hand had this been held at a rec center or other more socially acceptable venue.

Speaking of concessions, for this event you had drinks served at the bar and I believe hot dogs and hamburgers from the grill. They have Coke and various other non-alcoholic beverages (energy drinks, mostly) but here again you have the issue of the show being held at a bar. You're going to force a Mom or Dad who may not drink booze to wade through 20 guys liquored up on cheap suds, some of whom are smoking, in order to get to the bar so that they can order a couple sodas for their kids? Not exactly a welcoming environment.

Next, I go back to what I'll just refer to as "production issues". The advertised time for the doors to open was 4 PM and they didn't open until 5 PM. Late starts aren't anything new to this type of show, so that was no real surprise nor is it a big deal for me. I've just grown to expect late starts and late finishes because no one in indie wrestling seems to be able to run a timely event. The rain didn't especially bother me either seeing as how I actually find sitting in the rain rather refreshing. My legitimate concern is the lack of lighting, and this plays into how the late start affected the show as a whole.

As a promoter, you have to realize we're getting to the time of year where the days are shorter. That being the case, you should either have your ducks in a row as far as keeping things on a schedule is concerned so you don't wind up forcing your fans to watch a show in darkness or cut out some of the extraneous stuff from the line-up. There were two intermissions during this show and a couple segments that could've been trimmed for brevity's sake.

Perhaps more importantly, a promoter should realize that darkness and moisture create a lot of potential safety issues for fans and talent alike. If the venue can't supply proper lighting, buy or rent some industrial shop lighting. It doesn't have to be elaborate, it just has to work. What's that, Mr. Promoter? You don't have the budget for it? So you would sooner pay the medical bills of a fan who slipped and fell onto the concrete at ringside because they couldn't see the puddle of water they were walking into because you ran an outdoor event at night with no lights? Do you really want to be the guy who ran a show with a wet ring and slick ropes that wound up leading to an injury for an internationally known star like Matt Hardy?

Why am I being so critical? Because I think of things like this. It's in my nature to analyze logistics and to consider ways of improving an experience. If I were a pro wrestling promoter, that's what I would be concerned about - providing an experience that a fan will want to have again and again. Repeat business, in other words. I admit that it's easy for me to nitpick this sort of thing (while offering solutions at the same time) because I'm on the outside looking in. What do I know about anything, though, right? I'm just a guy with a blog who has been paying money to go to shows like this for better than 15 years.

All that having been said, WrestleForce has announced their next show, All Or Nothing, which will be held at The Hangar in Cayce, SC on Sunday October 20. For more information on WrestleForce, check out their offerings via the links below.

http://www.WrestleForce.net/
https://www.facebook.com/WrestleForce
https://twitter.com/WrestleForce
http://www.youtube.com/user/wrestleforce

A Trip to Asheville, NC and a Tour of Biltmore Estate

You don't have to do much more than pay attention to my blog to get an idea for how much my wife Jill and I love to travel. Granted, we don't go to way, way off locations or foreign lands but we do tend to stay on the road a good bit, especially in the warmer months when the weather typically affords more opportunities for getting out and about. (The summer of 2013 has been a complete oddity in that regard; I don't recall ever having the sort of rainfall we had throughout the bulk of late June and early July.) We've never shied away from the chance to take a fall or winter road trip, though, as one of the most memorable jaunts we've ever been on - in my mind, at least - was back in October of 2009 when we made our way up Interstate 26 into Asheville, North Carolina to visit the Biltmore Estate. (I won't go into much detail regarding why it was memorable right now other than to say that the story happens at night and that it involves our old GPS unit and an attempt to find a movie theater.) We hadn't been back there since then, and since my wife's birthday also happens to coincide with one of our mutual days off, that being Labor Day, I couldn't think of a better way of spending the weekend.

Taking a trip for us typically begins with dropping off Roddy, our beloved miniature dachshund, with one of our relatives. For this trip, that meant he got to visit his "grandparents" up in Lugoff, South Carolina, that being Jill's parents. I know not everyone sees a dog as being a member of the family but I have for a while now. Not having any legitimate siblings and being from a very small family, I've learned to appreciate what family I have and for me that includes those members who happen to be particularly hairy and walk around on all-fours.

Having safely deposited Roddy with his caretakers, we loaded up the car on the morning of August 31st and hit the road. Our selection of vehicles currently consists of my wife's Ford Focus (AKA, Frannie) and my Chevrolet Silverado (AKA, Agent Orange - it has a somewhat unique burnt orange factory paint job). We tend to take the Focus on trips like this for no other reason than it's much better on gas than my Silverado. It's not the most comfortable of cars for a guy my size to drive or ride in (my knees don't meet the center console all that well and folding myself up to get in the door is a bit of a chore), but what it may lack in luxury it more than makes up for with economy. Plus, it has a deceptively large and spacious trunk, meaning it's never particularly difficult to pack.

We left home fairly early that morning, early enough that stopping for breakfast seemed like the logical thing to do. (Side Note: I hate eating while driving as well as eating while riding. Apparently I'm not coordinated enough to do both without getting food down the front of my shirt.) I, personally, had been having a real hankering for Shoney's breakfast. I'm a sucker for scrambled eggs and pudding (that being traditional, Southern liver pudding - hey, don't knock it until you've tried it, smart guy), but as luck would have it our route wouldn't be putting us on a direct collision course with one of their restaurants. Instead, we stopped at a Waffle House near Newberry, SC and I have to say this may have been the finest meal I've ever had at a Waffle House.

I feel like I have to point out the quality of our experience because I've eaten at Waffle House a lot in my life. It's convenient fare when you're coming home late at night from a concert, sporting event, or what have you. I have the distinction of having been in a Waffle House that had a bomb threat called into it. (No, really, I'm serious.) What's more, on our first trip to Asheville Jill and I stopped into a Waffle House for breakfast and we saw a group of patrons request a cup of scalding hot water. Why? Because they wanted to use it in order to sanitize their silverware. (Like I said - no, really, I'm serious.)

That said, I had a 3-egg Fiesta Omelet (which comes with cheese, ham, onions, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers) with hash browns done the only way God intended them to be - that being covered, peppered and diced. Jill had a combo that involved a blueberry waffle, and it was quite tasty as she let me try a bite of it. It was a fantastic meal and a great way to kick off our trek.

The holiday traffic on the interstate wasn't too bad, which was a pleasant surprise. It began to thicken up as we approached our next stop (other than the welcome center coming into North Carolina; restroom/stretch breaks are good for the mind, body, and spirit), that being Hendersonville, NC. Hendersonville is home to the North Carolina Apple Festival, an annual event held every Labor Day. We didn't get into the bulk of that traffic, however we did get tied up somewhat as we stopped by McAbee's Fruit Stand to pick up some fresh gala apples. (Next door to McAbee's is a shop called Bloomfield's which was once known as the Dish Barn - I'll let your imagination wander as to what sort of offerings that can be found therein.) They're some of the sweetest apples I've ever tasted and way more inexpensive than what you'll find at your average grocery store - we bought a peck and a half for $10.

A plaque outside the North Carolina Welcome Center commemorating the Blue Star Memorial Highway

 

A map of the state made from various textiles inside the North Carolina Welcome Center

McAbee's Fruit Stand in Hendersonville, NC - some of the best apples you'll ever taste

Apples in hand, we continued onward towards Asheville. If you've never had the occasion to do it, I cannot emphasize enough how unique of a driving experience going up a mountain can be. I've only done it a handful of times and the variance between it and your average daily commute is very refreshing, not only in terms of being able to see breathtaking natural scenery but also maneuvering through the variances of terrain inherent to traveling through a region like this. There's lots of hills, curves, and what have you, in other words, and I like driving on them.

Not too far from Asheville proper is the Western North Carolina Farmers Market. It's a blast to look around a place like this because it's so much more than just fresh fruits and vegetables. We found a vendor that had an assortment of pickled veggies, among them being pickled watermelon rind. After having developed a taste for it during my recent trip to Atlanta, GA (see blog entry "I Went to Atlanta for a Week"), I couldn't not buy a jar of theirs. (Like I said with the liver pudding, don't knock it until you've tried it!) We also got a few bags of pumpkin seeds, guacamole bites (tortilla snacks dusted with an avocado-flavored mix of spices), and homemade Amish peanut butter (it's basically fresh peanut butter with marshmallow fluff blended into the mix - yeah, try and wrap your head around that concoction).

One item we had while at the farmers market that wasn't what we were hoping for wound up being our mid-day snack. (When we've had a big breakfast we'll sometimes skip lunch in favor of a morsel to tide us over until supper.) There's a bake shop inside the farmers market that specializes in breads and various confections. We had intended to get a bite to eat from the sandwich shop next door, but they were closed by the time we sought out sustenance. We selected what I believe was some kind of an apple turnover. While it wasn't terrible, to my palette the dough tasted like fried chicken breading and the filling wasn't all that sweet. The worst part about it was that it was ridiculously greasy - that and the fried chicken taste make me think they needed to change the oil in their fryer because even fried foods shouldn't come out like that.

A downpour came through the area while we were at the farmers market. The rain was fashionably late this day - I say that because invariably it seems like every time we take a road trip it's going to rain at least part of the time. Fortunately, the rain didn't last long enough to cause any real issues as we took that time to sit on a bench and enjoy the moment.

Our home away from home for this trip was a Days Inn, the same Days Inn we stayed in the first time we came to Asheville. We enjoyed our initial stay thanks to the accommodations being affordable and comfortable, as well as the fact that this location also gives patrons a free breakfast buffet with everything from grits to danishes. The room we had this time around was alright, even though it wasn't as nice as we'd hoped it would be. Apparently this Days Inn is in the process of renovating their rooms, and ours was one that hadn't yet been renovated. The room wasn't the most posh either of us have ever stayed in (a control knob on the air conditioner was broken, the bed was mostly caved-in, and the shower had next to no water pressure and also would go from scalding hot to ice cold at random - on the plus side, the TV was an excellent Samsung model and the WiFi was blazing fast) but it worked well enough.

What I can never get over when it comes to hotels is how their rates change on a daily basis. Case in point, the room we had cost us right at $90 a night and this was with a AAA discount. This was a holiday rate, of course - the day after we would leave, the rate for that same room dropped to around $50 a night. Go figure.

For dinner that night we set up shop at a nearby Buffalo Wild Wings location as we wanted some grub but we also wanted to watch the football game of the weekend, that being the University of Georgia Bulldogs versus the Cow Tech - um, Clemson University Tigers (yeah, that's it). Never having watched a game at a BWW, we figured we'd do well to show up early in advance of kickoff. We'd finished our meal by the time the game began, but the game would be only part of the entertainment we'd get that evening. As it would turn out, the restaurant became packed with Clemson and Georgia faithful. It was like a scene from Gangs of New York, UGA red on one side and Clemmy orange on the other. There was a point where I thought sure we'd see a knife fight break out between the two sides, which is why we left around halftime. We didn't want to be witnesses to collegiate sectarian violence and we needed to get our rest as we'd be touring Biltmore Estate bright and early the next morning.

Built in the late 1890s, Biltmore Estate was once the home of George Washington Vanderbilt II and his descendants still own the property. To this date, it stands as the largest private residence in the United States (even though no one lives there anymore, although members of Vanderbilt's family still live in their own homes located on the grounds of the estate). In addition to the house, also featured are the stables (which now host a series of shops and eateries), the gardens, a winery, and a resort and shopping district known as Antler Village.

Touring Biltmore Estate is like a trip back in time as the home has been expertly preserved in order to display the extravagance of life for the Vanderbilts. The home has everything from an indoor pool to a quite medieval-looking dining hall. (PRO TIP: There are no available restrooms inside the home, so if you need to take a squirt or a squat make sure you do it before you begin your tour.) There are so many more features to it than what I could ever fully describe here, it's a landmark that you have to see for yourself in order to fully appreciate.

While the home was wired for electricity when it was built, one thing that it did not come equipped with is anything resembling air conditioning. Even though we were in a higher elevation during a time of year I thought would yield cooler temperatures than what we're accustomed to in the midlands of South Carolina, the day we were on the Biltmore grounds was one of the warmer days we've had as of late. It goes without saying then that walking around inside the home was rather uncomfortable seeing as how the only form of AC to be had therein were shop fans scattered throughout. (I will commend the family and maintainers of the property for recognizing the need for restroom facilities and water fountains as they are prevalently available all over the grounds - just not inside the house itself.) I chalk it up to having an authentic experience to the life of the Vanderbilts as my sweat has now mixed with theirs.

An amusing visual - it was amusing to me, anyway - that I noted during our tour of the house was the sight of visitors who were taking an audio guided tour. What made it funny was the fact that the devices used to present the guided tour look a whole heck of a lot like handsets from an office desk phone. If you saw them and didn't know what was going on, it wouldn't have been out of the ordinary to wonder "Why is everyone on the phone? How do you guys have a signal in here?"

After our tour of the home we went through the gardens and the gift shop that's beneath the hot houses, which are essentially green houses but much larger. We didn't go through the hot houses because: 1) We'd been through them previously and 2) we were already plenty hot as is. I sat in a very expensive chair in the gift shop and we sampled a delicious variety of fruity syrups that can be mixed into lemonade in order to create a completely different beverage.

We hoofed it back to the house with haste (easier said than done; from where we were in the gardens to the house is an all-uphill walk of about one-third of a mile) as we had to be back there by 2 PM in order to meet up with our group for the Architect's Tour.

Biltmore offers several bonus tours that aren't included on general admission to the grounds which gets you into several areas of the home that are otherwise off limits. The Architect's Tour begins in one of the courtyards near the front entrance of the home then takes you inside and up the grand staircase to the fourth floor. Once you're there, you get to see a scale model of Biltmore and architectural blueprints that were used for reference during construction (the walls of this room are adorned with a variety of prints of European cathedrals and other similar buildings as these were inspirations for Biltmore's design). Next you're welcomed into what was described to us as being Vanderbilt's "man cave" - a room that is fairly small compared to most in the home but one that definitely fits the description as it was filled with books and wooden decor. We were ushered up a spiral staircase in the corner of the room (having broad shoulders made getting up that thing fairly interesting) then onto a catwalk encircling the perimeter of the room. From the catwalk, we were lead outside the home onto what is essentially a ledge; there was no risk of falling though because we were securely tucked in by the masonry of the railing (here again, being a bigger guy made getting out there somewhat of a challenge). Back inside the man cave and one more time onto the catwalk and we were outside the home again, onto an observatory platform (it can be seen from the ground if you look up above the grand staircase where the American flag flies). There's a huge metal dome on this platform that serves as an anchor for a gigantic metal chandelier that hangs above the grand staircase (it was incredibly hot, as you might imagine). The last portion of the tour granted us access into an area just below the roof where we could see how the stone shingles where tied together and attached to the home using wire. This was an awesome thing to see and I'm certainly glad we opted for this as it was well worth the additional cost.

Members of our tour group getting some knowledge from our guide

The view from the ledge outside the man cave - you can't tell how steep the roof is until you've seen it from this angle.

Another view from the ledge, this one looking down over the atrium courtyard.

The dome above the grand staircase - this thing was hot enough that you could've literally cooked an egg on it.

The view from the observatory platform down on another tour group.

The final leg of our day on the grounds at Biltmore consisted of spending time around Antler Village, which is a relatively new addition to the area. Antler Village holds the winery, various shops, the Biltmore resort, and a handful of other attractions. We were somewhat interested in taking a winery tour but we didn't not only because of time constraints but also because quite frankly neither of us have thus far been able to develop much of a taste for wine. (I'm a beer drinker, personally, and my wife prefers fruity cocktails.) Instead, we went through some of the shops and killed a bit of time until we were due for supper at Cedric's Tavern.

As it turns out, Vanderbilt had a beloved Saint Bernard whose name was Cedric. Therein lies the inspiration for Cedric's Tavern, a pub with an old world, English feel to its presentation and menu. Not long after we were seated our waiter brought out a batch of pretzel rolls with a compound butter made with grain mustard; sounds weird but take it from me, it was really tasty. I like to take the opportunity to try new and different eats when we're traveling and Cedric's menu presented an item I couldn't pass up - tavern deviled eggs. I'm not typically a fan of deviled eggs as the consistency of the boiled egg white doesn't jive with my mouth at all (I'm not a big fan of any not-quite-solid but not-quite-liquid food - Jello, yogurt, etc.), but I had to try these. Why? Because they're served with candied bacon, that's why. They were without a doubt the best deviled eggs I've ever tasted, which may not be saying much given my lack of exposure to them but even so it's worth pointing out. Jill and I both selected the fish & chips for our main course, which came with mushy peas (it's an English thing - think refried beans but with green peas), french fries and tartar sauce. Mine was a truly massive piece of deep fried fish perfection which I washed down with a nice pint of Cedric's Pale Ale. (I knew I wanted to try one of their resident brews but I wasn't sure which to pick; our waiter was generous enough to bring me out a sample of both so that I could choose after having tasted them.) When we made our reservation at Cedric's we mentioned that we were in town for my wife's birthday - no, the wait staff didn't sing to her, but our waiter did bring her a trio of frozen ice cream truffles with "Happy Birthday" written in chocolate syrup on the plate. Like the rest of the meal, they were a real treat and I can't say enough about how great of a way Cedric's Tavern was to cap off what had been a long day at Biltmore Estate. Our waiter made the occasion especially memorable as he was helpful, attentive, and conversational without being pushy or trite. You cannot overvalue staff like him and how they can make a dining experience all the more better.

So ended another great road trip for us and another set of memories I never hope to lose. Not to get sentimental here, but writing this blog and looking back on those days has genuinely made me value a trip like this one. It's the kind of event that not everyone gets to have even once in their lifetime and here we've been twice in less than 4 years. I consider myself to be very fortunate and incredibly blessed to be able to do things like this and to have someone like my wife along with me for the ride. It's a special thing, and it's made more so by the fact that we always manage to find a way to make our trips into adventures by doing things like the Architect's Tour. It's not so much the tour itself but, for me, the fact that we did it and we did it together that gives it real meaning.

A Visit to Johns Island, SC

I'd like to believe that every state has its own unique blend of culturally significant landmarks, both natural and man-made, which have been preserved through the generations so that others might enjoy and appreciate them. It's the sort of thing that I, as I've gotten older, have grown to value because I realize the importance of celebrating what's meaningful instead of what's merely popular in the moment. (Age and maturity has a way of revealing the differences inherent to both, I find.) That said, I would also like to believe that in the grand scheme of things my home state of South Carolina is richer than most when it comes to this type of locale - what, you expected me not to root for the home team? My wife, my mother in-law and I recently made our way to see one of the most popular natural wonders that the state of South Carolina has to offer that being the Angel Oak (named after a family that at one point in time owned the property on which the tree sits), a live oak tree well known for its incredible size and sprawling limbs.

The Angel Oak is located on Johns Island, SC which is in Charleston county. This region is referred to as the low country because of the fact that the land, for the most part, sits at or near sea level. Obviously that makes for some rather interesting terrain (there are many swamps and marshes in the area), as flooding isn't uncommon in this part of the world. We were somewhat concerned about the condition of the road leading up to the area around the Angel Oak, which isn't much more than a dirt path barely wide enough for one vehicle, especially seeing as how we've had an unusually wet summer this year.

Fortunately the road wasn't near as bad as I had anticipated. (PRO TIP: The parking lot at the Angel Oak park is very small, as in it can't hold more than 10-15 cars - if it looks packed, park on the road, else you'll have a Hell of a time getting back out of the thing.) For that matter, the drive down I-26 was quite nice as well. We went through a few brief spots of rain but by the time we arrived at our destination the clouds had begun to break and the temperature was hovering in what I consider to be the most idyllic of ranges, that being the upper 70s to low 80s. It was a great day to be outside, needless to say.

It's incredibly difficult to describe the grandeur of the Angel Oak if you've never seen it in person. Like most live oaks, the Angel Oak has a thick, squatty trunk as opposed to that of something like a redwood that stretches up into the sky. Don't let my wording fool you, though; "squatty" is a relative term as the tree's height is quite impressive. It's the kind of tree that you could build a tree house inside of without much concern for stability. I would hazard a guess and say that the Angel Oak's trunk is so thick that 10 grown men could stretch their arms out as wide as possible and still probably not be able to encircle the entire thing.

Other visitors gathered around the Angel Oak - this gives you an idea of how big it is compared to an adult.

What makes the Angel Oak such a breathtaking visual, for me, are its branches. Live oaks tend to have branches that come off the trunk and arch downward. They're the perfect shade tree and quite often they're found with Spanish moss growing off their limbs. The Angel Oak is no different, however its branches have been able to grow unencumbered for so long that many of them have penetrated the ground around the tree and come back out of the soil to emerge and continue on. They're so immense in their dispersion that they resemble the tentacles of a gigantic squid or octopus.

The Angel Oak's canopy - like I said, it's just about the most perfect shade tree ever.

An example of how the Angel Oak's limbs have grown down into the ground then emerged to continue growing

My wife & I had visited the Angel Oak once before. That visit was in January of 2012, and the Oak's foliage wasn't near as vibrant as it was on this more recent visit. What's more, there were patches of greenery growing on the limbs that added to the lush visual.

Foliage and other growth on the Angel Oak

Bear in mind, no one knows with any real certainty how old the Angel Oak actually is - reason being, live oaks are prone to rotting from the inside once core samples have been taken, so the numbers that get thrown around about its age are hypothetical at best. Obviously no one in their right mind wants to disturb this amazing tree, even though it's come under fire quite a few times over the years by clumsy developers and others who would prefer it be removed in favor of putting up condos or other nonsense. (Storms and hurricanes are a more prevalent threat as the Angel Oak has been damaged from high winds; support cables and joists have been installed around the tree in an attempt to bolster its strength without impeding its continued growth.) I've read various estimations that put the tree anywhere from 300 to 1400 years old. (Writing this, I'm reminded of a line of dialogue from The Empire Strikes Back spoken by Master Yoda: "When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not...") Stop and consider that for a moment. The Angel Oak is a living, breathing organism that has thrived for God only knows how many human lifetimes. I can't imagine what it's seen and the sort of lessons it would try to bestow upon us.

After we had spent our time with the Angel Oak, we made out way over to a fantastic eatery Jill & I discovered on our first trip to Johns Island. The Tomato Shed Cafe is situated inside of the Stono Market, a farmer's market that offers a vast assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables grown on the Ambrose Farm at Wadmalaw Island (I admit I only threw in the description of where Ambrose is because I wanted an excuse to use the word Wadmalaw). These ingredients are used in the dishes that appear on the Tomato Shed's menu.

First and foremost, I will say that you would be well served to get to the Tomato Shed early if you're visiting for lunch. Reason being, they have limited seating that is first come first serve. (Also, they don't have a traditional host/hostess stand; if there are no tables readily available when you go in, you sign your name onto a check-in sheet and a waitress will seat you whenever one opens up.) Once seated, you can help yourself to a beverage - tea, lemonade, and various colas. When it comes to the food, it's a combination of American favorites and low country specialties including various seafood and meats. I, personally, love their she crab soup (if you've never had it, it's a rich, creamy, chowder-like soup packed with the flavor of crab) and spicy pimento cheeseburger. I don't think you could go wrong with anything on their menu but those are my favorites.

We capped off our day with - what else - a bit of shopping and several tastes of ice cream.

Delicious ice cream. That's how every day should end, don't you think?

Anyone Need Some Boots? Perhaps a Handbag? How About Some Shoes?

My wife & I were in our front yard doing some landscaping earlier this month. We have two trees in our front yard and we wanted to create a set of decorative rings around them. At the same time, I figured we should put out a new mailbox and post seeing as how the old one was looking a bit worse for wear. When we were looking at houses, we knew we didn't want to buy a fixer-upper, but we sure have managed to stay busy with projects around this all-but-brand-new home of ours which was built in 2006. From installing a chain link fence to an overhaul of the shrubbery beds around our front porch, trust me when I say that we've found plenty of ways to stay busy. Troubling thing is, I can think of about half a dozen other things that need to be done but we just haven't gotten around to them yet.

We were working away when all of a sudden we hear someone shout, "NEIGHBOR! HEY, NEIGHBOR - YOU KNOW HOW TO KILL A SNAKE?!"

The shout came from one of our neighbors, who was approaching our yard with haste. Jill and I have been in our home for about a year now but I'd never had the occasion to meet this neighbor before as he lives several houses down from us on an adjacent street within view of our house. That said, I wanted to pretend I didn't hear him. I wanted to go back in the house and make believe that I didn't see him or hear the word "snake" come out of his mouth. Alas, I couldn't.

We would later learn from him that he'd gone around the neighborhood asking for help with no success. The people who live next door to us had apparently given some excuse about "women and cats" being inside the home and shut the door in his face.

My response was "Do you have a shotgun?", to which he responded in the negative. As luck would have it, I happened to be holding a blade shovel in my hands at the point this conversation began. It and the fact that I was in the yard were apparently all that were required to volunteer me for this job.

I followed our neighbor, whose name I still didn't know at this point, from our front yard over behind his house. He and his son had spotted the snake lying beside their air conditioning unit while they were outside working, just as we had been. As I approached the AC unit, keeping a good 30-40 foot distance between myself and it, I noticed a cat looked to be in a hunting crouch, prepared to go after prey. When I saw what the cat had cornered, I couldn't believe my eyes.

It was a rattlesnake. The pattern on its scales was unmistakable.

Suddenly this became more than just "a snake" - this was a deadly creature that posed a danger on everyone in our neighborhood, not to mention so many beloved pets. I tried to figure out what was our best course of action, since I was apparently now in command of the situation. We have animal shelter but nothing along the lines of animal control, so I wasn't sure if this was something they'd be capable of handling. I didn't put too much into calling the local police department either; what were they going to do, lock up the snake for trespassing? It seemed like my only course of action was to dispatch this beautiful but deadly creature with extreme prejudice.

I wasn't getting close enough to it to kill it with my shovel, that's for sure. Snakes like this can effectively strike a target several feet away, meaning I needed a weapon capable of killing the snake but not damaging my neighbor's home while keeping me at a safe distance. Shooting the snake seemed to be the only solution.

My questioning our neighbor about owning a shotgun (I don't have one but after this little incident that may change sooner than later) was before I knew of where the snake was holed up. The snake's proximity to the house as well as the air conditioner made using such a weapon out of the question as doing so would have wound up peppering both with pellets. The brick exterior of the home probably could've taken the shot well enough but the AC would've been shredded.

My wife ran back to our home to get one of our pistols, of which we own several. I was hoping she would return with my Springfield XD .40, but she came back with one of our Ruger SR22s. (Remember how Roy Scheider wanted a bigger boat after first seeing the shark in JAWS? For that same reason, I wanted a bigger gun.) We bought a pair of them a while back, intending for them to be concealed carry options for us seeing as how we both have our concealed weapons permits. They're the kind of weapon one buys for personal defense. It goes without saying that we didn't buy these with killing snakes in mind!

We'd had these particular handguns for a while but we'd not yet had a chance to fire them so I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of how it was going to handle. The fact that it was a .22 meant it should be controllable but I wasn't certain how good it would be against the hide of that snake, my never having had the occasion to shoot a rattlesnake before and all. At the same time, we live within the town limits, meaning I was now committed to firing a gun within said boundary - which is illegal.

Just to recap where we are at this point in the story:

- I'm wearing workout shorts, a cut-off t-shirt and a floppy hat.
- I have to kill a poisonous snake.
- I'm about to fire a gun in a residential neighborhood in front of an audience of half a dozen or so people.

I loaded 6 rounds into the magazine. I was still unsure if the .22 would do much more to the snake than piss it off, which is why I didn't bother filling the mag to capacity. This is where if this moment in my life had been a cheap science fiction film I'd have wound up making a horrible mistake - having only 6 bullets when in actuality I'd need 7. Remember, for all I knew this thing could've been some kind of escaped military experiment super-snake with Kevlar scales and steel fangs.

While trying not to focus on that scenario, I made certain everyone was out of harms way, readied the weapon, and proceeded to fire 4 shots, taking the time to check my aim between each (I wasn't concerned about ricochet but trust me when I say that the potentiality of my being sued for damages as a result of putting bullet holes in this man's property was in my mind all along).

Suddenly my audience of 5 or 6 became an honest baker's dozen. Who knew the sounds of random gunfire would attract a crowd?

My first shot wound up being slightly low although the other three were on target. You won't hear me bragging about being a marksman; the fact that the snake was coiled certainly made it easier to hit.

Is it odd that I felt bad for killing the snake? I have always been one to feel empathy, almost to a disabling degree, even in a situation like this where what I did more than likely was for the best. I blame it on good parenting.

After about 20 minutes, the snake stopped moving around. One of our other neighbors, who showed up to the event quite late, took my shovel and attempted to chop off the snake's head using the blade. He didn't do much more than push the snake's body down into the muddy soil surrounding the air conditioner; all the rain we've had lately made it too soft to serve as an effective block, otherwise he might have actually been able to decapitate it.

Satisfied that it was dead, we put the snake's carcass into a large plastic bucket. Upon holding it up, the snake looked to be almost 4 feet in length. We noticed that its abdomen appeared rather distended, meaning it had apparently eaten something recently, perhaps a rodent or some other critter unlucky enough to have been the snake's last meal.

My neighbor's son decided he wanted to touch the snake, just to see what it felt like. He was still skittish about putting his arm in the bucket with a rattlesnake, be it alive or dead, so I put the pan of my shovel in between the head and body of the snake. He reached down and ever so lightly brushed his fingertips against the snake, and he squealed like a little girl. If someone had been shooting video of us, we could've won some real money with that reaction. That or at least been YouTube-famous for a couple days.

I'm not sure what became of the snake's remains. One of our other neighbors had mentioned an old wives tale about how burning a snake after killing it will send a message to others that might be nearby to avoid the area. I want to question the science of that but who knows - the only difference between a myth and fact is documentation, after all.

Movie Review Round-Up #3 - Robots, Demons, and Mutants (Oh My!)

The 2013 Summer movie season is winding down, and I'd have to say that overall this one has been more or less middle of the road in terms of the quality of films I've had a chance to watch. To me, there just hasn't been anything out thus far that has been so epic in its presentation as to make it the definable movie of the season. That's not to say the movies I've seen so far have all stunk; far from it, as there have been several really good movies (Man of Steel, Despicable Me 2, and Star Trek Into Darkness) but nothing that's been absolutely great. There's been no Avengers or Dark Knight, is what I'm really getting at. Those are the kind of movies that make the bothersome task of going to the movies worthwhile for me seeing as how I can't bring myself to spend money on something like Grownups 2 or We're the Millers. That's the reason why I have Netflix, so that when I can't sleep I can watch something formulaic and repetitive that will put me down for a few more hours.

Pacific Rim

In the not-so-distant future, gigantic monsters from an alternate dimension have begun rising up out of the Pacific ocean using a gateway between their world and ours. Traditional machines of war prove to be ineffective against these great beasts called Kaijus, which is why the governments of the world begin building huge robotic avatars known as Jaegers to be piloted by 2-man teams. The Jaegers were effective initially but the Kaiju threat has grown worse and worse, and the Jaeger fleet has has all but been demolished. Down to a handful of Jaegers and pilots, humanity is making its last stand.

There's nothing about this movie I didn't love, quite frankly. It's robots and monsters fighting, how could every 13 year old boy (or a 33 year old man who still acts like a 13 year old boy a lot of the time) not get a kick out of this? There's more to it than that, though, as the stunning imagery and special effects (produced by the wizards at Industrial Light and Magic) are a great compliment to a well-rounded story featuring characters that are somewhat stock in terms of their construction but still unique.

The cast is lead by Charlie Hunnam (known mostly for his work in Sons of Anarchy) who plays Jaeger pilot Raleigh Beckett, a man haunted by the death of his brother who was killed when the two were engaged in combat with a Kaiju. Idris Elba takes the role of Stacker Pentecost who's the commander of what remains of the Jaeger program. He's assisted by Mako Maori, played by Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi. Ron Perlman is involved here as well, taking the part of Hannibal Chau a black market dealer in Kaiju parts who's something of a snake oil salesman. Charlie Day rounds out the core group as Dr. Newton Geiszler, a scientist working the the Jaeger program on ways to find the Kaiju's weaknesses.

I can't not mention a young actress by the name of Mana Ashida, who appears as Mako when she was a child. I won't spoil the scenario here in case you haven't seen Pacific Rim. She's not on screen for very long but her performance was brilliant, as far as I'm concerned.

One of the biggest compliments I can pay director Guillermo del Toro for how he constructed this film is to say that there was never a point in time while I was watching Pacific Rim where I thought we truly had the upper hand. There's never a moment where you genuinely feel like mankind or the Jaegers are going to run completely rough-shot over the Kaiju, and that's significant because in so many action movies there never winds up being any sense of peril for the heroes. There's never a situation where you, as a viewer, stop and think "Wow, how the heck are they going to get out of this?" Pacific Rim makes you do that about half a dozen times, and the tension it builds is a great additive to the experience.

4/5 Robot Jox References

Elysium

Almost 150 years into the future, Earth has become so polluted and overpopulated that the most wealthy among the human race abandoned the planet, choosing instead to live on an orbiting space station called Elysium where there is no crime, no war, and no disease. Every day is a struggle for survival for the people who have no choice but to remain on Earth, as the criminals are almost as bad as the robotic infantry put in place to enforce the law.

Elysium's plot follows the plight of Max Da Costa, (Matt Damon) an ex-con living in the ruination that is what remains of Los Angeles looking to redeem himself by earning a living working in a factory that manufactures androids. He becomes exposed to a lethal dose of radiation while on the job - given only days to live, he's presented with the opportunity to get to Elysium and save himself. Little does he realize, at least initially, that he actually has a chance to save everyone.

There is a lot of cool stuff going on in this movie from a technical standpoint. You've got ships capable of space flight, futuristic weapons, humanoid robots with fluid movements, and soldiers equipped with powered exoskeletons. What's more, it all looks great - especially Elysium itself. The problem is that there's not enough emotional substance of characterization behind it all. You wind up with a visually compelling piece of work that doesn't leave any impact on the audience.

The realm of science fiction can be a dark place and there are plenty of films that do a great job of making a case for a less than likeable character becoming a heroic figure, but Elysium spends too much time trying to make the audience care about a guy who, quite frankly, has few redeeming qualities. Much of Elysium's plot centers around Max's effort to save himself after he gets irradiated. Up until the moment he's injured we've not gotten any sort of context that makes him into a likeable or sympathetic person. He's been a thug since he was a child; not a Robin Hood sort of thug, either. He's not even an effective anti-hero because when he's presented with the opportunity to save the dying daughter of a woman he loves (and has loved since childhood) he's still primarily concerned with getting himself into a med-bay (you could make the argument that he's trying to get the agents of Elysium who are chasing him away from her home, but I doubt that's his true inspiration for fleeing). Not until it dawns on him that he more than likely isn't going to survive this journey does his cause shift to aiding the little girl, and by then it's too little too late to make a difference in the mind of a viewer.

I loved District 9 for the fact that it was an amazing piece of allegory that gave a rather stunning perspective on apartheid in South Africa. Blomkamp has tried again to make his audience care about a cultural phenomenon using allegorical means, this time shedding light on the concept of healthcare becoming something only the richest among us can obtain. It's a painful truth, but the fact of the matter is that Elysium comes across as being very heavy handed in its message, almost to the point of being preachy. I'm not disagreeing with the message, mind you, I'm merely of the opinion that politics and entertainment don't always make for the best bedfellows.

And is it me, or is it a little bit ironic that Blomkamp made a movie involving a ring-shaped world considering he was supposed to have directed a movie based on the HALO video games?

3/5 Guilty Sparks

Evil Dead

The lazy critic in me enjoys reviewing movies like Evil Dead, simply because of the fact that recapping their plot doesn't require much effort.

This is your classic "kids go into the woods and get terrorized by some demonic beast until all but maybe 1 or 2 of them are alive" type of movie. It's been done to the point of becoming formulaic, and in the case of Evil Dead it's a gimmick that feels even more redundant seeing as how this is a re-make. What's more, it's a re-make of what has to be one of the campiest horror films ever made, that being director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead which was released in 1981 (it's the movie that introduced Bruce Campbell to the world, though, so it's still awesome). The 2013 edition attempts to ramp up the experience by shedding the inadvertent silliness that was so abundant in the original, instead opting for good old blood and guts horror.

The plot of this incarnation of Evil Dead is based around a group of kids in their late teens or early 20s who've all come out to a remote cabin in the woods in order to have an intervention with one of their friends, a girl who's developed an addiction to heroin. It turns out that the cabin has been used for a variety of activities related to the occult and Satanic rituals, so of course when one of the characters finds a book that's wrapped in barbed wire and heavy plastic he immediately begins reading the thing. He winds up unleashing a demonic entity that inhabits the girl they were trying to help, thus setting off a rather nasty slew of events for all involved.

If you're a fan of practical special effects, those being the kind that rely on prostheses and make-up as opposed to computer generated imagery, you'll enjoy the effort put into this film. I have to say it's refreshing to see this sort of thing. Artists can do amazing things with CGI, it's true, but CGI is too clean looking in my opinion for a movie like this. It needs to be dirty, gory, and sick. You just can't get that out of CGI.

2/5 Bifrucated Tongues

The Wolverine

The Wolverine serves as a follow-up to X-Men: Origins - Wolverine and X-Men: The Last Stand, this time peeling back the history of Logan as it relates to the occasions during his long and tumultuous life where he found himself in Japan. According to this mythology, Logan was a POW being held near Nagasaki and was present when the Fat Man atomic bomb was dropped. He was able to save a man named Yashida, one of his captors, from the blast. Fast forward to present day - Wolverine has done his best to drop off the grid as he's haunted by memories and dreams of his lost love, Jean Grey, choosing to live the life of a hermit in the Canadian wilderness. His seclusion is interrupted when he's found by a young woman named Yukio who has come to bring him back to Japan as Yashida is dying of cancer and wants to thank Logan for saving him all those years ago. It turns out that Yashida knows of Logan's pain and offers him the one thing he has never thought possible - a noble death.

Hugh Jackman has made the role of Wolverine his defining work, and he continues to be the linchpin of the entire X-Men film franchise. How many other actors can say they've been able to successfully carry an entire series? (Certain media outlets are claiming Fox has offered him $100 million to continue on with the character in 4 more movies - that sounds like a lot of money until you consider how much cash he and the other merry mutants have raked in for the company.) The work he's done with this character is quite marvelous (See what I did there? X-Men, comics, MARVEL, marvelous?) and I highly doubt the series would be where it is if not for his charismatic abilities to make Logan the sympathetic warrior that he is.

Therein lies one of my problems with this movie. It is incredibly overbearing in trying to convey Wolverine as being in this epic state of depression. That's an understandable move - he wound up having to kill the woman he loved, for crying out loud, he's got a reason to be sad. Add to that the fact that he spends a majority of the film having to deal with being in a compromising position thanks to his healing abilities being suppressed, and you've got a version of Wolverine that's just not Wolverine for lack of a better way of putting it.

What I'm getting at is I don't like emo Wolverine. I like feral, berserker Wolverine. Chaos is just more entertaining, I guess.

I will be forthright in saying that, in hindsight, this movie feels a lot like nothing more than a transitional piece meant to bridge a gap left between X-Men: The Last Stand and the coming X-Men: Days of Future Past. I didn't dislike it, I simply don't think this was that big of a moment in the grand scheme of things. That said, Fox could've simply had Jackman suit up for the post-credits Easter egg scene, put that out around Comic Con or some other similar event, and been done with it.

3/5 Bone Claws