Parade, Part V

I get the singing Uncle Sams, and cars without their lids,
But why the hell the Flintstones' car?  And what's 'Can Tabs 4 Kids?'

Parade, Part IV

A lot of stuff you might expect, like eagles and old wagons,
Cavorting mid-pubescent girls, and...Chinese balloon dragons?

Parade, Part III

Vehicles of every kind, some homely, some much slicker
And lots and lots of fire trucks (plus one that made us snicker)...

Parade, Part II

Soon the parade was underway with lots of flags and soldiers              
(I wonder if it hurts their groins to put flags in those holders?)

With Uncle Sam, and giant floats, and singing flatbed ladies,
With curiously misplaced boats; and all as hot as Hades...

Several of us went down to the Pittsfield 4th Parade today (yes, a day late cause of churchiness)

To day we saw the Big Parade that comes through Pittsfield town,
And so we found a bit of shade and chairs and sat we down...

The crowd was big, and wall-to-wall; at times was even more
We saw them rig balloons right in the parking lot next door...

My immediate surroundings

This is the main living area of my little corner of the finely-appointed Yankee Suites here in Pittsfield. I spend most of my time here, if not out and about.  There is a somewhat pointlessly long hallway and entrance area: good for short hikes and bicycle storage and not much else. There is, of course, a bathroom...nothing noteworthy.  Also a bedroom.  To someone straight out of years in a penitentiary the bedroom would undoubtedly seem spacious.  My lack of prison experience, however, leads me to shun it for the most part. Small, dark, wood-panelled, so even darker, and with thick blackout curtains that I have to keep smashed flat against the glass with spare pillows so that the poorly-positioned air-conditioning vents don't blow all the cold air up and in-between the curtain and the sunlit glass, where it would be heated to complete ineffectiveness. Thus even darker, I guess is my point.

Anyway, nice big living area with a tv, recliner, full kitchen, couch, desk with a high-speed wired hookup, and a small dining table I use to keep change and recently purchased corn on.  I am somewhat dispirited to discover that the good corn --the sugar butter corn I took eighty pounds of home last year-- won't be out until the week before I depart. It's just as well: I am too agèd to take on a corn-fed appearance.

 

Y'all need to get hooked up, serious

OK, Jo got Carol's computer to work with Skype with a minimum of difficulty. Cause, you know Jo, if it wasn't a minimum, it wouldn't have happened.  Heh.  Anyway, here she is, posing on Skype for the first time. 

The only even small drag is that Skype saves its screen shots in the PNG format, so I have to convert them to JPG before I can do much with them. Like see them in anything but Skype.  Fortunately, there are things like this around.  Get on the ball, elders.

OK, I know I'm in the Berkshires..

...and should be discussing more topical and local annoyances and whatnot in this space; but I am so pleased that they actually (for the first time) have hi-speed internet here that I am lounging around the morning after our first show (a raging success - not to be counted on with further audiences) and enjoying that most modern of time-wasting activities: idly touring Youtube and watching cool videos.

For instance, this is a neat time-lapse of the space shuttle, from assembling the take-off package, to lift-off. The bottom of that thing looks pretty battered, but they send it anyway, eh?

Love you guys...

Moving day in Pittsfield

Because of various and sundry reasons --mostly having to do with actors getting a cheap long-term hotel rate and therefore residing on the lower rung of the touristy status ladder-- I had to stay in a different room last night than the one I'll be in the rest of the time. So I'm not really unloading stuff or unpacking until that happens. Hopefully, any hour now.

I did not bring my fancy birthday monitor up here.  But I did bring my little 15-inch flatscreen.  Since I haven't unpacked it yet, I'm putting off doing much on the computer.  To show you how much I love my birthday present, I include here a photo of my laptop screen: I have set the background to off-white that you may more clearly see the bright blotchy freckles that indicate where liquid got in some months ago.  Functions fine.  But it's really hard to look through this stuff, depending on what the page shows. It's always beneath the text, like some lurking plague.  I'm thinking phosphorus, perhaps, got washed off, so now the pixels are stuck in full light mode.  I'm sure that is completely wrong. But it helps to have an incorrect mental picture at all times.

The Long Drive North...

...features many things you can depend on: like my nemesis...and traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike moving slower than corpuscles through Rush Limbaugh's veins.

I'm leaving just in time...

..mt view is becoming alarming. Actually, it's kind of nice like this.  In a paralyzed-with-fear-if-I-get-too-near-the-window kind of way.

These are Jon's cats

Ghostface Killah, the darker; and Mullah.  They are attracted to me because I am allergic to them.  Cats are like women: if you disdain them, they suddenly get all interested... I miss Jon's old cat: Snooka.  A savage beast that would sneak out of the house to kill and terrorize the neighborhood. I doubt there were many small mammals within a half-mile radius. But friendly; one of the few cats I have known that would converse with you. Not like these haughty bitches.

Manasquan, NJ does not mince words

Maybe we should always have them put this on the marquis; it seemed to work. 

My nemesis again...

OK, for the first time since the fall of '08...

...my car has air-conditioning.  I'm too overcome with emotion to wax poetic. And I think I found an honest mechanic.  He basically had carte blanche to rip me off for a condenser and instead just replaced some relatively inexpensive electronic components and voila... Not even an arm and a leg. Not even an arm, even. Like...half a wrist...maybe. Maybe just a wrist-bone....

Dinner with Kate

All of the kids like corn. That's why we call them the Children of the Corn. Not really.  I mean, we really call them that, but not because they like corn...

Conclusion to things you don't care much about

OK, the American beats the Frenchman...pretty easy to tell who is who in this picture.  Final score:  five sets: 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68; 11 hours and 5 minutes of tennis.  They were both beyond gracious at the end.  And lost-looking. I guess, no matter how painful the actual experience, when you finish doing the thing that is the odds-on favorite to be the most memorable moment of your career, it must leave you feeling a little bereft and weird.

Things you may not be interested in

I still play tennis from time to time and fondly recall my youth, when I would play 5 or even 6 sets in a day, being all full of youthful vim and vigor and quite possibly beer.  But I can only eke out a set or two at a time now. And I can't even imagine the physical and mental stresses these guys are going through. Amazing tennis match at Wimbledon. Continuing today: the THIRD day of the match. Most matches last 4 hours and a little more.  They played a single set all day yesterday, neither managing to win by two points. I'm going to watch the continuation now, tied as they are at 59 games. 59 games each. Astounding.

Since my car a/c has been on the fritz.....

...since before LAST summer, the heat is particularly grueling.  This is the inner me, lusting for cold weather once more.

In the Hoosegow at Nationals' Stadium

Here we see Nationals' fans behind bars, sentenced to yet another year of suckiness.   Been doin' Hard Time for a while.  Every time we think we're Up for Parole, the Lousy Screws turn on us and throw us back in the Hole to Rot. So we Sharpen our Shanks, and Scratch our Lonely Days off on the Wall, and....frankly I'm running out of prison metaphors and in danger of stretching the whole thing tragically thin. So I think I'll stop here. They lost, I guess is the point I'm trying to make. Alas.

Happy Father's Day, Pop!

Remember, tell Mom that -for this one day- you get to be in charge. For a minute. Until you screw something up....

At the Gaylord Hotel, National Harbor

Some people will do anything to get 'on' TV.....

The Official Company Position...

..is that the glass is half full. There are times when it is difficult to maintain that position...

Why do they call it the 'Hinckley' Hilton?

Because right at this little curved wall here is where all the Jodie Foster impressin' went on back in March of '81.  Just in the background you can see the bullet-proof carport they built afterward to ease the shuttling of the famous and bullet-worthy in and out of the largest hotel ballroom in DC.  Oddly enough, we died onstage tonight and not one Secret Service man leapt to our defense.

When you drive to the beautiful new Washington Harbor...

...a question that never fails to arise is: what the hell is this giant metal statue-thing guarding the entrance? Seems like a pack of color-blind drunken Irishmen erected this; or perhaps H.P. Lovecraft. 

By the way, my camera is refusing to send email, so I'm running on stored photos for the next couple of days. I had some great pictures of me getting tires yesterday along with some marvelous shots of fat people at Costco buying things to make them even MORE fat, but the photos are inextricably trapped in my camera. C'est la vie.