Here endeth the lesson.

All in all, the staycation has been restful, but it wasn’t long before we realized that despite our best efforts and planning, it never felt the same as a vacation away from home. The original plan called for us to spend several days and nights on the boat, but that turned into just a couple of day trips out on the boat. And that turned into a fiasco.

As you might recall, the boat was recently overhauled, so that it would be in perfect working order for the Summer. We spent Wednesday on the boat and everything worked fine, but the overall experience was lackluster and it inspired some lengthy discussions about our commitment to keeping the boat. The biggest single issue is our time. For example, when we bought the boat, I didn’t work on weekends; now I do. It has been increasingly difficult to justify the expense of the boat and the slip, considering how rarely we enjoy those things. Anyway, the discussions left us leaning heavily towards selling the boat at the end of the Summer. And then, to punctuate or protest our decision, the boat died while we were headed home after one of our day trips. Sigh. Fangdango strikes again. So, we had the boat towed to Grant’s shop.

The next morning, Grant called and said the boat was ready. The problem had been a minor wiring issue. We picked-up the boat and drove it back to our slip. And then, while maneuvering through the marina, with its rows of boats that cost more than our house, the engine died again. Kimberly was already in the back of the boat and I leapt to the front to see if we could keep our four-ton, out-of-control paperweight from hitting anything. Kimberly called for help and two gentlemen rushed to our aid. Between the four of us, we managed to walk the boat to our slip without incident. Still, I was apoplectic.

Today we will be taking all of our personal items off of the boat in preparation for its sale. Despite its poor dependability this week, it really is mostly an issue of lifestyle and time. I’ll admit that it is heartbreaking, because it is a beautiful boat. C’est la vie. I’ll probably post an extended for sale ad on this site and link to it from the blog (and craigslist, and eBay).

Enough about the boat. Let me tell you about the most fun day that we had on our staycation. Because we don’t go out often and we certainly don’t go shopping (ugh), Kimberly and I tend to accumulate gift cards. Sadly, many of them expire before we can use them (all part of the gift card scam, you know), but many of the better ones do not. So, on one day this week, we took a fist full of gift cards and spent the whole day running around for free. We saw The Dark Night using free movie passes and we even bought concessions with a whole sheet of “cinema bux” we had picked-up somewhere. Since I am in the middle class, I haven’t bought concessions since I was a kid! Sadly, I know that kids these days don’t buy them, because I worked it out and drugs are cheaper than theater concessions, so why would they? Seriously, who can afford to buy that stuff?

The Dark Night was awesome. Was it the best and most l33t movie EvAR!!!!111!!1one??? Um, no. But it was very good and it worked for me. And yes, Heath Ledger deserves a posthumous Academy Award nomination for his role as The Joker. An added bonus was seeing the trailer for the upcoming 007 flick Quantum of Solace and the trailer for The Watchmen. Now, I knew what The Watchmen was, but I had never actually read it. So, I borrowed a copy from Dave Farabee on Thursday and I have been reading it since. It’s wordy for a comical book, but I’m digging it. I also really liked the trailer over which played The Smashing Pumpkin’s The Beginning is the End is the Beginning, which I had never heard before. It’s a slowed-down version of The End is the Beginning is the End from Batman and Robin, but with modified lyrics. Did you get all that?

Afterwards, we went out to eat for free and then we went on a Barnes & Noble shopping spree where I picked-up the first two seasons of MI-5 (an outstanding BBC TV show called Spooks in the UK), almost completely for free. We have been watching episodes every night since then.

The grand unification experiment with the iPhone has gone very well. All of my major email accounts dump into the phone. Only my work email is left and I will take care of that this week…when I go back to work. Yes, it’s that time again - Sunday afternoon, when the mind invariably wanders towards work on Monday. Monday. Monday…

jimmy

A nice thing about a staycation is that it begins immediately. The first part of a typical vacation is spent packing, boarding the animals, driving to the airport, checking luggage, negotiating the security crucible, flying to your destination, renting a car, driving to the hotel, and checking into a room. When you are finally able to fall back onto the bed, your mind will still be troubled with recovering your lost luggage and how you will get home Sunday night, since the TSA idiots confiscated the key to your Audi. In contrast, my staycation began the nanosecond that I walked out of work on Thursday afternoon. And it began with a very nice treat, indeed. I got home and there was a message from AT&T saying that my new iPhone had arrived and I could pick it up at any time.

The iPhone was a birthday gift from Kimberly to help me dull the pain of no longer just being 40, but now being in my 40’s. Ugh, let’s move on. The iPhone is brilliant. I plan to spend some of this week getting it setup further. We’ll see if this really is the Grand Unification Device that will finally pull together all of my email, contacts, and calendars in a useful way.

Kimberly has spent the first couple of days of her vacation visiting her mom, so I have been hanging-out with friends. On Thursday night, I saw Dave Farabee; on Friday, I went to an event at Hula Hut, celebrating Georgia Crawley’s 20th anniversary at TBA (my previous employer); and on Saturday I spent the whole day with Eric and Andrew at the hangar working on our LeMons race car. Tonight, we are going to a baseball game with Kim’s co-workers.

Much of the rest of the week we hope to spend on the boat. Yes, the boat. I know, I forgot that we had a boat, too. We have spent a lot of time and money getting it in shape lately and except for the stereo, it is finally finished. It is now in perfect condition to use…or to sell. We’ll see. A couple of weekends ago, we took the boat out and tied-up with our friends. They couldn’t believe that we were back out on the water; they had given-up on us. Still, they welcomed us back with open arms and we had a blast.

Judy, Monty, Heidi, Debbie, and Kimmy.

Grant commands the party from his poop deck.

And surprise…Jimmy does something that is unsafe (I’m hanging about 20 ft. off the deck of Grant’s ridiculous four-level fishing boat).

Besides boating, I hope to catch-up on some reading, movie watching, and blogging(!). I might even make a blog entry from the boat on my iPhone, just for the novelty of it. For those of you who have to go to work tomorrow, I’m crying for you. No really, I am. I feel your pain. In fact, I’m off to drown my sorrows. Cheers.

jimmy

For the contest, which takes place in cities all around the country, participating teams congregate on Friday night and are given a genre, a character, a line of dialog, and a prop. They then have 48 hours to produce a film from scratch which contains all of those elements. My team from church decided to take-up the challenge.

Friday

So, on Friday, Jim Shields and I went down to the studio downtown where teams would be given their elements. On the way to the studio we were discussing which genres we wanted and didn’t want. I was very afraid of comedy. Being funny is easy, but writing good comedy is very hard. I was also afraid of the musical genre, but our church is overrun with first-class, professional musicians and some of them were dying for us to draw the musical genre. After-all, for a 4-7 minute film (the limits of the contest), you are really only talking about one song with some setup. The only other one we were concerned about was holiday film. There is nothing hard about it, but a holiday film? Kill me. Yeah, that’s right, I work at a church and I just said kill me to making a holiday film.

Anyway, I remember saying to Jim, “I hope we get horror.” It’s not my favorite genre by far, but it’s just so easy to work with. This was our first contest, after all. I just felt like we could do the most with that genre, given our resources, which includes church property containing substantial wooded areas. To me, woods (at night) = scary. Well, against all probability, Jim drew horror as our genre! I was so excited, I think I made some sort of exclamation during the ceremony. Our other elements were as follows:

Genre - horror
Character - Zach or Zinnia Needham, take-out/delivery driver
Prop - a child’s block
Line of dialog - “That was a good one.”

I had a story immediately. I was coming out of my skin, because we weren’t allowed to call anybody, nor were we able to discuss any ideas until exactly 7pm. All I could tell Jim was, “I have the story. I have the story.” As soon as they released us, we jumped into Jim’s car, I told him my story and then I called the rest of our team, who were waiting for us back at the church offices. Then we rushed back to meet them.

Our team was a mix of church staff and volunteers. The staffers were the usual suspects: Tony Colvin (executive producer, craft services, and boom operator), Alex Jacobsen (gaffer, actor), Jim Shields (producer, director of photography, editor), Lane Fasetta (actress), and myself (writer, director, and actor). Joining us were Jenn Kovacs (camera operator and editor) and Amy Young (hair/make-up artist and actress).

Jim and Jenn get a killer time-lapse shot of a cloud formation on Friday

When we got to the office, we saw that Tony and Karen Colvin had setup an awesome craft services table to keep us fueled for the weekend. So, we grabbed some food and started brainstorming. I outlined my story to the group and everyone agreed that we should use it. One of the nice things about the story was that it utilized our resources almost perfectly. Most of the shooting could be done on our campus to save time and it took advantage of the actors that we had on hand.

Craft Services table at HQ: kettle chips, candy bars, and Red Bull (the really good stuff was in the kitchen)

After a couple of hours of fleshing-out ideas and strategizing for the long shoot on Saturday, some of the team went home to rest, Lane and Jen went shopping for fake blood supplies, Alex and Jim went to the event center to start work on the score, and I began punching-out a script. I was finished by 1 am, which now seems like such a luxurious time of night - plenty of time left to sleep, really not much later than I usually go to bed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sleep, so I just continued polishing the script and even managed to do some storyboard sketches.

Saturday

Everyone arrived at the church offices on Saturday morning looking pretty haggard. Jim brought coffee and pastries for everyone, so we spent some time getting caffeinated, before heading out for our first shots, which would be out on Hwy 71 (which also happens to be the title of the movie). The shooting went well, but in our search for the perfect stretch of road, we almost ended-up all the way out to Marble Falls. So, we spent hours of our time shooting what would amount to being a few seconds of establishment footage. I was getting nervous.

A storyboard sketch and the finished shot.

We regrouped at our offices, picked-up Amy Young, our other actress, and drove to Tony and Karen Colvin’s house for interior shooting. Our office, which is an old stone house built in the 60’s was perfect for our characters’ country house. Unfortunately, it is completely filled with desks and cubicles and no longer looks like a lived-in house on the inside. It would have taken much more work to try to dress the house, so we had to do more remote location shooting. The driving was really taking a toll on our time. Next year, we might work harder to keep the shooting down to one location.

By the time we got to the Colvin home, we were starving. Luckily, the first scene was a dinner scene, so we got to eat, though it was only after an hour of setup and shooting, so the food was stone cold as we ate it. It was during this shoot that I started to unravel a little bit from the lack of sleep. Once the dinner scene was over, I wasn’t directly involved in any of the other shooting. Since these were interior shots, there was a lot of light setup, which just seemed to take forever. Then a thunderstorm rolled-through, which made me nervous because we weren’t filming in order and I was worried about continuity.

Setting up for an uncomfortable dinner.

Anyway, I was so tired that when shooting resumed, I felt myself allowing mediocre takes to slide by as good enough. I just didn’t have the energy to help the actors give me what I wanted. I feel awful that I just let them hang out there without proper direction. Next year, I need to ban myself from acting. It was just too much overhead.

Amy Young in another scene shot at the Colvin home.

After we finished at the Colvin’s, we drove out Parmer Ln. to look for a good “break-down” spot for our characters. On the way out there, I could feel myself falling asleep at the wheel, which is very dangerous. Next year, we need drivers. The break-down scene went well, although I was still in the mode of not having the energy to push for stronger takes. I was mostly walking in circles, trying to stay awake.

Amy Young as Zinnia Needham, coming to the rescue of…

Lane Fassetta and Alex Jacobsen, playing a hip, young couple in love.

Then we drove back to the office for the final push into the evening and night scenes. We took a little break to gather ourselves back together. Once evening came, I got some energy back. The last scenes would be my character’s introduction and the physically demanding final scene, both of which took place in the barn that we have on the church campus. The shots took a long time to setup, but they went well and except for an impressive, mood-setting shot of a cloud formation during sundown that Jim shot on Friday night, I think the barn shots are the best in the film.

A storyboard sketch and finished introductory shot of my character, Zach Needham.

Saturday was a killer 18-hour day of shooting, but the team held together and got the job done. I think it would have been really easy for us to get on each others’ nerves, but that never seemed to happen. There were some mood swings, but overall, everybody held it together and remained professional throughout the shoot. Even at our most exhausted, we were laughing and having fun up until the very end. It was mad fun.

At the very end, as most of us were leaving, Jim and Jenn were just sitting down to begin editing a basic cut of the film, which they accomplished by 3:30 am.

Sunday

I finally slept on Sunday morning, so when I got up to be at a church event at noon, I was excited and awake. I felt great and I was telling anyone who would listen about the contest and how much fun we had filming. After the event ended around 1:30 pm or so, I helped record Alex and Ted Herring perform the original score for the film. Meanwhile, Jim and Jenn were recording ADR with Amy to loop some dialog that didn’t get properly recorded. They also recorded a scream that we didn’t want to do live at 1 am the night before, since the barn is only a few feet from some neighbors.

Anyway, we got the music to Jim by 3 pm and he began to mix it into the film. I had hoped to see a cut of the film, so that I could make suggestions for changes, but Jim said time was too short and that the cut was locked. He still had to mix the soundtrack, do some color correction, render the film and burn it to media. The film was due at Mangia Pizza on Guadalupe by 7:30 pm. So, Alex and I busied ourselves with the paperwork and release forms that were required to be turned-in with the film. When we had finished with that chore, Alex went home to get some well-deserved rest. I stayed behind to go with Jim to the drop-off party.

It was soon after that Jim walked-in to my office and said he didn’t know if we would make it. What? I told him that we had plenty of time. He explained how much there was left to do. I agreed that it would be close, but it should be fine. Also, we didn’t have to burn it to MiniDV (which is the best quality and preferred format of the contest), but we could just burn it to DVD, which wouldn’t take as long. He went back to work and I went and filled my car with gas, since it looked like we might be in a hurry to get downtown. And then the rendering process failed. That’s bad. That process was taking around 20-30 minutes a pop. Jim rebooted his computer and tried again. It would have to work this time for us to make the deadline. For awhile, I was considering going out to the parking lot and warming-up my tires and brakes, thinking it would have to be one of those kind of drives - a personal record to downtown. But even as the clock was ticking down to where even my most insane driving couldn’t get us there in time - the render failed again. It was over.

I lay down on the floor and stared at the ceiling, trying to keep it together as the bitter disappointment washed over me. I couldn’t believe it. Jim came into my office and after awhile, it occurred to him to try rendering the movie on my laptop. He brought his external drive and plugged it into my computer and started the render. It was agonizingly slow, but we just stared at the progress bar as it crawled along, showing the rendering happening frame by frame. Only 13,000 more frames to render. Sigh.

After about half an hour, the render actually completed! Jim burned the film to DVD, grabbed the paperwork, and we jumped in my car to see if we could catch the event organizers at Mangia. Jim managed to get someone on the phone and they said they would be there for another 15 minutes. So, I ended-up having to drive like a maniac after all. Traffic wasn’t as cooperative as I had hoped, but I know I blasted down the the 35th St exit at around 100 mph, so we still made good time. We caught the organizers at Mangia, but we were still an hour and 16 minutes late. Sherry Mills, the event producer said something about “at least you have closure by getting the film here” or something like that. Maybe she was right, but at the time, I just felt defeated. I hadn’t even seen the film!

After a day to reflect, I feel a little bit better. The film will be screened on Tuesday and Wednesday, so for the first time in my life, I will walk into a bona fide movie theater and watch a movie that I made. I’m sure the same thing can be said for most of those on my team. Also, hopefully, we will get some kind of critique, judgment, scoring, or feedback, even though we aren’t eligible for prizes. That would also be of substantial benefit to us and our education as we work to become better filmmakers. But no matter what, I am a very competitive person and to be a DNF just plain stings. Sigh. Builds character…I guess.

The 48 Hour Film Project really is a great event and we will be back next year. I want to thank the cast and crew this year for making it such a memorable and fun event. Jim, Alex, Tony, Jenn, Lane, and Amy - you guys are the best!

Addendum: We just got back from the first screening of our film and the films in our group. It was electric. I think we held our own against the other films, especially on a technical level, though I don’t think we had the best film. It was definitely one of the few films that didn’t take a humorous angle to its genre. In fact, it felt a little out of place. Afterwards, Jim said that next year we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously. Maybe. But I think that sometimes, going for humor is just another way to cop-out of meeting the challenge of the genre. That being said, there was some very funny stuff in the other films tonight and it was great to laugh along with them. I was very impressed with a lot of the work that I saw.

Afterwards, the team had dinner at Chuy’s for a proper wrap party and to celebrate Amy’s birthday. It was a great night.

jimmy

- Arcade Fire “Rebellion (Lies)”

An unwelcome reprieve today gives me a moment to shed some light on what I have been doing lately. I tried to sleep this afternoon, but it was futile. I didn’t feel like doing anything else and any reasonable estimation of my sleep deficit should have predicted success, but no. It wasn’t dark enough. It wasn’t cold enough. Nothing was settled enough. So, I pretended as long as I could, hoping that at least some part of my body was getting rest. I don’t think I ever really believed it. Fine, on the back of missing an Astros-Cubbies game with my work mates, missing seeing The Police with Rob, a very bad week all around, and a couple of stiff Knob Creek whiskey sours, I give you an update of the last several months.

First of all, I have been posting, just not to my own site. As I mentioned in my last post, my friend Tony and I started a local homeless ministry at church. He created a blog for that ministry and my last post will be copied to that blog. I should have more recent updates posted soon.

(click on the photo to open the site)

Also, I created a blog for the arts ministry at ACF. This should reflect what we have been doing at work, but of course, it is way out-of-date.

(click on the photo to open the site)

And I have another blog site out there, but I’ll get to that later.

I bought another car. I have kept the Miata as my daily driver, but I bought a 1994 Audi S4 from a friend for a song. It fell into my lap and I just couldn’t resist having another go at my favorite car that I have ever owned. A friend told me, “It’s so good to see you in an S4 again. I always thought that Miata looked like some kind of mid-life crisis car. You just look right in an S4.” Really? Oh my God, I love that Miata! I look like some middle aged punter? Ouch. Well, that’s a bloody shame because I’m still going to use that Miata as my daily driver. It uses regular gas, it gets decent mileage, and it has never given me any trouble whatsoever. That car is fantastic!

The S4 (UrS4), which I have named Nessie, is destined to be a garage queen and special transport vehicle on those rare occasions that I need to carry multiple passengers or maybe just on special occasions - like when I want to drive insanely fast or when I want to go broke buying expensive premium gasoline. Though I own three cars that are capable of track duty, I never intended for the UrS4 to see the track. And yet, through circumstances with which I won’t bore you, I found myself in the UrS4 on Harris Hill Road (H2R), which you might remember I visited in a pre-tarmac state here.

Here I am with a student at H2R (click for huge photo).

Here are some posts that I made about my car on another forum:

Nessie
Punch List
Jimmy’s ‘94 S4

In the spirit of the title of this post, I have to tell you that my new car was featured in a film that Jim Shields and I made for church last week. I didn’t drive until the wheels fell off, but I did drive the car over a curbed median while we were filming. The car doesn’t sound so good anymore. I had a light shining in my face while we were filming, so my night vision was gone and the light was reflecting off all of my windows and I could only see out of my front window. When I went to make a U-turn, I turned too early and plowed right over a median. It was all captured on camera. Our crew t-shirts are going to say, “I think Jimmy just jacked-up his car.” What do you want from me? I worked 15 hours that day.

I haven’t had a chance to see what I did to the car, because I’m busy preparing for a track event this coming weekend. The S4 will just have to wait its turn. My track event post should feature footage from the new in-car camera that I have installed in the car. Look for that in a couple of weeks.

Also, once this next track event is over, we will begin preparing for the 24 Hours of LeMons - no, not LeMans, but LeMons. The idea is to run a 24-hour endurance race with a car that doesn’t cost over $500. Crazy? You betcha. The event is in October. I made a team blog here:

(click on the photo to open the site)

Important Note: I wrote most of this post a couple of weeks ago at the end of a horrible week. Things are better now, but I’ll go ahead and finish my story. For some reason, I just didn’t seem to fit into the world very easily that week. I was thwarted at every turn and every success came at a high cost. I had disagreements with my wife, my boss, a co-worker, and a volunteer. I was exhausted and feeling like I was underwater. I had to punt on writing some devotionals for church and I had been asked to somehow help start and lead a third ministry. Sure. I had crashed my new car. By Thursday, I was reeling.

And then Tony walked into the office and told me that Isaiah, the homeless man to whom I am closest, was arrested at DPS when Tony had taken him to get his ID that morning. We had been in the process of getting all of his paperwork in order, so that we could legally pay him for contract work that we wanted him to do at the church. While waiting in line, they arrested him for a very serious felony warrant issued six years ago in South Carolina. He was a fugitive. I felt the floor drop out from beneath me. What were we doing? What good had we done?

Since then, I have a slightly different perspective about Isaiah’s situation. Tony and I have visited him in jail, while he waits for agents from South Carolina to come get him. He is doing well and seems to have a good attitude about what is happening to him. It’s part of a journey that he has to take. Most of us have made mistakes in our past that we wish we could run from, but we just have to walk it out. His life won’t get any better until he does. I’ll post more about this later, probably on the other site.

Anyway, I was done. I just wanted to have a nice day off on Friday to rest and regroup. Unfortunately, I needed to swap around some ceiling fans in the house and install a new one in my office. I’m not much of a household handyman, so you can guess how well that went. I’ll just cut to it - before the day was done, I had shocked myself on some exposed wiring and for the first time in my life, I fell off of a ladder. At the very same time, Kimberly was driving back from San Antonio when the tread on one of her tires separated from the tire carcass. She was thrown into another lane, but recovered quickly and was able to pull over. Luckily, there was a tire store within sight, so she crossed the median to the access road and got a new tire. Like everything else that was happening that week, that could have gone much worse. Thank you, Jesus.

We hadn’t quite driven until the wheels fell off, but last weekend, I had a friend who did. I’ll tell you about that in my next entry.

jimmy

About a week or so later, Tony had a remarkable experience which led him to meet a homeless man by the name of Winston. They shared some coffee on a street corner near Parmer and N. Lamar, and Winston gave Tony the lowdown on the homeless in that area. He said there was a camp nearby where most of them stayed. Most of them made money “flying a sign on the rail” - translation: they panhandled on the IH-35 access road, at the intersection of Parmer Ln. That overpass also provided shelter when the weather was really bad. Tony took Winston to a nearby Wal-Mart and outfitted him with a new coat and some other supplies. When they got back to the corner, Tony asked Winston if there was anything he would like to eat. He considered the question for a moment and said, “I could really use me some stew.”

The next night, I went back out with Tony. In the back of Tony’s battered CR-V was a huge vat of stew that we had made from scratch in the church kitchen that day. Tony’s wife Karen had also made some cornbread. We stopped at Starbuck’s and bought a traveler of coffee. While we were waiting, the manager started chatting it up with us. When she found out what we were doing, she gave us a huge bag of their day-old pastries.

I should pause here and explain something about how we were approaching this ministry. Based upon a perfectly solid biblical principal, we weren’t going to tell anyone about what we were doing. The idea was to diminish any motivation except to be obedient to our faith and humbly serve the poor. We weren’t going to tell the church staff, we weren’t going to tell anyone from whom we bought food or supplies, and we really weren’t even going to tell the homeless were serving. Clearly, that wasn’t in God’s plan, because it fell apart quickly and when it did, the blessings spilled forth. It started at Starbuck’s that night. As soon as we buckled and told the manager what we were doing, she gave us food. Over the months, that has happened time and time again. Starbuck’s, Whataburger, and Sonic have either just given away food or given us deep discounts, because we told them the food was for the homeless. I never would have expected that from corporate chain restaurants, but they have been very generous.

Anyway, after we left Starbuck’s, we drove towards the same place on Parmer where Tony first saw Winston. I was a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to find anybody, but as we approached Lamar, we saw Winston exactly where Tony had seen him the night before. We pulled into a construction area on the corner and waved him over. He was ecstatic that Tony had kept his promise to come back out. He was so happy, I thought he might start dancing a jig, saying, “I told them you would come back, I told them!” We asked where everyone was and that was when we were first made aware of just how green we were. Winston explained that everyone was probably down for the night. I don’t know why we thought people would be hungry and in need of coffee that late at night. Maybe we thought people were going to bed hungry? In our experience, that’s not generally the case.

We stood and ate some stew with Winston and he told us about some of the other homeless in the area. He went across the street and into the woods, where they camped, but came back saying that he couldn’t find anyone else. At the time, he was particularly worried about one old fella who was sick. He had gout in one foot and the other foot was gangrenous from an incident with a stingray! He wouldn’t let the doctors take his foot, so it was looking grim for him. We never heard about that guy again.

We left Winston and since we had so much food, we decided to just drive down Lamar in the hopes we would find some homeless people to feed. We found one guy, but he had already eaten. He was interested in what we were doing and after we told him our idea, he smiled and said, “Two Guys and some Food.” He got it. No proselytizing. No Bibles. Just food. Just salt. It really was that simple and so, in that moment, he christened our ministry (even though it has grown well beyond just the two of us).

Very soon after that night, we found the real campground in that area and met dozens of homeless. It has been a wild ride so far and we hope to document some our adventures on the Two Guys and some Food website here.

Meanwhile, please pray for these new friends of mine, these brothers and sisters, the lost and addicted, the opportunistic and manipulative, the victims, the thieves, the drunk, the hungry, the down and out, the hobo poets, and the gentle tramps: Winston, Russell “Sparky” Jones, Hugo and his dog Princess, Sherry, Linda, Wilson, Tom, Todd, Isaiah, Grandville, Mustafa, and Suddenly. Yes, I know a fella named Suddenly.

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

- Matthew 25:40 (NIV)

jimmy

Anyway, when we got to one particular part of The Boxer, I declared that there wasn’t enough whistling and humming in music these days. I guess I was dreaming of the past and by way of citation, I offer the SOTD - Jealous Guy by John Lennon. A simple, truthful, and beautiful song. If you are older than me, you might listen to John Lennon’s original; if you are younger, you might like Elliot Smith’s version. For me, musically (and emotionally) land-locked in the 80’s, it has to be the Roxy Music cover from 1981, made in tribute to John Lennon after his murder and sung by one of my musical (and sartorial) idols - Bryan Ferry. Just look at that beautiful pastel suit. He was wearing those when Duran Duran was still wearing leather pants and New Romantic pirate shirts.

Jealous Guy

I was dreaming of the past
And my heart was beating fast
I began to lose control
I began to lose control

I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy

Ha, something funny just happened. When I am at my desk at home (like now), my cat Cat-Cat, sleeps in an open drawer or on the writing desk, like this:

Cat-Cat responds to whistling and whether indoors or out, he will come when we whistle for him. Of course as I was writing this post, I was listening to the music and as soon as the whistling began, Cat-Cat stood-up and got in my face as if to ask why the hell I felt like I needed to whistle for him when he was right there.

Finally, I have to give a shout-out to Rob Booth. I don’t think I can ever really talk about music (especially older music) without thinking about Rob. My life is full of music lovers and honest-to-God professional musicians and songwriters, but it is Rob who is my real musical muse. Part of it is because he is one of the only people I know who cares about the lyrical content of music as much as I do. Part of it just has to do with when we met and what was going on with music in those days. Anyway, Rob calls every couple of weeks when he is stuck in Houston’s rush hour traffic. We are never home that early, so he always sings me a song on the answering machine or will quote/rap/scat/toast some lyrics for me. It always, always makes me smile. Thanks, mate.

jimmy

Aragorn: Gentlemen, we do not stop till nightfall.
Pippin: What about breakfast?
Aragorn: You’ve already had it.
Pippin: We’ve had one, yes. What about second breakfast?
Merry: I don’t think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.
Pippin: What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn’t he?
Merry: I wouldn’t count on it.

Kimberly weighed our cat Rowdy the other day and he tipped the scales at 24 lbs.. Enough is enough. We decided that he needs to go on a diet. Abra, our other indoor cat is so skinny that it looks like she is still hanging-on to the heroin chic fad of the 90’s. How could that be? They should be eating about the same amount of food. While we were discussing this, we noted that Rowdy walked back into the kitchen four separate times for food that morning. He’s like a Hobbit! He just likes food!

A little research on the Internets revealed that we shouldn’t have just been leaving food down all day for the cats. Also, since cats are pure carnivores, they don’t need anything except protein and fat. Carbs just make them fat. In general, canned food is better than dry food, because it has higher meat content and less carbs. So, the strategy was to switch to canned food and then only feed them twice a day. Well, it turns out that our cats don’t like wet food. We weren’t expecting that. We thought they might just take a little time to get used to it, but it just wasn’t happening, so we switched back to their dry food, but are maintaining the twice a day feeding schedule. We couldn’t think of a convenient way to just put Rowdy on a diet, so all of the cats are on a diet. So far, I think Rowdy has lost two pounds. The other cats haven’t lost any weight, they are just cranky.

Speaking of diets, I haven’t worked-out or run since starting at the church and that, tied with the holidays and my own lack of discipline, has caused me to start balooning in all the wrong places. I can’t think of anything more boring than a new years resolution to lose weight, but there it is. It looks like I will have no choice.

jimmy    

Update 12.17.07: The automatic podcasting worked! I have modified and republished the mp3 to include album art (which I have included below).

Update 12.18.07: Reposted Podcast.

The following is a German language, audio-only interview of factory driver Hans Stuck describing the 1989 Audi IMSA 90 GTO racecar. His commentary is followed by a recording made of this car screaming around a test track. The sound of the inline-5, 20V turbo motor at full tilt is ossum™! Turn it up!

IMSA.mp3

jimmy

On the front straight at Texas World Speedway.

Best recorded lap time: 2:17.5

Tech Notes:

• Hankook R-S2 tires (225/45-16), 35 psi (cold)
• Boost: 20 psi

Best…track…event…ever! Finally, after years of hard work, setbacks, frustration and at least one awful shakedown run three years ago at MSR, we saw the fruition of our labor as my Coupe Quattro made it to a track event and performed beautifully.

The Drivers

One of the reasons this was such a great weekend was because of all of my friends who were able to attend. It was almost like the good ol’ days, when there used to be enough Audi Club members at the track to merit our own group photo at the start/finish line. It also seemed like the good ol’ days because I almost haven’t been to the track since the good ol’ days! I haven’t been to any track in three years. I haven’t been to TWS in four years and even then I was in the wrong car, going the wrong direction. The last time I was at TWS in the Coupe Quattro, driving the right direction (anti-clockwise, if you must know), was five and a half years ago! Almost everyone else in our group was just as rusty. Ken Thieme was driving a new car, Ryan hadn’t driven his TT on the track in years, Eric hadn’t been to TWS in four years, Shawn had never been to this track, and Sarah had never been to any track!

The group was actually supposed to be even bigger, but in our usual way, we registered late and not everybody made it in, so Bill Fluhr and Dave Matheu stayed in Florida, instead of gambling on being able to move off of the waiting list. As it was, Ken was on the waiting list, but was able to start driving by Saturday afternoon, thanks in part to a Ferrari driver and sadly, somebody else.

Pictured left to right: Jimmy, Ken Fluhr, James Bufkin, Ken Thieme, Andrew Bianchi, Eric Fluhr, Ryan English, Sarah Nadalin, Shawn Olsen, Tony Nadalin, Pete Haas, Butch Bianchi

Friday

For once, there wasn’t a mad rush to prep or repair my car on the night we should be driving to an event. I’m getting too old for that kind of pressure on a travel day. This time, I made sure the car was ready to go a whole week before the event. Eric and I worked really hard to get everything done and then took multiple test drives, just to make sure. Still, even though I was more prepared than ever, the eleventh hour came with some frustrations and challenges. A tight time schedule and very limited space in the Miata prevented me from packing as thoroughly as I would have liked.

Adding to my crankiness was the fact that I had ordered a camera from Chase Cam and had paid extra to have it delivered in time for this event. When I opened the box on Thursday night, I discovered that the package did not contain the proper cable to use the camera! I wrote a Jimmy’s Gettin’ Angry™ style email, but I knew that nothing could be done. To their credit, Chase Cam called me on my cell at the track on Saturday and offered to overnight the cable to my hotel. However, I didn’t take them up on their offer, because I hadn’t brought any of the other parts of the in-car camera rig with me. D’oh. I have everything I need now, so my next event report will come with in-car footage.

On Friday afternoon, I was able to join James, Shawn, Ryan and Kang for the more relaxed daytime caravan out of town, rather than the frantically race the clock to get to the track before they close the gate at 10 o’clock caravan (Eric and Ken). The trip to College Station may have been at a relaxed pace, but it was anything but relaxing for me. First of all, I was crammed into an uncomfortable racing seat for the duration of the trip. Second, my car is very, very loud inside. The sound of the mostly open exhaust, which exits just behind the passenger door, resonates and drones inside the bare metal cockpit. It’s like sitting inside a megaphone pointed at a hive of angry bees. Finally, while I am thankful for the beautiful weather all weekend, it was an unseasonably warm 84º F, which made it almost unbearably hot in the car, where I have no HVAC whatsoever. It was made even more hot in the car because the firewall isn’t completely sealed, so blazing hot air comes from the engine, through the firewall, and somehow blows directly into my crotch. Not only was it very uncomfortable, but I am now almost certainly sterile. Also, I was drinking liters and liters of water from water bottles to stay cool and hydrated, so naturally I needed to relieve myself only five minutes into the trip. Certainly, we’ll stop somewhere, I thought. Kang brought his girlfriend, certainly she will need to stop. No such luck. My hardcore friends went the whole distance with no stops, so I arrived in College Station deaf, sterile, and in desperate need of a chiropractor and a dose of Trimpex.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. We grabbed dinner at Carino’s, Ryan and I went to the track, talked to S.W. & Friends (modified C6 Z06, Turbo Miata, brand new GT3), and waited for Andrew, Butch, and the Fluhr boys, who drove through the gate at exactly 10 pm. We spent some time unpacking and doing minor prep work, before finally calling it a night.

Saturday

Saturday morning was damp and foggy, but by mid-morning it was burning off and the rest of the weekend was perfect. I checked-in and got my driver’s packet. I had been told that I would be in the Blue group, but they moved me back up to the Yellow group with an instructor for my 2nd and 4th sessions. I have been a solo driver in Yellow for awhile, so I thought an instructor wasn’t really necessary, but it turned-out to be great.

In the first session, I was easily the slowest in the Yellow group. I let everybody pass. The running gag was that a couple of us just left our arms out the window giving passing signals so much that we needed a mannequin arm permanently attached to the car, so we wouldn’t get tired.

I was slow partially because I hadn’t been to the track in so long, partially out of choice, and partially because the car didn’t feel quite right. Even though Ken had just aligned the car, it was sometimes pulling to the left, it was sometimes unstable during braking, and it was bump steering like crazy. Even though the brakes themselves were working great, I didn’t have the confidence to really get into them, so I just went around the track and connected the cones without pushing it too much. I had decided that this weekend was about the car and not about me. We had identified several potential weak points of the car and we needed a good event to shakedown any problems.

Speaking of problems, some poor guy in the Blue group spun his Ferrari on the first lap of his first session and backed it into the infield wall. It’s always sad to see such a beautiful car messed-up like that, but at least nobody was hurt, and Ken was one step closer to being able to drive.

I got an instructor for my second session. Dennis was great. He didn’t say too much at first, so I guess he was just checking me out, but I told him that I was pretty rusty and he should chime-in about anything he wanted. After that, he gave me about half-a-dozen pointers that immediately made me faster. It was great fun. He was having fun, too, and admitted that he had really just wanted a ride in the car, because he thought it was cool. There were a couple of times he said something about “with quattro you can…”, so it was nice having an instructor who understood AWD lines and such.

The rest of the day went fine. That evening, we had dinner at Outback as is our custom and I had the Jackeroo Chops (even though they aren’t called that anymore), as is my custom. Eric drank a couple of beers(!) and we talked about dry sump systems.

Sunday

By the first session on Sunday, I was getting fast enough to start passing people in the Yellow group. All of the little handling problems I had been complaining about before (except for the bump steer), seemed to disappear when I drove the car really hard. I was getting more confidence in my braking, which was good, because my higher speeds required it. But I was still leaving a lot on the table. I locked my brakes a couple of times and recovered quickly without any drama, but I didn’t push quite as hard after that.

Still, I was finding my rhythm, trying to incorporate the suggestions that Dennis had made to me, and was even trying to drastically change my line into Turn 1, based on a chalk talk from the day before. The car was performing well and I was really having fun. Eric and I always tried to drive with each other. Here we are doing a coordinated high-speed drive-by at the finish line, which made for one of the best photos of the weekend.

Towards the end of the session, I came blasting out of Turn 2 and came up fast upon a BMW Z4. The driver gave me a passing signal and checked his speed. I didn’t want to pass there, so I waved off the signal and lifted all the way out of the throttle. I heard a loud pop and my car lost all of its power. I was pretty sure that I had popped-off an intercooler hose. I limped the car around the next two turns and then pulled-off on the inside of Turn 4, where the car immediately died. I signaled the corner worker that I was alright and waited for the end of the session. Since my friends didn’t see what had happened, they assumed that I had gone off the track, so I had to suffer the indignity of having them all honk at me as they drove past. After the session, I managed to get the car started and I limped it around the track and into the paddock.

Eric opened my hood and immediately found the problem. I had blown apart my bypass valve! I couldn’t believe it. For more information, see the TAP Bypass Valve Morbidity and Mortality Discussion at AudiWorld here. Luckily, Ryan English had a spare Forge valve, so we swapped that in and everything was as good as new. Interestingly, Ryan suspected he was having boost problems because of a torn diaphragm in his primary Forge valve. I thought the point of having aftermarket bypass valves was to improve the dependability of our cars.???

I think it was during my next session that Tony Nadalin timed me with his iPhone (Is there anything that phone can’t do?). Without knowing that I was being timed and while still driving conservatively, I set my personal best time. My fastest laps were yet to come, but I didn’t bother to ask anybody to time me again, since again, the weekend was about the car and not about me. Next time.

I think it was also during this session that I chased Kang around in his Miata. Unfortunately, his tires were starting to go away and he went four-wheels-off in Turn 6, recovered and got back on the track, but then spun off completely coming out of Turn 11.

Jimmy chasing Kang around the carousel.

Eric and I traded cars for the next session and that was major league fun. To be honest, I didn’t think I would like driving his car. After driving my car at speed for a day and a half, I thought I would find the UrQuattro too soft and too slow. Besides, I don’t usually like driving cars belonging to other people, even my friends. I’m just too careful with their cars. Well, I was wrong on both counts. I jumped in Eric’s car, drove it like I stole it, and loved every minute of it. No, it wasn’t as fast as my car, but it was still fast and it hooked-up in the corners as well as my car (same wheels and tires). I chased Eric for awhile and then he let me pass and he chased me for awhile. Eric said that my car was effortless to drive quickly. He said that without even trying, he got the car to 130 mph at the end of the front straight.

Jimmy running from Kang and Eric.

The last session was the best of all. Eric, Ryan, and I went out and played tag. It was a riot. Even though there was a permanent yellow flag between Turn 4 and Turn 5, because a Corvette had blown its engine, caught fire, and dumped oil on the track, I was driving as fast or faster than I had all weekend. Our train ran up on an RX-8 who was driving well and was fast, but not fast enough. His biggest problem was that he wasn’t giving out passing signals. Eric eventually got around him. Later, Eric said, “I felt like I was throwing that guy to a pack of wolves.” That’s about right. A couple of straights without seeing a passing signal had me seeing red instead. At the carousel, I late braked and jammed my nose up on the inside, so that I was driving right towards his passenger side door. He got the message after that and I finally got a passing signal.

The last person we ran up on was the same black Z4 that I had seen earlier in the day. I followed him for a couple of laps, but even though I was sure that I was faster, he was making such good drives out of the corners, that I couldn’t really get a good, safe run to pass, especially if he didn’t lift. So, I waved-off another passing signal from him and we just diced. Ryan and Eric were right behind me. It was a great way to end the event.

Coming in from the last session.

Ryan, Eric, and Jimmy. This picture says it all.

Random Notes

• Proudest Moment: Letting a GT3 pass me at the exit onto the front straight and then tucking-in behind him for a drag race to Turn 1. He only barely pulled on me. Ryan saw the whole thing. I’ll be back with all 28 psi of boost, pal.

• Best Save: Eric Fluhr got bent out of shape about fourteen different ways trying to late brake into Turn 1. I was right behind him for the show as he slid this way and that. His car was flip-flopping back and forth like a fish out of water. I was already on the phone with my bookie placing a bet for which side of the track he was going to fly off of when…he pulled it together and saved it! Not only that, instead of sheepishly taking it easy for a half of a lap, he continued flat-out around Turn 2 as if nothing had happened! Respect, yo.
  
• “Man Down!” Award: Me. Most of us had mechanical problems (Eric lost his power steering, Shawn blew his intercooler crossover pipe, Ken had suspension problems, and Ryan and I had bypass valve failures), but mine was the only one that put me off on the side of the track (if only temporarily).
• “Busted” Award: Too many to choose a winner. Pete Haas doing 78 in a 55, Andrew Bianchi braking on the banking, and Anthony Nadalin washing his daughters car at the track. You were all busted. Now let’s not let that happen again. Note: evidence photos kept small out of respect for the busted. I just wanted you to know that I have them.

• “Worst Lean Angle” Award: After careful photographic analysis (and with many valid candidates), Shawn Olsen’s UrS6 looked the most like a fully laden fishing trawler, listing badly to port in the angry ocean swells.

“We’re going over!”

Photos

jimmy

Note: All references to James Bufkin have been removed upon request. (11.19.07)

This is what I wrote:

“An even bigger difference is the steak sauce, which now comes in a small condiment packet. The steak sauce used to already be on the steak. In fact, I would scrape any frozen steak sauce which had stuck to the back of the cardboard cover, back onto the steak. Like the suggested side salad, the optional steak sauce is a nod towards healthy eating and I think it was the right thing to do (though really, if you have any kind of dietary restrictions or concerns, you shouldn’t even be looking at one of these things).

…I’m only asking for things to be the way they were.”

And this is what I saw when I pulled the dinner tray from the box this evening:

The steak sauce was already on the steak! This makes me happy for a couple of reasons. First, I will always use the sauce, so this saves me from having to fish the packet out from behind the plastic. Second, the reduction in packaging is a positive environmental step. And finally, I am going to pretend that the reason they changed back was because they read my review and said to themselves - we had better change back, because that powerful blogger likes things the way they used to be! He could ruin us!

I have some other comments about my earlier review. I noticed that for some reason, I was stingy with the photos in that post. So, I have added a photo of the plated dinner. Also, like all blogs, this site gets hundreds and hundreds of spam comments and they all come-in on that one post. I still can’t figure that one out.

I mentioned in the Nighthawk review that I would do reviews of other foods from my childhood, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Maybe on my next shopping trip, I’ll take a look at the current state of children’s breakfast cereal and pick-up some samples for review.

jimmy