Posted by Richard on Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
Football season is here. College kicked off a couple of days before Labor Day weekend and the official NFL start was a week later. Most big time college football seasons begin their seasons with what is euphemistically called “cupcakes” (to steal a line from College Basketball and Dick Vitale). Schools from smaller conferences (the non Bowl Championship Automatic qualifier conferences) are usually playing road games the first few weeks of college football. The smaller schools call these games where they go into the big name schools to play as “payday” games. Two or three of these games each year and a smaller school can almost pay for its entire football program. Most of the time, the smaller school just signs a one year contract with the big school to play although occasionally the bigger name school might sign a “two and one” contract where the smaller school plays two games at the bigger school and receives one home game with the larger school in return. If the larger school is feeling magnanimous. Or maybe they sign a four game contract where two games are at the larger school’s location while the other two games are at a neutral site.
Later in the college season there tend to be a lot of various types of rivalry games, often as the final game of the year but occasionally there are big rivalry games in the first or second week of the college season. The early season rivalry games usually are between schools located fairly close to each other but they play in different conferences.
Rivalry games, whenever they occur, are the games most likely to have angry fans taking the baseball bat to the garage door if their team loses to the rival. By having early season rivalry games, it can allow the garage door repairman to start ramping up to the repair needs for garage doors later in the year. Starting slowly and building as the year goes along.
Most every year though, there are a few upsets along the way where the smaller school, usually one from the less well known “Football Bowl Subdivision” (the schools formerly known as 1A Football) conferences go into the big name schools and win a game or two that they shouldn’t. And an even rarer occurrence is when a school from the “Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as 1AA) will go into the larger school’s stadium and upset the home team. When that happens, the coach of the larger school should probably be updating his resume and the garage door repairman gets a few more early phone calls to come repair or replace the damaged garage door.
Posted by Nicole on Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
In 2009, Vogue Magazine’s Anna Wintour created what is almost a charity of sorts. This one isn’t by the fashion industry, it is for the fashion industry. For the second year in a row, retailers in major cities opened their doors late and threw shopping parties. The point is to draw in crowds and increase sales.
The fashion industry has certainly seen sales drop in the last few years. At first it was a social return to crafting your own clothes and going retro with Goodwill finds. The fashion industry played along for a while, designing retro looking clothing in their fancy studios and behind their garage doors. But the designer label retro wasn’t vintage and it certainly didn’t have the Goodwill price tag. As the recession set in, the fashion industry experienced drastic sales declines. Somebody had to do something to keep the industry chugging along. Many designers were giving up comfortable work studios for home studios behind garage doors. Anna Wintour, the fashion industry’s fearless leader and frightful critic was the lady with the big idea.
This night of shopping in upscale boutiques is called Fashion Night Out. Designer boutiques that wish to participate stay open late and basically through designer parties that draw in the crowds. It is a night to shop among the stars. Each boutique recruits Hollywood darlings to sing, serve cocktails, and shop and mingle with the clients. Ever wanted to ask Bett Midler what size those red pumps come in? Fashion Night Out is your chance.
Fashion Night Out 2009 wasn’t quite a stunning success, though it was star studded and certainly dressed many people quite stunningly. The numbers after the fact showed that many designer boutiques spent at least as much hosting the parties as they made in sale—if not more. Even so, the fashion industry did it again in 2010. Many fashion designers cite the reason for continuing the event as the pure amount of fun and energy that goes with the event.
That makes sense. The fashion industry is as much about fun and energy as it is about looking great and making a statement. When sales are lagging and designers and models are working from behind closed garage doors, what better way to revitalize the industry and everybody in it than to throw a big party? The global recession is ending and consumers are once again pulling out their pocket books, especially for the nice items that they felt deprived of during scarier financial times. The fashion industry needs to keep up the good work as well as their energy and general level of fun. It won’t be long before the clothes are flying off the shelves again. Serving spirits while raising the spirits of those who make the fashion industry tick is a great way to boost the industry and get it looking forward to the golden days ahead.
Posted by Nicole on Monday, 27 September 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices, Resident Evil Afterlife
The movie Resident Evil: Afterlife received poor reviews upon its debut. The news was not terribly surprising, and it even seems that the studio knew it would be so. The usual previews of the movie never happened. Keeping critics in the dark is rarely used when the studios think they have a blockbuster. This type of secretive activity is usually an indication that the movie isn’t expected to do well out of the starting gate.
Resident Evil: Afterlife is the fourth installment in what has turned out to be a less than inspired movie series. The origin of series is the Resident Evil video game. The video game was renowned as amazing. The story line drew the gamer in and had many so frightened that they removed their garage door windows so they could use the holes to shoot down impending zombie hordes. The idea that corporate America was capable of creating a mass epidemic of zombies was not new. But the Resident Evil video game showed it to be a plausible reality.
The original game’s graphic effects pushed the game console hardware. The virus infected zombified Doberman pinschers were real enough to keep people hiding behind their garage doors for fear of the neighborhood dogs. The movie Resident Evil: Afterlife attempts to regain some semblance of that realism. 3D techniques have been added to the movie. Critics claim this is overboard and that the 3D effects actually hurt the movie.
3D movies have become extremely popular in the past year. That is, of course, until they weren’t anymore. Movie goers would gladly close up the garage door and drive out to a cinema to see a 3D movie. They would even pay the extra $5 or $10 for the pleasure of seeing what video imaging can do. It didn’t take long for the additional price and those little glasses to lose their shiny newness. Movie goers are back to staying in with the garage door closed and renting inexpensive movies on Redbox or Netflix. What is a movie studio to do?
Well, the critics aren’t saying what they should do. They are, however, holding up Resident Evil: Afterlife as an example of what they probably should not do. Critics and viewers are tired of loud movies that attempt to distract them from the lack of plot with a lot of flashy tricks. The movie studios will have to do better than that if they want viewers to give up their sweatpants for paper glasses.
Posted by Richard on Friday, 24 September 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
Well, not really. It was the actress who played Bonnie Blue Butler who recently passed away. It was Cammie King Conlon, the woman who played Bonnie Blue Butler in the movie Gone With the Wind who died at the age of 76. Her obituaries say that she used to joke that her acting career peaked at the age of five, after her role in Gone With the Wind and as the voice of Faline in Bambi.
Ms Conlon was not the sole remaining actor from Gone with the Wind as Olivia de Havilland (Melanie Wilkes) is still alive at 94 as is Ann Rutherford (Careenn O’Hara, Scarlett’s sister) at 89.
Many of the articles on Ms Conlon’s death mention the costs of Gone With the Wind memorabilia. Now like most forms of memorabilia, this stuff does not usually wind up out behind the garage door. Even the sturdiest and most airtight garage doors can let in moisture and the elements, causing degradation to the memorabilia and if that garage door gets damaged through whatever means, those pieces of memorabilia can degrade that much further.
Items of memorabilia from any movie, period of someone’s life, cause, or whatever can be degraded quite often by neglect. The tough thing for most non-collectors to know is what things improve in value after being cleaned up and what things decrease in value. With the popularity of TV shows such as Pawn Stars and American Pickers, many people are learning that cleaning some items can cause a drastic reduction on the value yet they also learn that other items lose value if used at all.
The dress that Ms Conlon wore as Bonnie Blue Butler is supposed to be at the University of Texas. It is quite likely that much of the memorabilia from Gone With the Wind has been preserved because of the popularity of the book and movie even before filming started. Although Clark Gable was apparently a consensus choice as Rhett Butler, the casting for Scarlett O’Hara was an international story with multiple newsreel stories devoted to the process. There are few if any books today that could be of such a high profile as to elicit worldwide interest in the casting of characters, although there were stories wondering who would be cast as the Vampire Lestat as well as speculative casting for the Bridge of Madison County or The Godfather. And as always, anytime there are casting discussions for characters as well known as those in Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, Interview with a Vampire, or Bridges of Madison County, people will disagree with the decisions made.
Bonnie Blue Butler, you will be missed.
Posted by Richard on Thursday, 23 September 2010
Tags: garage door – garage doors – garage door opener – garage door repair – garage door replacement – garage door installation – garage door service – garage door prices
As most folks are already aware (assuming they are sports fans) the Big Ten Conference is expanding. Starting with the 2011 season, the Big Ten will go to twelve teams with the addition of Nebraska. The Big Ten has now announced the new “divisions” they will use moving forward. They haven’t named the divisions yet but one division will have Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern and Minnesota while the other division will have Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana and Illinois.
The Big Ten does plan to have a half dozen standing cross-divisional football rivalries played each season, including the Ohio State – Michigan as the end of the season for at least the next two years. The other standing “rivalry” games will be Illinois/Northwesten, Indiana/Michigan State, Penn State/Nebraska, Purdue/Iowa, and Wisconsin/Minnesota.
Now looking at that roster of “rivalries,” there are obviously a couple of them that would fit the definition of contrived. Especially the Penn State/Nebraska and Indiana/Michigan State games. It is doubtful that any long time football fans would place those games anywhere near their personal top 100 “rivalry” football games. Rivalry games are the games where the fans of the loser go take out their frustrations on the coach/star player/officiating/fill-in-the-blank by taking a nine iron or baseball bat to their garage door and hope that the garage door repairman is not a fan of the rival team.
Rivalry games such as The Ohio State – Michigan game are the types of rivalry games that have been played for decades and this game has historically ended the Big Ten regular season. But it is fairly obvious that the Big Ten is hopeful of getting a second Ohio State – Michigan game as part of the divisional alignment. Of course, by attempting this, the Big Ten will actually de-value the regular season game.
The Big Twelve Conference, when it first expanded to twelve teams, is rumored to have had the same thinking by placing Oklahoma and Nebraska in opposite divisions and those two teams never have met in the Big Twelve Championship game. The Pac-10 (soon to be Pac-12) Conference will be setting out their divisional line-ups soon, although they probably won’t have any splits quite like placing Ohio State – Michigan in opposite divisions.
All these conference expansions are geared to one thing and one thing only. Money. They’ve seen the Southeastern Conference expansion from a few years ago lead to increases in television rights fees and want in on the money. They really do not care about the fans who take out the frustrations on the garage door after the loss in the Big Game.
