Bedford Blues & BBQ - 2018

A short review of another outstanding Bedford Blues & BBQ Festival. I have been going to this event for years and have never been disappointed. The food is always good, the beer is cold and reasonable and the music outstanding. It is always a fun crowd. Every year I wind up in a conversation with friendly strangers. The crowd ranges from infants to old geezers like me. 

Sunday is the big night and has the top headliner. A couple of years the star has kind of coasted through. Some years the Saturday night closing act has been better than the bigger name Sunday star, sometimes it's the Sunday early evening act that shines. This year, everybody was really good. In addition to the main stage, there were several pretty good lesser known bands who perform on the secondary stage. Nonstop music from around 2:00 until close to midnight
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On Saturday we got there around 6:00. Lil Ed was OK but to be honest, we were still checking out the craft and food vendors during some of his set. The laser show was something new this year. They had big smoke machines to help highlight the lasers, but it is Texas and the wind blows. Still, pretty cool. Ted Benoit did not disappoint. He did a solid set. 

I got there around 5:30 on Sunday, early enough to hear part of Buddy Whittington's performance. He is a local guy who spent 15 years playing with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, a band Eric Clapton once played with. He rejoined Mayall in 2013 at the Bedford BluesFest for Mayall's appearance. Buddy plays the festival every year and is always very good. For me, the very pleasant surprise of the weekend was Samantha Fish. I had never seen her live but had heard her music and seen some YouTube videos. I thought she was OK, a better guitarist than singer. She has certainly improved. Her voice was much stronger, more on key, and less screaming. She has also beefed up her band. It had a couple of horns, congo drums, backup singers, an organ, and a violinist in addition to the normal bass and drums. Her performance was outstanding. The song selection and execution had the crowd rocking. I was talking to a guy before her set began and we agreed that her voice and presentation needed work. Then she started and we both looked at each other in amazement. Samantha was way above expectations. The second stage band, Wallace and Branch, was good too while we waited for the headliner. Kenny Wayne Shepherd had a couple of tough acts to follow but he was up for it. The guy can sing and he can certainly play a little guitar. Go see Samantha and Kenny Wayne if you have the chance. 

So, another enjoyable weekend at Bedford's premier event. I'm already looking forward to next year. For about 10 hours of music per day, it is $10 admission, $7 in advance online, and $5/day for a weekend ticket. Beers are only $5 or $6 and decent vendor BBQ and other food is reasonable. You can also buy tasting/voting deals for BBQ samples. There were 125 entrants competing this year, mostly professionals. This is not your backyard Weber grill competition. Beat that deal.

Come join us in Bedford next Labor Day Weekend. We'll have fun.

wjh 

Very Random Thoughts - August 2018

• Why is the name Ann also spelled Anne, do we really need that E?
• Sara and Sarah are the same deal. I'm sure you know others.
• Who decided that the name John needs an H?
• Why I'm at it, why is there an L in the middle of my last name?
• Don't base your plans on a weather forecast you see on a program you recorded a week ago.
• I often get mad at the guy in charge of gluing those foil lids onto containers. A little dab will do you. The lid should be stronger than the glue and come off in one piece, not 25. 
• Instead of all those gas and oil pipelines, we need a network of water pipelines. Invariably, when there is a drought in one part of the country, there are floods in another part. 
• The new Texas Live entertainment complex just opened. One of the food venues is Pudge's Pizza. The Pudge is Ivan "Pudge" Rodríguez from Puerto Rico, a place known for their pizza. Maybe he picked pizza because of the alliteration. 
• The Little League World Series truly is a WORLD series. The MLB World Series, not so much. At best it is a ⅔ North America Series. 
• If beauty pageants go the way of the dodo bird, where will we get the future football sideline reporters?
• Fitted sheets are not only impossible to fold, they also hide other laundry items in their corners. 
• A good day for MSNBC is usually a bad day for Fox News and vice versa.
• Do people who do half-ass work not care, not know how, or not know the difference?
• When she's gone, you really will regret not calling Mom more often. 
• What used to be self evident isn't anymore. Now it is a conspiracy theory.

wjh

School Safety Business

It is that time of the year again, back to school. I see one big change this year. Usually, the local TV stations are doing feel-good reports about little ones heading off to kindergarten or the first grade. The anticipation, excitement, and sometimes trauma for the kids and the parents. Maybe a story about a brand new school. Some high school football stories are usually sprinkled in. They encourage folks to send their first-day photos to the TV website or social media accounts. 

Well, apparently those happy celebrations are so 2017. This year almost all I'm seeing and reading about is school safety. What new safety equipment and procedures has your school district put in place? How much safety stuff has been purchased and at what cost? What training have the teachers and staff received? 

There have been stories about school safety seminars and conventions. The school safety business has become a $2.5 billion industry almost overnight. Metal detectors, locks, alarms, bulletproof desks, whiteboards, glass, and a hundred other items. There are also notification apps and equipment. Of course, there is no shortage of "experts" who will be happy to come to your school to provide a safety assessment and/or conduct training sessions. 

The "experts" that I've seen interviewed are deadly serious and make it sound as if every school will be invaded by a crazed gunman within the next few days. But, if the school district follows their advice and purchases their prevention equipment, all will be safe.

I know the local news outlets love a sensational story that they can hype. I wonder what effect all this dire and sensational reporting about school safety will have on the kids and parents. 

Wednesday, 8/15/18, was the first day of the school year at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It is the site of last year's horrific school shooting where 17 students and staff were killed. That dominated the news. There were stories about the trauma the survivors have endured, the new security measures, the increase in armed security personnel, and ongoing counseling. More stuff to scare the kids.

Still, not one photo of little kids on the first day of classes. 

I know, news is news and it is mostly about bad stuff. I understand that the return of Stoneman Douglas students is newsworthy. A few stories about new safety procedures and measures are warranted. Students and parents need to know what backpacks are acceptable, what any new dropoff and pickup procedures have been implemented, that student IDs are required to be displayed at all times, etc. What we don't need are the furrowed brows and dire tones of the reporters, anchors, school officials, and security personnel. It is up to adults to protect our children, not scare the hell out of them. 

I wonder, with all the emphasis on school safety, the active shooter drills, the classes and seminars on the dangers, and the graphic news stories, what will be the results? Will kids be afraid to go to school, will they be nervous and scared all day every day, will grades suffer, will we have a generation of kids with PTSD? 

As usual, we go overboard after a tragedy. We did it after 9-11 and now we are doing it because of school shootings. As usual, the con artists come out of the woodwork to take advantage. The government officials cave to public pressure and pass laws and spend money on perceived solutions. Many of these so-called solutions have no history of actually working. There are no federal guidelines for what constitutes school safety. None of the new products like locks, cameras, bulletproof items, fencing or building design have any kind of certification. Whoever has the best salesmen and marketing gets the contract. 

Let's tap the breaks, quit scaring the students, staff, and parents. Do some real studies about how schools work and how to stop invaders or malicious students. 

Summer is over. Let's have a fun, productive and safe 2018-2019 school year. 

wjh

Recycling Famous Brands

I've touched on this subject before but the trend just keeps getting more ridiculous. That is the recycling of our famous brands. Apparently, the creative and marketing folks can's come up with new concepts. They now just slightly modify a well-known name or brand. Almost every trip to the grocery store, there is a new version or flavor of an old time product. 

TV and the movies are notorious for doing sequels, spinoffs, and revivals. This coming TV series, we have a new version of Magnum PI. Based on the previews I've seen, it looks like only the Hawiaan location and red Ferrari remain from the original. CBS already has the reboot of Hawaii Five-O. That same network also has the Young Sheldon spinoff of The Big Bang Theory. There are three versions of the NCIS franchise. There used to be several versions of Law and Order and CSI. This is not new, we have had numerous versions of Star Trek for the last 50 years. In the Movies, we have the Star Wars franchise and several other superhero sequels. The Ocean's series has used numbers between 8 and 13 to designate the films. How about The Fast and the Furious movies How many have there been? And all with the same script, just different cars and locales.

It is not just the entertainment industry. Food is a particularly derivative industry. There used to be one flavor of Cheerios, Oreos, Triscuits, Corn Flakes, 3 Musketeers, etc. Buying Triscuits, Wheat Thins or even Cheese-Itz is now a major decision point. They all have multiple flavors, sizes, and textures. Sea Salt, low sodium, gluten-free, no GMO, organic, and a thousand other descriptive adjectives. Some real, many complete marketing BS. Candy is and has always been gluten-free, but now it is trendy to put that on the label. Remember when yogurt was a small section in the dairy aisle? Now it takes up more room than milk. Is it really fair to call two vanilla cookies with a chocolate filling an Oreo? According to Nabisco, now almost every sandwich type cookie is an Oreo. There are dozens of flavors and combinations. While spinoffs and variations have always been around, the changes have come far more quickly of late. Oreos were mostly only available in the original flavor from 1912 until the 1970s when different shapes and sizes emerged. New flavors finally came about after 2000. 

Sometimes the new flavor or shape has absolutely no relationship to the original. It's the same for TV and movies. The current Mission: Impossible movie franchise has very little to do with the original TV series. The original was about a tight team of professionals who worked together to outsmart the adversary. Little or no violence or gunplay was necessary. Tom Cruise is a lone wolf who displays superhuman abilities and has an impressive arsenal of weapons. A low-key, brainy TV original vs an over the top bombastic movie series reboot. I'll take Peter Graves over Tom Cruise. 

There is at least one more disturbing area of this recycling trend. That is the reviving of a once iconic brand name for a new, usually crappy, product. I have seen late night infomercials that tout the Bell & Howell or Polaroid name. It's usually for some $19.99 plus shipping and handling, we'll double it for the next 10 minutes, product. Buyer beware.

I know this trend will continue and probably accelerate. In fact, I may recycle this bitch in the future.

wjh

Very Random Thoughts - July 2018

• Pro teams now have a special uniform for every holiday or cause. Sell more stuff.
• Not sure if I have defective technology or I don't speak clearly. I told my Google Home to set a reminder to do laundry. At the appointed time it said I'm hungry.
• It is often not so much what we did that we regret but rather what we didn't do. 
• If you only watch one TV news network, be it Fox News or MSNBC, you are not really informed.
• When someone says "this is not who we are" what they really mean is "this is not who we want to be". We already proved who we are. 
• Are any legitimate products or services advertised on TV at 2:00 AM or later?
• Saw an old episode of The Fugitive. Made me wonder, was he the unluckiest guy ever for almost getting caught every week or the luckiest for escaping? 
• If politicians and lawyers wrote software, none of our technology would work reliably. 
• Seems almost every retailer now has a Christmas in July promotion. 
• When it comes to marketing slogans, UNLIMITED rarely actually means unlimited. See unlimited phone plans to prove this point.
• It's amazing to me how many people apparently don't have access to Google and 60 seconds to spare to check on outrageous crap on social media. 
• Don't you hate it when the artistic designers get so cute with graphics and fancy script that you can't actually read it?
• Local TV news continues to shrink the sports segment and expand the weather segment. How long does it take to tell us it is going to be hot or rainy or cold tomorrow?
• We now have 4K HDR 70" TVs with Dolby surround sound speakers yet we watch movies and TV on a 5" phone with a crappy speaker. 
• Seems every news anchor and reporter was in Helsinki for a one day, closed door, one on one meeting between Trump and Putin. For what purpose? 
• Are The Rolling Stones the most dehydrated/drawn looking band ever? 
• When I was growing up no adults had first names except for aunts and uncles. Everyone was Mr., Mrs., or Miss.
• Wouldn't it be nice if all TV stations were approximately the same volume?
• It occurs to me that the Mission: Impossible movies are the exact opposite of the Mission: Impossible original TV show. The TV show had very little violence, they outsmarted their adversaries. The movies are all action and violence and carnage. 
• Where do they find those idiots on infomercials? They can't slice, dice, grate, paint, nail, etc. 
• We have tea bags, how come there aren't coffee bags?
• In many TV commercials for drugs, the announcer or disclaimers say "Do not take super drug if you are allergic to it. First, how would you know you are allergic? Second, if you do know, why would you take it?
• In government, the personnel director's title is "chief component human capital officer". Seems a little too overblown and confusing.

wjh

Equalizer 2

We went to see The Equalizer 2 on an early Saturday evening. It was either this or Mama Mia 2 on a very hot afternoon. The theater was over half full for a 4:30 showing on the movie's opening weekend. A diverse crowd. 

We enjoyed the movie, so that part is out of the way. This is a kickass movie and Denzel Washington does almost all the ass kicking. The first few minutes establish Denzel as a complete hard ass at least in the past as a government agent. He takes no prisoners and four to one or five to one odds are no problem. You do not want to mess with this dude.

Then the movie slows down. Denzel is "retired" and living a quiet life as a Lyft driver. There are a couple of side stories, some of which really contributed little or nothing to the main thread. Those stories needed some development and it took time. It was well into the movie before the main theme began to evolve, slowly.

I don't want to do any spoilers. It is basically Denzel's old government team has turned mercenary and needs to be stopped.

The last third of the movie depicts how that comes about. Then the tangent stories are also tied up. Maybe happily ever after, maybe not. Denzel survives so there could be an Equalizer 3 in our future. I'd go see it.

The acting, particularly Denzel, is better than the story and script. That is not surprising. He is damn good. This movie is worth the two-hour investment. I rate this a solid B. 

wjh

What's Really Dangerous?

For anyone who knows me or has read my posts you already know this issue is one of my pet peeves. I don't know if it is because I have always watched the news, read a lot or if it is because of my training, career, and tendency to look at things logically. 

I find it funny or maybe I should say ironic how we view certain dangers in our society. A friend just posted a heartfelt story on Facebook about a child who fell off a riding lawn mower and had severe damage to his feet when the mower ran over them. I don't want to make light of that danger, although the story seemed manufactured to me, but exactly how many kids are injured each year when they fall off a lawn mower driven by an adult or older teen? People are horrified by this story, quick to blame the adults in the situation and agree that children should never be allowed anywhere near a riding mower let alone on it. Now, these same horrified people have no problem putting those same defenseless kids into their cars and driving 80 mph on the freeway, running a stop sign, failing to have proper child seats or using the ones we have. Let's think for just a minute, how many kids have their feet damaged in lawnmower accidents versus how many are injured or killed in automobile accidents? 

There are thousands of other examples of this kind of thinking. We are scared of our kids catching Ebola from someone miles away in a different state yet we don't see the danger in failing to immunize those same kids against all the diseases that are now preventable. We skip annual flu shots for them too. 

We are irate at GM for producing a faulty ignition switch that may have contributed to the deaths of a handful of people yet we will drive while impaired by alcohol, drugs or other conditions. Maybe we'll put off getting those new tires or new brakes. 

Many parents will blame a school or the authorities when an armed lunatic enters a school but have no problem letting their young kids go home after school to an empty house or apartment. There they are not only susceptible to a stranger walking in but all the other household dangers.

A bicycle rider recently killed a pedestrian in New York's Central Park. There was all kind of indignation in the media including recommending a ban on bike riding in the park. Fact is, this will probably be the only pedestrian killed by a cyclist in NYC in the next few years. Are these same people recommending the banning of cars in the park or the city? Nope, but many will be killed or injured by automobiles. In fact, cyclists in will also be killed in Central Park by automobiles.

People will get all in a huff about GMO foods, because the media told them to, but will eat at McDonald's five times a week. Remember the pink slime uproar? That's a travesty against the population but those McNuggets manufactured from chicken beaks, bones, claws, feathers and probably some rodent waste are delicious. 

I could go on and on. You probably have your own favorite false scare issues and stories. At one time in our history, these panics came about because of lack of information and lack of education for much of the population. Today we have too much information that is being interpreted and analyzed by too many talking head idiots that have an agenda and a forum. We supposedly have a better-educated populace but stupidity still abounds. I am always amazed that the TV reporter on the scene can find the most stupid, most uninformed person to interview. The media also tend to give as much coverage to the crackpots as to the real experts. 

I guess human nature will always be touched by the little guy vs the Goliath, the poor against the rich, the underdog vs favorite and the unusual vs the norm. I feel it is our responsibility to be truly informed about the issues that affect us, our families and society. That usually means taking everything you see, hear or read about an issue with a grain, pinch, pound or ton of salt. Find another source or two to verify the facts then form your own opinions. Don't take the interpretation of the so-called experts as gospel. Don't confuse opinion with fact. Try to learn the biases and agenda of the "expert". 

One of the advantages of being informed is that you can turn on Fox News Channel or MSNBC at almost any time of the day or night and enjoy some very funny unintentional comedy. Fact checking is not those network's strong point. 

We've become a society of hype and PR rather than substance. Opinions and prejudices are more important than facts.

We get used to certain behavior and events as normal and acceptable. Motor vehicle deaths are OK, plane accidents are not. It makes no difference what the real numbers are. The most annual aviation deaths ever, outside of war years, was 1972 with 2,429 worldwide. In 2010, there were 2,998 traffic deaths in Texas alone, 42% involved alcohol. Even our language evolves to mask the real dangers. We have "plane crashes" but "automobile accidents". A drunk driver speeding in the wrong direction on a freeway is not an accident, but I bet it will be reported as a "traffic accident". 

I have little hope that any of this will change. The unusual is news, normal stuff is just life. Humans are more apt to react on emotions rather than logic. They aren't willing to make the necessary changes to correct things if it may cause some inconvenience. We could probably drastically reduce traffic deaths by imposing harsh punishments for breaking traffic laws. Things like heavy fines, suspension of licenses, jail time, public service, removing unsafe vehicles, etc. But that would cause inconvenience, so we accept about 30,000 traffic deaths per year.    

I'm not advocating draconian traffic laws. As a mobile society, we are willing to pay the price for that mobility. Apparently the same is true of gun ownership. We accept approximately 30,000 gun related deaths per year. OK, but don't go crazy when a junior high football player drops dead on the practice field just because the news chooses to show the grieving parents on TV. Don't rally to ban bicycles from Central Park after one pedestrian death unless you also are willing to ban cars, which are far more deadly.  

TV news is now more show business than news business. They are going to hype stories then analyze them and basically tell us how we should feel and react. I promise you that bicyclists killing pedestrians is not an epidemic.

wjh