Today, Jason and I will finally start fullfilling our goal of seeing all 14 movies at the dollar fifty movie theater in one week. We're taking off Monday, so we have 6 days to do it. Our original goal was to only have already seen no more than two of the movies between the two of us, and this week meets that criteria (I've seen 300 and Bridge to Terabithia and Jason has seen 300). That goal was really hard to accomplish since we go to the movies so often. But we've been trying to do it for over a year now, so we're pretty excited. For any one who cares at all, our jam packed movie schedule is as follows:

Friday
4:30 - Shooter (2 hrs 06 mins)
7:45 - Bridge to Terabithia (1 hr 36 mins)
10:00 - Wild Hogs (1 hr 39 mins)

Saturday
1:00 - 300 (1 hr 57 mins)
3:35 - The Ex (1 hr 30 mins)
5:35 - Premonition (1 hr 36 mins)
9:40 - 28 Weeks Later (1 hr 40 mins)

Sunday
1:00 - Are We Done Yet? (1 hr 32 mins)
3:15 - Blades of Glory (1 hr 33 mins)
5:30 - Next (1 hr 36 mins)

Monday
(No movie on Monday)

Tuesday
7:15 - Lucky You (2 hrs 4 mins)
9:30 - Vacancy (1 hr 25 mins)

Wednesday
4:15 - Perfect Stranger (1 hr 49 mins)

Thursday
9:55 - Fracture (1 hr 54 mins)

Facebook open up their Facebook Platform a few weeks ago, and I finally got a chance to mess around with it a little bit the other day.
I decided to go for simple and port my Baby Puncher site to a Facebook application. I threw it up there and got it working and then, after I got 5 people to add it to their applications, I tried to submit it to their public directory.

A few hours later I received an email from Facebook that said:

Hi Garrison,

Thanks for your submission of "Baby Puncher" to the Facebook Platform's Product Directory. We have reviewed your application, and unfortunately cannot yet add it to the directory because it contains offensive material. Please fix this problem and resubmit the application.

Thanks!

The Facebook Platform Team

I fail to see how punching a baby is offensive…it doesn't cry or bleed or anything. It just bounces around. There is a Facebook app called SuperPoke that replaces the poking feature of Facebook that lets you bitch-slap, lick, grope, and spank your friends. That seems just as offensive as punching babies to me.

In light of this, I'm officially starting a grassroots effort to get as many users of the Baby Puncher Facebook application as possible. Facebook shouldn't be allowed to decide what's offensive and what's awesome.

Click here to show your support and add it to your Facebook Applications now!

I bought a box of Trix the other day and on the front they advertised their “new” shape! The new shape…spherical. They used to be fruit shaped. But not always. I’m old enough to remember the original Trix shape. Bet you can’t guess what it was? That’s right, they were originally spherical. New shape my butt. Don’t try to fool me General Mills, cause once I get fooled…I can’t get fooled again.

Sorry this is way late. I started packing to move as soon as we got back and neglected to finish this post. But here it is!

Sunday - Wednesday, May 20- 23, 2007

Click here to see Set 9 of our Road Trip 2007 photo gallery.

The last few days we basically just drove straight through from Oklahoma City to home with a stop in Memphis, where we went to the zoo, and a stop in Clarksville, TN to visit my aunt.

We're back from the road trip now, and I think it was very successful and entertaining. Zero tickets once again…heh.

I did have some thoughts on the whole road trip thing now that I've done two of them.

"And this was really the way that my whole road experience began, and
the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell."

I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but it's not 1950 any more. The days of the locally owned road-side diner have almost disappeared; it's all McDonald's and Burger King's anymore. With most places feeling like most other places it's sometimes hard to get that sense of distance that comes with visiting a new town far away from home. I guess having all the conveniences of home (minus Bojangle's and Chik-fil-a :-p ) makes most places seem pretty familiar. All the amenities of home can be found just about anywhere now-a-days. That makes it tough to find those tiny, out of the way towns where there's still a slower pace to life. You can find them, don't get me wrong. It's just not as simple as it used to be.

Whenever I travel somewhere new I usually have this desire to want to have some type of Kerouacian experience from the trip. Finding that kind of meaning isn't exactly easy either. Maybe you need to take a few months to travel around the country so you can really take in all that you get to see. Going 6000 miles in 11 days and seeing all the things we saw really causes a sensory overload that makes it difficult to retain everything.

I do love these trips though. You get an opportunity to see a little bit of a whole lot and get a feel for where you'd like to spend more time. I was also thinking along the way, around day six or so, about how we had seen more things in the past six days than a lot of people get to see their entire lives. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we feel lucky to have had the chance to drive around almost the entire country now. Twice for Joel and I.  I also only have 12 more states left to visit and I'll have visited all 50!

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Click here to see Set 8 of our Road Trip 2007 photo gallery.

Today was going to be mainly a driving day…or so we thought. The basic plan was to just drive from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City, OK, but we managed to see and do some cool stuff along the way. We’re just that awesome.

We went to eat breakfast at El Charritos, a traditional New Mexican restaurant, on the recommendation of the always right 100% of the time Internet. It was also right this time, so it gets to maintain its record. We picked it because it was recommended and they have a mariachi band every Sunday from 10 until 2. If you’re ever in the area, check it out. It’s right near Historic Old Town. The food was delicious and certainly a different experience as none of us had ever really had that kind of food for breakfast.

After breakfast we walked around Albuquerque’s Historic Old Town for a little while. It’s essentially a bunch of little shops and restaurants. There’re a lot of handmade crafts and art and stuff. We picked up a few souvenirs and an awesome “silly hat” picture you can check out in the photo gallery when it's up. If you’ve seen the rejected video, then you'll understand. If you haven’t seen that video, then I’ve nothing to say to you because you should’ve seen that.

We arrived in Oklahoma City a little before midnight, which turned out to be a good time to arrive at the memorial for the victims, survivors, and rescuers of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Being late, we could not visit the museum but were able to see the lights. Each of the chairs representing the victims has a light making a memorable sight. Hopefully some of the pictures we took can convey the serenity and hope that the memorial is meant to inspire. Also located at the site is a 90-year old American Elm that survived the blast and part of the wall from the building.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Click here to see Set 7 of our Road Trip 2007 photo gallery.

Apparently the pace of living in southern Utah is retardedly slow. We went to McDonald’s for breakfast this morning and it took more than 15 minutes to get our food. I don’t have the patience for that. I expect to spend more time eating my McDonald’s than I do waiting for it.

On the way towards our next destination, Albuquerque, NM, we had two stops we wanted to make in the Indian (feather not dot) reservation. Both are Navajo Tribal Parks: Monument Valley and Four Corners Monument.

They charge less than the national parks – five or three dollars per person versus 25 dollars per car. But I guess because the Indian (feather not dot) parks were smaller and less polished than the national parks, Daniel failed to see the justification for charging any money at all. The whole, “you can do what you want with private land” thing didn’t seem to assuage his dissatisfaction.

Monument Valley is pretty cool. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures and video of it in feature length films such as Back to the Future Part III, and in Ford commercials. It’s the expanse of flat desert that has these gargantuan rock formations shooting up out of the landscape. It’s pretty impressive to see. I’d really like to stand on the top of one of them like they did in The Amazing Race. But alas, such privilege is reserved for huge television networks and Robert Zemeckis.

Four corners was fun, if not all that exciting. Basically it’s an opportunity for people to take pictures of their crappy kids sprawled across four states and for the locals to try and sell “Traditional Navajo Tacos.” We grabbed our photos in between a pack of Germans and an strung out mother trying to coral four or five rowdy midgets together while her husband talked to an associate on his Bluetooth headset about how relaxing his vacation was so far. “I’m in Arizona, I mean Utah, but now Colorado. Hah, I’m just at Four Corners…” Putz.

Mexican Hat, Utah – population: You.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Click here to see Set 6 of our Road Trip 2007 photo gallery.

We checked out of the MGM Grand this morning and headed towards Utah.  We decided to just go to Zion National Park and forego Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks to save some time since we stayed the extra day in Las Vegas.

Utah’s landscape is straight out of The Hills Have Eyes…except with Mormons instead of crazy-go-nuts murderous cannibalistic inbred hicks.

We went on a few hikes throughout Zion.  It’s a place you could spend week hiking around and still not see everything.  Unfortunately it was the dryer season so the waterfalls and things were not quite as impressive as they are normally during early spring after the snow in the mountains melts.

Joel’s inability to interpret the words on warning signs came to the forefront again when he decided to venture out on another ledge above the bottom of the waterfalls.  In Joel’s defense, it probably wasn’t as dangerously life threatening as the sign implied, due to the decreased volume of water on the river.  Either way, it was met with the disapproval of the couple sitting on the rocks at the back of the pool of water.  We asked if they would be so kind as to take a picture of our group.  She obliged, but only if we would repeat after her, “boys are silly.”  I (Garrison) was like, “I’m not gonna say that, cause I already did my stupid thing yesterday at the Grand Canyon.  You’ll need to talk to him about that,” pointing at Joel.

It was our luck though that we got to see several of Hank’s cousins, Brigham and Young, at the park.

Daniel was about to get this great picture of Brigham standing in a field when this dumb-faced kid decided he’d go talk to the deer in it’s face.  He ran whole-heartedly towards Brigham screaming “hey deer hey deer hey deer!”  Brigham snapped his head up in shock, and was like, “oh crap,” then bolted like Bambi when his mom got shot.  After the kid fell and skinned his knee or something, he went away and Brigham was kind enough to strike a couple of poses for Daniel to get some good pictures.

Dan Dan the wonderful driving man was keister-fanny anal about leaving the windows open on the bus.  That was apparently his arch nemesis.  Worst arch nemesis ever…

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Click here to see Set 5 of our Road Trip 2007 photo gallery.

It was a good thing we decided to stay an extra day in Las Vegas so Joel could have an opportunity to see some of it.  He was still sick through most of the afternoon so he didn’t get to go to the Stratosphere with us to ride the rides at the top of the tower.

They used to have a roller coaster at the top of the Stratosphere, but they’ve discontinued it because it was more of a kid’s ride than anything.  So they’ve replaced it with the X-Scream, and the Insanity.  The Big Shot is still there.  The first two rides basically hang you over the edge of the 1000 foot tower and do things like tilt you down toward the ground and spin you around or drop a car over the edge on this sliding track and stop you when you think it’s about to keep going.  The Big Shot is your standard shoot you way up in the air pneumatic ride, but the kicker is that you’re on top of a freakin’ building.  So when Daniel, Garrison, and I (Amy) got onto the X-Scream we boarded while the ride operator joked about our last moments and that if we weren’t scared we should be.  I like how the ride operators say things like “good luck” as if to imply you have some control over the outcome of the ride.  Personally I wasn’t all impressed by the ride, probably because I couldn’t see anything but the back of the seat in front of me.  However, the best part of this ride by far was the guy in the front seat cowering into his neighbor’s shoulder emitting the highest pitched squeals I’ve ever heard.  Until we got off the ride and I saw his face I swear I thought it was a girl.

After we rode the rides, we went to try and see the White Tiger at The Mirage, but he was bein’ all asleep so he didn’t do anything interesting.

Joel called and said he was feeling better and wanted to eat supper with us.  Wolfgang Puck has a restaurant in the MGM Grand, so we decided to give it a shot.  You can see some of the food we had in the photo album there.  Amy had a pork tenderloin thing and I (Garrison) had some shrimp with Parmesan cheese risotto.  Joel got a flat iron steak (not pictured) and Daniel went with a calzone.  It was delicious to say the least.

After supper we headed back down the strip to see the fountain show at the Bellagio and the pirate show at Treasure Island. Initially we had planned to see the 10 PM showing but it was cancelled due to gusts of wind excelling .346 mph. It was scary stuff; I totally understand why they cancelled…

The pirate show has apparently been overhauled recently as well.  We understand that it used to be two pirate ships fighting.  Now the same two ships still exist, but one of the ships is filled with the Sirens of Treasure Island (read hot chicks) and they seduce a sailor from the other ship and some fighting (read dancing) ensues.  I’m serious, even stepping was involved.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Click here to see Set 4 of our Road Trip 2007 photo gallery.

Yeah, this is late too…so we're slow…

At 3:30 this morning we got up to race the sun to the Grand Canyon. Getting a chance to see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon was one that we couldn’t pass up and consider a trip worth doing. After packing everything up it was 4 am, and we were about 90 minutes away from the canyon with a little over an hour to get there, go time baby. Parents, you may want to skip to the end, since we had to rush, Joel drove. On the way we started to see more and more large brown animals on the sides of the road. Garrison wondered, “I wonder if Elk are just active at dusk and dawn?” our resident elk representative quickly answered “Yes, but it’s not really a time thing, elk don’t really tell time that well.” I know that many of you have been debating this fact for years, a good friend of mine even died for his opinion on this matter, so thankfully this long argued conundrum has been put to rest. Seriously though, if they can tell time they are also psychic because I’m pretty sure every single elk in the western US was there to watch us speed our way to the canyon. Surprisingly, only one decided to try and throw a spike in our trip by standing in our way, and it was only loitered for a little while but avoiding another splat scenario required hard enough braking to elicit a pretty sissy like gasp from Garrison.

Once at the actual canyon we were all gasping, it was quite a sight. The way the rising sun cast shadows on the different rock faces created a very poignant sense of depth that made me (J) feel pretty damn small, as evidenced by the photos of me and Garrison on the small plateau. This was at Yaki point – the second area we visited after getting some breakfast at an obscenely over-priced McDonald’s just outside the park. Why we didn’t just kung-fu chop the manager in the neck I’ll never know, instead we simply paid our eight dollars and begrudgingly ate our McBreakfast.  I’m hoping my huevos will finally drop some time in the next year.

Anyways, back to Yaki; we saw this little out cropping roughly 100 feet bellow our walled off tourist area, and I thought it would be pretty damn sweet to get down there for a picture.  The first few routes I scoped out were a little scary looking – sheer cliff faces and pathways right next to 300-foot drops. These were not conditions that were conducive to an out of shape tourist, wearing a loose pair of Birkenstock clogs, getting to where he needed to go. Luckily for me, Big D found a fairly easy looking pathway down that didn’t look to be anything but steep, I could handle steep, as long as I can sit on my ass I can get anywhere.  Off I went with Amy and Daniel still at the top joking about how this would be the last time they ever saw me.  Despite their lack of faith, I made the trip with relative ease.  I didn’t even rip my shorts; Mom you’d be proud. After enjoying the view afforded by my borderline lunacy I was faced by a small problem.  Looking back toward the top of the edge it was soon apparent that no one had bothered to track my progress downward.  So after making the trek I had no one to get photo evidence, go figure.  Well after waving at a handful of strangers I was finally able to get the attention of my “friends” who had caught the faint sounds of my hailing someone with a damn camera, thought I was hanging on for my life, and came running.  I tell you folks – friends are beautiful things.  After seeing my guinea pig butt safely on the landing, Garrison thought, “Hell, he’s wearing sandals, this should be easy!” It was nice to have some company I’ll admit.  Garrison also noted that being so close to a demise that is visually very easy to imagine is a bit nerve-racking.  After we convinced Amy to come wave (apparently she didn’t like seeing Garrison in danger) we headed back up and came closer to dying from being fat piggies than falling.  Oh, and the rest of the canyon was effing sweet.

2,436 miles in to the trip and we’ve finally reached Las Vegas.  Thanks to Hotwire, we managed to secure rooms at the MGM Grand hotel and casino.  I’m nearly certain that the lady checking us in considered Joel and I (big D) to be a gay couple, judging by the shocked expression on her face when we told her we wanted two queen beds rather than one king.  “Amazing” is the only word I can think of to describe this city within a city.  We were there for most of the day before leaving the hotel just because there was so much to see and do.  After much deliberation we decided to scratch a couple of national parks from the trip and spend an extra day in Sin city.

Due to age restrictions, I (Big D) was forced to only sit back and watch the gambling.  Apparently picking a slot machine in Vegas is tricky business, not only because you want to pick the “winning machine,” but you also don’t want to take someone else’s spot.  J, who was eager to try his hand at a Lucky 7 slot machine, began to sit down when a woman came barreling forward in a manner only the overly obese get away with.  As J was just ready to sit down the woman belted, “That’s where I sit!”  Astonished, J slowly rose and began withdrawing himself from her gravitational pull.  I guess the moral of the story would have to be, “check the gambling perimeter for low flying aircraft before blocking the runway.”   I’d have to say first prize gambling would have to go to Amy, for she was the first to strike gold; however, not knowing when to quit, she was unable to break even, as goes for Papa G and J.  So maybe I’m the real winner here!

For dinner the first night we went to the Grand Buffet.  It was really good if you ignore the lamb.  Joel tried it and subsequently got sick and was unable to attend the Jeremy Hotz standup at Harrah’s with us.

…Porgy

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Click here to see Set 3 of our Road Trip 2007 photo gallery.

Sorry this is a bit late.  We had issues finding internet access the last couple days. 

We were pretty excited to do New Mexico today.  I’ve (Garrison) been talking about wanting to see Carlsbad Caverns and Roswell for like 12 years now, so it’s about time I actually made it, heh.

We finally timed something well – Carlsbad Caverns were free of charge today!  The caverns are super huge – definitely the biggest ones any of us had ever been in.  We did the self-guided two-mile tour, at the beginning of which we were given the “touch nothing” spiel. This one was actually pretty unique, however, due to Ranger Dan’s sacrificial stalagmite.  At the top of this stalagmite there were two soft mounds, so naturally Joel gave them a little feel. It was too quick to grab photo evidence, but Ranger Dan did see this uncouth molestation of his rock.  Instead of yelling or kicking us out however, he simply asked Mr. Cop A Feel if he would have done the same if said mounds were hanging from the bottom.  Needless to say Joel could think of little by way of a come back and simply stammered something that vaguely resembled a “no!”  Well played Ranger Dan, well played.

Unfortunately the low lighting did not facilitate the taking of 100% awesome pictures, so we didn’t post a lot of them that were too blurry or whatever.  We did get a couple pictures that are so fantastic you could put them on postcards, so it all evens out in the end.  Any pictures you may be able to capture don’t do the place justice though.  It’s most certainly a you-need-to-see-it-in-person kind of deal.

The biggest disappointment of the caverns was definitely the “Bottomless Pit”.  Turns out, it actually has a bottom…that’s only 140 feet down.  Our guess is that “Pit with Bottom” didn’t have the same effect.

After we left Carlsbad we headed towards Flagstaff via Roswell, New Mexico.  We didn’t see any aliens unfortunately, but we did visit the coolest antique shop ever.  Joel got some totally sweet signs and I (Garrison) found a King cornet in amazing shape for 86 dollars.  You couldn’t slash that price any lower, unless you used one of the Nazi Youth knives that were for sale in the cabinet on the back wall.

Also random was the truck from Rocky Mount, NC that we saw while eating.  Not quite as random as Daniel seeing someone he knows on the streets of New Orleans, but pretty close.

We went to see the Very Large Array (the giant radio telescopes you probably saw Jodie Foster use in Conact) after Roswell.  It was getting really close to bring dark so we had to hurry the last 49 miles.  Joel broke the old speed record of 110 by getting to 114, but only for a second.  We got some pretty decent pictures of the sunset with the telescopes in the background too, but we didn’t stay very long because it was really cold.

Holy crap!  We almost destroyed our car with Hank on the way to Arizona from The Very Large Array tonight.  For those of you who don’t know or may not be as familiar with Hank, he’s our deer friend from Badlands National Park who stood in the middle of the road and wouldn’t move.  Hank apparently also transformed into a huge elk since last year.  Luckily Joel has cat-like reflexes and avoided splattering the crap out of a giant elk.

Springerville, Arizona has a Razor Scooter gang.