A dangerous pastime. I know…

My daughters would be able to tell you the whos, whats, whys and whens of the beginning words of this blog. Something we do quite often is quote movies that fit the situation we are in. It is amazing the number of really good movie quotes you can fit into a daily conversation.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking. It could be a good way to get me in trouble, or just a good way to keep me up all night. Actually I fell asleep much earlier this evening while reading a book. I guess the house was just too quiet. I had to get up to make sure my alarm was set for the morning, so here I am wide awake.

I’ve been thinking about this coming year. My youngest will be graduating High School. Sometimes it seems like yesterday I was meeting her when she got off the Kindergarten bus. So very many things have happened since then. Graduations, marriages, deaths, births, have happened. I guess life has happened. Not always what we like, but it is what we get.

Both daughters have been out of the house this week. The youngest left Sunday afternoon, and the older left early Monday morning. So I have had time to think. Many things have entered this head of mine and I am ruminating on them even as I write this. Maybe more thoughts will form, while others fade away. I’m never sure on this.

Good night..

If you are like me, one of the biggest critiques of the mega-million dollar making movie The Dark Knight is the vocal gymnastics of Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman. As the billionaire playboy, his voice is smooth and dare I say, normal. However once he slips on the cape and cowl, his voice becomes low, gruff, and at times hard to nearly impossible to understand. It is almost as if he is trying to channel his inner Clint Eastwood, aka “Dirty” Harry Callahan. Although most actors have found it necessary to slightly alter their intonation for the duel role, I think Mr. Bale has gone a bit overboard. It is one thing to sound menacing, but to make it such that it is incomprehensible? Makes you wonder what the nogoodnicks the Caped Crusader apprehends think when they are growled at.

Though “The Dark Knight” has been a bona fide cultural event, boasting rave reviews and boffo box office, it hasn’t been immune to criticism. Some have quibbled with its political undercurrents, and others have criticized a muddled theme.
But here’s the critique most widely held: Why does Batman talk like the offspring of Clint Eastwood and a grizzly bear?
Donning the costume for the second time, Christian Bale has delved deeper into the lower registers. As Bruce Wayne, his voice is as smooth as his finely pressed suits. But once he puts the cape on, the transformation of his vocal chords is just as dramatic as his costume change.

Particularly when his rage boils over, Bale’s Batman growls in an almost beastly fashion, reflecting how close he teeters between do-gooder and vengeance-crazed crusader.
“The Dark Knight” hauled in $43.8 million to rank as Hollywood’s top movie for the third straight weekend, fending off “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” which opened a close second with $42.5 million. It has earned $394.9 million in just 17 days, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Though much of the voice effect is Bale’s own doing, under the guidance of director Christopher Nolan and supervising sound editor Richard King, the frequency of his Batman voice was modulated to exaggerate the effect.
Critics and fans have noticed.
“His Batman rasps his lines in a voice that’s deeper and hammier than ever,” said NPR’s David Edelstein.
The New Yorker’s David Denby praised the urgency of Bale’s Batman, but lamented that he “delivers his lines in a hoarse voice with an unvarying inflection.”
Reviewing the film for MSNBC, Alonso Duralde wrote that Bale’s Batman in “Batman Begins” “sounded absurdly deep, like a 10-year-old putting on an `adult’ voice to make prank phone calls. This time, Bale affects an eerie rasp, somewhat akin to Brenda Vaccaro doing a Miles Davis impression.”
Before the similes run too far afield, it’s worth considering where the concept of a throaty Batman comes from.
In his portrayal on the `60s “Batman” TV series, Adam West didn’t alter his voice between Bruce Wayne and Batman. Decades later when Tim Burton brought “Batman” to the big screen in a much darker incarnation, Michael Keaton’s inflection was notably but not considerably different from one to the other.
But it was a lesser-known actor who, a few years after Burton’s film, made perhaps the most distinct imprint on Batman’s voice. Kevin Conroy, as the voice of the animated Batman in various projects from 1992’s Batman – The Animated Series right up until this year’s Batman Gotham Knight, brought a darker, raspier vocalization to Batman.
Conroy has inhabit the role longer than anyone else and though animated voice-over work doesn’t have the same cachet as feature film acting, there are quarters where Conroy is viewed as the best Batman of them all certainly superior to Val Kilmer or George Clooney.
The animated series are notable because they drew on the DC Comics of Batman as envisioned by Frank Miller, whose work heavily informs “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.” (Bale and Nolan were unavailable to comment for this story.)
As Batman has gotten darker, his voice has gotten deeper. As some critics suggest, Bale and “The Dark Knight” may have reached a threshold, at least audibly.

Indeed, I agree with the article. Kevin Conroy best characterizes the difference in the characters. Possibly because he was trained in voice-over work.

At one time most people thought of clowns as those funny guys who somehow emerged by groups from very little cars at circuses. I realize that some small children were scared of the wild antics of clowns at circuses. This probably was the driving force of the dark turn that clowns took in movies. The latest clown prince was of course Heath Ledger’s “Joker” in “The Dark Knight”. But to keep your interest in clowns going, here is EW’s list of 18 TV/Movie Clowns.

I remember Bozo from my youth.  One not listed was a local clown, I remember seeing him as a kid in his clown suit and in normal person form.  He would always take time to talk to me in his clown voice, and he always had balloons to make balloon animals.  His clown name was Quacky the Clown.  I found a site listing for the for Quacky and a picture at the bottom of this page, but I don’t think it would be the same Quacky from my youth.

Something good has happened with my internet connection. For some reason, I am now getting a much better signal at home with my cell-modem. I can actually watch most YouTube videos in streaming mode (some longer ones I catch up with the stream). I can listen to streaming radio. And I can easily watch sport downloads from mlb.com. I’m hoping that this is a sign of good things to come and not just a temporary weather fluke.

I’ve been told that the towers in the area are getting some upgrades, so maybe my recent speed increase has something to do with that. I’m now averaging over 600 kbps. Earlier, I was averaging 150 to 200 kbps with bursts to 300 kbps. On the old dial up I had before this, I was averaging 15 kbps (yes, that slow). So, I am now accessing the internet 20 times faster than my old dial up…

Edited to add that I maxed out at over 1000 kbps this evening!! Something is up with the connection

Isn’t technology grand?

Sunday afternoon, I took my 4 year old niece to watch our theatre’s annual Children’s Workshop and its presentation of The Phantom Tollbooth (or if you prefer, Toolbooth). It was throughly delightful. The performers ranged in age from 7-17. Although the older cast members showed more seasoning (no… not cooking… meaning experience), the younger thespians were adorable. I particularly enjoyed the two young ladies who played the imprisoned princesses. At times, I thought they came straight out ofThe Shining as the Grady twins who torment little Danny at the end of the hallway. Only the princesses were far less threatening and much more enchanting. I also liked the use of the Giant Roadmap/Storybook and the turning of its pages as the three travelers made their way to the Castle in the Sky. OH, yes… I did recognize the theme from Driving Miss Daisy which accompanied Milo, Tock, and the Humbug on their journey.  As for my companion, she liked it a lot and could not stop talking about it even after we returned to grandma’s house.

I was just doing a little late night surfing and found this in the “Odd News section”. Seems like fighting beetles is a big thing.

After you see the video can you imagine the size of those beetles? According to Wikipedia, the Rhinoceros Beetle are among the largest beetles in the world. I don’t think I want to see something that big crawling around in my house.

I’m not sure I like the idea of beetle fights, but then again we still have one or two frog jumping contests in the US. Probably much the same.

The private sector has been in the space race for a few years now. The prize for the first commercial, non-governmental vehicle that made it to space was awarded. And now they are getting ready to unveil the start of the next phase, paid passengers. Virgin Galactic will be unveiling the first half of their attempt for commercial traffic in space. The well named Mothership will be displayed by the company that developed it.

Right now the price for a 5 minute space ride is well out of my budget, but this is hopefully the first step to more and less expensive rides into space. My wife’s great grandmother lived to be 104 years old. She was around (and remembered) when automobiles started to take over the roads, she was around for the first airplanes. She couldn’t afford to ride a plane when passenger travel was first introduced, but when she was in her nineties, she was able to buy a ticket and enter a plane, travel to California to see her sister. Maybe when I am in my nineties, I’ll be able to do something like that and travel in space. I hope it is sooner.

When I sign in to my google account, on igoogle they ave a neat little gadget that gives you links to 1 or more wikiHow articles. Today’s was how to separate an Egg. Very informative article on this somewhat delicate procedure. Now a few years ago I wrote a little post on how to crack eggs one handed. I can’t recall were I put it so I will have to enter it by memory — This is a slightly humorous post, and it may or may not be funny to you. So now that the disclaimer is out of the way, on to breaking eggs one handed.

We’ve all seen in the cooking shows, on movies, or TV where someone is making eggs and cracking them, dropping the egg in the bowl, or skillet and then discarding the egg shell. I’ve tried this many times only to discover that the eggshell is calmly sinking in my bowl of eggs. these could be large pieces of egg shell, or the smaller bits that you only find when eating the finished product. So I always thought that there should be some sort of lessons on the art of cracking the egg 1 handed.

So here goes.

1) It all starts with the egg. Make sure that the egg fits your hand comfortably. If you have small hands, you don’t want to try cracking the Grade A super-duper large eggs with one hand. This will just make a mess. You should grip the small end of the egg with your index and middle finger. Use both, you don’t want to give the egg the finger do you? Grasp the larger end of the egg between your palm and thumb.

2) Make sure your thumb is positioned toward the end of the egg. Give the egg a sharp tap on the side of the bowl you are using to deposit the eggs. You may want to start using a bowl that you will be putting the egg shells in, sometimes this stage will cause shell fragments to drop in the bowl. With practice this is not usually a problem.

3) Pull the egg apart by expanding and slightly straightening out your fingers. Make sure you are holding the egg over the bowl at this point, it may come apart on your first try. If your egg isn’t opening, hit it again.

4) Open the egg just enough to allow the egg to drop through the expanded opening. This allows you to keep a good grip on the egg shell. Do not shake the egg to get everything out until you get comfortable holding the egg in this manner. Shaking the egg shell may cause shell fragments to fly all over the place (take cover when shell fragments are flying).

5) Dispose of empty shell and try it again. Practice, practice practice.

6) What to do with all those eggs? I would suggest in the early stages of your practicing, that you will want to stick with things like egg sandwiches on Melba Toast, Brownies with nuts, Cookies with nuts, Cakes with nuts, and any other egg dish you can think of that also contains explainable crunchies. Can’t be wasting those eggs just because you couldn’t dig out all the shell fragments can you?

Now, the question is, should I post this to wikiHow?

I have found a list of the emoticons used by wordpress.  Check it out:

💡

Say, C, any way we can update these smilies to look like the ones on this page? 

It seems that while I am somewhat of a computer geek, I am somewhat outdated somewhat of an computer geek.  You see, my home network has been a wired network for a long time now.  With this new computer and its wireless capabilities though, it is time to move on.  Plus, my nephew has been complaining about my not having a wireless network- not that it will matter to him soon as he will be off to SIU in a couple of weeks.

So, kind and generous as he is, our admin here donated to me an old router he had laying around, a Linksys type G router.  I let it sit for all of one day 😛 before finally hooking the thing up.  I went through the settings, following the manual as I did so, and thongs seemed to be working, except no internet.  Hmm.  Oh yes, I seem to remember having to turn the cable modem off and back on after several seconds.  Did it, and yes!  Internet.  I was now in the wireless world- for a short while.  After a bit I could no longer access the internet and my computer showed the network as “limited connectivity” or something like that.  Well, the power supply he gave me for it was not the right one, rated at 500mA while the router says it wants 1A.  I read that too low of a current rating may cause flakiness, and the power supply seemed abit warm, so I unplugged it and was going to go to Radio Shack for a universal supply.  However, I dug around first and turned up a few power bricks.  7.5V- no.  14V- not (both AC too, while I needed DC).  12V- yes.  1000mA.  Well, that is one amp, so- double yes!  DC and right size plug- yes, yes, yes!  Plugged it in, connected everything back up to it, and I was good to go again once I power-cyled the modem.

So, I finish a blog entry and click publish.  Can’t connect- aargh!  Tray icon shows limited connection again, and this time I wasn’t even using the wireless, opting for the wired connection instead!  Sigh.  Looks like I may have damaged the router.  I hope not.  I’ll have to do some research,  but once I’m working again I may just have to try another one.  I am now hooked back up to my old router and everything is working again, so here’s my second blog entry for the day.  Two days in a row with two entries?  Definitely not my normal routine.  Don’t worry JustJ, you will bump me to fourth in just a couple days now I’m sure, not that this is a competition.