Biggy in the Sky with Diamonds

My daughter has been a big fan of the Beatles for about the last ten years. I gave her some CDs of the band's greatest hits, and she spun them on a permanent loop in her bedroom for a pretty long while, before asking me to get more Beatles songs to listen to.

I recently found out that the famous Houstonian sculptor, David Adickes, known for his large-scale statues like the Sam Houston statue in Huntsville...

Or the Stephen F. Austin statue in Angleton...

Yeah, that guy has a giant statue of the Fab Four at a brewery in Houston. When I heard that, I realized that I had to show it to my daughter before she went off to college.

We headed downtown. Right outside the brewery is another big statue that's kind of famous in Houston, you know, because people like to pose in front of it to show their city pride.

Problem is that it's so big that it's hard to even see who's standing underneath it. I tried to get a shot where you could see my face, but it didn't work out so well.

The Beatles statue is on the patio area of the brewery. We walked in, and cruised straight through and out the back door to the yard. Since I had three underage kids with me, I figured I shouldn't stick around inside. We were there for a particular reason, and it wasn't what was on tap at the bar.

We walked over to the corner of the yard, and found the Fab Four waiting for us there.

They are some really big statues, but I guess they only reflect how large those four loom in our culture.

Maybe?

Saw these guys still hanging around at Target, and I wondered if I should get them for my Christmas shelves.

I could probably be convinced to get the Christmas tree guy. But I don't want the other two. They don't even look a little bit Christmassy to me. One of them is even an elf, but the colors they used make it look like he's not an elf at all.

Rish says that even the Christmas tree guy sucks.

He says it might make more sense if the guy was called Melted Candle Man instead.

Two Finds

I was at Walmart this morning, and I found two thing that I considered worth buying.

This four inch scale Cyclops to put with my Sentinel.

The Sentinel was a buid-a-figure with six inch scale figures, but the scale was never right. Sentinels are supposed to be much, much bigger. Getting a four inch figure works so much better. The Cyclops is a stiff five-points-of-articulation figure, but I think it still looks pretty good there in the hand of the Sentinel.

And also, I found a Mer-Man.

I think it's the one from the new wave, not the one from the earlier wave that I never saw, because there were other figures from the new wave on the shelf as well. I guess they're different. Not sure how much I like it, particularly the eyes. But it should look alright on the shelf next to Skeletor and Panthor.

Halloween in July

This weekend, we were doing some grocery shopping at Costco, when we saw that they had their Halloween costumes out for sale already. They put them out this early every year, but it's always a surprise to me when it happens.

Their costumes are always the cheapest and highest quality of any costumes we see around, though, so we always check them out, and if my son likes any of them enough to buy, we do. And we've learned that you have to buy early, because they don't last.

Two costumes caught his eye. They had a Boba Fett costume and a Mandalorian costume. 

They didn't have his size in the Boba Fett costume though. In the Mandalorian costume, they had one in his size--only one. 

That decided us...that and the fact that my son is gaga for Baby Yoda. He has a big, what could be considered full-size, Baby Yoda that he could carry around with him around the neighborhood.

So, we put the costume in the cart. When he got home, he tried it on:

It looks pretty darn good. He is, however, determined to turn the mask into a full helmet, so we will have a project to work on until Halloween, I guess. Good thing we have PLENTY of time for that.

Happy Pioneer Day!

To continue my series of flags outside our house, today was Pioneer Day, the state holiday of Utah, one of the states where I have lived. So, I took my flag out, and put it out on my pole.

 

By the way, these pictures are a good reason why the people at the Vexillilogical Society recommend against putting words on a flag. You might think that we are flying the flag of HATU when looking at them. I probably should have gotten some pictures from the other side, but I didn't even think about it. I didn't realize that the flag was backward.

 

Speaking of that, there's a movement out there to make a new Utah flag that is characteristic and interesting, instead of bland and indistinguishable from more than half of the state flags out there. I'm all for it. I'd love to dump this ugly flag and add a new interesting one like this to my collection.

Support the Organization for a New Utah Flag (newutahflag.org). Their design is totally awesome, and something that all Utahns could unite around.

There's a really strong human tendency to stick with something even if it's terrible, because it's always been that way. Many people in Milwaukee are fighting tooth and nail to keep this flag, widely considered to be the ugliest flag in the world:

Rather than accept this beautiful and simple design representing the sun rising over Lake Michigan that won a contest to redesign the flag.

In articles I've seen online, the most frequent comments are that "we've had this flag forever and why should we change it?" or "don't we have better things to do than wasting time on choosing a flag?" All I can say in response to both of those is, "do you want the symbol that represents you to be something that sucks or something you can be proud to fly outside your home?"

After the third try in a row, the bill to establish a commission to investigate the possibility of making a new flag passed this past legislative session, and a huge victory on top of that was that the new flag design was named as the 125th anniversary of Utah statehood commemorative flag. That's a big step towards breaking through and normalizing it in the minds of those stubborn ones who refuse to consider anything different than they already know.

I think I might buy myself one of those commemorative flags of Utah, and fly it outside my house next year just to show my support. Then people can see my beehive flag and know that it is a symbol of Utah and not Hatu.

Anyway, this has gone on way too long for a tiny post that was just supposed to be a picture of the Utah flag outside my house, so I'm going to end it now, even though I could go on and on and on and on and on and...

Nice Find

 Look what I found at Half-Price Books!

I've been working on a collection of the Song of Ice and Fire books for a while. I want them in hardback, but they don't have to be anything special like first editions or something. For some reason, they don't sell new versions of the books in hardback.

I got A Dance with Dragons and A Feast for Crows a long time ago at a thrift store, but up until today, that was the extent of my collection. Then, out of the blue, these three books dropped into my lap. I did not pass them by.

Now all I need is A Storm of Swords, and I've got the whole bunch...oh, I guess I could get that Fire & Blood book too. That one was pretty good.

Not A Snow Globe, It's Worse

I was looking in the pantry when a shadow passed over me. I looked up, and this is what I saw.

I'll say it again, what do I do? It appears to be trapped inside there. If I pull the globe off, I'm pretty certain it will get away and I'll probably drop the globe, shattering it on the ground, while trying to kill the cockroach before it gets away.

I guess I'll leave it there for a while and hope the light really does kill it with the heat it generates. God I hate cockroaches.