Keep in mind all the men who have died fighting for our freedoms. For it is them who have made it possible for us not to go to work today…oh and do all the things we take for granted everyday. But also the not working thing.
🙂
Archive for personal
Happy Memorial Day
Posted in holiday, humor, personal, random with tags personal on May 29, 2006 by PaxtonCrashing the House of Mouse for my Birthday!
Posted in Disney World, Florida, holiday, Orlando, personal, roadtrip with tags birthday, Disney World, Florida, Orlando, personal, travel, Universal Studios on May 14, 2006 by Paxton
This article has been over a week in the writing. Work has been slamming me so I’ve had to write it on and off over many days. Hope you enjoy it. It’s longer than usual so just bear with me.
I wanted to go somewhere fun for my birthday. Since I now live in Jacksonville, FL, Walt Disney World is only two and a half hours away. I hadn’t been since 1999, so I decided that is where I wanted to go. When I went in 1999, my favorite park was Disney/MGM Studios because it had more of the rides and shows that I enjoyed. To help seal the deal, Disney/MGM had also added a new ride, the Aerosmith Rock & Roller Coaster, since I’d been there last. So on Cinco de Mayo we packed up the car and headed down to Orlando.
We stayed at a Courtyard Marriot in Lake Buena Vista. It was, literally, a 5 minute drive to the park on Saturday morning. We get to the park around 10:30am and immediately head to the first ride, The Great Movie Ride. A great ride, not just in name only, it is made to look like Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA. I have been to, and seen a movie in, the real Mann’s, and it’s a great replica. The ride is a celebration of classic movies and showcases popular scenes from these movies with wax figures and small sets. Very cool. It’s like riding through a large Madame Tussaud’s exhibit. A very cool attraction I like to ride whenever I’m at MGM.
Next we headed over to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. The lines were getting a little longer, so we grabbed a Fast Pass at Tower of Terror and went to stand in line for the Aerosmith Rock N Roller Coaster.
If you’ve been to Disney and haven’t done the Fast Pass, you are missing out. You grab a ticket from an automatic dispenser and it tells you to return to the specified ride at a specified time, usually about 1.5 hours later. So with Fast Pass in hand, we waited in line at the Rock n Roller Coaster.
The ride itself was very cool. The environment while you waited in line was like you were in the lobby of a recording studio named G-Force Records. There was a lot of musical memorabilia like gold records and concert posters. All of a sudden a large group of you are ushered into a room that looks out on a recording studio. It looks like Aerosmith is putting the final touches on a track and they notice you. They inform you that they are about to leave for a concert but they want you to come with them. The dialogue in this little drama…is BAD. Do you remember the SNL Wayne’s World sketch they were on when Tom Hanks hosted? The drummer spouts off a long diatribe about supply and demand that sounded unrehearsed and fake. That’s kinda how this sounded. They even throw in the line “Everyone knows how we feel about our fans.” I’m on the ride, I don’t need to be pandered to. Anywho, we are shuffled into the loading area where you load the roller coaster. The cars look like a stretch cadillac limousine. It’s nice. As for the ride itself, it’s very good. Fast, furious and lots of Aerosmith rock playing. The ride is a suped up, much more fun version of Space Moutain. It’s all dark except for neon street signs that keep the feeling of a high speed run to the Aerosmith concert. Lots of fun, but too short. I was having so much fun that it ended just as we got started. I realize that coasters nowadays are getting faster and shorter, mush like our attention spans, but COME ON!!! If you go to MGM Studios, definately get on this ride.
We got off the Rock N Roller Coaster at exactly the time our Fast Pass said to be back over at the Tower of Terror. So we head over and get in the Fast Pass line. We literally walked right up and into the ride. Maybe a 2 minute wait. That was nice. The Tower is a great ride. You walk through the basement of an old hotel, get in an old elevator and it takes you around the Twilight Zone until it drops you up and down in a random sequence. Very fun and thrilling. Another good ride.
Next we hopped back over to the other side of the park to visit the Star Tours gift shop. I had been on the Star Tours ride several times and so had everyone else. I didn’t see any need to go again as it is only a mediocre ride. If it wasn’t based on Star Wars, I would probably say the ride somewhat sucked. It seriously needs to be updated. While walking to the Star Tours gift shop, I noticed some things had changed since 1999. Outside the ride there used to be a life-size speeder bike you could get your picture with. Check out this cheezy pic from my visit to MGM in 1999. That is no longer there. And the gift shop, The Jawa Trader, has been upgraded tremendously. There is a lot more room and they built tatooine adobe builings around it. I guess they had to sell more merchandise. You think they would have upgraded the ride. This is what I bought at the gift shop. It’s a Star Tours passport to Florida. They never have my name personalized, so I gotta get the generic items.
From here we moved onto Muppet-Vision 3-D. This is an awesome 3-D show featuring the Muppets as they demonstrate their new breakthrough, Muppetvision. It’s pretty funny and the theater itself interacts with the movie. They even have balcony seats with Statler and Waldorf sitting in them yelling out insults just like the Muppet Show!! All of your favorite Muppets show up so it’s lots of fun. I love the Muppets so I love seeing this show everytime I go to MGM Studios.
Lunchtime, baby! We decided to eat at the nicest place in the park, The Brown Derby. It’s a recreation of a famous restaraunt in Hollywood, CA. It’s upscale and very nice. We had wine and I ordered strip steak and mashed potatoes. The food was phenomenal. If you go to MGM and don’t have a bunch of kids with you, this is the place to eat. Kids won’t like it much, but it’s a great adult place.
Lastly we hit the MGM backlot tour. It’s really short, and doesn’t compare to the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot tour, but it’s fun. In the beginning they show a special effects presentation featuring Pearl Harbour. They take members of the audience to perform. My group of 4 was chosen to be the participants. My wife had 900 gallons of water dumped on top of her and the rest of us stood on a fake PT boat and reacted to bombs going off around us. It was a lot of fun, but we didn’t get to see the performance. Apparently they take what we did and edit it into a short film that the people in the audience see. Since we were not with the audience and busy taking off our rain-gear we didn’t get to see the edited result and Disney said it gets deleted immediately. I was really disappointed to hear this. When we were “acting” on the PT boat, I really played it up. Running around and screaming like a girl, it was awesome. I totally wanted to see it edited together. Oh well. The rest of the tour took us on a tram ride to see a few abandoned movie props and an exploding movie set. Not bad.
By this point we were out of things to do at MGM, so we decided to park hop over to Epcot center. Epcot was in the middle of some Flower and Garden festival so it was all dressed up in pretty flowers. We first rode Spaceship: Earth which is a slow, meandering history of communication on Earth. It is housed inside the famous white “golf ball” that everyone associates Epcot with. The ride was okay, but it had been a long day and this was a welcome respite from the heat and walking. We then proceeded to the World Showcase and started to visit the countries. We went to Mexico and rode the River of Time. Another meandering “history of…” ride. The Mexican marketplace was cool, but boring. I did enjoy my “fiesta” margarita, as did everyone else in my party. We wound up drinking our margaritas while walking around Norway.
Of the countries we visited this time, my favorite was Norway…and not just because we drank margaritas next to the Maelstrom. The ride, the just mentioned Maelstrom, was fun and random, but the film they showed afterwards was a little on the silly side. Norway does have a cool giftshop where you can buy bad ass Viking helmets right next to not-so-bad-ass sweaters.
We finally stopped when I couldn’t walk anymore. I was so exhausted. We decided to hit a movie after leaving the parking lot. Well, for the next two hours we drove around looking for a theater and found nothing. The only theater we could find was the AMC at Downtown Disney, and there was no way we were getting a parking spot there on Saturday night at 8pm. Believe me, we tried.
So we went to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings and then crashed back at the hotel. This was one of the most fun trips to Disney I’ve ever had. I’m glad I got to do it for my birthday and with our friends, The Stars. It was a blast.
The drive home the next morning was an interesting event. We hit not one, but TWO crashes. The normally 2.5 hour drive back stretched into almost 5 f’n hours. I was so salty when I got home that I could’ve spit. My friend, Dave, slept probably 90% of the way. When we got back to Jacksonville he had no idea we had been stuck in traffic for like 3 hours.
None of this dampened the experience though and I look back on that trip with much fondness.
Technorati Tags – Walt Disney World Epcot Center Disney MGM Studios
Happy Birthday to Me!!
Posted in holiday, humor, personal with tags birthday, personal on May 9, 2006 by Paxton
Today is my 32nd Birthday. Let’s pause to reflect on the enormity of that statement.
I am 32 years old. Three and one-fifth decades old. The only milestone left in my life, age-wise, is the Presidency. In three years I can run for President. While I do fancy myself the modern day Millard Fillmore, I don’t plan on running for president, much to the dismay of my high school guidance counselor (much love, Mrs. Kolb). I’m having a good birthday today, so thanks to everyone that’s asked.
Moving Day!
Posted in personal with tags personal, work on April 4, 2006 by Paxton
My team at work is moving from the main Winn-Dixie headquarters building to a former store location called “Stalag 13” due to its resemblance to a prison. It’s bland white with barbed wire fences around the parking lot. Should be interesting.
Update
Got to my new desk at “Stalag 13” and found like 15 magazines in the desk drawer. The magazine titles included Ebony, Essence, Black Entertainment, Oprah and Woman’s Day. I did find one copy of PC Upgrade magazine on how to build your own computer. Needless to say that is the only magazine that didn’t end up in the circular file.
RateBeer.com Incident
Posted in humor, internet, personal, ratebeer.com with tags beer, internet, personal, websites on March 29, 2006 by Paxton
Last year, my friend, Steve, and I joined a website called RateBeer.com. The idea is simple, rate and review beers you drink for everyone to check out. Now, I freely admit that I am no beer enthusiast. My tastes run to the light American lager that true beer connoisseurs hate, a legacy left to me by my father (he still stocks his fridge with Keystone Light and Southpaw). The site is very cool and I enjoy reading the reviews that people put out there. It’s amazing how different other people’s tastes are from my own.
Steve and I thought it would be fun to rate beers we enjoy and completely tear apart the ones we hate, which, coincidentally, would be completely opposite of everyone else on the website. Check out my beer ratings here. The list should be sorted by my rating, with my favorites at the top. There are just under 40 beers there, click on a few and see how I reviewed them. If you want to see my friend Steve’s ratings click here. Our reviews for each beer will be the first one listed underneath the “Commercial Description” after you click on the beer title in the list.
While putting in my ratings, I was messaged through the site by some guy with the handle TAR mocking my ratings. His subject was ‘hahaha’ and the message said:
Saying Budweiser is beer is like calling Sutter Home or Thunderbird, wine.
I thought this was funny. Knowing I was going to hear from beer snobs like this was why I started rating beers on this site. I thought it would be fun to rip TAR a funny answer:
Just because it’s a macro-brew doesn’t automatically make it bad. I prefer beer that doesn’t taste like warm asphalt poured through an old shoe. I also prefer to be able to pronounce my beer in my native tongue. I’d put Pabst Blue Ribbon against your top beer anyday. If it was good enough for my grandfather and my father, it’s good enough for me.
In this reply, I was mocking the guy and his beer choices (which he started), but in a good-natured way. I didn’t expect his over-the-top and hostile reply:
First of all, when did I say all macros are bad? You need to learn how to read. Secondly, the example you cite (pouring beer through asphalt, for example) sounds as if you’ve let that beer alone to affect your overall view of decent-to-good beer, if it was indeed a decent beer that tasted like asphalt. Also, what exactly is your native tongue? Chances are, your ancestors were immigrants. Please don’t tell me you’re one of those people who claim that this land solely belongs to them. If so, you’re all wrong. You wouldn’t be here if that was the case. But of course you could never understand the points I’m making since you’re a stubborn, non-critical thinker like most dumb males. You probably also watch porn and football and voted for Bush (I’m a Republican, by the way, but if you cannot see that Bush is an idiot, something’s worng with you). Don’t be a bigot. And as for PBR — Please give me some specifics on how it compares to Rochefort 10. I’ve had all those beeers you claim are good, but have you tasted any of my faves? I thought not. Open your mind, dude.
To his credit, he did not say all macro-brews are bad. That was an assumption I made and it was my mistake. He did imply it, though. And even if my ancestors are immigrants, as he proclaims, wouldn’t I STILL have a native tongue? And I don’t remember claiming that this land, or any land for that matter, “belongs” to me. Wow, TAR is pissed and making wild and unfounded accusations about my person. He goes so far as to call me a bigot, too. Well, TAR, last I checked, you were the one to message me mocking my choice of Budweiser as a good beer. Then when I explained my opinion, you lash out at not only me, but all American males who prefer American macro-brewed beers in general. Now you’re doing exactly what you claimed I had been doing, being a bigot. My job here is done.
FYI…I sent a “bridge the gap” email that I usually send to people to shut them up, but I stopped talking to the ass. I haven’t really even been to the site again. I prefer wine to beer. It’s not that I don’t like beer, it’s that it bothers my ulcer whereas wine does not. Besides, wine is the thinking man’s beer (take that, TAR!).
Cavalcade of Awesome 
