Would you believe Don Adams is gone?

During my junior high years, the TV show "Get Smart" was one of my favorites. Every chance we got, all of us kids would say either "Would you believe..." or "I missed it by that much..."

Don Adams played agent 86: a bumbling secret agent, much like Forest Gump. But by the end of the show, everything turned out all right.

Would you believe, Don, that we will miss you.

CEO of Death

Directors, scripts, and movies with political agendas aren't anything new. "Fahrenheit 911" is a good example of a documentary with a political agenda. "Kingdom of Heaven" is a good example of a movie with a political agenda.

"Lord of War" is a movie that includes documentary information but is wrapped in a movie, and definitely has a political agenda.

In "Lord of War," actor Nicolas Cage portrays character Yuri Orlov. Orlov is a gun runner. The movie begins with Orlov working at his parents' restaurant: a thankless, minimum wage, dead end kind of kind of job. After selling his first gun, Orlov is hooked on easy money and the adrenaline of the deal.

Orlov's life's work becomes making bigger and better gun deals. Along the way, Orlov is reminded repeatedly that he is more than a salesman: he is a merchant of death. Even after Orlov's brother, Vitaly, dies during a deal, this doesn't stop Orlov from doing business. Like any drug dealer, Orlov doesn't let family or morals interfere with business.

Where does the political agenda come in? Near the end of the movie, it becomes quite clear that the message is: America is a corporation whose business is death and this corporation's CEO is George Bush.

"Lord of War"isn't that entertaining. The story line of an immigrant son turning to crime/business to make it big in America, is nothing new: "The Godfather" is the best example of that. Of course, "Lord of War" isn't of that caliber.

Nicolas Cage isn't exceptional in this movie but he is competent and gets the job done.

If you're interested in learning about gun running and the business of war, this is the movie for you. The movie opens with a little story of how a bullet gets from the factory to being shot into someone's head, which probably has more impact than the rest of this movie.

Unless the subject matter is very important to you, you will want to skip this movie and wait for it to come out on DVD. The trailer for this movie gives one the impression that this is a dark comedy. It has very few comedic moments.

To sum this movie up, death wears an expensive suit, rides in a limosine, and is not a demon but very human.

Madison is now using bins for recyclables. This blue truck comes every 2 weeks and picks up the bins with a robot arm and dumps the contents into the truck. Two problems: bin is too big for our garage and this is going to be a much tougher task when we have snow on the ground.  

Closeup of robot arm. 

Madison garbage truck uses robot arm to pick up bin full of recyclables. 

New bins we're now using in Madison for recyclables.  

More Willy St Fair Photos

For more Willy St Fair photos, go to the web site listed below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jack390/

I attended the Willy Street Fair today on Williamson street in Madison, WI. It was fun. There was food, free music, and family oriented activities. 

Selling beads to benefit Katrina evacuees. 

This year's Willy St Fair T-Shirt. 

Free music was part of the Willy St Fair. 

A truly organic bike at the Willy St Fair. 

A salute to Mardi Gras was part of the parade. 

Willy St Fair Parade 

More Photos

If you would like to see more of our Las Vegas and Mississippi photos, go to this address:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jack390/

This is a small digital player that we rented for $10.00 on the flight to Vegas. A headphone splitter was available for $2.00. It had about 6 movies, 4 TV shows, and some music videos. It made the flight seem much shorter. Movies were pretty current. One movie we watched was "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." 

Another example of Kudzu growing by a highway in Mississippi. 

Kudzu is common in the south, especially Mississippi. It is a vine that, unless stopped, covers everything in its path: trees, bushes, grass. It was originally introduced as a forage crop. 

This shot was taken while flying over the Nevada desert on our way to Las Vegas. There is a huge area of the United States that is desert.

Travel Traffic and Security

During our travels, we noticed a few things.

Less Road Traffic
During our travels through Wisconsin, Nevada, and Mississippi, we noticed that there was a lot less traffic. I know some of that was because kids are back to school and the tourist season was over and these may have influenced the amount of traffic.

Fewer Air Travelers
It was interesting that the planes we flew in were half empty. During the last ten years, most of the planes we've flown in have been full. And the airports seemed empty too.

Less Speeding
As our family and friends know, I drive pretty close to the speed limit. One thing we noticed was that very few cars passed us. Usually a lot of cars pass us. Most of the cars we saw were either doing the speed limit or less. I'm sure gas prices had some influence on drivers.

Security
Security at the airports was about the same. There weren't any lengthy delays or lines. Security people were pleasant but professional.

Gas Prices and Rental Cars on Vacation

Gas Prices:

Las Vegas, Nevada: $2.85 a gallon. No gas shortage.

Memphis, Tenn.: $2.89 a gallon. No gas shortage.

Tupelo, Miss.: $2.66. There were spot shortages here. One gas station we stopped at was out of regular gas. But other gas stations had regular gas. I really expected to pay more in Mississippi because of the damage Katrina did to the oil refineries. But Mississippi had the lowest prices.

The price of Gasoline was definitely on our minds during vacation. We rented one car in Vegas ( a Saturn Vue) and one car in Memphis (a Chevy Impala). Both cars were new. Between the two cars we spent about $120 on gas. That doesn't include the price of renting the two cars.

If we had driven our Van from Madison to Mississippi, we figured gas alone for our minivan would have run about $200. And one could add another $50 in gas for the side trips in Mississippi.

So, for us, whether to fly or drive depends on:
Cost of airfare.
Can we apply frequent flyer miles towards the price of the airplane tickets?
If we drive, how many nights will we need to get a hotel on the way?
Cost of gas.
Wear and tear on our personal car.
Will we need a rental car or is there public transportation available at our destination?
How much time will we save by flying?

It's not rocket science, but figuring out how to get to a vacation destination, without paying an arm and a leg, is a little more complicated now.

Some of the gas stations we filled up at required us to prepay before getting gas. If the pump accepted credit cards, it was fine. But if the pump didn't accept credit cards, it was a pain trying to guess how much the rental car was going to take. When we were at the gas stations with the lowest prices, we tried to fill the tank up to the top. And we had to fill both rental cars to the top before returning them.

We drove both a Saturn Vue and a Chevy Impala. I liked the Saturn Vue a lot. Visibility wasn't as good as my Chrysler Voyager, but it was tolerable. The Vue handled well, rode well, and had plenty of power when I needed it.

I liked the looks of the Chevy Impala but that was about it. It was harder to see out of and was sluggish when I hit the gas pedal. The car rode well. The cruise control was very unsteady, especially on hills.

Back from Vegas...On To Memphis

Wendy and I returned from Vegas this morning. We had a great time and I will write more about this later.

Tomorrow, we leave for Memphis because our New Orleans trip was canceled. Believe me, I am not complaining. Other people have much bigger problems and suffer greatly.

Once we're in Memphis, we will drive over to my parents' house. They have not had any damage being in the Northeast corner of Mississippi, near Tupelo.

I will write more when we get back. All the airports we've been in so far charge for Internet access (usually about $10 for 24 hours of access). So, I have not been updating this site.

I took some great photos in Las Vegas and had a great time (my scale also tells me I had fun).

This on the Las Vegas Blvd looking North. Wendy and I returned early this morning, Friday.  

This is the overhead tram or train that was built about a year ago. As of this writing, this train only stops at 7 casinos. Eventually its route will start at the airport and end downtown. At $3.00 a ride, we never got on it. 

This is the lion in front of the MGM casino. 

At one of the casinos, people were taking their shoes off and slapping the overhead support beam with them. This was in the parking ramp. Strange but true. 

One of the newest things in Las Vegas is to have a personal action figure made for yourself. It costs around $100. They photograph you and then a figure is made and mailed to you. 

This was a great Sushi restaurant called Todai which was in the Aladdin casino. This was done in buffet style and was $14.95 for all you could eat. The Sushi was great and the price was actually very cheap for what you get.

This is the interior of a Sushi restaurant called Todai. 

I saw several of these oxygen bars in Vegas. For $15 you can breathe in oxygen for about 10 minutes. It's supposed to make you feel more energetic. I didn't try it. 

This is one of the entrances to the Forum Shops in Caeser's Palace. 

I found this $799 remote control in a forum shop in Caeser's Palace in Las Vegas. For whatever reason, my wife said, "No. We don't need it."