In honor of her memory I will be showing the film classic "Bringing Up Baby" starring Katherine Hepburn this Friday night, July 4th, after the fireworks show on the Lake in Lake St. Louis. If you wish to attend please send me an email.
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Ok, I'm on Vacation Day #7 now and I haven't made a new post yet. That's ok, the digital camera has been humming and I hope to have an update soon. However, in summary "Boating". There, you have it.
Today, the best compliment I have ever received about my car. Overheard as a 4 year old little girl was walking through the parking lot holding her mother's hand "Mama, look at the neato car!!!"
I love having a car so 'neato' 4 year old kids get excited when they see it.
Vacation : Day Number One This morning when I got up, my wife and I decided to go to some garage sales. We had a productive morning; I purchased several cowboy hats and, most importantly, a disco ball. In fact I purchased a disco ball the size of a very large beachball for the outstanding price of $5. In all we made a whole bunch of garage sale purchases, like a set of junior golf clubs for my son Alex, but the disco ball was the real score. In the morning and early afternoon I cleaned the boat as best I could. I also purchased a strobe light from Radio Shack. During the afternoon we took our son Alex tubing and swimming on the lake. This evening Terry and Alex were both tired out from staying up late last night to buy the lastest "Harry Potter" book, so I went out by myself. At first I just listened to the Cardinals baseball game, which we won!! The sunset was simply breathtaking! My friend Rob Hippe came by and told me there was a party around the corner and I should come b...
Well, my theory that blogger is scanning my web posts and producing banner ads tailored to my topics seems to be gaining evidence. For the last couple of days, the banner ads have all been for selling ebay sniping software. Note, that just a post or two ago I commented about how I lost an Ebay auction I really wanted to win. Coincidence? I think not.
Officially as of 6pm tomorrow night my vacation starts. I'm thinking of kicking it off by driving down to Bush Stadium, by myself, and buying a single ticket from a guy off of the street. The Kansas City Royals visit us, and we will most certainly kick their ass.
Some very interesting things happening at work too. I don't talk about work on my blog site, so if you are my close and personal friend, send me an email or make a phone call and I will clue you in. Life is ever interesting.
I just saw something on Blogger that, if it's true, is awesome. I went to my Blog page and the inserted banner ad was specifically designed to match posts on my site! Since I often talk about baseball, specifically the St. Louis Cardinals, the blogger site specific software decided to insert a banner advertisement for tickets to Cardinals baseball games!
How totally cool! Next week I suppose it will insert a banner ad for "The Ghost In Jar" t-shirt.
Fathers day was very nice. In the morning I took all of the kids, including my nephews Charlie and Nathan, to play tennis. Afterwards we cooled off with an ice cream and then went home for some back yard swimming. In the early afternoon our friend Marty called up and invited us out on his speedboat. The kids and I went out on the lake and went tubing and then wakeboarding. My nephew Charlie is one of those kids who can do all kinds of trick riding on his street bicycle, so I figured he would be great at wakeboa...
It's Saturday, I should update my blog. Unlike my friend Bruce who hasn't updated his blog in over a month even though I know for a fact there's a bunch of stuff going on in his life.
The fuel pump went out on our boat, so we had to take it into the repair shop this morning, and they won't have it fixed 'for a week'. Which means I will start my vacation without a boat. This is not cool.
Tomorrow is Father's day, I bet my kids get me a card.
Now it's gone full circle. Some idiot actually paid money for the URL to 'ghostinajar.com'. Well, good for him. It didn't take him long, a day, to link to my site. Yet more traffic by people who are as obessed with cultural fads as I am. That said, I am terribly dissappointed. I bid on a the official "Ghost in a Jar" painting. I was really psyched about winning this auction because it was an original painting inspired by the 'Ghost in a Jar' auction at the time the auction happened. Heck, I figured I would cut prints and sell a limited edition set of a 100 copies and make a profit ten-fold my original purchase price. However, I lost the auction. I use a piece of sniping software called "Auction Sentry" but it failed to successfully submit my final bid which was higher than the closing price. Live and learn, next time don't cut it so close.
I am still waiting on my movies from South Africa. I now consider the incredible pa...
ATTENTION GHOST IN A JAR FANATICS!
I am getting a huge number of hits on my website because people are searching on the phrase "Ghost In A Jar". A few days ago, when the infamous "Ghost In A Jar" auction was closing, I made a few posts on the topic. Just scroll down past the boat pictures and you can read the blow-by-blow description of how the auction came to a close.
Thanks for your support, now back to our regular programming... like this new Ebay auction sensation !
Well, Sunday is here and this lovely weekend is just about over. Great weather and great fun. One interesting development today. I turned on my computer and 7 people had voted on my mini-poll. That was unusual because there have only been 7 people vote on it in the last 6 months, so 7 in a day seemed very unusual. I went and checked my site statistics and it turned out I had about 100 hits in one day! Since this blog normally gets about 6 hits a day, I was pretty surprised. When I got the details on the hits it was immediately apparent what had happened. Google and Yahoo search engines have incorporated my recent blog postings into their database. I am currently the number three search result for the query "Ghost in a Jar". So, to all of you "ghost in a jar" fanatics who have wandered here, welcome, and don't be surprised how boring I am. Last night I had a movie showing on the lake. There were so many things that could go wrong and, sure enough, something did. ...
Woke up this morning and the weather is unbelievably fantastic! I've decided I can't waste such a beautiful day by going down to the Fox. Instead, I think I'm going to try to show a movie on my boat. I have been anxious for a chance to try setting up my giant tripod movie screen on the boat. I haven't decided if I'm gong to show 16mm or DVD yet. I'll just play it by ear.
Today Ebay cancelled about 300 "Ghost in a Jar" themed auctions. Many of which, in my opinion, were legitimate. Every "ghost in a jar" auction I was bidding on has been cancelled with the exception of the painting of "a ghost in a jar", which I truly intend on winning. I lost the movie rights, the boobies in a jar, and even the ghost poop in a jar. In addition to that, I lost my opportunity as "legal representation for my ghost in a jar auctions."
Enough about ghosts in jars. I just returned from seeing "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the Fox Theatre. It was an absolute blast. First we watched the movie "Aliens". As a movie collector myself, I was really surprised they couldn't get a better quality print. It had a lot of surface wear, quite heavy, and even a few minute long green emulsion line. Very surprising. But, it was still great fun to watch.
We figured if we saw "Aliens" we could just...
Last night there was a concert on the lake. We cooked dinner on the boat and were docked along side a bunch of friends. The concert was Island music, mostly Jimmy Buffet stuff. Once again, I made pitchers and pitchers of smoothies with my solar energy. When it got dark I fired up the patriotic rope lights I had wrapped around the entire boat. Four strands of rope lights, 18 foot each, for a total of 72 feet of lights! I got quite a reaction from them, let me tell you. We must have had twenty people come by and ask about the lights. I heard more than one person ask their spouse "How come we don't have lights like that on our boat?" It made our boat extremely festive and, of course, very well lit. Lots of people wanted to know how I powered the lights and I showed off the solar panel and Frankenstein's laboratory of batteries, wires, and cables behind it.
I also announced to everyone that we will be showing a movie on the lake immediately after the 4th of...
Ok, the Ghost in the Jar auction closed, at a measily $50,000 or so. A pale reflection of the 100 million dollars it was up to at one time. The seller cancelled bids furiously while buyers came at it from every direction. There are now 200 'Ghost in a Jar' themed auctions on Ebay. A few are interesting, most are just dumb. My favorite so far, in terms of raw creativity, are the 'Boobies in a Jar '. Look at the series of photographs which accompany this auction. That's a lot of effort! Also note, I'm the winning bidder.
Another "Ghost in a Jar" update. The seller is rapidly cancelling bids placed by other people, now the auction has plumetted to a lowly half million dollars. Good thing he is only keeping the 'legitimate' bids alive. I wish I was going to be at a computer when this auction closes, I bet it's a riot.
Ha, this is great!! There were nearly a 100 bids on "Ghost in a Jar", until it hit 100 million dollars. Then the seller started cancelling bids furiously and got it all of the way down to 5 bids and $4,000. However, right now, people are furiously bidding it back up faster than he can cancel the bids, so it's at $14,000 at the moment and rising. This is funny as heck.
The Ebay "Ghost In a Jar" phenomenon.
About a week ago a guy posted an auction with an opening bid for $99 for an actual 'ghost' captured in an old jar. The auction description was a cute little story and seemed very tounge in cheek. Naturally, someone saw this auction and brought it to the attention of Dave Barry , who promptly mentioned it on his site. As soon as this happened, a bunch of people began bidding up the "Ghost in a Jar" auction to outrageous levels; figuring since the auction was a joke so were their bids. Now the seller has a long litany of threatening revisions to his auction claiming he will send the FBI after anyone who does not bid legitimately. How droll.
The current bid for the " Ghost in a Jar " is a little over a half a million dollars. (**Update, the auction is now up to 2 million dollars as of this moment.) The auction closes about 3 hours after I am typing this.
*** Update ** I think we have a winner, the...
Well, a few things going on. First, this company is taking me out to fancy dinner for free. They used me as a reference for some investors and are returning the favor. Since I was planning on spending the evening with my son anyway, I asked if they would buy him dinner too. They said that would be fine. So, make that two free dinners at my favorite Japanese resturant in the area "Shogun".
Yesterday my teenage son Johnny went out to find a summer job. He walked into "Denny's", asked for an application, then immediately got an interview, and starts work busing tables on Thursday. Wow, that was easy.
Today my South African Connection, Naushad Mohomad, agreed to let me act as his sellers agent for feature movies. He is going to send me a bunch of 16mm feature films and I will be selling them for him and we will, hopefully, be able to split a decent profit.
I now have 10 tickets to see "Aliens" and then "The Rocky Horror Picture Show...
Well, this weekend wasn't quite as exiting as last. I'm ready for summer, this spring weather has got to stop. My only big news item this week is the movie series at the Fox Theatre all week!
The Faublous Fox in St. Louis is having a *free* movie series all week. The most exciting event is Friday evening with "Aliens" showing at 9pm followed by "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at midnight. This is going to be a very cool 'cultural event' for St. Louis, showing such a classic cult film in the confines of the Fabulous Fox. For those of you who don't know, the Fox Theatre is one of the most stunningly beautiful theatres in the entire United States.
Normally you would have to spend $50 a ticket to see a show at the Fox, so this is a great opportunity to have a lot of fun in this great venue. There are fantastic shows all week long too.
**Update! I got my tickets today at Pulaski Bank, then a friend of mine went there about an hour l...