Greatness!

Stand Up!

A friend's first stand-up comedy gig:



If you enjoy it, watch for more on Youtube under Caleb Shirk!

A Handy Meme Database!

http://knowyourmeme.com/

Boom Goes the Dynamite?

A clever study of the internet meme:

Where Are They Now?: Clue Edition

From "The Scoop": http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/

Whodunit? The Clue DVD cover After the first two murders, they gather Mr. Boddy and the cook. Wadsworth (Tim Curry) explains how the cook was killed. Who's missing? The conservative Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan) does not approve of Yvette (Colleen Camp) The cast of Clue

Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with the lead pipe? Perhaps it was Mrs. Peacock with the knife in the kitchen. Or could it have been Mrs. White in the billiard room with the rope?

In 1985 a cast of hilarious actors brought Clue, the Whodunit board game, to life on film. Donning 1950s garb, they were locked in a creepy, albeit classy, mansion with Mr. Boddy and a slew of unfortunate guests. The actors filled the movie with dry humor and wit on its way to becoming an ‘80s classic. Aside from avoiding suspicion, what have they been up to?

As Wadsworth the fast talking, exuberant butler, Tim Curry led the cast. In the same year Clue premiered he terrified audiences in Legend and later as the evil clown Pennywise in Stephen King’s It, then moved on to The Hunt for Red October, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Congo, Muppets Treasure Island, Charlie’s Angels, and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. He appeared in or voice acted in episodes of the TV shows Wiseguy, The Legend of Prince Valient, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, The Pirates of Dark Water, Dinosaurs, and had a starring voice role in The Wild Thornberrys. A well known stage actor, he starred in The Art of Success, played Alan Swann in the Broadway production of My Favorite Year, then starred as King Arthur in Spamalot, earning his third Tony nomination. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and he won the Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

As the sexy Miss Scarlet, Lesley Ann Warren had the male suspects trailing behind her. After Clue, she starred in A Fight for Jenny, Cop, Worth Winning, Lola, Life Stinks, Pure Country, Color of Night, Natural Enemy, Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, Losing Grace, Secretary, My Tiny Universe, Constellation, Deepwater, The Shore, Stiffs, and just completed Bound by a Secret. She appeared in episodes of Desperate Housewives, Will & Grace, and is currently starring in the protective custody drama, In Plain Sight. Warren is also a ballet dancer, having trained at the School of American Ballet. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Victor Victoria before Clue.

Michael McKean spent his days on set bumbling around as Mr. Green. The comedian starred in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Coneheads, Airheads, The Brady Bunch Movie, Small Soldiers, Mystery, Alaska, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, Relative Strangers, and is working on Whatever Works. He guest starred on the TV shows Grand, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Dinosaurs, Boy Meets World, Friends, and Smallville starred on Saturday Night Live, and voice acted in 101 Dalmatains: The Series. Along with acting, he co-wrote several of the songs for Christopher Guest’s film A Mighty Wind which won a Grammy for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media and the song “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song. He appeared on stage in London in Love Song and was recently cast to star in the British series The Thick of It. He’s also starring in the 40th anniversary Broadway revival of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming.

The shrill voiced Mrs. Peacock played by Eileen Brennan, denied guilt in the film, but couldn’t deny the laughs. Following her performance in Clue she starred in the movies Babes in Toyland, Rented Lips, Precious Victims, Take Me Home Again, If These Walls Could Talk, Jeepers Creepers, Comic Book Villains, and recently finished The Kings of Appletown. She is most well known for contributions to the small screen including the TV shows Blossom, thirtysomething, Home Improvement, ER, Mad About You, in 7th Heaven as the nosy Mrs. Bink, and in Will & Grace as a rough and tough acting coach for which she was nominated for an Emmy. Brennan was nominated for an Oscar for Private Benjamin in 1981, was nominated for six Emmys, and won one, also for Private Benjamin.

The most well known comedian in the cast is Christopher Lloyd. Following his turn as Professor Plum, Lloyd starred in many family oriented movies including, Walk Like a Man, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eight Men Out, Back to the Future trilogy, The Addams Family, The Addams Family Values, Camp Nowhere, The Pagemaster, Anastasia, My Favorite Martian, Alice in Wonderland TV movie, The Big Time, Detective, and has multiple projects in production or nearing completion. He did multiple episodes of Deadly Games, voice acted in Cyberchase, and starred in Stacked. Known as a very shy man, he rarely appears in public or gives interviews. With the success of various films, including Back to the Future, Lloyd’s voice accompanies theme park rides and animated specials.

Madeline Kahn portrayed the femme fatale in Clue as Mrs. White. She starred and voice acted in My Little Pony: The Movie, An American Tale, starred in Betsy’s Wedding, Mixed Nuts, Nixon, A Bug’s Life, her final film was the independent movie, Judy Berlin, and she starred in the TV show Cosby from 1996 to 1999. In 1987 she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance in an ABC After School Special called Wanted: The Perfect Guy. Kahn returned to the stage in the revival of Born Yesterday, then in Wendy Wasserstein’s play The Sisters Rosensweig, for which she won a Tony Award, and she also played the corrupt mayor in a concert performance of Anyone Can Whistle. Kahn died in December in 1999 shortly after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She was 57 years-old.

The stern looking, but not quite intimidating Colonel Mustard was played by Martin Mull. He went on to star in Home Is Where the Hart Is, Cutting Class, Ski Patrol, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jingle All the Way, Beverly Hills Family Robinson, Come Away Home, and Relative Strangers. Mull guest starred in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, The Wild Thornberrys, Arrested Development, Danny Phantom, American Dad, starred in Roseanne, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, The Ellen Show, and recently he appeared in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Gary Unmarried. Along with acting, Mull is a comedian, painter, and a recording artist. He did a series of TV commercials for Michelob in the ‘80s and radio commercials for Red Roof Inn during the 1990s. In 2009 he is set to host the show That’s Not Fake.

While Colleen Camp begins the movie as the seemingly helpless maid Yvette, fellow suspects quickly begin questioning what she’s hiding in her feather duster. Following Clue she starred in Walk Like a Man, Wicked Stepmother, My Blue Heaven, Wayne’s World, Last Action Hero, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, House Arrest, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Election, Joshua, In Good Company, Running with Scissors, Four Christmases, and is working on several projects. She appeared in the shows Roseanne, Entourage, and The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman. She began steadily working as a producer in the late 1990s on projects including An American Rhapsody, How to Make a Monster, and 2010’s The Monster of Longwood.

Could this cat be ANY cuter?

CP's Going on a Cruise!

I'm planning to go on a cruise in July, leaving the Sunday of San Diego Comic-Con! I figure it will be a nice way to relax after the convention, and I've always wanted to try it. I've done a lot of research, and cruises actually look like a pretty good bargain. You get hotel (ooh, a STATEROOM) and all the food you can eat, including room service, and your non-alcoholic drinks for the price listed, and that comes out (right now) to around $80-150 a day. I can't go many other places for that, and on the boat you can say your cell doesn't work, even though it will. The ports you stop at look like fun, this first cruise goes to Ensenada and Catalina Island. There's another one I'm considering in the Fall, depending on how much I like this first one. That one goes to the Bahamas for a week.

I've got a birthday coming up, and everyone gives me grief for being hard to shop for. I am sure other things will spring to mind, but I KNOW these would come in handy to pay for drinks and whatnot on the ship:

http://www.carnival.com/BonVoyage/Default.aspx?cat=GiftCertificates

So there it is, I'm no longer so hard to shop for!

-CP

CP vs. The Kitchen

So, it's a week before Christmas and my mom says "I'm getting a new washer and dryer, do you want mine?". Keep in mind, hers were MAYBE 3 years old, and they're those cool Duet upright ones that use less water, etc. so I said "You betcha!". And so it began...

So I remember that I have gas instead of electricity for my dryer, but Mom's are electric. Then I notice an unused plug that LOOKS like it's 220, and the handyman who's doing the installation checks it and says it's all A-OK. He hooked them up, they look BEAUTIFUL, and he starts them both up to test and then he goes away. Keep in mind, it's bone-chillingly cold that day, and I decide it'd be nice to have toasty warm sheets that night. So I put ALL my blankets in the washer (it's incredible how much it will hold) and then move them to the dryer before heading out to Ben and Marlena's to open Christmas gifts.

I get home from the Halls' house, and open the dryer. I'm SO ready for my nice, toasty blankets. What I have instead is a swamp! Everything was still soaking wet, but nice and WARM and wet. So I have to sleep under the DOGS' blanket to stay warm, thanks to the hole in my bedroom wall (relevant post) that leaks cold air. In retrospect, I should have slept in the living room. The next morning, I did my research. Sounds like the electrical outlet was 110, not 220.

A digression - If I were the guy that designs dryers, and those dryers require a certain voltage to be effective, I think that I'd probably build in something like a light or a buzzer or an error code that says "Not enough juice." Instead, the dryer lights up properly, all the controls work, it spins around and says "I'm drying these clothes, merry merry merry" while it's really doing DIDDLY.

So, I go to Home Depot and buy a snazzy electric gauge. Yep, 110. Stinking handyman! So he comes back out and re-wires it, and all is right in Laundryland.

So then I'm home sick from work, a couple days after Christmas. "I am tired of not having a dishwasher," I think. So I go to the appliance store and buy one. It's swanky, stainless-steel and has all kinds of bells and whistles. My house was built in 1930, so it doesn't know what a dishwasher IS. Time to start fixing that...

So I figure out which cabinet needs to come out, a 24" unit of drawers next to the sink. Getting a single section of cabinetry out of the middle of your kitchen without messing up the countertop is NOT an easy task. It takes most of a day for me to use a hammer and wonderbar to break it out, piece by piece. I manlied it right out of there, and was left with a nifty hole. What is that IN the hole? It's an electric cable sticking out of the wall, just waiting on a dishwasher! Either I got really lucky, or someone was planning ahead during a remodel in the last 70 years. I don't know which, but I was REALLY happy to not have to run any new wire!

The handyman came back, and now there's a dishwasher! I washed a TON of dishes in the first day or two, and love it to pieces. The kitchen's finally starting to look like something! So now I'm looking at the cabinets in the kitchen, but that's not going to happen today, probably not even tomorrow. Home Depot has some nice unfinished oak cabinets that are affordable, so I think I'm going to tear out the upper section of the cabinets (I already tore out the furdown that took up a lot of room, which looks like a warzone currently) and start replacing them one at a time.

Pics of what I've done so far in the next day or two, right now CP is sleepy!

-CP

Happy New Year!

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a day late...