I splurged and spent too much money (although I was not ripped off) on

my second favorite Star Wars vehicle, an awesome snowspeeder. I put the

quarter in there for size reference. This is another titanium model and is really

built to last a long time. It will remain, unopened.

 

Hey, this thing brought down an Imperial AT-AT walker on Hoth.

Hmmm.... He looks better in person. He's not very photogenic.

Cool, we have something in common.

I don't live here anymore. That was another life and what seems like

a lifetime ago. But that chair on the porch there? When I smoked, I

smoked outside and I wanted a semi-comfortable way to do it. So I

bought myself a slightly better than lousy plastic chair. I still have

that chair where I live now. but it doesn't see much cigarette smoke as

today is my nine year no smoking anniversary. I haven't smoked for

nine years today.

 

I'm not too proud of many things in my life, but I am kinda pleased

with myself over this.

 

I saw these "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" birds at

a pottery store not too long ago. I think they're pretty cool.

Here's a gymnasium at Balboa Park in San Diego. I'm not sure

what takes place here, but this building is really old school. It

reminds me a lot of the buildings where I went through the school

system in Santa Monica, California. If you've ever seen the movie Rebel
Without A Cause starring James Dean, you will know what I mean. The high
school in the movie was Santa Monica High School, my alma mater. This
gym really reminds me of SAMOHI's auditorium, Barnum Hall.

Van Nuys! (I'm gonna git you on the blvd.) Van Nuys! I've got a mean machine! Van

Nuys! (I'm gonna git you on the blvd.) I'm lookin mighty clean!  Van Nuys! (I'm gonna

git you on the blvd.) Van Nuys! Wednesday night! All the girls! Lookin mighty right!

 

Van Nuys! I'm gonna git you on the blvd!

 

(Ken Mansfield and Ron Wright - Van Nuys Blvd. - 1979) 

"I've just about had enough of you. Go that way. You'll be

malfunctioning within a day, you near-sighted scrap pile. And

don't let me catch you following me begging for help because

you won't get it."

(...said 3CP0 to R2D2 in Star Wars.)

Whenever I go to the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Griffith

Park, California, I always give myself a half hour at the end of the day

to browse the gift shop. I always have to buy something. It wouldn't be

an official trip to the museum without bringing something home to remind

me of my visit. It's part of the fun.

 

This year I bought a postcard featuring Gene Autry and his Wonder Horse,

Champion. A day or two later I bought the frame and now it hangs on my wall.

I really like it.

 

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I will bother you with this one more time. I hung up my Indiana Jones poster!

Hoo-RAH!

Wha'd you call me?

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I framed the Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster
that they were giving away at the movie theater last night when I went to see
Resident Evil: Redemption (take breath). I think the poster looks nice. I'm not sure
yet where I'm gonna hang it up.

The poster is 11 x 17 inches.

12:13 AM
 

Ah yes, close to my heart. I love going to the Regal. But you knew that.

 

1024 x 768

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4:15 PM

I had been waiting a long time to see The Cabin in the Woods at the theatre.
When it finally came out I waited for the crowds to die down and then went
to a late showing to see it. I was really excited. It wasn't supposed to be your
run of the mill slasher. Five minutes after the movie started the main credit hit
the screen in a way that said, "Oh man, this is going to be GOOD!" Two minutes
after that, five idiot guys came in and sat down right behind me.

They were rude and laughed in all the wrong places, LOUDLY. They did not shut
up during the entire movie. So much so that I did not even SEE the movie. It was
that bad, I didn't even see The Cabin in the Woods. When the show was over, I
cussed them out quietly as they walked past me to leave and resigned myself to
seeing the movie when it came out on Blu-ray. And here she is. I finally get to see
The Cabin in the Woods. I am excited again.

Anyway, that was the worst movie going experience of my life.

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11:45 PM

I decided to go see Resident Evil: Retribution in IMAX 3D tonight. It was
very cool. Most people don't seem to like the RE movies but I really enjoy them.
I mean, c'mon... Milla Jovovich and fully automatic weapons? Of all kinds?
How can you go wrong? Wait, let me answer that. You can't.
Leeloo Dallas Multipass!

Above you can see my "bridge of the nose killer" 3D glasses (that I "forgot" to
drop in the box when I left the theater). But I found that if I kind of stuck them to
my forehead they would stay off of my nose bridge and that was much better.
Except when I got home and looked in the mirror after washing my face, I
noticed that I now have a Grand Canyon sized forehead dent that I hope
goes away by tomorrow.

You can also see a cool Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster
that they were giving away to promote the soon to be released Blu-ray. The poster
is on pretty thick stock. I think I'm going to frame this one.

I took this picture late tonight on the side of our house. It's a

black widow spider and this black widow is not alone. There

are more of these spiders around. We're going to have to pop a

cap in their ass. I'm so fly.

Every time I pass by here I scratch my head and wonder

why anybody would have this painting in the window

of their business. It looks like the young lad with football
eye stuff on is ready for some action.

As I love love love popcorn, I would really enjoy having a "professional

grade holy cow you can't even fit that in your kitchen let alone clean it

every time you make popcorn" popcorn popper. But I would settle for giving

this popcorn popper that I spotted at Target a try. I can't really afford the one

that I would really want, not in a practical way anyway.

I think this one is more of a "novelty" item, but it might work okay (at least
for a while) as the popping system seems to be the traditional movie popper type.

You can tune out if you're not into yummy (that's right, Tex said "yummy") lotions.

This is my all. time. favorite. lotion. EVER. Vanilla Bean Noel from Bath and

Body Works. It is only available during the Christmas Holiday so every year

I go and stock up on it. All I can say is, and I have described it this way to friends

many times, it is like being a pancake, and sitting in a huge plate of syrup. Plain

and simple, that's it. Sitting in a big ol' plate of syrup.

 

You owe it to yourself to try this lotion.

Bonnie Gray was a trick horse rider during the 1920's. They say her most

famous trick was to jump her palomino horse King Tut over a car. Ever been

on a horse? I wouldn't want to be on one while it jumped over a car. No sir.

Above is her Stetson Hat from the 1920's. That is a NICE hat.

 

From my 2012 visit to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in

Griffith Park. California.

Wow, it's 111 degrees right here right now in the hills of Casa De Tex.

Beautiful Southern California.

(An hour later the temp rose to 113. Just too hot to do anything much.)

(About an hour later the temp rose to 114. Just WAY too hot to do anything much.)

Huzzah!

 

Well, awesome. The Halloween season is approaching. I like Halloween

almost better than any other holiday (long story there) and today I made my first

visit to the Spirit Store. Spirit if you don't know is a seasonal Halloween store that

pops up all over the counties during... you guessed it. Above is the first Spirit Store

I managed to find. I have been on their mailing list for a few years so I always have

20% off coupons for this annual outing.

 

Every year Spirit seems to have an overriding theme, and this year it is "zombies".

I imagine that is due to the AMC series on television called "The Walking

Dead". I've yet to see it (I will), so I don't know if it's good, but I hear it is excellent.

That said, I added another guy to my skull collection. He is the first one I have that

still has a little flesh left on him. Zombie don't ya know. That's him, up there.

 

Last year the popular costume was Charlie Sheen. He was having his (with all

due respect, Charlie) meltdown and everybody it seems wanted to be him. This

year Charlie's section was in the corner, pretty much in the dark. If you dress like

him now, I bet nobody would know who you're supposed to be. Above is last years

"Charlie section".

 

Next I zipped over (like with traffic these days you can do any real zipping) to the

next Spirit Store I managed to find. This one is a little smaller but they pretty much

managed to pack everything in there, albeit some of it precariously balanced on

the shelves. But it's all good. I didn't hear one person complain, except for that

one guy, who was in the chair, at the back of the store, the guy with 50,000 fake

volts running through his body. That guy was on edge.

 

There was a pretty freaky looking lady in the window too.

Not TOO attractive. Sorry lady.

 

And I found one more skull for the day. He is a glow in the dark and my second

skull to have no painting or accents on him. He glows pretty good. Anyway,

I will be visiting Spirit again before the season is over and with any luck I won't be

working the day after Halloween so that I might catch the "day after" sales.

 

Please bear with me on this.

This is the coolest house ever. Not only does it have the

world's most awesome balcony, but it is totally surrounded

by a golf course. How's that for the lap of luxury?

Here is an Agave Americana that was out in back of our home. It is also

known as a "century plant". These plants live ten to thirty years and at the end of

their life cycle, they bloom. Their blooms can reach up to twenty-six feet.

That is the tall plant you can see on the left hand side of this photo. Yes, they kick

the bucket after blooming, but the good part is that they produce shoots from their

base so that they may reproduce. Hoo-ray for reproduction! Hoo-RAY!

As with all of my pictures, if you right click and open them in a new tab or
window they will open to the size I intended them to be.

That case sitting there with the initials on it is a cigarette case that I

bought at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet in Pasadena, California. I bought it when

I was seventeen years old. I have no idea who it belonged to or what the

initials stand for but the case is pretty nice. It is sterling silver and has

spring loaded fancy arms inside that keep the cigarettes in place.

 

If this thing could tell stories.... I no longer use it or anything that could be kept

inside of it. At this point it holds mostly sentimental value and memories.
This little guy accompanied me on quite a few adventures.

Remember these? I remember staying at my mom and her husband's

house when they first bought this and the sky was the limit. This thing

brought in everything. Over the years it got more and more expensive

and the dish companies got so hardcore charging for stuff it just wasn't

worth it anymore and Presto Change-o Disconnecto! It was eventually

dismantled and it's probably rusting in some Corellian Engineering junkyard.

 

This picture was taken with my (old)Sony Mavica.

I unfortunately did not find out what these statues were all about

when I visited the Autry Museum last week. There were several

placed all throughout the museum. Some of them were really beautiful.

This was pretty gross. A couple of months ago we would get up in the

morning and our car's passenger door and window would be totally covered

in bird "droppings". And I mean major bird "droppings". After about a

week of this we figured a bird of some kind must have been attracted to the mirror

and was just fluttering about or landing someplace and excited by his own image

was doing his business over... and over... and over. So we started covering up the
mirror at night and it stopped in about three days, never to happen again.

The photo on the left shows a water bucket buried halfway into

the ground. It's kept full of water for coyotes. Hopefully they will

be happy quenching their thirst drinking that water rather than chewing

through any of the water lines on our land.

 

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

In honor of Labor Day, here is a conference room where I worked

for many years. I wish that I still worked there, but they relocated

halfway across the United States and it was not going to be a good

move for me. I had already relocated once with them and at the time,

that was a good thing.

This is a video I did on my iPod when I visited the

Autry Museum in Griffith Park CA earlier this week.

It is the little waterfall and stream in the Trails West

Courtyard. I think it was running a little stronger this year.

A couple of booths at an Acapulco Mexican restaurant in Escondido,

California. I really like their cheese enchiladas. They use a really

dark mole sauce (I think that's what it is called) that is wonderful.

 

It's too bad they closed and demolished the building last year.

 

My all time favorite Mexican restaurant is called El Coyote Cafe on

Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles. I grew up going there and it can't be beat.

The enchiladas at this Acapulco kind of reminded me of El Coyote.