a laff for today smiles

read this and thought i'd share it smiles


"When Arizona became a state in 1912, the first man it sent to the United States Senate was a loquacious cowboy called Henry Fountain Ashurst. In his first address to the Senate, Mr Ashurst boasted that Arizona was 'poised to become a veritable paradise.' Only two things were needed, he said: 'Water, and lots of good people'. According to legend, a senator from New England responded, 'If the gentleman from Arizona will forgive me, that's all they need in hell.'"


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how i learned to love indies,foreign & mainstream film smiles

 how i learned to love indies,foreign & mainstream film as a teenage in San Francisco...
as a kid, i guess we went to alot of movies, as t.v. was not a favorite or a mainstay in our house probably in the 1960 started seeing movies, i remember the big screens and "it's a mad,mad,mad world-the big CinemaScope screen. ..when the original pink panther came out-they was a promotion where the was pink champagne,pink popcorn,candy or promo items i wish i still had...horror,western,Hercules abounded...and cartoons...and coming attractions for days....if you could hear the film, that wad considered state of the art...so alot of movies in s.f. about 50cents to get in ..a buck for fancy theaters....a quarter would get you stuff to eat, unless you snuck some in...my mom would bring a back of stuff...as a kid ya wanted to get something at the snack bar...it doesn't scar ya...just relish the few times you did. now fast forward about 6 years
now my best friend bart and i during high school were offered a job running a theater in the haight ashbury...cinemateque (sp) bart had run projectors in school and said he'd show me how to run the projector and splice film...we didn't realize we ran the whole deal from opening to selling goodies, stash the cash (credit cards weren't even a concept) clean up, close run a slide show/light show at intermission and passed out flyers. the odd thing, we never saw the people who ran it after the first day we opened...it was an "art house" film theater, not sure if bart was as esoteric, as pragmatic and saw nude women there. one of the films "el topo" alejandro judorowsky-shirley clarke-and foreign films this was about 35 years ago....but it did put the seed of interest in non-traditional films in me...then with angela i saw kwaidan and was blown away-there was another Japanese film also and that and the work at that theatre started my love for film, not only mainstream, but independent, not widely released, art house and foreign.....but the way...after being paid weekly..it stopped suddenly, can't remember but i think we deposited the till everyday at the bank.....and we had about a month go by.....and we decided that the slide projectors and a few other things, after being unable to contact anyone and still depositing the money daily- were close to a trade off as we were informed the rent wasn't paid on the theatre and the doors were closing in a few days...so there was the catalyst that made films a world as deep as books, emotional if that was to be conveyed, a look to see i wanted as mad as i thought or in the scope of things did it really matter......you get a piece of life from films as you do books, except with books the film is in your head as the director, with films there's a directors who leads you there..but let's you take it the rest of the way smiles

with spring coming about....i put in a small pond (300 gallons?) heavy black plastic 2-tiered...and i learned that i was not in tip-top shape-i had gotten the back of my pick-up a short bed 73 stepside chevy give you an idea of the size of  and the amount of sand i had to help level the pond base-so i dug sweat dripping in my eyes even with a head band and wrist band..so when i thought i was done after drinking about 300 gallons of water, i saw i have to dig another foot to put the sand in, which was in 5 gallon buckets about 200 feet away, now i know what it is like to be on a chain gang-get the sand in, offer to make a sacrifice to some obscure gods to let me put in the pond base level-so eyeballing it and barley using a level i had handy i put water in the pond and even without a  sacrifice to the gods that pond sunk and leveled out after another 2 hours of feeding sand along the sides of the pond- now that was after spring and first of summer...so a bit late to attract any frogs...as summer paled we realized that frogs were not going to come this year....forward to the present-just starting this week we now hear a male frog crooning away..and this bad boy is loud, can be heard over a sound system and a film...with our backyard, it is hard to figure where he is, our neighborhood is relatively quiet...so if i went to look for him...it would be a case of keystone cops...me wandering aimlessly and forgetting the frog will be quiet on he hears me pounding about....so as he croons and can offer his own pond, bubbling slowly, bugs galore, greenery to hang-out and bid their time for bugs...sprinklers with water to bring more bugs abounding...not sure if quail would bother the frogs..i.e. eat them...there are robin red-breasts who hop thru the yard after a good watering, bug hunting...the sparrows and finches seem more interested in the bird feeders or the sunflowers later in the summer...don't want to get store brought frogs as they are not acclimated to our yard and survival may be minimal...now one of our cats, tinker does cruise the yard and drinks out of the pond, hopefully as much cat food as she eats, will be less inclined to eat a frog, but cats like to play with their prey also, a bridge i am crossing too early...need to set some drip lines a we are doing a boxed planter deal with herbs and vegetables this year...i digress-so the hunt for the frog will continue..or at least see that he has made a home in the pond and secondly will find his true love smiles until later