• Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Phil as I like to think of him, smiling into the distance while skippering the Cornelia Marie
As those of you who are fans of the show know by now, Captain Phil Harris passed away February 9, 2010 after having a stroke while in port off-loading crab on St. Paul island. It’s taken me this long to be able to post anything about it here.
Phil was my favorite captain on the Discovery show Deadliest Catch, and was skipper of the F/V Cornelia Marie. He’s had health issues for a few years now, but his fans had hoped those were close to being resolved. Sadly, this was not the case. Many, many people have written comments on various boards all over the internet about how sad Capt. Phil’s passing is. Most remarkable to me is that many people, including myself, felt such an affinity for Phil that even though many of us have never met him, we feel like we lost a close friend. Mike Rowe said here that people were drawn to Phil because “the world is desperate for authenticity…and Phil Harris had it in spades”. Truer words were never spoken.
I know some people will say it’s foolish to get so upset over somebody on a TV show. But after watching every episode of Deadliest Catch, and worrying about Phil and the boys in the off-season, missing that ray of down-to-earth sunshine, I truly feel like one of my friends is gone. You could always count on Phil to have some great comment, like his explanation of fishing by looking for crab farts – which, by the way, apparently works, judging by their success. He’d always tell it like it is, and the world needs more of that honesty.
I wonder what will happen now. Nobody will be able to fill Phil’s chair on the Cornelia Marie, but life must go on. I hope that whatever Josh and Jake Harris choose to do now, the path they follow is one that leads to happiness and a sense of fulfillment. I’m glad they got time with their Dad before the end, as described in this article from People.com.
• Wednesday, January 06th, 2010
I read this fascinating article tonight about a photographer named Mark Menjivar who decided to take pictures of various people’s refrigerators, on the idea that if you are what you eat then your fridge is the window to your soul. I think it’s a good premise. I found the results very interesting, but also a bit disturbing. I must admit the voyeur in me enjoys seeing what other people’s refrigerators look like, and perhaps feeling a little superior that mine is cleaner. My fridge certainly tells what kind of life style my husband and I enjoy. Some were kind of sad though, like the person who only had $432 a month to live on, with only mayonnaise and a bag in their fridge.
My vote for neatest fridge is the Red Cross Board Member’s fridge.
The one I found the most disturbing was NOT the one with the rattlesnake in the freezer (no, I’m not kidding), but the one owned by a school crossing guard/nursing home assistant in a 6 person house (parents and 3 adult children in an efficiency apartment):
That’s just NASTY. These are the people who are helping our kids cross the street and caring for our elderly? Both jobs where cleanliness should reign supreme? Eww…
And the college kids one you don’t even need to read the description. You can tell just by looking at the picture that college students live there.
Anyway, I didn’t copy all the pictures so please go ahead and check out the link.
• Monday, October 26th, 2009
If you recall, I blogged about this as my very first entry last fall.
It looks like Richard Gillespie and TIGHAR are planning another expedition to Gardner Island/Nikumaroro next summer, in 2010. For some reason, this article was published recently on Discovery.com, as if it were already a fait accompli. While I think it’s an exciting idea, I think it is misleading for Discovery to publish an article about an expedition that’s going to happen almost a year from now in which they hope to prove their theory, when there have been previous expeditions which were unsuccessful. They make it sound as if it’s a sure thing that Gillespie’s and TIGHAR’s theory is what happened, but I like to remember that many people have had theories on this subject, and until conclusive evidence is found we won’t know which one is correct. Does it seem likely to me that Gillespie is right and Earhart and Noonan crash landed on Nikumaroro? Sure. But just to be fair to all parties, I want to point out that Mr. David Billings left a comment to my original posting directing those of you interested in this topic to his website, http://www.electranewbritain.com/. Check it out and make your own opinion.
And by the way, does anyone else find the line “A new biopic about Earhart’s life, starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere, opens this weekend” a little bit strange? I can’t say I would ever have picked either of them to be in a movie about Amelia Earhart.
• Saturday, October 17th, 2009
Every once in awhile I get sucked into watching one of those cake shows on TV where the chefs have to create a 5 foot high cake in 9 hours. They come up with some pretty amazing creations, particularly considering the short amount of time they have to do it. And of course there’s always the stress of having to move it to the viewing area without it falling apart.
So I was intrigued when I read about a blog called Cake Wrecks which posts pictures of cakes that have something wrong with them, usually a misspelling or a particularly horrible design. However, the poster did a section on steampunk cakes and the one from Mike’s Amazing Cakes stood out from the rest due to the technical skill involved in crafting the extremely well-cut gears. See below for a picture of the cake, from Exoskeletoncabaret’s Flickr stream:
This led me to the Mike’s Amazing Cakes website (click the link above to go there). All I can say after viewing his gallery is that the guy should be given some kind of medal. Wow. I can’t get over how well-defined all the edges are. Given that cake is such a soft medium to work in, it is easy to have the edges look a bit squidgy, but his just all seem so CRISP.
Anyway, I felt that it was cool enough to share with all of you. Enjoy!
