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The Fairfield Williamsburg at Kingsgate, where we're staying has a nice fitness center. My parents, my sister, and her husband took the three kids to Costco and Sam's Club for supplies. For dinner, we took went to the Peking Restaurant, famous for its all-you-can buffet. It's very popular, given the increasing retirement community in Williamsburg. The restaurant had two pairs of lions outside, both the traditional stylized ones and a more realistic variety with an accompanying cub. Miranda couldn't resist putting her hand in their mouths.

My parents drove back to Washington after dinner. My father insists he has to install GIS equipment tomorrow at work. So it'll be just like the days of our childhood when we trashed the house while our parents were away.

June 29 Permalink

Started out on our vacation to Williamsburg. The biggest delay took place at the mixing bowl, where discovered through WTOP that an accident on the Occuquan River bridge was holding things up. We stopped at a Burger King in Lorton to hit bathroom and check the map. I shifted to Route 1 and got back on 95 after the Occuquan River.

Real close to Williamsburg, we got off on Route 30 to eat the McDonald's, but Miranda and Whitlock found the bathroom too disgusting. They weren't going to eat there. In the parking lot, my father called me on my cell and gave me the building and room number of the suite.

We ate a Wendy's on Route 60, across the street from the chocolate outlet. After we got settled, Whitlock and I went to Food Lion to buy the week's groceries. When he got back, Miranda, Victoria and Ian were all in asleep on the hide-a-bed.

June 28 Permalink

Watched the special 75-minute season finale of CSI: Miami,"Body Count". A guy gets stabbed in a prison yard and Horatio is called in. But it's all a diversion for a helicopter-powered jailbreak where Horatio gets to show incredible marksmanship.

The three escapees were three roommates: Randall Kaye, a stockbroker in for a hit-and-run where he dragged the victim for two miles; Hank Kerner, a homicidal maniac, and Stewart Otis, a child molester. The downed helicopter is found a few miles away with Kaye and his brother, the chopper pilot, dead from gunshot wounds to the temple - a Hank Kerner calling card. Kerner is about to be sent to death row for a murder case Calleigh is working on.

We meet a prosecutor briefly, but she soon turns up dead, courtesy of Hank Kerner. Clear now that Hank has a vendetta on everyone responsible for putting him away, Calleigh calmly refuses all offers of additional protection. She ends up in the only Miami gunshop that sells the unique oldschool lubricant from Kerner's recent murder scenes. She spots him in the security mirror and Hank spots her as well. Since Emily Proctor will be back for the next season, she single-handedly apprehends him.

The other escapee, appeared in the previous episode "Broken" where he scared lots of parents by killing a little girl in a Chuck E. Cheese bathroom. Stewart Otis developed a lust for Kaye's daughter Emma by whacking off to her pictures in prison. He has fashioned a private school teacher uniform and abducts her from her school, posing as the new authority figure.

We briefly meet D.B. Sweeney as the pedophile who prefers boys that provides an RV to Stewart. The police arrest poor D.B. for possessing child pornography although we never get the idea he's actually got anything obscene. When Horatio finds the RV, here's blood and a taunting video tape. Fortunately, he finds Emma alive in a swamp.

Later in the box, Emma lets on that she told Stewart where her cousin Robyn goes to school. Her class is on a field trip to the aquarium and Stewart is right there with a homemade aquarium uniform. Horatio finds him there, but Stewart grabs Robyn anyway and threatens to drop her from a high balcony. Horatio shoots him, Stewart lets go of Robyn, and himself is hanging off the ledge. Stewart wants Horatio to let him go. I can't figure out why a suicidal man can't just relax and let himself go. Never mind. Horatio pulls him back so that can Stewart can be properly crucified with the lethal drugs.

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Also watched "Mr. Monk Goes Back to School", the second season opener of Monk. We begin with Andrew McCarthy, obviously having an affair. He's scheduled to proctor the SAT the next morning. As the ex-Brat Packer sits in front of the classrom, his lover drops from a great height onto his automobile, setting off the car alarm.

It appears to have been a suicide, but the audience is pretty sure Andrew did it, despite having a clean alibi when the victim hit windshield. The exclusive school which is the setting for the episode was Trudy's alma mater and Trudy's best friend, now the headmaster played by Rosaline Chao, requests Monk's help. The embarassing OCD moment occurs when Monk, substituting for the dead teacher, takes forever to meticulously write his name on the blackboard.

I was guessing that perhaps Andrew had his long-lost twin sit in the class, but an even wilder scenario ensues. He killed his lover in the clock tower, then placed her on the minute hand. She fell off at 8:20 when Andrew was safely in the classroom. Because of the SATs on a Saturday morning, the athletic field that the clockface overlooked was empty. Unfortunately for Andrew, a maintenance man saw everything and he is disposed of as well.

Whitlock like that Rosalind Chao played a character that didn't necessarily have to be Asian. Andrew pretty much played the same preppy character from Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero, now all grown up.

June 27 Permalink

Watched season finale of Angel,"Home". In brief, Lilah offers the group the L.A. office of Wolfram and Hart and eventually Angel takes the deal. Many people have been pissed off with this turn of events, but the entire thought of being corrupted by large amounts of money and power at this point in time seems very attractive to me. I finished the episode skipping a happy beat.

In between, Connor goes postal, tying himself, Cordelia, and a bunch of hostages to explosive propane tanks. Angel fights him and driving a knife through his son's neck. The episode ends with Connor as an 18-year-old in a nother happy family.

The biggest WTF moment for me was the black panther in the White Room with Gunn. I still prefer the crazed girl.

June 26 Permalink

Watched the Angel episode "Peace Out". When last we left Angel, he was in a demon dimension with the former Jasmine worshippers that took of the form of spider-like Ray Harryhausen creations. The orb he used to transport himself here makes the creatures shrink away in horror. Angel finds he must climb a mountain with a temple at the top. Inside the temple is a talky priest and a taciturn warrior that Angel must defeat in order to learn Jasmine's true name.

Meanwhile back in Los Angeles, Connor has Wesley, Gunn, Fred and Lorne bound on their knees, ready to kill them when Jasmine halts the execution. Instead they're locked in the cell in the basement where they learn that Connor could see Jasmine's true form from the beginning, but because of his upbringing in Quor-Toth, he's not freaked-out by maggotty skulls.

Connor demands to know from Jasmine where Cordelia is. She won't tell him, but he eventually coerces the secret out of some Jasmaniacs and finds Cordelia's body in a church, still comatose and covered in some netting. We can see the Shakespearian references here to Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. Vincent Kartheiser makes his greatest performance in a soliloquoy, filled with angst worthy of the early days of Buffy.

Jasmine is in the hotel balcony, presenting herself to a worldwide audience when Angel appears in the lobby with the head of the keeper of her name. It speaks those words and everyone runs in panic at seeing the true form of Jasmine. She restores her appearance but Gina just isn't quite as radiant as before.

Gunn finally succeeds in kicking open the cell door and the former inmates find an empty hotel. Out on the streets of L.A., it's just after the Rodney King verdict. Jasmine presents herself as a subtle, twisted villain, believing she had the godd intentions of humanity the entire time. I think this was harder to execute than the more obvious Caleb. Angel has a senseless argument with her that results in Jasmine tossing an automobile from an overpass at him. Their battle ends with her kissing Angel, then Connor interrupting them. Jasmine thinks Daddy'd come to help, but he sticks his fist through her skull.

Angel comes home to the rest of the gang in the lobby. Then the episode ends with Lilah in the doorway.

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In honor of today's Supreme Court decision go do what you've been doing all along.

June 25 Permalink

Watched "Inside the Box," the season-ender for CSI. A bank robbery to grab a specific safety deposit box results in the death of an off-duty police officer. Soon, everyone directly involved in the robbery is dead. The trail leads back to Sam Braun, a casino owner who's known Catherine since she was in diapers. Sam killed one of his waitresses that he was having an affair with for having an affair herself with his buddy Benny Murdock. Benny died just a few months earlier. Braun did her in with, of all things, one of those giant novelty scissors used for ceremonial ribbon-cutting events. Benny kept the scissors in the safety deposit box, perhaps for blackmail, but we never really find out. Catherine also figures out that Sam is her biological father.

Anyway, I understand Sam wanting to keep the murder weapon out of police hands, but did he have to resort to such a public display that pretty much screams,"Hey! I've got something to hide!" Why not hire someone to impersonate a relative and heir of Benny to con the bank out of the contents of the safety deposit box? Why not pay a ridiculous amount of money to the legal heir for the contents of the box. I've never seen such stupidity in villain outside of Dr. Evil.

My favorite moment was when the younger CSI's are gathered together in the break room and Nick explains to Grissom how fortune cookies are made. The glow on Nick's face is the priceless look of the slowest kid in class finally getting the right answer.

June 24 Permalink

Finished Brotherhood of the Bomb by Gregg Herken, the story of Ernest Lawrence, Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller and nuclear weapons from about 1940-1960. You learn about the incompetence of the intelligence agencies who focused on the big fish like Oppenheimer while letting Klaus Fuchs, the real spy, slip through. While, at various points in his life, Oppy had Communist sympathies, treachery was not in his nature. Later on, Oppenheimer had his security clearance removed in an exhausting secret proceeding when he was perfectly prepared to resign. The book isn't of general interest, but you might enjoy it if you have the Manhattan Project bug.

June 23 Permalink

I spoke too soon. MLB has come to their senses and the same-uniform plan for the All-Star Game will be tabled for at least one year. Unfortunately, they may bring it up again next year in Houston. Hey guys, can it. It's a bad idea.

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Watched the Enterprise season closer "The Expanse". A mysterious alien vessel cuts a mindless swath from Florida to Venezuela before crashing on Earth. Several million were killed including Trip's younger sister. Archer gets temporarily kidnapped by the Suliban and gets told that a race called the Xindi were responsible for the attack because they found out that Earthlings would destroy them 400 years in the future.

Trip gets into a vengeful post-September 11 mode as a Archer tries to convince Admiral Forrest and the Vulcan High Command to search for this Xindi. Archer was told by the Suliban that the Xindi could be found in a Bermuda Triangle-like region of space called the Delphic Expanse, rather than the Badlands. The plot is briefly interrupted by T'Pol resigning her Vulcan mission to continue with Enterprise and Duras still chasing Archer.

So this story has the not-very-original, but nevertheless serviceable plot of answering an unprovoked attack. So why complicate it with time travel? Because Berman and Braga don't know jack about science fiction. Just because they run the most famous science fiction franchise, doesn't mean they do it with any skill. This is the similar conceit of Peter Angelos that because he owns a baseball team, he is automatically a "baseball guy". So we fly into next season with the hope of lots of real adventure that won't make the slightest bit of sense in the end.

June 22 Permalink

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

Miranda had her seventh birthday party at Build-a-Bear in Montgomery Mall. She wanted her birthday there after attending Katie's birthday party in February. At Build-A-Bear, you choose your stuffed animal, dress it, watch it being stuffed, then get a birth certificate. There wasn't as many kids in the store as there were in February, so it was less crazy. I was most helpful at the computers where I helped the kids in entering information for their bear's birth certificate. We had two hours reserved, but the party was pretty much over in an hour and a half so Tiffany, our party girl, entertained the remaining kids for the last half hour.

June 20 Permalink

Had dinner with my parents as the Silver Fountain because they won't be at Miranda's birthday party tomorrow. Afterwards, we cruised Aspen Hill showing Miranda my old home, as well as Peary High, Parkland Middle School, Brookhaven Elementary and Whitlock's old apartment at Pepper Tree Farm. Parkland was a junior high when I went there and Bea went to Brookhaven. My old house has bigger bushes now.

Ellen Vartanoff hosted tonight's Knossos meeting. The book was The King Must Die by Mary Renault. It follows Theseus from his birth to his return to Athens after the Cretan adventure. It was appropriate for the group since much of the story takes place in Knossos.

Most of the group found her overly romantic. Though I didn't finish the book, I found her style uncomfortably both heroic and naturalistic. World-famous media fan Martin Morse Wooster found the pace slow, but no novel is slower than Declare.

June 19 Permalink

E-mailed Larry Sheingorn tonight about future tapings of Silver Screen Test. Turns out his cancer has gotten worse and his doctors give him 6 months to two years to live. This evening I edited an episode I taped way back in April 2002. For Larry's live airing of The Doctor's In, I did triple duty of running the teleprompter, answering the phones, and putting an episode on Silver Screen Test on DVC Pro tape simultaneously. For the taped episode of The Doctor's In, I just made a copy of my show while running the teleprompter.

For his standard opinion at the end of the second show, Larry gave his swan song,"advice from a dying man," he called it. He cried, I didn't. I was too busy concentrating on teleprompter and thinking,"This is great television." It's just getting to me that we won't be working together for many more shows. I could just rationalize it and pretend he's just moving away. Maybe the best I can do for both of us is to make the shows we do work together on, the most fun we've had thus far. Over on Kristin's site and you'll find I'm one of many that helped her get through suicidal times. I'm not really sure what I did, but I was glad to be helpful. Now I'm charged with being one of those sharing Larry's last days. Maybe our greatest aid to our fellow persons comes not from our heroics, but from being human everyday.

June 18 Permalink

Don't like the idea of the Major League Baseball All-Star game players wearing the same uniforms, similar to that worn during batting practice and for the home run derby. I understand it will black and white, similar to the ChiSox jerseys of the late 1970s. Still I think it's a bad idea. Part of the thrill for a fan of the Tigers or the Pirates is to see Nate Cornejo and Brian Giles in your home team uniform. It's not like it matters in baseball or that players throw to the wrong base because of uniform confusion.

June 17 Permalink

Finally watched "Chosen," the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the main plot, Buffy decides that Willow can give all the Potentials the power of the Slayers. Spike wears an amulet Angel brought over from the WB, which produces sunlight in a bottle that quickly finishes off the army of Turok-han and begins the implosion of Sunnydale into the hellmouth.

Anya dies with a swordslash from a bringer. At the beginning of the episode, when we thought Buffy had dispatched Caleb with Angel's help, the preacher revives once more the slayer him. Her line to Angel, who had been unconscious, was,"He split."

She could have gone for the cheap,"Faded away, kind of like a firefly." The heartwarming moment for long-time viewers showed Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles, standing together one last time before the battle. I was surprised Andrew didn't view himself as the red shirt, doomed to die in the final battle.

Wood took Faith down a notch for her performance in bed. She might have been 20 or 21 when she went to prison and had a year in a coma to boot. So emotionally, she's lost four years of heterosexual relationships and therefore Faith may be more like a 20-year-old.

My nostalgia for Buffy's passing is not as deep as other fans. The magic of Whedon has disappeared since he's been occupied with Angel and Firefly. However, on this episode, with Joss writing and directing, I was glad to see his sure hand once again, and it showed in the final product.

June 16 Permalink

Here's the July schedule for episode #11 of Silver Screen Test, again with a real time slots:
Tuesdays, July 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 6:00 pm
Fridays, July 4, 11, 18, 25, 3:00 pm
The programs appear on the Open Channel in Montgomery County, Maryland, Channel 19.

June 15 Permalink

For Father's Day I cut the grass and thought I'd give a shot at going to see the Germantown Black Rox, but nobody was there. The recent rains must have caused a cancellation due to wet grounds. Anyway, I'm on the e-mailing list for future postponements.

Got a cellphone call from Chip Beall for advice on the largest lake in South America. I couldn't contribute much other than my belief that both Titicaca and Maracaibo are acceptable answers. You can read all the details on the Questions Unlimited site. I just think that in the future, questions in this area should emphasize that Maracaibo is not properly a lake. While we're at it, check this argument that Michigan and Huron are really the same lake.

June 14 Permalink

Watched the Enterprise episode "Bounty". All the previews showed T'Pol in heat, but that turned to be only the B-plot. The main plot had Archer getting himself captured by a Tellurite bounty hunter. The Klingons have a price on Archer's head for escaping from Rura Penthe. The Tellurite hopes to repurchase his impounded cargo vessel with the reward. Unfortunately, the bounty hunter discovers from his brother that the impounded vessel has been cannibalized beyond recognition. The Tellurite gets a change of heart and turns Archer over to the Klingons in a highly defective pair of cuffs. Once again, Archer defeats Duras and escapes in an emergency pod where Enterprise later picks him up.

In the Maxim plot, T'Pol and Phlox have returned from an away mission with some contagion that keeps them in quarantine. While Phlox is barely affected, T'Pol is induced into pon farr. She desperately needs sexual union regardless of species. At one point, T'Pol escapes to a sealed-off deck where she comes on to Reed, safe within his spacesuit, but, heck, we thought he was gay anyway.

June 13 Permalink

The Orlando Rays of the Southern League will move to Alabama next year and play as the Montgomery Biscuits. Around here, that kind of name reminds us of Montgomery Donuts.

June 12 Permalink

Rick Neuheisel got fired for betting in a high stakes NCAA basketball pool. I think size matters in this case. Many offices have pools on the tournament where everybody puts in $1-$10. But once the stakes get into the thousands, then many people have a gambling problem.

June 11 Permalink

Had family pictures taken at Rockville United Methodist Church for the directory. Afterwards, we drove by Ridge Road Regional Park to peek in on the Germantown Black Rox hosting the Silver Spring-Takoma Thunderbolts.

June 10 Permalink

Watched the Enterprise episode "First Flight". Not much exciting happens here. T'Pol and Archer investigate a dark matter nebula while the Captain broods over the death of an old friend on Mt. McKinley. Flashback five or six years to Forrest, Archer and A.G. Robinson, played by Keith Carradine. It all looks like The Right Stuff with sometime CSI and Angel guest star Brigid Brannagh as waitress Ruby.

June 9 Permalink

How come the promos for the NBA Finals use the line,"Live and unscripted"? I guess most people assume they're fixed like wrestling matches.

Worked with Doug Joubert first in the morning. Then, I sat behind Brad and Ernie Anderson for a couple of matches. I read for the first of the semi-finals. Ernie read the second match while I turned the lights out for the visuals. For the finals, I recognized the players and determine right and wrong. Horace Greeley defeated fellow New Yorker Smithtown 275-250.

Matches went well overall. Questions Unlimited computer mistress Tanya Govurune enabled the whole tournament to be run from laptops, right down to the scorekeeping and music. I checked the math questions back in February so there were no problems there. The biggest protest was whether "right or wrong" was a suitable synonym for "true or false" in defining the law of the excluded middle. We were able to access the internet directly from our Marymount dorm rooms. As far as I could research, the technical answer was "a or not a". "Right or wrong" just didn't appear.

June 7 Permalink

Partnered with Jason Russell. When his New York acting career stalled, he turned to teaching and school administration at a Christian school in New Hampshire.

One player accidentally hit the buzzer way too early on a toss-up. All I got to was two homophonic prefixes and she got it with "anti-" and "ante-". Definitely the most amazing buzz of the tournament.

In the evening, Jason and I played Showbiz Shuffle. He won two games out of three. The most interesting film put together was when Jason had a cult science fiction film featuring animals and animation, directed by Ed Wood starring Clint Eastwood and David Duchovny with Bela Lugosi and Joan Cusack.

June 6 Permalink

Worked today with Brad Rutter. He's lost weight since he won $1.2 million on Jeopardy. He's looking to start a high school academic quiz show in his home town of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Introduced a contestant named Sara Wolf very close to a question about palindromes. You can construct the palindromes "Harass Sarah" and "Flow Wolf" from her names. Of course, she doesn't have an "H" in her name. But really, I cribbed them from John Cooper. Then I inflicted Silver Screen Test on Brad.

June 5 Permalink

The first day of the National Academic Championship. I worked with Doug Joubert. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of you, Doug. He liked my reading of a question of a bonus on famous love triangles. The 5-pointer was Ashley, Scarlett and Melanie. Obviously the answer was Gone with the Wind. When I got to the 20-pointer, I said,"Bill, Hillary and Monica."

Also, after a question about the new name of Yugoslavia, now to be known as the Federation of Serbia and Montenegro, I added,"Now it will be referred to as the Federation of S&M. In the evening, I inflicted a couple of episodes of Silver Screen Test on Jason Russell and Ernie Anderson.

June 4 Permalink

Okay, so Sammy used a corked bat. Give him his suspension and let's turn our attention to something more interesting. Did we agonize over other players found with corked bats? Norm Cash got his only batting title with a corked bat. Gaylord Perry readily admitted to using foreign substances on the road to 300 wins. Let's treat this incident with the proportion it deserves.

June 3 Permalink

Riley doesn't get a whole lot of props. After all, he's not a dark, tortured soul or a formerly dark, tortured soul reduced to a simpering puppy dog, not that dangerous bad boy the girls seem to love. Riley is a generally optimistic, government employee with generally positive relationships with authority figures, just like, well, you get the idea. While the boys in black boil the girls' hormones, military man is still cut and can provide many hours of carnal pleasure as exemplified by "Where the Wild Things Are". Sure, Riley is the guy you marry, and Buffy is still a little young to be thinking about that, but he can sure make marriage look pretty good. She let a good one get away.

Watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "End of Days". Buffy pulls the magic axe out of the rock and First Buffy tells Caleb to let her go. Meanwhile, after the Potentials blow-up, Faith has been stunned and Kennedy rallies the troops to fight one seems to be only one Turok-Han, but soon becomes several. Buffy barges in to rescue them.

Buffy sends Xander out to take Dawn away from the fray. He chloroforms her, then shoves her into the car. Later on the road, Xander passes Buffy's note to Dawn explaining why he's taking her away. Dawn responds by tasering him, then turning the car back towards Sunnydale.

Caleb has some mystical merging ritual with the First. Spike and Buffy have another deep conversation that again reminds that he's just such a wimp now. Andrew and Anya go to the hospital to loot medical supplies and have a wheelchair fight.

Buffy goes to crypt decorated in Egyptian fashion and meets a well-preserved old woman that delivers one lame joke, but not much else before Caleb breaks her neck. They fight some until Angel appears, but Buffy wants to handle it herself. She knocks out Caleb, then gets into a clinch with Angel. The episode ends with Spike just off-stage watching and being taunted by the First Buffy.

Whitlock and Miranda baked a birthday cake for Kauai, not that Kauai will ever eat of it. This date was selected by Miranda when I figured that he must have been born over Memorial Day weekend last year. This makes sense when you think about it because the mother may well have felt more comfortable at a time when all was quiet on the Montgomery College-Rockville campus.

I finally cut the grass after letting it go for three weeks. The far corner of the back lawn, near the woods had a small grove of mushrooms.