Monthly Archives: October 2008

Boo Halloween

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Halloween is dumb.

I’m fairly certain that I didn’t like Halloween when I was a kid – I just saw it as an excuse to get sick off candy (I wonder why I’m worried about diabetes…hmmm).

I came by my loathe for Halloween honestly. I remember being maybe 13 when my mom first showed me how to detract trick-or-treaters (outside and inside lights off, hide in basement).

I don’t understand how this crazy ancient Celtic pagan holiday (Samhain – the festival of livestock slaughter, bonfires and masks that signified the end of the harvest season) became the entire month of October. There is a house in our neighborhood that has a whole graveyard, a couple of dementors on the edges of the driveway and zombies littering their yard. Some people put more effort into the “Halloween Season” than they do to taking care of their yard.

Now, I certainly don’t have kids and I might feel differently if I did (seeing my 14-month old niece dressed as a monkey…pretty cute), but since I don’t, I avoid Halloween at every turn. The last time I dressed up was about 7 years ago when both Alli and I put on afro wigs and horrible flannel shirts and went as “Bob Ross”.

Overall, I can’t put a big reason on why I don’t like Halloween…I just think it’s a waste of time and a contributor to early juvenile diabetes and obesity. I think we have a big enough problem with that as it is.

Flame away.

AMC’s Fork & Screen

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The Entrance Sign 

I’ve been looking forward to AMC opening the new Fork & Screen experience at the Olathe AMC ever since they closed down the entire East side of the building to do the renovations. The Fork & Screen is a unique movie-going experience…the first AMC theater of its type.

Through Twitter, I acquired an invitation for Alli and I to attend an exclusive blogger event organized by AMC’s Social Media master, Justin Gardner.

One Ring to Rule Them AllMost of the AMC Fork & Screen is built around “MacGuffins”, a term named by Alfred Hitchcock as “a plot device which advances the story.” There are famous examples of MacGuffins all around the Fork & Screen…the entryway has some of the most memorable (like the one at right).

The whole experience is fantastic. There is one less theater than there was before, but what they lost in seating, they gained in experience. We got to take a look at both the more upscale CinemaSuites and the standard Fork & Screen Theater. It’s important to note that to get access to the Fork & Screen, you must be over 21 or with a parent or guardian because the main attraction of the Fork & Screen is its fetching bar.

The Main Fork & Screen Bar 

In my CinemaSuites ReclinerAlli in her CinemaSuites ReclinerThe pricing is different for the two experiences. The CinemaSuites are $10 more per ticket, but you get a recliner and a more private movie viewing experience. Plus, you can reserve your seat and you also get a $5 voucher with each ticket toward your food purchases, which is enough to get you at least a free drink and get you well toward a full meal, since the prices are amazingly reasonable. Both experiences include seat-side service for food and drink and the menu is pretty decent. There were even options for my vegetarian wife.

After we’d had the full tour, we headed over to the standard Fork & Screen Theater to watch Guy Ritchie’s latest movie, RockNRolla. Despite a terrific cast, the movie was awful. Seriously…don’t see it. It sucked.

But the bad movie couldn’t ruin a great experience. Alli and I are really excited for this new movie-going experience and plan to get to it as much as possible. I foresee us spending the extra money for the CinemaSuites experience because I thought that it was worth the extra money for a little more comfort.

The Fork & Screen Standard TheaterBut, if you want the Fork & Screen experience…here’s the genius part. It doesn’t cost you a dime more for the standard Fork & Screen…you get access to seat-side service, better concessions and a fancy table for all your stuff. Just don’t forget your wallet (like I almost did tonight).

The Fork & Screen officially opens this Friday night. It will be pretty crazy the first weekend out, but I think it is worth the trip. It was one of the best movie-going experiences I’ve had (just a really sucky movie).

Elsewhere, be sure to check out Ramsey’s video blog of the Fork & Screen.

Disclaimer: I was not paid anything for this post besides the free screening of the movie and a few bites of some appetizers.

My Steel Cut Oatmeal

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Since I heard that I had high cholesterol, one of the things that Alli and I have been doing is having oatmeal on an almost daily basis for breakfast. It’s filling, tasty and supposedly good for my cholesterol count.

Since I’m so proud of the recipe and I think that everyone deserves a little oatmeal goodness, I thought I’d share it with you.

What you need:

  • 2 cups of water
  • 1/2 cup of steel cut oats (McCann’s are the best known and have the best packaging, but Bob’s Red Mill are cheaper)
  • 1 tablespoon of vanilla
  • 1 tablespoon of cinnamon
  • pinch of ground cloves
  • dash of nutmeg
  • 3 tablespoons of honey
  • 1/4 cup of brown sugar

Here’s how it works (recipe serves 2):

  1. Bring the water to a boil and add the oats.
  2. While it’s boiling, add the vanilla and the cinnamon. This allows the oats to get infused while the cook.
  3. Allow the oats to cook at a rolling boil until the contents start to thicken.
  4. Turn the burner down to low and cover for 30 minutes.
  5. Add honey, brown sugar, nutmeg and cloves.
  6. Stir and serve with almonds. If you want some extra awesome, put some strawberries or bananas on top.

It should look like this:

Steel Cut Oatmeal

And another thing about Herm

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His lack of a statement regarding the truth behind Larry’s situation is disgusting.

I was listening to Nick Wright from What’s Wright on 610 this evening and he really was laying into Larry and the whole front office for continuing to stand by a guy who has been anything but stand-up. This is now Johnson’s fourth altercation in which his opponent was a woman.

Where are all the men in these clubs? Why hasn’t someone stood up to Johnson’s mistreatment of women and knocked him out. It’s not like he’d be easy to knock down…just look at how he breaks tackles these days. You’d just have to tap him on his glass jaw and he’d fall over.

It’s time for the Chiefs organization to make a stand. Larry Johnson’s price tag doesn’t equal his production and it certainly isn’t worth the trouble. The season is lost anyway…we might as well reclaim some of our character in the process. Johnson should go. It’s an insult to the loyal female fans at Arrowhead that we continue to put up with his diva-like antics.

Why Herm Edwards should be fired

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Our defense was supposed to be better.

It’s worse. Lendale White and Chris Johnson are destroying the Chiefs’ defense today.

End of story. Herm cannot say he doesn’t have the horses on defense…he’s had his drafts. Our defense is as bad as it was during the Dick Vermeil era and at least during that period we could score points. I don’t know what Herm has to do to be fired, but if I were the owner, I’d never have hired the guy.

The $22 Million Walking Bridge

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Council Bluffs-Omaha Walking Bridge 

This weekend, we headed up to Council Bluffs to visit Alli’s family. On Saturday, I spent the morning with Tyson and Ashley taking engagement pictures, which took us on a tour of Council Bluffs to places I hadn’t seen before, including the bridge pictured above, The Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge.

The bridge opened at the end of September and was built by Kansas City’s own HNTB for about $22 million. I was wondering what cities in their right mind would pay for such a bridge when my father-in-law informed me that the reason it was named for Bob Kerrey was because he had acquired about $18 million of that “wasteful pork barrel spending” from the government to help pay for it.

The bridge spans over 3,000 feet of the Missouri River and is an impressive structure that connects Omaha to Council Bluffs. The lights were donated by the Gallup organization, who have a training facility at the end of the Omaha side.

I’d love to see cool stuff like this start showing up in Kansas City. Omaha is a little ahead of the game when it comes to the development of their downtown and if Kansas City doesn’t get its act together soon, they’ll soon be sorely losing out when it comes to big events (case in point – the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials were in the Qwest Center in Omaha earlier this year).

If you’re ever in the area, you should check it out.

On Poverty

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Today is officially Blog Action Day, one day every year that bloggers across the world take time to focus on a specific topic and bring awareness about it. This year, the selected issue is poverty, something that affects millions of individuals worldwide.

The ONE Campaign to end Global Poverty is an amazing organization that was started by Bono of U2. I’ve blogged about it before, but it is worth mentioning again. Since today is Blog Action Day, I encourage you to join an organization like ONE and help to shine a light on the issue of global poverty. You can check out the presidential candidates’ stances on global poverty at ONE Vote ’08 and compare them here.

I also encourage you to sign the petition to send a message to the next president to keep our global commitments to this cause. No matter how tough our economic times get, people continue to suffer abroad and it is important for us to be vigilant in our support for the eradication of global poverty and HIV/AIDS.

Lucky Dog

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Lucky Dog
by Mark Barrowcliffe
RATING: 7 out of 10 

I finally finished a book.

It’s been a long time since I finished a fun book. I’ve been reading a lot of church books lately and needed a break. Lucky Dog by Mark Barrowcliffe is a book I’ve had on my shelf for several months and one I’ve been looking forward to reading.

The book focuses on a British real estate agent named Dave Barker who happens upon a dog that starts to talk to him. At first glance, a talking dog seems like a bizarre way of telling a story. To be honest, there were times where the plot certainly unravelled a bit, but the one thing that was always right was Reg the Dog.

Reg provides great nuggets of wisdom throughout the book with an intelligent and witty, albeit decidedly dog-like countenance. Consider his stance on neckties:

“Every time you put it on you end up going somewhere you don’t want to. That’s what I call a leash.”

Lucky Dog suffers at the hands of its main character, unfortunately, who makes one bad decision after another. It is those bad decisions that ultimately put the book in a bad place for me – a place where Reg the Dog was absent for large stretches of the book.

Still, Lucky Dog is intriguing to someone like me because Barker fills his off-hours by playing poker. When the dog enters his life, he suddenly has a leg up on the competition, an animal instinct (if you will) for his opponents weaknesses, confidences, and nervous tics. Reg the Dog gives Dave access to almost subconscious tells he can sniff out.

Along the way, Dave manages to get himself involved in a variety of quandaries, from shady business dealings and fraud to girlfriend troubles and problems with some mobsters.

Barrowcliffe’s characters aren’t terribly interesting, save Reg the Dog, who made me wonder just what my own dog might say to me if he could talk. It’s sometimes fun to imagine. But the humans (or the ‘hellooos’ as Reg calls them) are just kind of droll.

Still, the story is fun. Despite having a talking dog as the main character, it’s a very grown-up story about figuring out what kind of person you want to be.