A short history of the4th of July

2009
Cooper River Marshall Tucker Band and Foghat

2008

Party at our house, no fireworks. Kickball in the field.
2007
Ocean City
2006

Italy and Greece.
2005

Party at home, Cooper river for fireworks only.
2004
Cooper River Pat Benetar
2003
Cooper River Cheap Trick
2002
Williamsburg
2001
Cooper River - America
2000<
Marton - Craleys and Powells
1999
??
1998
Marlton

Faux Softee.

I still love getting the newspaper, especially on days when I have time to read instead of skim the articles.

Today's paper had this story about fake Mister Softee trucks roaming our neighborhoods. Apparently ruthless faux ice cream vendors are out there playing the famous Mister Softee jingle, having a fake Mr Conehead logo and worst of all selling imitation Mr Softee Ice Cream.

Who knew?

The article gives a dark glimpse into the world fake Ice Cream vending.

You have to love the quote:

"The children, they don't know the difference,"

Well they should. You know if it were Microsoft, they would spend all their time marking the ice cream as "genuine" and shaming people into buying only "real" Mr Softee Ice Cream. There would be no room for fakes out there.

or how about:

Franchisees notified headquarters and private investigators were dispatched.

What was this like? Teams of dark suited men with earpieces and sun glasses following ice cream trucks around the neighborhood in dark SUVs with tinted windows? Helicopters in the air? You can almost hear the banter on the radios: "Conehead approaching Elm, stay with him EagleEye", "I think I've been spotted", "Softserve, pick him up on Walnut".

Or undercover men working the fake trucks wearing a wire?

That sounds a little too expensive for an Ice Cream Co. It was more likely some rumpled old guy in a 10 year old Dodge Aries that had three different colored fenders or a better yet a windowless maxi-van.

Following an Ice Cream Truck.

With binoculars.

And a Notebook.

Hmm. It's a wonder he wasn't arrested as a pedophile. That would have been a little tough to explain and it's not exactly what you think of when you think "Private Investigator"

I also love how they found Mr Softee trucks parked in a junkyard in NY and went after them in court. You just know the Mob is involved somehow.

So, today on this "Christmas of the ice cream season", make sure you are getting real Mr Softee Ice Cream and not some cheap mob knock-off.

A sure sign of the recession

If Mount La-La had a center of town it would be the street where the post office, police station and library are. We broke off from another township in the 19th century and they got the "town" part. We got farms.

I guess that's why we don't have 4th of July and Memorial day parades. We have no where to host them.

However, this does not prevent us from showing our patriotism. The township usually plans small US flags along the drive between all the aforementioned civic buildings. Lots of little flags.

Well this year the recession must have hit the flag budget. There were still flags but it was sad sight to see so few of them spaced far apart. I must get a picture.

Like I have room to talk. I haven't even put up my US flag out front or the bunting.

It's been a quiet day so far. My wife is working a double and I spent the morning walking the dogs and doing lawn work.

Tomorrow we are planning to do the free Cooper River concert and fireworks thing with Foghat and The Marchall Tucker Band.

Surprise!

The best thing about summer is that when I come home, I never know what I might find the kids doing. Yesterday it was Michael Jackson, Ham and fruit kabobs and, of course, dyeing their friend Noam's hair blue.

Actually it was blond by time I got home. Well, redish blond with the edges his natural brown. Yes, when I came home my son was bleaching his friend's hair. That wasn't the best part. The best part was when my wife got involved. She was worried about getting blue dye everywhere along with bleach so she stepped in. She helped bleach and re-bleach his hair. Pictures here.

He dyed it blue because his parents wouldn't let him have it blond. It makes perfect sense of course when you are the parent and are saying it, it's only after wards that you are saying to yourself "did I just tell my son to dye his hair blue instead of blond?"

Youngest son is becoming obsessed with Michael Jackson. He's been listening to nothing but and studying dance moves. He's also started rolling his pants up. Michael Jackson was the only guy on the planet that could get a way with "flood' pants. I guess you have to have high pants when you are paying that much for socks.

For Youngest Son's generation it's like discovering Star Wars. As they were growing up Michael Jackson's star was diminishing. He only knew Michael Jackson the alleged pedophile not the guy from Thriller. He has been scouring the Internet for MJ stories and was telling me all about the 50 degree lean in Smooth Criminal and MJ's Patent.

He thought I was holding out on him when I had the album Bad and he didn't.

Oldest son is calling it "The Summer of Michael Jackson".

They were so proud of the kabobs they made too. They rolled up Virginia ham around pineapple and melon and grilled them. There was one left, it was good.

On Saturday we are doing the Cooper River free concert with Marshall Tucker and Foghat followed by the fireworks. It's great since it is the county next to us. I feel like we are getting away with something. It's always a good time. Pictures to follow of course.

ubiquitous

I'm listening to thunderstorms roll in and to Michael Jackson's Thriller. Not a CD. Not the iPod. Not from the High Def. Not from Pandora or the Computer.

It's the actual album.

Vinyl.

Oldest son has a portable turntable and a growing collection of vinyl but this record came from the crawlspace. It is mine. Or Hers. I'm not sure. Actually there are two in the musty crawlspace box so one is mine and one is hers. That is how you sell 65 Million records. Everybody buys two.

I was reading today that Michael worked out a deal with the record company were he got $2 on every copy of Thriller. That means I contributed $4 towards diapers for Bubbles , crazy statues or glitter socks.

Like I said. It was ubiquitous. Everyone had one. Or two. Everyone chipped in for amusement rides at Neverland.

The other fact that strikes me about the time when Thriller was big is screaming.

My first screaming memory was of my future wife and one of her friends in my Volkswagen bug/walkman.

The Bug/Walkman had a 50 Watt stereo and I had turned the back "cubbie hole" behind the rear seat into a woofer speaker cabinet. The stereo separation stunk but that thing cranked. There were also a pair of midrange speakers and a pair of tweeters in the doors. The receiver was so large a unit that it would not fit as a replacement radio so I put in the glove box and built a black pleather boot around it. I think the receiver had a separate front/rear stereo amp. It was huge.

Small Space, big speakers. It rocked. Like Myth-busters, break the glass, your ears will be ringing, rocked.

This might explain the ringing in my ears after the Bruce concert.

Anyway, Billie Jean came on the radio. Billie Jean was at the peak of it's popularity at the time and She turned it up to 11 screaming. Both of them screamed the whole song and yet could not overcome the 50 in-your-face watts.

The next scream fest was the Victory tour in September 84. We had a group place in Ventor, NJ for the summer and it was Labor Day weekend, the last hurrah. A group of 6 or 8 of us either drove up or waited in Philly for the Saturday night JFK show. I sat next to girlfriend, some day to be wife, who screamed like it was Beatles at the Ed Sullivan show for the entire show. More ringing in the ears.

The thunder has passed and the record stopped so my reminiscing has come to and end. I have to go pick up oldest son from his hiking trip.

One last thought:
How ubiquitous? Enough that Philippine prisoners eventually staged their own version.

Buffett 2009

It's been a busy couple of days.

Thursday was the Jimmy Buffett concert. I hadn't been in over twenty years and it hasn't changed much. Well maybe the 40 year old guys in grass skirts are now 60 year old guys in grass skirts. I put together a Goodwill/Pirate Hat found in car ensemble. I bought a $4 polyester Hawaiian shirt at the Goodwill which my in-house fashion consult strongly suggested I not wear the plaid shorts I had on with. The Pirate hat which drew the whole thing together was found in the car from picking Oldest Son up from college back in May.

The Pirate hat was a hit.

We sat on the lawn of course. Well I wouldn't say sat. We staked out a piece of real estate with a tarp and then stood in front of it for 3 hours.

A Jimmy Buffett show isn't about the music, that's for sure. He could be up there doing Irish step dancing or playing Mummers music and most of the folks around us wouldn't have noticed or cared. It's as if Buffett has built this annual party that people just show up at. He could have actually passed away sometime in 1997 and they could keep throwing these things.

The Lawn had a very high intoxicated person per square foot ratio. I'd guess almost one to one. Highlights included this guy:


5! 5 Dollar. 5 Dollar Foot Long

Who had a much better Pirate ensemble than I did. He would run through the crowd and pose like he is above and then run off. Very strange.

Then there was the young girl we adopted. She was like a lost little lamb out wandering the lawn looking for her group. She knew they were in "G5" which is good, it's a start. You can see the 5 above the Pirate's right hand above. She was close. She had no cell phone, no numbers, no idea where she was.

So we friended her on face book and took her picture.

Later we found out she found her group on the way out.

We got home around 11:30 and were in bed by 12 after checking on Oldest son who went to NY City for a concert with Girlfriend. He was in Penn Station taking the train back to Seton Hall and driving from there.

As tired as I was, I had hard time sleeping so I leaped from the bed when the phone rang at 1:30. I am now in every parents nightmare. The phone call in the middle of the night. The Caller ID showed his cell number.

He said he was alright but he had swiped the side of the car. Who cares about the car. It's 12 years old and on it's last legs. Are you OK? Is Girlfriend OK? yes and yes.

It turns out he was very fortunate. A truck came around to pass him and he thought it was too close so he swerved out the way and ended up just kissing the guardrail on the NJ Turnpike.

Now I really couldn't sleep.

I ended up staying up until he got home at 3.

When I woke at 6 and headed out for work, I had a back in college, "what the hell did I do to my car last night moment" when I came out. Then it all came back to me.

I opened the drivers door and it came 1/2 open as metal ground on metal and I squeezed in. It seems Oldest Son and I have different definition of "alright".

While I went to work for my 9 hour day, my wife did a double from 8 AM to Midnight. Tough going.

Today is the Medford Relay for Life and an another all nighter and Sunday is Father's day back in PA. It's going to a busy couple of days.

#IranElections

I've been watching the protests around the elections in Iran on twitter under the hash tag "#IranElections". I first started watching when the traditional media was reporting that twitter was being used by protesters to get the word out of Iran because it was a clandestine method for getting information of the country.


There were a lot of tweets but honestly, I had a hard time making sense out them. They were a lot of retweets, all by people outside Iran. People were simply repeating whatever they heard.

I changed my status to:

There were two guys in a boat, tweet and re-tweet, tweet jumps out. Who's left? Re-tweet. There were two guys in a boat....

I honestly thought this was crazy. How do you, sitting in Iowa, have any idea if the guy you are retweeting is really in Iran, really a protester or not just a crazy person?

You don't.

There were a lot of other crazy things going on too. People thought the Iranian authorities were isolation twitter users by location and time zone so everyone was setting their location and time zone to Tehran.

They were also changing their pictures to have a green tint and were encouraging major news outlets to change their web pages to use green as the primary color. Green was the color chosen by the protesters to identify themselves.

The BBC actually did. People are still trying to get google and yahoo to do it.

unfufu RT: @oli2be Ask Google to change Google logo for one day http://whereistheirvote.x10hosting.com/ #iranelection #google

I spent two days looking for something, only to realize I was looking at something.

The volume of people doing this is the real story. I'm not sure there is any real truth here but room of ranting maniacs repeating what ever they heard.

682 more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them.

Click here to see the insanity.

More CFL madness, Jimmy Buffett is coming.

I'm staring up at the lamp in the kitchen again. Feit electric came through with the two dimable CFL lamps about a week ago and so I put the one old one and the two new ones into the three bulb fixture.

Of course the new lamps didn't match the color temperature of the old one.

That is no longer a problem.

The old one died too. I should have seen this coming. Of course it was going to go, what ever was wrong with the first two was wrong with the last one as well. I should have just asked for three weeks ago.

So now it's back to phone on Monday to call for a new bulb.

I got a Friday night bike ride in before the deluge on Saturday. It's been a cool, rainy June. Not much pool activity but the hot tub has been jumping. I came home Friday to find youngest son and his friends in the tub. I didn't even know he knew how to use it but use it he did and even cut the valves over to keep the tub hot while filtering the pool.

JDV joined me for the ride. To get to the "connect the parks" ride you have to travel down a heavily congested two lane black road. Sometimes it has a shoulder and sometimes it does not. We actually got a horn honked at us on the "sometimes it does not" part. Not sure what the guy wanted us to do, ride on the grass?

After the ride we enjoyed the chilly pool. I've now been in twice.

I'm going to Jimmy Buffet on Thursday at the Camden River Front, formerly Sony-Blockbuster ECentre, formerly Tweeter, Susquehanna Bank Center. I haven't been to a Buffett show since 1988 when the words "battery powered blender" were magical. I remember everyone wore hawaiin shorts and had "fins" hats.

A trip to the Camden River Front, formerly Sony-Blockbuster ECentre, formerly Tweeter, Susquehanna Bank Center is always like going to a foreign country. They speak a different language and have different customs and holidays. It's like driving to Berlin in the 60's - a land locked fenced off place where different cultures can meet.

To get to the parking lots, you have to wait in line in your cars past the prison along the route. It doesn't matter which way you come from, there is a prison along the route. There you will see women making hand gestures to men in prison who are viewing them from the long narrow windows high up on the multi-story facility. There is a special sign language they share and so the women make crazy hand gestures out on the street and at first you are not sure what's going on since you only see half the conversation.

So, I'm looking forward to seeing the aging Mr Buffett. I looked over set lists and I know the shank of the set list. I may have to boned up on my Buffett, though.

That's about all that is happening here in Mount La-La for now.

Grass Master 9000

I was awakened at 8:30 AM by the sound of the riding lawn mower of the guy behind me. I rarely sleep in but somehow up until that point I was doing exactly that. It is no small riding lawn mower either, in fact I've named it the "Grass Master 9000". If it doesn't have name like that, well, it should.

I guess if you have an acre of ground, a Grass Master 9000 is warranted. A 36 inch cutting swath, 26 MPH, that baby would make short work of a big job.

He ain't got an acre. He has a weedy, bumpy, and shaded back yard. It's got to be 100 feet wide and 60 feet long. And it takes forever. It sounds like a helicopter landing in backyard. At 8:30. Look Honey, I think President Obama is here in Marine-1, ohh wait, no it's just the Grass Master 9000.

I understand that everyone is busy, I understand that you may have commitments during the day, but 8:30 AM? That's a little early, don't you think?

Worse that all this is the fact that the Grass Master 9000 has no home. It's homeless. He throws a tarp over it were ever the GM9k stopped. That's just cruel. A machine like that needs a home, a shed of it's own. If there were an SPCA for lawn equipment I'd call them.

Lazy Weekend.

Over the weekend Mom and Dad were over. Younger brother (he who does not want to be know on the Internet and yet has a domain) was over with his family as well. Pretty uneventful until their dog cut his paw somehow. We ended up at the 24 hour vet in Cherry Hill. He's fine.

Well, until the bandage. The girls put a bandage on him after he continued to bleed everywhere later.

Mom and Dad went home Saturday night and young brother and his family stayed over night. It was campfires, smores and hanging out that night. We enjoyed the fridge in the shed. Need a cold drink? Head to the shed. I nearly slept out there.

We spent a very lazy Sunday by the pool. The biggest effort was when we went out for Cheesesteaks. The entire day was spent laying on cushions or floating in the pool. I did not cut the grass. I didn't care either. Well, I did, but ignored the temptation to cut it. There was more shed action for cool drinks.

This morning there was a huge thunderstorm and somehow I elected not to walk from the PATCO underground to the office because that would have been way too smart. I was soaked from the knees down. I had to take off my shoes and hang in my office while they dried on the AC vent.

Outside, it was like night at 8 AM and somehow I did not take pictures.