Nielsen's ra(n)tings

Politics, guns, homeschooling for the gifted, scuba, hunting, farming and somewhat coherent occasional ranting from your average Buckeye State journalist/dad/farmer/actor.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Boot scootin' with the Amish

Doc-wife and I went out to the local honky tonk the other night after one of the “Cuckoo’s Nest” performances…giving me the chance to unwind from that charged show with a couple beers and some country music.

The place was packed with people of all ages and lifestyles…from John Travolta Urban Cowboy wannabes to the dozen or so snowmobilers stopping in for a quick warm-me-up to the gang of 8-10 Amish boys in the corner ogling the girls and trying to consume every Jell-O shot in the place.

They nearly succeeded. In between playing with their cell phone and smoking copious quantities of cigarettes (Ohio’s smoking ban hasn’t made it to this place yet), these boys emptied the waitress’s tray of shots three times during the hour we were at the bar… forking up the cash for two or three shots each during visits by the waitress. It’s a good thing they weren’t driving.

The Amish boys, clean shaven (thus unmarried) and apparently on rum springa, got me thinking. I was reminded of the music video by John Michael Montgomery, “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident.),” with the anachronistic dancing Amish guys.

I doubt that any of the boys was of legal drinking age (21), though since the Amish have no photo identification, how can you tell? “Oh, yeah, that’s my brother Owen Yoder there…he’s 21 for sure.” Anyway, the reason for this disjointed post is I thought I’d see how difficult it is to link to a music video…in this case the John Michael Montgomery auction video…let’s see…

SOLD THE GRUNDY COUNTY AUCTION INCIDENT

Friday, January 26, 2007

USB turntable...great, but flawed, idea

While shopping for my daughter’s birthday present at Hot Topics this week, I came across something I absolutely had to have.

The Ion ITTUSB turntable is an idea whose time has definitely come: Direct-to-computer transfer of those old vinyl album tracks from my hundreds of LPs…those albums that are classics, but will never make the commercial jump to CD…what’s not to love? Unfortunately, the idea was better than the execution.

After four hours of frustration yesterday that the computer couldn’t find the turntable, completely reading the instruction manuals and support materials online, at the very end of the FAQs, I came across the note that “oh, yeah, it’s not supported by Windows XP Media Center.” XP Home…yes. XP Pro…uh huh. No Media Center, though. A further look revealed no patches for the problem either…grrrrr!

It’s aggravating, but not an insurmountable problem, though, as we plan to purchase a couple new laptops within the next two months. I’ll have to do a little further looking to see whether the turntable will be compatible with the new Vista OS.

Will post review later…assuming I can find an operating system on which it will run.

Dissecting polls

Mrs. du Toit has an absolutely outstanding post up about the ludicrous claims being made based on one question, yes-or-no polls. An excerpt:

Do you think Social Security should be eliminated?

Yes

No

If you answered that all taxes should be eliminated, think the cost of Social Security is too high, but don’t think that Social Security should be eliminated, what have I learned?

Yeah, BESIDES your being psychotic.

I’ve learned that you don’t think of Social Security as a tax, but I’d have to ask a lot more questions before I would be certain of that. I have to ask the tax question a few different ways, I have to ask the Social Security questions a few more ways, and on and on until I can figure out how you really feel about Social Security. Then I’d have to figure out how strongly you felt about Social Security in relationship to other issues, say Medicare, Welfare, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc. If you continually choose something other than Social Security as the issues you feel are important, then I know that while you may have opinions on Social Security, the issue doesn’t move you.

I’ve harped on the fact that reporters, being the lazy and sometimes ideologically-driven creatures they are, often present such polls without looking at the substance and methodology behind them. Connie du Toit lays out in clear and lucid detail why those public opinion McNuggets presented with such fanfare by the media mean exactly nothing.

Read the whole thing.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Global warming sucks

A foot and a half of 'global warming'

We got about a foot and a half of global warming dumped on us the last day or so and more expected tonight. High winds, deep drifts and another half a foot expected also forced the cancellation of tonight's performance of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" at the Ashtabula Arts Center. I'll be back on stage tomorrow night.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

'Nostalgia' no growth strategy

I can’t help feeling I’m seeing the blind destruction of one of my favorite local institutions.

Rabbit Run Theater has been in operation for more than 60 years and is one of the few barn theaters surviving in the country. It’s hosted the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Hume Cronyn through its history and for years has enjoyed broad support from the community.

I’m just not sure why there seems to be a concerted effort on the part of the organization, now, to splinter that support.

Rabbit Run’s season this year seems designed to appeal only to the over 70 crowd and diehard theater-goers. The season includes:

*Forever Plaid

Four young men donning the loudest of plaids and singing in the closest of harmony bring the joy and innocence of the music of the 1950’s to life in this uproarious revue.

((Fogies of the world relive your youth!!))

* Having Our Say :The Delany Sisters` First 100 Years

Each over 100 years old, Sadie and Bessie Delany take us on a remarkable journey as they recount the last hundred year’s of our nation’s history as seen through the eyes of these two pioneering African-American professionals.

((Are your sh*tting me? Black history in lily white Madison? Remember the trouble we had casting Hoke in Driving Miss Daisy?))

*Swing

Experience the joy and exuberance of SWING!, the `feel-good musical` that celebrates the music and dance of the swing era. Be enthralled as some of Northeast Ohio’s most talented young adults strut, shuffle, and stomp to the music of Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and many others.

((More fogeys dancing in the aisles))

* Little Women - The Broadway Musical

Follow the adventures of Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy in this exhilarating new musical based on the beloved novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

((Can’t find a story from the last 100 years, huh?))

* Fallen Angels

Watch the hilarity unfold in this classic Noel Coward comedy as the ups and downs of marital monotony and the thrill of rekindled former romances are outrageously explored.

((A 1923 Noel Coward play? And don’t give me any of that “as relevant today as when it was written” crap.))

The theater has also upped its ticket prices, going to $17 a ticket for the musicals.

All of this, to me, seems designed to appeal to an aged audience or one composed of diehard theater-goers. It’s losing sight of the fact, however, that your aged audience is not going to be there forever; and by appealing to only the elderly, you’re ignoring the task of building a base of Rabbit Run patrons for the future.

This geriatric slate of offerings will also prompt the Rantmeister clan to forego Rabbit Run auditions this spring. This summer…for the first time since we returned to Ohio….the Rantmeister clan will be absent from the Rabbit Run stage. Let’s see…”Fallen Angels” at Rabbit Run versus “The Wizard of Oz” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” to be presented this summer at the Ashtabula Arts Center…it’s no contest…we’ll take our costumes and greasepaint to Ashtabula this year.

In a barn theater like Rabbit Run, nostalgia is nice and certainly has its place. But the past shouldn’t be pursued exclusively at the expense of the future.

If it was good enough for David...

This was just too funny...heck, even Barney Fife had it all over these guys:

TIJUANA, Mexico The police department has issued about 60 slingshots to officers in the violent border city of Tijuana, where soldiers confiscated police weapons two weeks ago on allegations of collusion with drug traffickers.

Municipal police spokesman Fernando Bojorquez said Monday that the slingshots, along with bags of ballbearings, were given to officers patrolling areas of the city visited by tourists.

Tijuana's police force of 2,000 officers has been without guns since Jan. 5, but some patrol alongside armed state police.

Now THERE is a solution I would never have conceived...I'd have started with maybe...hmmm...policing my own police force? Cracking down on the corruption and graft that passes for justice down there. By arming even the good cops with slingshots, though, you're virtually guaranteeing the drug gangs will be able to run amok...ingenious!

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Finding home again

Last night, I found home again.

It’s not like I was lost, really. I’m a pretty happy person, comfortable and content in my home with my family. I’ve always been somewhat on edge away from home, though. Moving every three years like clockwork, as we have because of work and home concerns, I’ve developed a shell and have always been on my guard when out in the public, not surrounded by my close family circle. Friendly: yes. Relaxed: no.

I took the blog-daughter to rehearsal for Pocahontas last night at the Ashtabula Arts Center. The scene was chaotic - there must have been at least 200 people milling around through various rehearsals for Annie, Pocahontas, performance choirs and dance classes. Normally, such noise and confusion would cause me to try to find a quiet place to sit on the outskirts and count the minutes until I can leave.

This was different, though.

In front of me in the pit area of the building was rehearsal for Annie. That consisted of 35-40 people of various ages going through blocking of the upcoming play and tuning their harmonies while happily walking through the fledgling production. I remembered the pit area as the place where I’d spent countless hours as an adolescent, rehearsing plays, singing in the youth repertory choir and waiting for my sister, who was nearly always in dance class at the center. I remembered it as the place where I met my wife and kissed her for the first time, when we auditioned for a mutual friend’s production of “Catch-22” in May 1985.

To the left, in the previously hallowed ground of the original dance space (genuflect, all ye who enter here, and REMOVE YOUR DAMN STREET SHOES) 30-40 youngsters chatted and made/renewed friendships during their first Pocahontas rehearsal. Parents watched as the music and theatrical directors tried to impose some order on the proceedings with less than complete success. This was also the place where my sister, on a near-daily basis through her youth and adolescence, had obeyed the mysterious stentorian French commands of “glissade, assemble, changement, changement!” delivered by the dance teacher. Then, it was the home turf of the legion of the leotard-and-tights, hair-pulled-back, pointe-shoes-wearing, short-tempered dancebots…now it’s just used as an extra rehearsal space. The dancers now have and entire new wing of the center in which to pursue their obsession, safe from the distraction of prying eyes.

At the service/information/center hub counter behind, me was a woman I had known during my stint at the local community college. She answered phones, accepted money, wrote receipts, reserved tickets and answered questions with a smile…not rushed, but happy in the moment. I remembered another woman who had manned the counter for a time during my teen years, enjoying the tide of bright and interesting people ebbing and flowing from the center: my mother.

I recognized new friends and old friends, heard sour notes and the promise of beautiful music to come and saw a small band of dancers venture from their wing into the main part of the center (no doubt to get a Diet Coke), staying tightly packed together lest some of the whirling chaos infiltrate their world of control and precision. I had several people come up to me to congratulate me/ask for information about “Cuckoo’s Nest.”

And I realized…I was happy, very uncharacteristically relaxed in this swirling crowd of chatting, laughing and singing people. I was just me, without need for the shell presented to all but close family and select friends. As my daughter trundled off to her rehearsal, memories from the past and present merged into something I hadn’t realized I was missing. It was that “swift spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever (courtesy of Grosse Pointe Blank.)”

It felt like I was home.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Master wordsmith

Best analogy for the folly of raising the minimum comes from....drumroll please...Kim duToit:
"Increasing the minimum wage is like daylight savings time. They day isn’t actually made longer (or shorter). It’s like cutting off your head and standing on it, so you’ll be taller."
Mrs. duToit also posts a succinct, logical, real world-based explanation of how increasing the minimum wage actually hurts those it's intended to help. Despite her on-again, off-again blogging, Connie duToit remains one of my must-reads.

The Big Chief

"Every night, they turn the world on its side..."

Here's the Rantmeister, aka Chief Bromden, during his opening monologue for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," now running at the Ashtabula Arts Center. Opening weekend went very well - the cast was ready and foulups were at a minimum. The show continues for the next two weekends.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

"Cuckoo" hatches

Opening night for “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” at the Ashtabula Arts Center went pretty well last night…the production was ready for it’s debut, something that’s not necessarily been true of other recent Arts Center productions with which I’ve been involved.

The smallish audience appeared to appreciate the play, though I did hear reports of an elderly couple leaving early (we warned you there was bad language and mature subject matter.) An actor playing a minor character had the misfortune to dislocate his shoulder yesterday at school, but took the stage like a trouper at curtain, albeit with a slightly modified role.

The show was being recorded last night (which I knew), but the videographer was also waiting in the hall outside the dressing rooms to record the actors when we left the backstage area after the show (which I didn’t know.) There was also a gauntlet of cheering people to run through after leaving the backstage area for the lobby of the Arts Center, all the while being filmed.

This wigged me out.

Coming off stage from Cuckoo’s Nest, I’m already very wired up and jangly and the thing I want most at that time is some peace and quiet for a little while to wind down. When I’m onstage, I’m performing…offstage, I just want to be able to disappear. I want to go off into a quiet place for a couple minutes and ramp down…last night I was just trying to get to the parking area, and my truck, for some solitude.

I’m afraid I probably looked a little deranged coming out of the backstage area and being faced with the camera and cheering audience members. Thankfully, two of my relatives came to see the show last night and I was able to say a few words to them before bolting to my truck.

*****

The preview article for the play was in the local paper’s weekend edition here. The play runs tonight, Friday, Saturday and Sunday next weekend and Thursday, Friday and Saturday the following weekend.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Top of my 2007 Christmas list

I saw this on Instapundit this morning, and it is just too cool to be believed. Doc-wife, are you reading this? Nudge, nudge, hint hint!

Friday, January 05, 2007

"Cuckoo's Nest" to open

We’re heading into production week for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at the Ashtabula Arts Center and, as usual, things are looking a little shaky.

Rehearsals for the show, ongoing since early December, have been on Sundays and Tuesdays only and have been sparsely attended. Most of the actors know their lines, though the principals are still having some problems. Hopefully, the magic of the theater will help everything come together for opening night, because the cast is very talented and the play is dynamite.

I play Chief Bromden, who is the narrator in the original book. While observing life in an insane asylum, he pretends to be deaf and dumb so he doesn’t have to interact with the staff and patients. He is forced from his shell by the arrival of a boisterous patient named McMurphy, who challenges the status quo at the institution with tragic results.

The artwork above is one of the promotional posters for the show. The other poster, apparently prepared by someone with no knowledge of the show, is of a cuckoo bird flying over a nest. The title of the book has little to do with the plot, and is taken from an old children’s rhyme:

Wire, briar, limber, lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew east, one flew west
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
O-U-T spells out
Goose swoops down and plucks you out!

The show runs Jan, 12, 13, 19-21 and 25- 27.

"Shite by any other name..."

It’s depressing to watch the early slate of candidates being trotted out for the 1998 Presidential run.

Rudy “The ‘G’ stands for Gun Control” Giuliani? John “Gang of 14/McCain-Feingold” McCain? Mitt “No abortions/No assault weapons” Romney? Two east-coasters and a senile Southwestern septuagenarian? Is there no one promising from those bright red flyover states? These guys are a trifecta of weaselly, mealy-mouthed, career yes-men whose only claim to conservative status is that they look somewhat conservative by New York standards. Curtail free speech? Check. Gun control? Check. A nod and a wink to illegal immigration? Check.

And on the Democrat side we have Chicago’s own Barack Osama Obama, whom everyone agrees is a “rock star” among politicians, but can’t come up with anything else about which to boast on his resume. And then there’s Hillary, a harridan I would cheerfully vote for only if she were in a contest against that poster child for liberal lunacy, Dennis Kucinich, with Cindy Sheehan as his veep.

And I’m not a classic conservative…”angry moderate” is the phrase a friend used to describe me. I favor abortion rights, stem cell research, keeping God out of government, space exploration and strict enforcement of pollution/environmental regulations. Conversely, I also want to shrink the federal budget, put an end to illegal border crossing, free law-abiding citizens from onerous gun regulations and, if necessary, use force to protect American interests at home and abroad.

The worst thing is that it is fast approaching the season when these candidates will fine-tune their image try to convince the voters that these turds can, indeed, change their smell. To paraphrase the Bard’s famous observation by Juliet, “What's in a name? that which we call shite by any other name would smell like crap.” The east coasters are now faced with running outside their home turf and trying to win the hearts of “flyover country’s” voters. Predictably, they will bury their gun control speeches and resurrect tales of religion in their lives. They will wring their hands over the epidemic of illegal immigration while maintaining the need for “humane” measures to help the huddled masses already here illegally.

Is this the best we can do? The greatest Republic on the face of the Earth is reduced to depending on insipid power-grabbers more interested in tailoring their speech to the latest poll than stating their positions with integrity, honesty and intelligence?

I guess I’ll have to console myself that it’s a long time until the election, and perhaps today’s Presidential luminaries will burn out before November 2008. Twenty two months and counting…

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

WTF?!?

Custom Mauser .308 that weighs in at 20 or more pounds!

The Gunrunner has another auction running this week and one of the guns that caught my eye was a custom Mauser in .308 with a heavy stock and super heavy barrel. Obviously not one for packing over the mountains, the gun would be deadly at a stationary blind (think artillery emplacement.) With the bid at $20 as I write this, it seems like a bargain so far. Heck, the scrap iron value alone...

New year, same story

If it’s January, that must mean it’s time for the annual “Starving of the Exchange Student Exhibition.” Get you tickets for the spectacle now!

We are currently hosting our 13th foreign exchange student…a string that started when we began hosting in West Virginia when son&heir was only four. We’ve had boys and girls from several different countries, sometimes two at a time, stay at our house for the school year.

The story is always the same come January, though…”Holy crap, I’ve gained 30 pounds (or more) since I’ve been here and now the New Year reminds me that I will have to return home in a few short months.” What follows now will be a couple months of extra trips to the YMCA, skipped meals and self-flagellation over allowing themselves to balloon like the blueberry girl on Willy Wonka after partaking of the sumptuous Rantmeister vittles.

To be fair, this annual ritual is much more pronounced in the female exchange students than the males we’ve hosted. In fact, the only being thus far immune to the effects of the Rantmeister’s larder was a boy from Hong Kong we hosted in 2000. This boy ate more than anyone I have ever seen, twice as much as any other family member, but remained at his 5-10 and probably 125 pounds throughout his stay. I swear that boy must have had an entire bellyful of tapeworms to process that much food without adding weight.

Yesterday’s trip to Wal-Mart (Den of Unspeakable Evil) saw my cart loaded with more fruits and veggies than normal (ever the conscientious host parent.) We’ll probably also cut back on our trips to the buffets for a couple months to aid our current student in her efforts to again shoehorn herself into her jeans.

Recipe blogging: Black Bean Soup

I’m back again after a whirlwind trip to South Carolina to visit Doc-wife’s relatives and celebrate her 10th-anniversary-of-turning-30 birthday (nudge, nudge, wink, wink!) It was a nice trip but a long-ass drive.

We brought back a HUGE can of black beans with us which one of their renters had left in a house when they moved out. Lacking any other culinary inspiration at supper time yesterday, I made some black bean soup which turned out to be pretty tasty. That makes it time again for some completely lame recipe blogging.

So, without further ado:

Rantmeister’s Spicy Black Bean Soup
1 huge can…institutional size (a gallon?)…of black beans
2 pounds ham, cubed into ½-inch pieces
2 medium yellow onions…chop coarsely
3 large carrots…cut into 3/8” thick slices
2 large stalks celery, sliced ¼ inch thick, include the leaves if possible
1 can diced tomatoes and chilies
2 cans chicken broth
3 chicken bouillon cubes
1-1/2 tbs cumin* (*approximate…I don’t measure these things)
3 tsp six-pepper spice mix from Sam’s Club* (see previous note)
3 tsp coarse garlic salt* (do I have to say it?)
1 tsp paprika* (duh!)
¼ cup vegetable or peanut oil

Place oil in large Dutch oven type pan over medium-low heat. Add ham, onions, carrots and celery. Cover and cook until they start to soften. Add tomatoes, one can broth, bouillon cubes and spices. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 10 minutes. Drain and add beans and remaining broth, stir, cover and simmer over low heat for at least an hour.