Babe Ruth Bigger Than Jack Benny?

Ok, YOU think of another Babe Ruth headline.

Here, here is Jack Benny…

Babe Ruth In Satin

Since you liked that one, here’s another. The pile of stuff between his feet is masking tape. Every single pinstripe is the result of two pieces of masking tape. You take 1″ tape and razor blade it down the middle. Then you use the good straight edge to define the outside of one stripe. Repeat for the other. Then you paint the stripe by hand, between the tape, with the Yankee blue acrylic paint. You peel the tape off, and there’s your stripe. I’ve experimented with many other methods: stamping, freehand, rolling. All of them are N/G. This is the best way. As you figured, it is slllloooooowwwww.

Also remember that any sheen on the figure will be removed by overspraying with the top secret window froster. Cloth, and skin for the most part, are flat. Not glossy. Not semi. Not satin.

The edges of the base will be hemmed in 6″ oak planks, which I have just purchased.

 

[There's the Oak on top of the pine and basswood.  You can see the airbrush compressor as well.  In the background is the life size Mickey Mantle statue, awaiting his sprucing up.  Those headphones are fantastic.  They are totally soundproof and also a great am/fm radio.] 

The deck will be coated with a thing called “Turface”. Turface is the stuff that sometimes is referred to as “diamond dry”. It is kiln fired clay that is ground up. It is very light and granular (think unground pepper kernel size) and apparently absorbs water like a son-of-a-gun, however, I don’t care about it’s water properties; only that it is the cleanest “dirt” that I can find that also looks realistic.

Babe Ruth in Prison Stripes?

Story at eleven… 

New Comedy on Discovery

After the Mythbuster’s Marathon on Discovery last night, they debuted just about the dumbest show I’ve seen in quite a while: Smash Lab.  Obviously trying to capitalize on the success of Mythbusters, they have cloned the show ah la Friends after Seinfeld.

The premise is supposed to be that these four idiots are scientists but they can’t fool me.  The four “scientists” blow things up with dynamite and then walk up to the wreckage and ooh and ahh.  Seriously, that’s it.  They say things like “oh wow” and “dude”.  There are three, vaguely California surfer guys and one chick who is so obviously there to entertain the male viewers that is laughable.  She is in almost every shot (they make sure of that), wears skin tight outfits and says little more than “oh wow”.  They tell you up front in the intros that she has some kind of scientific credential, but a second after she opens her mouth, you think, “suuuurrrre”.

The premise of the show I tried to watch was that there was a nifty, paint-on pickup truck liner substance and why don’t they see if they can use that to bomb-proof a building with it?  Because that is important work after all and they ARE supposed to be scientists.  So they start by blowing up pickup trucks with dynamite.  Really vaporizing the trucks.  I was waiting for Bin Laden to stroll out.  After each explosion, the gang would all laugh and clap like seals and say intelligent things like “wooowww”.  And the announcer has that faux-toughguy, super over dramatic voice going and you’re just thinking, “STOP IT!”.

The explosions started early and never really stopped.  They built little cinder block walls and blew them up; they even built a little building and blew that up.  It was supposed to be scientific but the science was limited to things like: “…well, if we fill this with dynamite and it survives the blast, it could be used for bomb proofing”.  Super genius.

At about the 20 minute mark I was laughing out loud at the whole thing.  There really wasn’t even one redeeming feature.  It made me appreciate Mythbusters all the more.  I saw how Jamie and Adam manage to not sound like idiots after doing an “experiment”, even one that is just a gratuitous explosion.  It isn’t easy, apparently.  While I think Mythbusters goes too far and gives kids too many destructive ideas to try at home,  I love the show and the cadence of it and I even learn something.  I also love the idea of debunking hooey, which people are just so prone to believing in; particularly with regard to the dopey Hollywood movies.

With SmashLab, there’s no danger of kids getting ideas to use household products because everything they did involved dynamite.  And there’s also no danger of kids learning any science on this show either because the science knowledge of the 4 dummies doing the demolition is limited to the shouting of “fire in the hole”. 

 This show is must-see TV because it is so bad that it is hilarious.

Last of the Dust

I am so close to the end of the dusty phase that I can almost taste it…well, actually, I can taste it. And there’s the old sculptor’s mallet–the round thing. Someone once asked me “why is it round?” Well, so you don’t have to look at it to know what way it’s oriented (that’s or-ee-ent-ed NOT or-ee-en-ta-ted). “But hammers aren’t made that way!”. True. But with a hammer, once you place the thing that you are driving down, you don’t look at it anymore and you are free to look at where you are striking. When you are sculpting, you NEVER want to take your eyes off the end of the chisel and you can’t possibly watch two things at once. If you try sculpting with a claw-hammer (I have), you will bang the **** out of your left hand (I have) and stop.

Here’s the last night of the dust. And definitely the last night of the chainsaw. Maybe the die grinders will be coming into play but the heavy artillery is out. This was the first work after the hands were attached.

***

Today, work on the Babe Ruth statue went slowly. I wasn’t into it however, I was excited that pool was on TV and so I tuned in the women’s 9-ball final from some casino in Oregon. The camera work was so bad that I basically gave up and turned it off. It is so annoying how ESPN covers an event. It’s dopey. It’s as if the guys doing the editing have never played pool.

They spend 80% of the time on a closeup of the face of the shooter. For a pro like Alison Fisher, that expression RARELY changes a whit. Doesn’t matter. That’s all we get. Even with the balls on the table still rolling and the cue ball doing some traveling, they cut to her face. I am going nuts thinking, “…oh wow! She hit low left on that and maybe wants to come off the rail UNDERNEATH the 3-ball…I wouldn’t have thought of that..”

And you miss the cue ball placement because, like kids who bang the balls on Friday nights in your local room, they only want to see the object ball disappear! They don’t even realize that that’s 30% of the story for the pros. And I’ll even grant them that they are trying to build a brand there with some of the women so you might tune in for the player and not the event.

As a pool fan and player, I don’t really care who’s playing; just that high level pool will be shot and I can look in and see how they take apart a table of balls. A player plays along at home. A player tries to guess before the shot, what the pro will do because many times, there are several ways to make a ball and set for the next shots. But you can’t do that with ESPN because they are not showing you the table hardly at all! To really follow the match, you need an overhead view of the balls or perhaps a long shot of the whole table from a few feet away. You never get that. You always get closeups of the faces while the announcer just GUSHES about these women. It’s all the tired banalities and generalities that could be spoken of any champion or high level player in any sport. Total rubbish.

Only Ewa’s comments on the shot she would make are interesting and even she overindulges. One time, the woman missed a routine shot by half a diamond~! Ewa went right into how the ball MUST have hit some debris on the felt. I’ve never seen debris make you miss like that. That’s major league yips, Ewa, so stop protecting her. Call it what it is. Don’t insult the viewers.

And they have even miked up the cue-chalking~ That’s right, you will hear, very loudly, the chalking of the stick after each shot. That’s probably a $100,000 parabolic microphone. The same kind that they point at football players during games, hoping to hear Shakespear, I guess. I don’t know about you, but I find that sound grating, the same as someone scratching a blackboard. It’s skeeves me out. Why the heck would I want that sound miked up? My goodness.

I finally got so disgusted with the coverage being such a tease and never showing me the table that I turned over to Curling from Rockefeller Center. And don’t you know that they aren’t showing the match either? The USA puts a rock into the house and it’s obviously a take-out rock and it hits SOMETHING but you don’t see it until they show a few replays. The main camera above the house didn’t show the edge of it so you didn’t see the stones contact. I guess they were all worked up about the sweeping, which just makes Americans giggle, doesn’t it? But I can’t think of anything more important in Curling than the rock’s path in the house at the end of the shot. Could you show that? But I got plenty of close ups or Horst or Jurgen or whoever it was. Great. You have all these cameras and I MISS the event.

Bactine for Babe

Another in the Babe series.  Here is proof that I can shift gears a little.  There was too much meat on the shoulder so out come the 1/4″ die grinders and belt sanders and off comes some shoulder.  It feels weird because the thing is mostly done back there and then I’m taking a step back to get something right.  That’s why I like to start striping up finished areas because that helps you see the right things.  Things that you wouldn’t see in wood or primer will become more apparent.  Remeber my mantra: do the easy stuff first and then the hard stuff becomes easy.

Yes, you are seeing the hands on the big guy now.  That’s as of 1am yesterday morning and now the job is to get them looking right, sanded and sealed.  Tonight was more of that and today was a really light day for a Saturday because of the stuff I talked about in the last post.  Too much family stuff going on to do much but I did force myself down there to get a coat on because when dry time is in play, you have to take advantage of the time.  Tomorrow has to be a big day.  I was hoping to be past this point by this time but you do what you can do.

And the Andy Griffith 4-pack was disappointing.  Two of them were on last night.  So I watched Antiques Roadshow.  Roadshow is a good program to work to because I don’t have to look at the screen really at all.  I can just listen to what the appraisers say and the laymen jabber and I’m ok.  If the piece is stunning, I can quickly glance and then get my eyes back to the end of the die grinder or what have you.

I have a little FM base station plugged into the TV and I wear wireless headphones to pick up the sound.  It’s great because they block the sound of the machines and act as noise dampers (that I would have to wear anyway) and with a little flick, I can mute all the dopey ads–every *** **** one of them.  Did you ever really stop and listen to how they scream and yell at you and insult your intelligence in just about any TV commercial you can name?  It’s really amazing when you think about it.  And movie trailers?  Don’t get me started.  Why does EVERYthing in a movie trailer have to WHOOOOSH and BOOOM at you like you have your ear on the subway track at rush hour?  Do they think we are monkeys?  It’s just raw f****n noise people!  I don’t know about you all, but if an ad is obnoxious enough, I will avoid buying it within reason.  –fog 

Holiday Cheer Everywhere. Even My Lungs.

My kid keeps breaking out of his swaddle blanket.  The kid is like Houdini~  He gets a hand out of the little swaddle blanket (which looks an awful lot like a tiny straight jacket) pretty much before you get the light out.  And he likes it.  He gets a little thrill out of it. 

Just when I thought the dust phase of the statue was over, I got a full 8 hours of it today, a vacation day, no less.  The hands are on and I’ll be posting out some photos of that this w/e.  And I do wear a mask when the dust is flying but it can be darned uncomfortable.

Tomorrow, I need to have another big day with the work on the statue but will be shoveling frozen ice off a driveway (still doing that) and taking my nephew to his hitting workout as his dad is in dialysis.  Then after hitting, we are working out the kids for tryouts for the last 2 slots and we have ringers coming in who should be good; but we have to go through the whole thing.  Then we take the boy to get measured for a custom baseball glove.  They measure his hand and build it to suit.  It is quite cheap on a deal that the coach has arranged, so I’m all over it.  He may get 3 years out of this glove.

Then it’s over to the nursing home that my dad is in now with the broken hip.  He was released from the hospital and is there for rehab.  I was a little p****d to find out that this place charges.  Where I work, if someone is on a full Medicare A stay, the first 20 days of your 100 days are free in essence, because you are collecting 100% from Med-A.  Whatever that person’s RUG score is, THAT’S what they pay the facility.  Well, at least this place is close and that money could be an incentive to get the walking in and get out.  He will most likely be there for Xmas but it still may only be for 4, 5, or 6 days.  All in all, for his age, he has come through remarkably well.

After all this stuff, I will be able to work.  Maybe get in a 6pm to 1am shift.  That’s when I get all my work done anyway.  At least there’s an Andy Griffith 4-pack on at 8pm.  2 hours of Mayberry.  I want to live in Mayberry.  There isn’t much to watch on TV when I’m trapped in the shop.  Why isn’t there more pool on TV?  I love it.  All I see is poker: Where’s the pool?  And when it is pool, it’s always 9-ball.  How about some Rotation (Chicago) or one pocket or something other than 9-ball?  And when they show you the table with the ball diagrams on there, can they show that more?  I mean longer?  So I have a chance to map out 3 or 4 shots ahead?  That’s the whole game and they rush it but boy, they make sure they have the stupid, “pocket cam”.  That is a little camera that gives the view of an ant, standing in the pocket as the ball comes AT you.  Now why in the hell would you EVER want that vantage point?  I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole match from above the table.

Also today, I bought 100 shares of YUM and now I’m hoping that those guys can sell a lot of our bad food (and lifestyle) to the Chinese.  They have some dough in their pockets now so naturally, they’re going to want jalapeno poppers, doesn’t everyone?  And I will profit like Cheney….[evil laugh]. 

Last item.  See the photo below?

This is my tax money being spent on town, curbside, leaf collection.  Yea, that’s how they do it here and you don’t have a choice.  I rake my stuff to the curb on a busy county road and the cars and wind blow it all the hell all over the place.  I re-rake it daily for a couple of weeks and then these guys come around and vaccuum them up.

Only here, this year, they can’t vaccuum up my neighbor Bill’s leaves because the da*n things are frozen~  So there were as many as 4 guys hacking away at Bill’s leaves with shovels and backing up traffic for 10 minutes.  The pile on the right?  That’s the ice from my driveway.  The leaves are behind Bill’s blow-fence.  Unsure if the blow fence is helping the leave-entropy.  They might be because Bill is the only one on the street with any leaves at all.  The mayor wants us to know that the system is working and can he please raise our taxes? Again.

Overheard at Floyd’s

Today I gave some presents out to people and one was to the pizza man down the street.  We gave him a plaque for last place in the baseball fantasy league (83.5 games back)  as well as my gift for the store.  It was a wooden checkers set.  I told them that it was in keeping with the theme of the place as “Floyd the Barber’s Shop” where people come to hang out and listen to the zaniness and gossip, as much as they do for any food.  And they come for Floys as well.  It’s kind of a cult of personality that way.  Floyd ties it all together and makes it work.

Up until now, Floyd, who would rather play a game than work, has only video games behind the counter that he plays with the mailmen that come in.  Now, there is a retro game that you can play anywhere in the store.  And no sooner does he have it unwrapped than he claims he will “kick my…” at it.  It doesn’t matter what the sport, he’s going to kick my… or at least tell me that he will.  

I’m not very good at checkers but I suggested a store “ladder” where you can challenge anyone on the ladder and move up and down with wins and losses.  We’ll see. 

You Hafta Try It

Click here to launch the Brazilian Football name generator in a new window

I got this off of one of the the blog sites.  Anyway, you plug in your name and get out your dopey Brazilian name, for instance, George Bush yields: “Georgildo”.  And it puts in on a little yellow national jersey and you can put in your number.  All in all, it’s about 2 minutes worth of work-procrastination but not for some~

In the 1970′s, when my family had season tickets to the NY Cosmos at Giants Stadium, (when mystery men were hitting pennant winning homers for the Yankees), the Cosmos had a player named “Rildo”.  We thought that was funny.

So I had sent this link to some guys and one of them was at it long enough to plug in “Ron Swaboda”.  How many names he plugged in before this is anybody’s guess.  A dozen?  More?  I mean, Ron Swaboda?  That’s random.  Anyway, he figured out that Ron Swaboda will yield “Rildo” in the name generator.  I mean, what are the odds? 

***

Rildo Menezes – Head Coach (Right)

Rildo Menezes is the Head Coach of the Bridge USA Soccer Academy, and is world renowned in his coaching ability and knowledge of socccer. Rildo was born in Brazil, and started his professional soccer career when he was a teenager, playing for Botafogo and Santos in Brazil gave him the opportunity to play for the Brazil national team, where he teamed up with Pele, for the 1966 and 1970 World Cup. Rildo played 9 years for the Brazillian national Team.

Rildo continued his career in Brazil, and in Europe and finally in the US with Pele for the New York Cosmo’s. Rildo has spent the last 30 years coaching professional soccer clubs and teams across the USA, and now coaches exclusivley for the Bridge USA Soccer Academy. With a FIFA International A class licence and his experience Children of all ages are learning a higher level of soccer to help them become the next World Cup Soccer Star for the future.

 

Career:

Former Brazilian National Team Player(played 65 games), Played World Cup in 1966 & 1970 with Pele, World Cup Champion Team Member, 5-times Brazilian Club Team Champion,

FIFA Int’l A class Coaching License.

1959: Ibis-PE
1960: Sport Recife-PE
1961-1966: Botafogo-RJ
1967-1972: Santos FC-SP

1973-1976: CEUB-DF

1977: New York Cosmos – USA

 

Relativity

My nephew and I hit tonight with the coach and his kids at the indoor facility.  I pointed out one of the staff and said to him, “…hey, that guy’s father hit a homerun for the Yankees that won the 1976 pennant…”  And he said “really?”, and the usual discussion ensued.  He didn’t know who he was.  And that homer was BIG.  I remember it as a kid.  I was at a sleepover that night.  I hated the Yankees but it was just a big event.  Everyone was in an uproar about it.  And then the Big Red Machine blew them off the field in 4.

Anyway, I thought about it and the fact that he didn’t know the player.  And then I realized.  I’m old.  He was born in 1999 and this was 1976.  That would be like my uncle telling me, “hey, there’s Dolph Camili’s kid!  He was the 1941 MVP for the Dodgers…” –fog