Still Alive, Muley?

Yes, I am still alive. I just have not figured out yet what I want to do with the shriveled, neglected carcass of comedy and culture that Muley's World has become. I waver between jumping in again full-steam or pushing DELETE and sending the whole thing to cyber heaven.

To answer the question I posed in my last post from back in MARCH, the Muley family has decided to return to Branson for our summer vacation. We leave on July 7 and will return on Muley's birthday, July 11. We'll be staying at a hotel-water park combo that is adjacent to Silver Dollar City amusement park, which is where we will spend probably a day and a half. We'll also take the night cruise of the lake on the big paddlewheeler, and have a whole day to just bum around town, eat cobbler and buy garish trinkets. It should be a blast.

Anyway, I've felt so guilty every time I've seen this bookmark come up, knowing that I have this bad penchant for just up and disappearing with no explanation. Even though I've learned over time that this is not uncommon in the blogosphere, I thought I would write a few words here to let you guys know what's up. Maybe all those nights under the Ozark moon next month will give me a better idea of what to do with Muley's World.

In the meantime, I hope all of you and your families are well and having fun this summer. If we can survive this heat, $5 gas and the incessant lunacy that is Election '08, I guess we'll survive anything.

Back to Branson?

Okay, so it's like this. The Muley family (at least, at this point, Muley and Mrs. Muley) is trying to figure out where to go on a family vacation this summer. We had thought about just doing a few weekends close to home, but the more Mrs. Muley and I pondered this, we realized that we won't have too many summers left to travel together with our girls, and that we need to try to take as many trips as possible while our kids still want to go places with us.

Last year, thanks to a generous, unsolicited financial donation from my parents, we were able to splurge and take the girls on their first visit to DisneyWorld, which they absolutely loved. Well, we don't have the financial resources to do that again, so we are thinking a bit more economically. With the increasing expense nowadays of air travel, we want to go somewhere we can drive to instead of fly to. Even though the price of gas is outrageous, it's still somewhat cheaper to drive instead of fly (unless you plan on driving to Cape Horn in South America, which thankfully is not one of our contenders. I hear it is almost impossible to get Dr Pepper down in Argentina).

So, we are at the moment thinking of returning to the vacation oasis of Branson, Missouri. We were just there three years ago, but there are some advantages to returning so soon. First, it's definitely cheaper than DisneyWorld or Colorado or New York City or Hawaii -- some other spots on our ultimate family travel wish list. Second, we can drive there from Waco in a day's time. (That would give our girls a chance to catch up on all their DVD watching in the car). Third, we all had a good time in Branson the last time around, and if we go again this summer we'd be doing things we didn't before, such as possibly going to a huge amusement park and doing some cool stuff on the lakes.

The problem is that as we do some investigating on the Internet, it seems that in the nice places we would want to stay, the cheaper rooms and packages are mostly booked up. (ARGH! What's with these annoying, well-organized early vacation planner types?) We haven't looked very long at this, but hopefully we won't be faced with a choice of staying in a huge multi-bedroom suite in a nice place (and paying through the honker for the privilege) or staying in a budget one-room efficiency in the Ozark Outhouse Motel out beyond the city water treatment plant.

Have any of the three or four regular visitors to this site been to Branson recently? If so, any suggestions?

St. Patrick's Day Jokes

I apologize for being such an unfaithful blogger lately. A lot of strange stuff involving home improvement projects, spring break and injury-inducing neighborhood dogs has taken up my time and kept me from regular computer time. I need to tell some of those stories on a good blog post, but until then, I'll share a few Irish jokes I received from Mrs. Muley today, in honor of St. Patty's

NUMBER ONE

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place.  Looking up to heaven he said, "Lord take pity on me.  If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!" 

Miraculously, a parking place appeared. Paddy looked up again and said, "Never mind, I found one."

NUMBER TWO

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut . The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?"

"Just water," says the priest. The trooper says, "Then why do I smell wine?"

The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He's done it again!"

NUMBER THREE

Walking into the bar, Mike said to Charlie the bartender, "Pour me a stiff one - just had another fight with the little woman." 

"Oh yeah?" said Charlie, "And how did this one end?"

"When it was over," Mike replied, "She came to me on her hands and knees.

"Really," said Charles, "Now that's a switch! What did she say?" 

She said, "Come out from under the bed, you little chicken."

AND, NUMBER FOUR

Flynn staggered home very late after another evening with his drinking buddy, Paddy. He took off his shoes to avoid waking his wife, Mary. 

He tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step. As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump. A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful. 

Managing not to yell, Flynn sprung up, pulled down his pants, and looked in the hall mirror to see that his "cheeks" were cut and bleeding. He managed to quietly find a full box of Band-Aids and began putting a Band-Aid as best he could on each place he saw blood. He then hid the now almost empty Band-Aid box and shuffled and stumbled his way to bed. 

In the morning, Flynn woke up with searing pain in both his head and butt and Mary staring at him from across the room. 

She said, "You were drunk again last night weren't you?"

Flynn said, "Why you say such a mean thing?"

"Well," Mary said, "it could be the open front door, it could be the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drops of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes, but mostly.....it's all those Band-Aids stuck on the hall mirror.

Rejected Valentines

I missed this one yesterday. Here's a few Valentine's Day cards that didn't quite make the cut. I don't know -- I wouldn't have sent any of these, but I know a few of them would probably sell quite well. (PG content rating)

Movie Star Trivia

If you are a fan of movies and Hollywood of days gone by, one of the best time-wasters on the Internet is to visit the Internet Movie Database site. Here you can find seemingly everything you'd ever want to know about every actor, actress or movie that ever existed.

One of my favorite leisure activities is to visit the entry for a movie, actor or actress and click through to the "Trivia" section. You can find some amazing little tidbits you've never heard before. Of course, since I believe that virtually anyone can submit these, I never know for sure if every single "fact" shown is 100 percent true.

Here's just a few of the interesting trivia facts I've found from past trips to IMDB:

Sophia Loren derives great pleasure from rolling her bare feet over a wooden rolling pin while watching TV.

Production of the Tom Hanks movie “Cast Away” was halted for a year so Hanks could lose 50 pounds and grow out his hair for his time spent on the deserted island. During this hiatus, director Robert Zemeckis used the same crew to film “What Lies Beneath” in 2000. It's also interesting to know that actual lines of dialogue were written for" Wilson the Volleyball" in the movie, to help Hanks have a more natural interaction with the inanimate object. Wilson even has his own credit and write-up in IMDB with his own IMDB page, which begins: "Wilson the Volleyball is one of Hollywood's most loved volleyballs."

Don Adams, who played Maxwell Smart on the TV series “Get Smart,” had seven children with first wife Adelaide Adams. One of the kids they named Beige.

While Rhonda Fleming (called “the Queen of Technicolor") was always a competent actress, she was more renowned for her exquisite beauty, and the camera absolutely adored her. At one time a cameraman on one of her films remarked on how he was so struck by her beauty that, as a gag, he intentionally tried to photograph her badly. He was astonished to discover that no matter how deliberately he botched it, she still came out looking ravishing.

Suzanne Pleshette, best known as Bob Newhart's first TV wife, was the producers’ original choice for the role on Catwoman on the "Batman" TV show in 1966. When negotiations broke down, the part went to Julie Newmar, who made it her own.

Slim 1960s fashion model Leslie Hornby was known by a distinctive nickname. She was first nicknamed “Sticks” because of her reed-thin figure, but then switched it to “Twigs” and, finally “Twiggy.” According to “Celebrity Sleuth” magazine, her measurements were 31AA-22-32 at age 17, 32-23-32 during the peak of her 60s modeling career, 32B-24-32 in 1976 at age 27 and 36B-20-33 when measured in 1986.

“Alien” star Sigourney Weaver was born Susan Alexandra Weaver in 1949. Her father, a famous TV producer, originally wanted to name her Flavia, because of his passion for Roman history (he had already named her elder brother Trajan). In grade school, Susan Weaver was quite a bit taller than most of her other classmates (at the age of 13, she was already 5’ 10”), resulting in her constantly being laughed at and picked on. In order to gain their acceptance, she took on the role of class clown. In 1963, she changed her name to “Sigourney” after the character “Sigourney Howard” in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

How to Hula While You Make Moolah

I think it was that eminent philosopher Fonzie who said, "Sit on it and spin!" That might be a good slogan for something called "The Hawaii Chair," which I discovered on a blog somewhere. Check out this YouTube video of what has to be one of the goofiest products ever invented. If you want the sensation of working at your desk during an 8.4 earthquake, then I guess this is for you.



And just what, pray tell, is a "2800 RPM Hula Motor?"

My Vinyl Gallery

There is a space between two windows in the Muley back room -- which serves as the office, library and playroom of the Muley house -- that, for the lack of anything more striking, I have made into a rotating exhibit space that might be called "Muley's LP Gallery." I still own hundreds of vinyl LPs from those ancient days before CDs, and so one day I bought a dozen LP frames from a crafts store, arranged them in three rows on the wall, and, "voila!," a gallery was born.

Instead of leaving the same record covers up forever, I decided to rotate them out every now and then for variety's sake. Sometimes they are chosen to match a theme ("Country music," "Standup comedy," "Female balladeers"), and sometimes they are totally random. Here is the gallery that appeared in December 2007 featuring Christmas albums.



Sometime in January, tiring of the cold and bleak winter weather, I took down the Christmas albums and replaced them with ones depicting the warm wahines of sunny Hawaii.



I suspect I am just about the only one who ever notices what records I put up on the wall. My kids think I'm a bit weird and ancient, to begin with, for even owning something as old-fashioned and outdated as LPs. I'm guessing that, to them, I could cut the fronts off of old boxes of cereal and slap them up on the wall and I wouldn't be doing anything any goofier or less visually arresting.

What about other oldtimers such as me? Well, we've had guests in the house for parties, and not once have I ever had anyone comment on the gallery, good or bad. Maybe they're too busy playing the vintage 1980s Nintendo games we have set up in the room (remember "Duck Hunt"?)

To be truthful, I don't really care all that much if no one else notices the LPs. It's sort of like my private Etch-A-Sketch on the wall. I have fun thinking about what theme I'll feature next. After Hawaii, I might do all Beatles albums, or maybe a set of great ol' cheesy 1950s lounge records I bought cheap at the library used book sale. Maybe I'll report back from time to time on what's featured in "the gallery."