Guy Fieri and My Favorite TV Show

My cable television company provides a wide assortment of specialty channels.  There are channels for auto racing, tennis, golf, animals, and home and garden, just to scratch the surface.  There are also some channels that USED TO be specialty channels (MTV, History, The Learning Channel) but now just program useless garbage.  Usually I avoid specialty channels regardless of the garbage level.  And this usually also applies to another one, the Food Channel, because I generally detest shows on cooking.  You can have your Rachael Ray and Paula Deen...just keep 'em off my TV when I am in front of it, thank you.  And I really, deeply, detest those shows that pit cooks against each other in competitions or involve "experts" insulting the dishes of contestants.  But out of all the uselessness, there still stands one show on this channel that is so, so much fun to watch that it has become my current number one favorite show in all of television: Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.

In Diners, Drive-In, and Dives, chef-in-his-own-right Guy Fieri (or just "Guy", that'll do fine) travels the USA searching for local eateries that produce excellent food for its customers.  The show is set up to filter out the "losers" in advance: all we end up seeing are just the successes, with Guy amiably chumming up with different restaurant owner/cooks as they demonstrate how they prepare their more popular dishes.  Guy has an infectious personality, with an uncanny ability to hit it off well with just about every sort of character (some pretty offbeat) that one might encounter whipping up a delicious meal somewhere.  Part of each visit (usually to three different establishments per half-hour episode) involves filming how the food is prepared, usually from scratch, back in the kitchen. The other part involves going to the dining area and showing how the food is presented to the tables, with Guy eliciting the "customary" fawning approval of customers.  I love the positive vibes of this show, something you sometimes want when flicking on the boob tube after a hard, grueling day at the office.  ...And also, I used to be one of those cooks back in a restaurant kitchen (for eight years, actually), prepping ingredients, mixing them, cooking them up, and setting them out for the server to present in the dining area. 

If you want a respite from a lot of the negative crap polluting our television programming, then take a break and watch Guy do his magic.  I dare you to watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and not smile! 

Reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

I am in the middle of reading David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas. And by that I mean I'm right smack in the middle of it, exactly halfway through.  You may have read this book, but most likely you've heard of it through last year's movie version.  When I saw the preview ads on television, I was instantly interested and wanted to see it upon its release.  However, I then read a couple of reviews that were a bit critical of the film.  The impression they gave me was that it would behoove me to first read the book in order to be able to properly follow and understand the movie.  So I skipped the cinematic run of Cloud Atlas and opted instead to obtain the book.  Good decision.

Already in the first 250 pages of this novel is enough material that I think would necessitate more than one movie...preferably three...to adequately give expression to the story's flow and character development.  I still, at this point, have no clue as to how the author will conclude what amounts to several nested, unfinished short tales that jump from the past through the present and then on to a speculative science fiction future.  There are subtle connections that tie the seemingly unrelated stories together, not to mention at least one character in each of them.  Each of them is written in a completely different writing style as well, which at first was cumbersome to plod through but which now I find to be delightful.

Except for the movie trailer and those two reviews, I went into reading Cloud Atlas cold, with no background knowledge of its author.  I'm sure David Mitchell is known in contemporary literary circles for this and other works, but when I tried to check out a copy of Cloud Atlas from my local public library (which serves the University of Florida community here in Alachua County), I discovered that they had no copies, but were in the process of ordering some in response to the high demand generated by the movie.  Well, finally I got to check out a copy...then began reading.  After reading a little of it, I then returned the book to the library and went down to a local bookstore and purchased a copy for my very own.

Cloud Atlas is a slow read, quite unlike books like the Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia series that I raced through.  I intend to write a more adequate review for it after I'm finished, but I will at this point say that I've already easily gotten my money's worth from this intriguing work. 

And yes, I plan to eventually watch that movie!

My Apathy with Sequester Issue

The news is focusing on the "sequester" possibility with our federal spending, when automatic drastic cuts with take place  across the board if an agreement cannot be reach by the rapidly approaching deadline between the President and Congress.  I know that this is something about which I should probably have a strong opinion to express on this blog, but instead all I can feel in this regard is a kind of numbed apathy.  Still, my instincts and discernment of the situation lead me to side with President Obama and the Democratic-led Senate against the Republican "controlled" House of Representatives.  I say "controlled" because this body seems out of control to me, with House Speaker John Boehner utterly incapable of convincing his own caucus to back any deal that he might reach with Obama.  Then the dude gets on TV and instead insults the President and the Democrats, as if that will accomplish anything constructive!  Personally, I think he should just resign from his leadership post since he has shown nothing resembling leadership.  Let another conservative get in there to try to work something out. Somebody who can actually behave like a leader instead of a whining crybaby!

No, I'm not even keeping up with how many days are left before the cuts kick in automatically.  But whatever happens, I'm sure that the two sides will put their own spins on it, complete with mutually contradicting alternative realities and "facts" with their eyes primarily focused on winning the next congressional election in 2014, not working together to solve the nation's problems.

Are you as sick of all this crap as I am?

Forget "Article of the Day" From Now On

Once I had this notion that my hordes of faithful readers out there would click onto my website each day to follow what I had written for that day.  The days of that notion are gone, regrettably, as I know now that folks are either into their little Facebook social networking feedback loops and completely miss this blog, or only access it via a search of their topic of interest.  In either case, taking the pains to put out a daily article makes no sense.  Therefore, from now on I'm publishing 'em when I write 'em...

This is why you're about to experience articles #2, #3, and #4 for this one date: I wrote all of them together, and in a very short time span (along with this one)...

Asssorted Thoughts

Just some random notes to keep up some semblance of continuity on this blog, which I'm still attached to.  Times have been busy for me of late, and all sorts of different things are going on in my personal life, most of which are for the better.  The family is doing fine as well. 

--I'm disappointed in this so-called "winter".  Right now, around 11:30 in the morning, the temperature is 80 degrees and expect to rise several more.  Ugh, I get enough of this the rest of the year here in northern Florida...why can 't I get a break from it for just a month or two?!

--The University of Florida men's basketball team this year is one of their all-time best.  Whether or not they can win the national championship, though, depends on how they can deal with pressure.  So far, though, each time they have surged in the national rankings, they quickly lost their next game.

--The Los Angeles Lakers are an enigma.  With all of their talent, at this writing they are still four games under .500.  The ultimate question the sports analysts are asking is whether Dwight Howard is finally getting into form and will play an important role in their success during the rest of the regular season.  He had a good game a couple of nights ago against Boston.  If the Lakers can play to that level the rest of the year, then they should be able to sneak into the playoffs.  And once they're able to accomplish that, who knows how far they will go...

--I am still running, with plans to enter a half-marathon race in Tavares, Florida, on March 3. 

--My workplace is undergoing draconian changes in employee assignments, reporting times, and days off.  Hopefully, my dear colleagues there will be able to adjust to the often very sudden demands put upon them with their altered schedules.  After all, we all have lives of our own, many of us with family members who depend on us to be there for them according to our availability.  A little more advance warning from the party making these changes would have been sheer, common courtesy.  But here we are and this is what we have to deal with...  

Re: Recent Sparcity of Blog Articles

In case you haven't noticed it (how couldn't you), this blog's entries have tended to be rather sparse in the past few days, even months.  I used to put out daily articles, but a combination of factors has slowed down my writing rate.  One is that my daily schedule is more full of other things, and any time I have left over to write often slips by or finds me too tired.  Another factor is that I have come to my wit's end with the nonsense I see going on in the news, particularly in the realm of politics.  I see a handful of folks on TV like the brilliant Rachel Maddow tackle and refute a lot of the worst head-on, but there is so much b.s. going on that I feel overcome should I  pay too much attention to it.  Of course, there are other things I can write about, but even with those I seem to have lost a crucial degree of interest in sharing my thoughts with others on the Web.  I don't know whether this will be permanent or is just short-term.  But that's how it is, anyway...

March Half-Marathon in the Works

It is looking more and more like I will be running in that Sunday, March 3 Orange Blossom Half-Marathon in Tavares/Mount Dora.  It also looks as if Melissa will be accompanying me; she plans to walk the 5K event when I run mine.  I just got that Satuday off so, we can make a weekend out of it! And that has special meaning because she grew up in that area in Lake County, while I myself lived there for a few months back in 1987.

Meanwhile, much further south where I grew up, half-marathons abound year-round.  There are two events held regularly, both in northern Dade County.  One is just east of North Miami Beach and the other is in Hialeah.  Both are trail runs, too.  It might be fun to try one or both of them out on future visits.  But the only reason I still have to visit there is to attend to my 86-year-old father.  Maybe I can schedule a trip there around when they're holding a half-marathon. But I don't think I'll be running anything long in south Florida during the hot and humid summer months: I had a bad experience down there a couple of years ago when I was almost overcome by the heat and humidity, and on a relatively short four-mile jog at that. 

Attractive [Personality] Models, Part II

Back a couple of years, I ran across a book written by ultra-marathon distance runner Dean Karnazes about his passion for this sport, aptly titled Ultramarathon Runner.  The book is more or less a rough autobiography of "Karno", as he is popularly known, as it relates to his running.  One thing that stood out in this account was this individual's very strong sense of purpose and determination when it came to identifying his goals and then acting upon them, regardless what anyone around him said about their attainability.  His philosophy mirrored that of one of his early running coaches: go all out from the very beginning until the finish, and if you have anything left at the end...then you didn't try hard enough!  Well, I think in order to live my life in this matter, I would need heaping amounts of both courage and faith in my eventual success in the face of the inevitable pain, exhaustion, and discouragement that heady, even sometimes outrageously ambitious undertakings can  elicit.  But I think that it has been these very factors, which would filter out most of us, that has motivated Karnazes in his efforts.  For he believes that his courage and the triumph of his doggedness WILL achieve success.  Period.  Karnazes hasn't just done this with his running exploits: he has also overachieved both in college, as a corporate executive, and as an independent entrepreneur. 

Do I personally know others like Karno? Not exactly: I know many people whose determination to achieve a difficult goal has been inspirational, but I couldn't really say that it was a defining characteristic of their personality.  And perhaps this, realistically, is where I would want to emulate someone like Mr. Karnazes...by identifying some specific areas in my life that I strongly desire to achieve greatness in and then pouring on the effort to go full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes!   

Attractive [Personality] Models, Part I

There is a type of personality that I envy; not that I actually would want to exchange identities with those who possess it.  For the most part, I tend to be reserved, passive, and not a wee bit suspicious concerning my interactions with others.  For anyone who knows anything about my upbringing as a child, this should not come as a surprise.  After all, we grow up emulating those around us the most and tend to adopt their demeanor and outlook, including how we see and react to other people.  But from time to time in my life, I have run across others who approach their social dealings in an entirely different manner, cultivating each individual relationship in conversation with the theme almost always being getting to know the other and their experiences and views.  You might think that this personality type exhibits some degree of maturity, but I encountered more of them in my early, pre-adolescent childhood among some of my age-group peers.  Then, going through puberty seemed to change a lot of them into reserved, hypercompetitive types with whom an interaction was seen as a contest, if not a threat to them.  But even in high school, I would occasionally (not often, though) run across a refreshing, friendly soul whose attitude was positive and interested.  The most striking occurrence with this was back in my tenth grade chemistry class when, out of the blue, a kid a year older than me, Steve, introduced himself and instituted a friendship.  He displayed a mixture of that childlike (not childish) enthusiasm and friendliness... plus something I would later abruptly recognize on PBS Playhouse's version of a forties' hit movie...

In the early 1980's, I had pretty much isolated myself from the world at large, living alone like a hermit except when the need arose to go to work (where I pretty much kept to myself as well, with some notable exceptions).  One exquisitely solitary evening at home, I had my tiny b/w television tuned in to the local Public Broadcasting channel when "their" new version of the old cinematic classic You Can't Take It With You came on.  The starring role in this one (more so than in the original 1938 movie) was the oddball family's "Grandpa" Martin Vanderhof, perfectly played by Jason Robards.  This character captivated me by his interest in others and his relaxed demeanor about life in general.  Robards stole the movie with his portrayal and made this 1984 version of an already popular story something that all good pieces of art, music, and literature do: it began to effect a change within me, in this case with me looking more outward than inward. 

I don't possess Martin's personality...at least most of the time I don't.  But I do often find myself engaging others in the very same type of banter that he did in that unforgettable show I saw nearly thirty years ago.  But get this: this character, by his own admission, had undergone a transformational change himself and had made a decision to value things that were more important.  His choice was to abandon the pursuit of a high-stress career, leaving the rat race to others.  My change may not manifest in the exact same way as his, but we just might end up in the same place, anyway.  I hope so, at least: he seemed to be one happy dude!

Some Half-Marathons in My Area

After successfully completing the Ocala Half-Marathon on January 20, I began to look ahead on the calendar for more upcoming races of this distance taking place in my general area.  Since I work on Saturdays and am off on Sundays, I focused on the races offered on Sunday and ignored the rest.  One race stuck out: the Tallahassee Half-Marathon, held on February 3.  I had only been in my home state's capital city once in my life, in 1994, and I was only then driving through it on my way to Texas.  A visit and a run...yes, that sounded appealing, at least at the beginning...

I was hoping that the Tallahassee Half-Marathon's course would wind through the various interesting sites of this important city, including Florida State University, Florida A&M, and the downtown area which features various state government buildings such as the state capitol.  Instead, though, when I visited the event's website, I discovered that, although the race did begin and end at FSU, it quickly turned down a "rails-to-trails" path that ran out of the city: a "there-and-back" course, avoiding the more interesting sites I wanted to experience as a runner/tourist.  That's a shame, because I already have a race like that in Gainesville: the Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon, held in the late autumn on another converted railway-to-pathway (leading away from Gainesville...and then back).  It's fun to run in (I've done it twice so far), but I like the more tourist-friendly Five-Points event held in February, and which goes through the heart of Gainesville as well as the University of Florida.  Alas, though, I'm committed to something else (more important) this year when this race happens on February 17...

Well, my disappointment at the Tallahassee race course turned out to be a moot point as I had developed an annoying, nagging cough due to a cold combined with allergies.  I didn't feel up to running that distance anyway, so passing up on that race wasn't such a bad deal.  Besides...

On March 3, in Tavares, Florida, there will be a half-marathon race that goes by some pretty lakeside scenery.  It's on a Sunday morning, too.  In 1987, I lived for about seven months down there in Lake County, a few miles west of Tavares in Leesburg (in the general vicinity of Orlando).  It's not a very long drive there and back, and the race looks very interesting.  So if things keep looking positive and I keep up my health, then maybe I'll try this one more half-marathon before the temperatures here in Florida begin to heat up in the springtime. 

There is one additional point I'd like to make about the way some of these races are organized, one that has made me scratch some of them off my list of possibilities. The race packet pick-up is often mandated the day before in the race's city, which means that, unless I already live near or relatively close by, I would have to make an overnight commitment to stay at a hotel (I think that's their cynical idea behind this policy) or make two long trips.  To the credit of the Tallahassee and Tavares organizers, neither of them made packet pickup a requirement the day before the race, giving runners the option of picking them up on raceday morning before the start.  Others are rigid with this pack pickup policy: if the race is farther from my home than Ocala (about 40 miles distant), these folks can just forget about my participation.  So another race taking place near Live Oak next month that could have been fun to run in won't see me anywhere near there since they have this ridiculous "day-before" mandated packet pickup policy...

My General Political Stances

It's been quite a while since I've written about politics.  So let me recap my general views on things in that area.  I tend to support more liberal positions on the issues, so that usually lands me squarely in the Democratic camp as opposed to the Republicans.  I like health insurance reform, but I think the recently enacted Affordable Care Act didn't go far enough and should have been tax-supported instead of having an enormous competitive disadvantage placed on the backs of American businesses, which really don't have a logical connection with health insurance benefits other than that, in the beginning, some companies offered them as a lure to employees and the practice gradually expanded.  I support immigration reform, which is needed for different reasons, not the least of which being that we don't need a subclass walking our supposedly free streets too afraid to seek police protection from the real criminals out there.  I support firearms regulation and actually do something the so-called conservatives usually insist upon (but don't when discussing gun control): I read the United States Constitution, specifically its Second Amendment, in the context of the late eighteenth century when it was written and when the fledgling nation had no standing peacetime army.  It depended upon its citizenry, along with their ready arms, to be quickly available in response to a military necessity.  Now that we have the world's most powerful standing armed forces, that need is unnecessary and the amendment is outmoded.  I believe that deficits and the national debt should not be interpreted in terms of raw dollar amounts, but rather in relation to the amount of gross domestic product...and that the tax breaks given to the wealthy in essence amount to the rich being the biggest "takers" of government entitlements.  I believe that patience and diplomacy should accompany our use of military and that the sheer presence of our forces in an troubled region can sometimes be an effective deterrent to threats against us, without necessarily instituting open conflict.  There are other issues, some of which you may fault me for omitting... but what I'm done here is cover some of the more pressing, headline-grabbing issues affecting us now...