Catching Up

Happy Thursday, folks. I have a few light items, and then I'll close things up for today. I've felt both swamped and tired lately, hence the sporadic posts. I'd love to say that it's over, but I have a number of things that I need to get accomplished over the next few weeks. We'll see how it all goes. I have a few different writing projects I'd like to work on, so I may do one blurb a day or so, and then combine them into a bigger article. Anyway, here's what I have for today.

One of my favorite shows in high school and college, up until the departure of the original hosts, was The Man Show. One of my favorite segments was a recurring segment in which Jimmy Kimmel would impersonate NBA star Karl Malone in such a way as to suggest that Karl Malone had the IQ of a twelve year old. Recently, I found transcripts of these sketches. Awesome.

I think I mentioned that I've been watching a lot of episodes of Battlestar Galactica lately, working on running through the entire run of the show as it gets ready to wind down. One of the more interesting stories from the four year filming history of BSG has been the two occasions during which an extremely expensive ship model has been semi-advertantly destroyed or damaged during impromptu filming sequences.

Have you ever seen The Great Escape? Do you remember Steve McQueen's epic motorcycle jump? I saw it back in October thanks to the Butt Rubber and Olive Oil. If you've seen the flick, check the following re-enactment out.



For the record, the Times doesn't give the embedding link to that - I figured it out for myself, because I'm so awesome.

They just re-opened the Iraqi National Museum, and there are excellent pictorials from The Guardian, the BBC, and Fox News.

So, I spent most of yesterday evening running errands, and one of those errands was going to a hobby store. Apparently they can't get a hold of the model kits I'm looking for ("USS Hampton" and "USS Dallas vs. Soviet Alfa", both by Dragon Models, both discontinued). I'm going to go in again at some point and see if they might be able to get something comparable, but I'm not optimistic at this point. That having been said, I did get two copies of the British submarine HMS Tireless, and I got a model of the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier for the tiny airplanes that it includes. The carrier kit is actually the exact same kit that I bought and assembled when I was in high school and planning a long and storied Navy career (that was brief and didn't result in a commission). I bought this one mainly for the planes. I assembled the "Hampton" and "Dallas" models (as USS Albany and USS Helena) when I was in college, and they would have been precisely what I was looking for. I may keep looking, but I have my doubts, so I may have to figure out an alternative. The whole project, which could take a couple of months to actually complete, was inspired by my recent trip home (during which time I saw the models I'd assembled nearly a decade ago), by watching all of those episodes of Galactica, and by the reader submission of the USS Tripoli at Starship modeler. I'll take pictures as the project develops... Well, if the project develops. It would sure be nice to get a couple of 1:350 Los Angeles class kits.

Alright, folks, that's it for today. Tune in tomorrow for AMF, and I'll try to get some pictures from my recent trip home up on the blog this weekend. Have a great day!