Random Ramblings

Monday, August 25, 2008

Finally the South Dakota rundown.....

Hey there folks here's the semi-long form run down from the week we spent in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Its a hell of a long ride up there I will say that right off the back. It can be made in one day but its a real ball buster of a drive. It seemed to take forever to get through South Dakota. Well let's begin, shall we?

We started out at about 3:45am and it got interesting right from the start. As we were pulling out onto the main drag through town we saw a guy getting arrested. You could tell this guy wasn't, uh hmm, cooperating as the cops were putting him in the squad. Not much really happened noteworthy until we got into southern Minnesota. There's quite a few farms up there that are using wind power. We saw quite a few of the windmills seemingly out in the middle of nowhere. Going through Minnesota we pulled up on something I thought was a blown out tire, it turned out to be a wolf just chilling in the right land. As we slowly rolled by it was like, "What the hell are you looking at?" We stopped in lovely Mitchell South Dakota for lunch and saw some interesting stuff. Mitchell is the home of the Corn Palace which is baiscally entirely covered on the outside by different colored ears of corn. While in Mitchell we stopped at Arby's for lunch for whatever reason....in hindsight I'm glad we did. The check out girl at the Arby's had a few tattoos, but nothing crazy, that were covered by band aids. As the girl was ringing up the stuff I noticed she had some tats across her knuckles. I took a look wondering what they said, well they said "OCA COLA". Go ahead read that last sentence again. This girl didn't have "COCA COLA" but rather "OCA COLA". I guess she didn't want to go all the way with adding that first 'C' to her pinkie finger. Actually looking back her knuckle tats made her look like another kind of "c". Also on the way out there we stopped in the Badlands and it was sort of amazing that smoething that barren looking would be so close to an area so green with trees and grasslands.
First thing that I learned on vacation, when traveling with kids just take the time to find a hotel without a pool. If you don't the kids are more focused on getting back to the stupid hotel and in the pool then actually doing stuff on vacation. Remember this you'll thank me for it later in life.


So we roll into the Black Hills and gambling in legal there and there are literally casinos in evey rinky dink gas station with video poker machines and so forth. Also there's seriously a constant piney smell in the air out there. Its like someone dumped a big bottle of Pine Sol. The first place we visit after we got up there was to go to Rapid City South Dakota, which is the New York City of the Black Hills area. Rapid City is known as the City of Presidents because they have quite a few life sized bronze statues of the Presidents on different street corners in town. Nate is a history nerd so of course we had to visit some of the statues. In a weird little occurance as we were walking around the downtown area to see the statues a SUV with some lady in it slowed down and rolled by and honked her horn. I though wow that was odd. Then the same lady must have went around the block again and did the same thing except this teim she actually waved to me. Yes I guess I'm huge in Rapid City SD. I'm guessing they may have gotten some early intel about my impending announcement regarding the Kevin DeBolt brand. There were two things I did notice while watching the news from Rapid City. They didn't have a sports part of the news on the 10pm newscast on Saturday night. The other thing was that American Legion baseball is HUGE there. On the nights that they did have a sportscast on the new Legion baseball always got top billing. The big sports story up there was that one American Legion team didn't want to schedule a regular season game against some young upstart American Legion team in Rapid City. Legion ball is as big up there as major league baseball is around here.

Tuesday we took a bus tour of all the stuff up there and got an idea of what else we wanted to go back to see later in the week. We saw a lot of good stuff and the biggies of the Black Hills. Went to Mount Rushmore, Needles Highway, and Custer State Park. We went through three tunnels cut into the Black Hills that were really really tight fits for a tour bus. When we went through in the Trailblazer I could reach out the side and touch the side of the tunnel.
Yep we went through these two tunnels in a tour bus.
The main reason we went to Custer State Park was to see bison, an we heard on the tour that the day before they were far off the beating path but we were lucky because when we went the next day they were right next to the road, and at times even in the road.
"Hey you want to see me walk in the street and stop traffic? Watch this its pretty cool."
"See I told you I could go in the street and stop traffic."
At the state park there are donkeys that are descendents of donkeys that were brought there during the gold rush in the area some 140 years ago. They were tame as hell they would eat popcorn right out of your hand. Heck they were even tame enough to take pictures alongside a cocouple of complete jackasses in a cowboy hats.



While we were up there we also went to Deadwood which is a cool little town. A lot of gamlbing joint, Kevin Costner actually owns a casino up there. We went into Costner's place and left winners. We also went to Sturgis while we were up there as the rally was starting right as we were leaving town. While I was there I did decide I needed to buy a Harley, I had the yearn a little while back and it subsided. But now its back and I've got a plan to get one. We also stopped at Wall Drug on the way back, you have to its a law, and its a standard touristy type place. I'll be making my big announcement in the next two weeks probably, I have to go to the Lego Store first...it'll make sense later. I guess that about covers it, take it easy ya'll.






Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Bravo

The Chicago Bears have a new marketing campaign "One City. One Team." You can see all the ads here: http://www.chicagobears.com/OneCityOneTeamFullOne.asp





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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Another Olympic crush

In additon to swimmer Natalie Coughlin

also Lolo Jones



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Monday, August 18, 2008

The New Addition

Video of Lincoln & Lucy

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Please

From Variety:


Warners whips up Banana Splits
Classic kiddie show gets a modern makeover
By
SAM THIELMAN
-->
'The Banana Splits'
Warners consumer products division has whipped up a new version of the Banana Splits.
Hanna-Barbera’s 1960s phenom is returning in a multiplatform effort starting Sept. 2, with shorts and musicvideos airing on
Cartoon Network and its website. Future efforts will include DVD and audio CD releases, as well as live performances.
Turner Animation’s Stu Snyder noted that the Splits have “been entertaining kids for years,” but the return of the property will capitalize on boomer nostalgia as well. “Go Bananas Your Way,” the new Splits album, is “intended to appeal to kids and parents,” according to the release.
Bingo, Drooper, Fleegle and Snorky’s Web presence is targeted at 4- to 7-year-olds, and the live entertainment will include a section of Myrtle Beach, S.C.’s, Hard Rock Park, to be dubbed Banana Splitsville and devoted to the cartoon characters.
Nostalgic revivals of vintage properties are a dicey proposition when it comes to new content, but elderly brands like “Mr. Men” have found surprising support in lifestyle products such as T-shirts and accessories that preserve the original art for sentimental fans. Accordingly, Warners will release apparel, games and books as well.


Warner Brothers please don't screw this up. I LOVED this show when I was a kid.

--Site reated news yes the South Dakota recap will be here by the end of the week.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Lincoln Photos he's 8 weeks old


This second one is kind of funny you can see Lucy the other Boston peeking in the door to the left of the picture. When the two are together they play grab ass too much to get a picture of either one of them.

One funny one and me being a jerk on vacation

I think its funny. If you don't get it ask your mom....or maybe your older brother would know better.

We made sure there were no forest fires while we were there. Every time I saw the Smokey the Bear signs I sang the old Smokey the Bear song. Everyone all together now, "Smokey the Bear, Smokey the Bear. Growlin' and a prowlin' and sniffin' the air."
Chicks in South Dakota didn't dig me either because I take pictures like the one below.

That's right who's the biggest ass in this picture? I'll put my money on myself.



South Dakota pics

Here's some pics from South Dakota. My vacation run down will take place later this week. I was going to do it tonight but I didn't realize how many damn pictures I took. I took all of these except one....check out my skillz.
Here's one especially for those laying down reading the Ramblings. I have no idea why it won't post the right way and have tried to fix it twice. Yep I'm lazy so screw it. Nate is throwing up some gang signs or something or trying to talk to the deaf, I'm not sure which one. Yes Shawn Michaels let me borrow his hat. I actually made the comment to Nate while we were there that if I was on the mountain they would have to change the name to "Mt Crushmore", then did a bad pose. After I said it I wanted to kick myself in the nuts.


Thumbs to Mount Rushmore, I'm sporting a little bit of a heel beard.

Look at me getting all artsy.




Nope not a postcard a photo I actually took.

More artsy stuff.



Check this one out the tour guy pulled over to this place and that's Mt Rushmore through a natural spot in the pines.

Random Photo



At Wizard World, you know the Nerdfest Nate and I went to about a month ago, we saw the world's greatest Superman. Yes its a bit fuzzy because the lighting in the room was for crap and Nate has few camera skillz.

Photo of me from South Dakota with an indy wrestling gimmick pose and gimmick that sure didn't catch on. You know there's some guy out there going by the name "Big D". There's probably a guy in WCPW trying to use it....FACE!


Knock knock knock

I'm knocking on your door Rod. I bought an Illinois state flag today.





Pictures of Lincoln and Lucy to follow here later today.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

This weekend...

Went to the Bears pre-season game Thursday night
Friday recovered from the late night Friday and saw TDK again
Saturday bought another Boston Terrier...a male we've named it Lincoln, because Nate is a big Lincoln fan.
Sunday watched way too much of the Olympics

Pictures of Lincoln will follow soon.


Oh and I have a crush on US swimmer Natalie Coughlin, she's 26.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Yes I'm admitting this....and just a thought

Went with v2 to see The Dark KNight again this afternoon, it was as good the second time around. I did find one singular fault with the film. When the Joker is hanging upside down towards the end I think the shot should have been of him with his chest at the top of the screen instead of the bottom. The way it was shot they had the Joker with his chest at the bottom of the screen and it took away from the idea that he was hanging upside down aside from his hair and jacket feeling the effects of gravity. Okay her's what I'm admitting tonight when we got home we did a little Dark Knight related testing involving the scooter. After this testing all I'm going to say is that while it is a nice visual when Batman is riding the Batpod there are some shenanigans as to how free flowing his cape is. The speed that he is attaining there would be too much wind holding down the cape to make it flow so freely. Unless it was totally made out of something like tissue paper I'd don't think it would fly that way. Otherwise you could go with v2's theory that it was smart fabric like they said in the first one so it was really light material. I still think that it would get stuck on his back from the wind created on the Batpod.

Go ahead and feel pity for me know because that's what my evening partial consisted of.


Observation: I think its odd that chicks say they want an old fashion romantic guy then they get sort of weirded out by standard old school guy stuff like opening doors for them or whatever. Get the stories straight ladies come on.

Just got the first season of the Showtime show Californication on DVD. Its pretty funny I've seen three of them so far. David Duchoveny (who I'm not even a fan of) plays this dickish writer in Los Angeles and stuff that happens with his ex-wife and stuff. Its a pretty solid show.

One last thought, the guy lighting the torch at the Olympics was sort of corny if you ask me.

Okay I'm out suckers. Oh wait I'm the sucker I had in depth discussion on the cape physics in The Dark Knight. I can only imagine what would have happened if I got in a crash what the hell the cops would have thought, "Well chief he was wearing a cape at the time of the accident." If I would have died or something do it you could have felt free to go ahead and laugh because it would have been pretty damn funny if you ask me. In case you are wondering.....yes I own two capes.......actually I own two of them. My name is Kevin....and I am an ubernerd. And one wonders why there aren't lovely ladies knocking down my door.