If you’re a frequenter of the Lebowski Fest Forums, then you most definitely already know about this. If not, here’s the scoop.
The movie is called The Amateurs starring Jeff Bridges, Patrick Fugit, William Fichtner, Tim Blake Nelson, Joe Pantoliano, Ted Danson and plenty of other people you’ll recognize. It’s about a town of amateurs who want to make a full length, clean, adult film. Here’s a link to the trailer and here’s a link to some photos Jeff Bridges took during production. If you didn’t know, he’s into photography and does that. I have some of the photos he took during production of The Big Lebowski and they’re amazing.
So if this looks interesting, please help us get the word out. The Dude Abides.
The other night I met Rajeev at the theater to see one of the best Westerns, in my opinion, in a very long time. I know that Unforgiven received a lot of glory and even an Oscar, but I think I like this most recent re-make just a tiny bit better. Rajeev hadn’t seen it before and I was definitely up for a second viewing. It was also nice just to do something with a guy for a change. Almost all of my friends have moved away, that’s what happens when you immediately start working at the school you graduated from, and I’ve made new ones but it’s not like we hang out often. Usually I end up hanging out with Liz’s friends or doing the “couple” thing. I think we’re planning to see some more “man” movies in the future. The kinds we want to see but our better-halves don’t want to.
It’s official. Joan, the best sandwich artist ever, doesn’t work at Subway anymore. She’s down at Cracker Barrel. She was the main reason Gunner and I would go to Subway every Tuesday. She knew us. She knew what we wanted and she was good at what she did. Maybe if I’m down at Cracker Barrel I’ll have to see if she’s around to say hi. These other people they have making sandwiches just don’t work the bread and toppings like a pro.
Besides going partially deaf for one day Liz and I had a great time back in Iowa. We got to see almost the whole gang, I went to Harris twice, got some Whitey’s, saw Tyler’s new house, saw Josh’s new house and even watched an episode of Dr. Who.
One interesting moment was at Harris with my mom we ordered a pepperoni and pepperjack, the usual, and the waitress kinda looked at me for a moment. She said, “Pepperjack….cheese?” The next night Liz and I went with Josh and Erin back to Harris for round two. This time we got sausage and pepperjack. I was relating the story from the previous night and even pointed out the waitress. Our waitress for that night comes over, we tell her what we want and shes says, “Pepperjack….cheese?” It was pretty hard not to laugh. I looked across the table at Josh and almost started busting up laughing. Luckily I held it in.
What else comes in pepperjack? We looked at the menus and under toppings it says, “Pepperjack.” There’s no “cheese” after it or anything else. I felt like saying, “Oh, it comes in cheese? That sounds awesome. I’ll try that.” Unfortunately we’ve all grown up and we aren’t sarcastic and obnoxious to wait staff anymore.
I learned to shoot a gun when I was 4 years old. I used to be pretty handy with a rifle or shotgun in a variety of different situations, but sadly I have no place to easily go shooting since I’ve been in the state of Indiana. I never took a hunter’s safety course or anything like that. I never really felt like I needed it.
I’ve sometimes laughed at people who get all the “gear” to do something. Once I was helping a guy tear off a roof and the owner of the house was trying to help us. He looked like Bob Villa. Brand new jeans, boots, gloves, tool belt, tools, safety glasses, etc, etc. He also didn’t know what he was doing. I’ve seen similar things when I’ve been to shooting ranges. People wearing gloves and ear muffs and everything while they’re shooting trap or just plinking with a .22.
I do wear ear protection when I’m shooting something big or a handgun, but on Saturday I was just plinking with Liz in my mom’s backyard. I had my trusty Winchester 86a and my un-seasoned Taurus M63R. I was shooting with Federal. It was all I could find last time I bought ammo. I’ve normally used Winchester hollow-points in the past.
Well everything was going just fine. I was using the Taurus for a while then Liz wanted to try it and then she gave it back to me. I loaded her up, took one shot, aimed and then heard the loudest noise in a long time. About a second after that I quit hearing anything with my right ear. It was just ringing combined with that white-noise sound you get when the TV is turned up with just fuzz/static.
I eventually figured out my gun must have backfired or something. There’s currently a shell stuck in the barrel and another one all smashed to bits inside of the action. I’m guessing a spent shell didn’t eject and got smashed up. I tried to tap the jammed shell out with a cleaning rod and I couldn’t get my small needle-nosed pliers into the action to get anything out. I might have to take it somewhere. I’ll probably just wait until I go back home and have my grandpa take a look at it.
If you’re looking to submit a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and you’re also using the Joomap component for Joomla, you might have some problems with your sitemap being valid. After a couple days of searching and scratching my head I finally figured out the problem by reading a couple other threads on the Joomla forums.
Your URLs in your sitemap must match the URL of the site you’ve setup in Google WT. I originally used “http://www.lebowskipodcast.com” but my sitemap had “http://lebowskipodcast.com” as the start of all the URLs. To fix this I just added “another site” using my URL minus the “www.” I then resubmitted my sitemap and now everything works.
If you have a Joomla site out there and you want to start using some Google tools like Analytics or Adsense or the Webmaster Tools check out the Extensions area at Joomla.org before you start trying to do things the hard way. I found that lesson out the hard way. There’s some free components and modules that’ll let you easily change your URLs so they’re SEF (Search Engine Friendly), add Google Analytics, create a sitemap, etc.
I’ve pretty much always hated the free software that comes with HP Scanners. It never seems to work very well, very often has errors, and rarely works properly unless you’re a full-fledged admin. Since I manage labs at work with this stuff installed, 99.9% of the users have no admin rights whatsoever.
Today I was creating a new image for a particular lab and after installing the scanner software I realized I couldn’t access HP Director. I eventually found out IE7 won’t let it work anymore. There is a quick fix though. Just go to the download section for software and drivers on HP’s website. After you navigate to your “make” and “model”, just scroll down towards the bottom and you’ll find the patch under Updates. It’s called Critical update to resolve an issue with HP Director after installing Internet Explorer 7. After you install that you should be good to go.
So I’ve been told it sounded like I’m totally unhappy with my life here. I re-read it and can see how that could be taken. That wasn’t really my point of writing that, and I’m pretty happy with life. What I was alluding to, or trying to address was general unhappiness that I see around me. I’m also not a Stepford Wife, in that even though I’m happy with life, I’m not happy every second of every day I’m alive. Sometimes when I am unhappy I ask myself retrospectively, “What’s your deal?” because I do have a lot of good things going for me.
In other news, I got a couple new Lebowski books. The first would be the new book by the BBC Film Institute and the other would be the Coen interviews from the Conversations with Filmmakers Series. They both look pretty promising and I’ll definitely post a review after I’m done with them.
Last time I went to Subway I tried Gunner’s suggestion of putting some spicy brown mustard on my chicken bacon ranch. It sounded a little weird, but I was totally up for it. Let me assure you it tastes amazingly good.
We’ve been a little bummed though because the regular subway lady hasn’t been there. We were thinking today that maybe her shift ends at 1:00. We used to always go in the 11-12 hour, but now we don’t head over until 1. When other people make our sandwiches it just isn’t the same.
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