I used to enjoy a good afternoon of Monopoly, but as I grew older I discovered that it takes FOREVER to play and who can actually say that they have ever played a full, complete, by the book game?  In any case, here is a bit of useless trivia that might come up on a night of fun and games.  Which is the only property on the original Atlantic City edition of Monopoly to not be named after an Atlantic City location?  Marven Gardens is a housing development in Margate City, New Jersey and is not located in the Atlantic City limits. It is on the border of Margate and Ventnor City (there must be a Ventnor Avenue 😀 )… hence the name Marven Gardens.  Another bit of useless trivia: the Monopoly game has mispelled the name for the decades in which it has been produced.  Charles Darrow’s mispelling “M-a-r-v-i-n” was copied when Parker Bros. bought the game rights and a formal apology was made to the residents of Marven Gardens in 1995 (better late than never I guess).  I was recently introduced to a new Monopoly card game entitled MONOPOLY DEAL which does not take the never ending hours of the traditional ( board game (or one of the hundreds of variations).  If you can name any pop culture creation I am sure there is a version or soon to be… let’s make a list:

• Star Wars Original Trilogy Edition
• Star Wars Episode I Edition

While sitting at home trying to recover my voice or to allow it to get beyond sounding like Froggy from the Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts (primarily by keeping my mouth shut), I have been listening to my favorite gift.  For years, I have been torn between two iconic series of film scores by the same composer: Star Wars and Indiana Jones.  John Williams supplied all of the music for the 6 Star Wars films (yes, even the 3 prequel films) and the 4 films featuring the world-traveling archaeologist.  Just hearing music from either series is enough for me to want to pop in the DVD and sit back and enjoy but I also like kicking back and listening to a good movie score and picturing the events in my mind.  I have had the Star Wars collection of CDs for sometime.  However, the music for the Indy films have been rare indeed and even those recordings have lacked in length, until recently (I had a cassette of the Last Crusade soundtrack that featured only 30 minutes of the score).  Particularly the score for The Temple of Doom.  Williams expertly created scores for each of the films.  Raiders, Last Crusade, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull each are much lighter in tone and fun while Temple is full of dark, sinister, blood curdling themes.  However, it also features the Cole Porter tune “Anything Goes” sung in Mandarin Chinese and a fun theme for Indy’s young protege, Short Round.

Indiana Jones: The Soundtracks Collection contains the four scores with previously unreleased tracks along with a fifth disc of ultra rare recordings with a fifteen minute interview with Williams, George Lucas, and the man, Steven Spielberg reminiscing about the creation of the films and the musical motifs throughout each movie.  Extremely cool.  Now I will post a poll that I know most people who frequent this blog can answer and you must choose, but choose wisely. [poll id=”5″]

So you don’t know what to ask your wealthy friends and family members for for Christmas.  Well, how about Indiana Jones’s whip or fedora from Temple of Doom?  Or how about that light saber used by Mark Hamill in the original Star Wars movie?  Now you know why I said wealthy friends and family, because no ordinary person is going to be able to afford these things, but if you are one of those who can, the auction is December 11.  There are some things for ordinary mortals too (though still starting at $1000 for most), but don’t expect to get some of the more famous stuff including the above mentioned items for less than 100 grand, and no- the chocolate bar won’t work as payment. 😛

The place to find more information is Profiles in History and what to look for there is Hollywood Auction 33.  Besides the two films above by Mr. Lucas, you can find items from films like Harry Potter, Gremlins, Men in Black, Terminator, and many more.  What are you waiting for?  Go and check it out.  Be sure to get something to catch that drool first…  The first bunch of items are photos, but after those the good stuff starts.  I downloaded the catalog at 24 megs, but you can view the lots on the web too.  Indiana Jones starts at lot 368.  Star Wars at 346.

I have seen High School Musical 3, and I want to see it again! It’s like Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith all over again. Only, I think I was a little worse with Star Wars. I knew how many hours and minutes to Star Wars, and I wasn’t quite that bad with HSM 3. There were many surprises in this movie and I couldn’t stop laughing. Okay, of course there were some parts that you didn’t want to laugh, but I’m pretty sure you get the idea. It’s just a fun, relaxing, and entertaining show! There are some new characters, that I think they plan on using in the next High School Musical if they do a fourth one. I don’t think I’ll want to watch anymore if there are different people. It just wouldn’t be the same! I normally don’t watch sequels if there are different people playing main characters. As I sat in my seat at the movie theater, I didn’t feel as if it was as late as it was getting. You were absorbed in the show and you lost track of time. Troy and Gabriella have three duets in this movie, and you can really see that Zac and Vanessa (for anyone who doesn’t know, those are the actors) really love each other through the way they act. You can just see it in the way they are able to act with each other so well. It must have meant so much to them when they sang those songs, and were together. I have the CD now. As soon as the movie was over, we headed to Tony’s house, so I could get my money and he took me to Wal-Mart to get the CD. I can’t wait to be able to see it again! When is it coming out on DVD?!?!

Anybody else see a theme forming… And this topics color is black..

Has anyone seen some of the headlines about the new Super Collider? Bunch of doom and gloom coming from somewhere.

Things like “Fear Looms”, “Doomsday machine to start”, “Collider triggers end-of-world fears”, “Black Holes may devour the Earth”, “Will Collider destroy the Earth”, “Giant wild goat kills thousands”.. Ok, I made that last one up. I understand that this is cutting edge science that very few people understand, but does the media have to make the stories so out there. The chance of something like this happening is very small, almost non-existent. The only reason it isn’t non-existent is that nobody really “knows” what will happen when they finally get a collision. There are some very good ideas, but nobody “knows” yet. They haven’t done the experiment yet.

Tomorrow there is a chance that the collider will create mini-black holes that will swallow the Earth. Tomorrow the Sun could explode and fry the Earth. Tomorrow a big rock could hit the Earth and send us flying out of orbit. Tomorrow a space ship (that’s no moon, it’s a space station) could blow us to bits. Tomorrow the Sun could rise, and then set and the day will be normal. I have an idea of which of these things will happen, but I don’t “KNOW” which one will happen. I’ll check tomorrow just to be sure.

May the Force be with you when that space station decides to blow the Earth to bits. We aren’t even part of the Imperial Senate….

I know that it has been awhile since I have last written, but I have been busy. I have been trying to plan my wedding while go to school and work at the same time. I guess I could write how much school is driving me crazy, or something like that, but at the moment, I am going to write about my wedding.

Since the wedding is the ‘bride’s day’ I am sure that I should be planning most of this myself. Or at least, that is the tradition. There was no way I was going to plan this huge event all by myself, especially not when it will effect both of our lives. Nope, he is helping me with all the planning for this wedding and he is not even complaing. He really does not mind helping me and I am so glad for that.

At the moment we have the guest list finished for the most part. It might change every now and then, but for the most part it is finished. We also have the place where we are having our reception reserved for us. We really wanted to make sure we could get it reserved since we are getting married the same time so many people are graduating and having graduation parties. I know that it might seem like we have picked the wrong time to get married, but my younger sister is graduating next year, and we are trying to make things easier on one of my older sisters who lives in Florida.

I have picked out what dress I want. Unfortunately, it really does not exist, so my oldest sister is going to be making it for me. She had to spend hours upon hours to find a pattern really close to what I want. Tony and I had wanted to have some Star Wars in our wedding, but since we are having it our church, our Pastor said no. It wasn’t going to be the entire wedding party dressed as Jedi or anything. All we wanted was for me to wear Mara Jade’s outfit and Tony was going to wear Luke Skywalker’s black outfit. Oh, and of course Artoo Detoo as the ring bearer. Well, now instead of wearing the green outfit of Mara’s, I am wearing her wedding dress. Pastor does not know that my wedding dress is related to Star Wars in anyway and I am not going to tell him. Besides, what can he do? It is a wedding dress after all.

There are some other planning that we have finished all ready, and we have slowly begun to buy things that we are going to need for the wedding. I refuse to get stressed about planning for this wedding. My oldest sister was the one who paniced for her own wedding and then my other sister’s wedding, so I am just going to let her do the panicing and I will remain calm. At least, that is the plan.

Every so often I write something to try to get some of the lurkers, who read my blog, to stop and say hi. This is another of those posts.

I am a numbers person, so I am fascinated by the statistics that are generated for this blog. Some topics seem to bring more people. Books, Haunted houses, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Moon Landings are all big draws. Big of course is a relative term. This blog has been averaging about 15 readers per day. My maximum in 1 day (that I know of) was just over 80. The average this week was around 25. I realize that some of the ‘readers’ I am seeing are just robots or data mining sites, but when they find something that, in the programming, is found interesting, they leave blog replies. Some of the people who come to read just won’t do it.

I know a couple of the ‘shy’ people, and I don’t really expect replies from them (they know who they are). There are others that I think would be very interesting to hear from.

Things I would like to know about you. How did you find this blog? What do you want to read here? What country/state are you from? Do you come back often? Am I boring you? Just pop in to say hello. Again, until you are ‘vetted’ (good political term, no?) your replies will only be seen by me, or maybe the owner of the place, he once ‘hacked’ in for a April Fools joke… But he is a good friend of mine, almost like a long lost brother. So if you don’t want them to be seen, let me know in the response, and I’ll get rid of it. Me, I’m just curious…

Other things I want to know. Why is a site in Russia interested in my blogs on Superman Movies? Why isn’t the same site interested in Batman? Just wondering..

This is just stuff I was thinking about this Saturday morning…

Loaded with tags, just for fun? Just having a bit of fun, that’s what blogging is all about.

Saw the latest addition to the Star Wars Saga yesterday with my family. Interesting movie, but I’m not sure it did much to fill in the story for me.

As a stand alone movie, without any Star Wars background, I don’t think this movie would even be in the theaters. The animation and story line were direct to DVD quality, or maybe in line with some of the offerings on Cable. Not what I would consider for a theatrical release.

That being said, this was a Star Wars movie. And of course another story in the life of the Skywalker family. Supposedly the time line for this is sometime between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith (Star Wars II and III). In that I was hoping it would expand the story a bit. I was disappointed in that.

Good points, well the battle scenes (and there were a lot of them) were interesting to watch, and the interaction of various members of the Droid army were very funny. The voices behind Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and C3P0 (Anthony Daniels) were well done, especially since they were all in the other movies as the same characters. The other voice work was ok, but the main characters lacked some zing. Maybe this is my “the original 3 shows were better” mentality, but this show needed work.

Is it worth going to see? Cheap theater, cheap seats (two for one day, or bring your own bag day) sure, but if you’re not a Star Wars fan, save you’re money — wait for the rental.

Well the summer is winding down and the Big blockbuster movies are just about done. This week the Olympics are in full force. And we will be getting to the US political conventions very soon.

I can’t think of thing there that I want to put in my blog. I may review a movie or two, but I don’t see any coming out that warrant a review. I’m not at all sure about the animated Star Wars film. I think Star Wars is a but played out. I have a daughter who is really into Star Wars, so I’ll let her handle that review if she wants to.

The movies I’ve seen that may get a future review are few. I had fun in the 3rd Mummy movie, as long as I kept it in my head that it wasn’t the first two. There were some funny parts, but I don’t think of it as a continuation of the series.

Politics… Not in this blog thank you very much. The only political statement I’ll make is that we are subject to a campaign season that is way too long.

Olympics — Well Tiger Woods isn’t in it so it can’t be worth watching.. No wait that’s the PGA.. Anyway, no blogs on the Olympics either.

My favorite team looks to be done for the season, so I won’t be blogging about baseball much. There are some bigger fans of teams that are doing well, so I won’t have to.

NFL — Nah, don’t see it,unless it is the Bears game at C and L’s.. Great fun watching games there.

Maybe as the mosquitoes die off, I can get my telescopes out again. Way to many bugs in the evening to have much fun watching stars. When they can bite through the mosquito suit, there are too many of them.

Oh well, I’ll just watch for strange and unusual news, that may be enough to keep this going. And School is starting and my youngest will be in her High School’s show choir. That should be fun. I’m going to let my daughter blog about her own wedding plans, unless it affects me to a greater degree.

Maybe I will have things to write about. We will see, what we will see.

The newest Batman movie
The Dark Knight has been breaking all kinds of earning records. The powers of the movie industry do not think that Batman will break the current $ record held by Titanic, a movie I never saw by the way (the boat sinks), but it has a good chance of catching up to the Original Star Wars movie.

But I did some searching, and found out that adjusted for inflation, The Dark Knight is currently in 58th place. The #1 show is Gone with the Wind. #2 is Star Wars.

Just some cool things I found out at Box Office Mojo. If your interested in box office takes at all, this is one very interesting site. They had breakdowns on the days of the week, time of the year and movie ratings. I may spend a little more time there looking for trivial information. (That may help in some games!!)