Category: product endorsements

Alan Alda autobiography

On By Rick McIn books, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo is well known as Hawkeye Pierce from the old TV Show M.A.S.H.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin Hawkeye Pierce

I’d heard good reviews of his autobiography, published 2005. And finally listened to an abridged audio version with Alda reading.

Alan Alda’s autobiography travels a path less taken. Instead of a sensationalist, name-dropping page-turner, Alda writes about his life as a memory play, an exercise in recollecting his childhood, his parents (dad Robert was a veteran on stage, film, and vaudeville), and his career. You want to know about Alda’s most famous work, the eleven years on M*A*S*H? You have exactly 16 pages to do so, and guess what: It’s one of the least entertaining parts of the book. …

Really, who else would name his memoir after an unfortunate trip to the taxidermist? The year the book was published during a revival for the 69-year-old; he was nominated for an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony in the same year.

Dog-Stuffed

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned

He was the prototype starving actor who financed his lousy career by inventing “systems” to win at the horse track.

Very interesting and engaging.

I loved his story of the morning of the Academy Awards … (He had been nominated for his supporting role as Senator Ralph Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese’s film The Aviator.) … While at the grocery store he was mistaken for an elderly shop clerk.

Alan Alda is a likable actor. And an entertaining writer. Highly recommended for one and all.

His second autobiographical book, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, looks to be less appealing.

Best Island in the World – Maui

On By Rick McIn hiking, product endorsements, travel4 Comments

For the 15th time in 22 years, Conde Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards poll has chosen Maui as the “Best Island in the World.”

But I’ll be the judge of that … hiking Maui for the next 2wks.

maui

I flew out of Vancouver, now my favourite airport in Canada. The new SkyTrain rail service, the Canada Line, whisks you directly downtown, connecting to harbour ferries.

Or, with one bus connection. to the Vancouver Island ferries at Tsawwassen. Superbly convenient!

The line opened August 17, 2009, fifteen weeks ahead of schedule. One of the rare things the B.C. government ever got right. Kudos.

Thanks Les and Tam for the “buddy pass” airline ticket on WestJet, my favourite airline.

chicks dig 3 Wolf Moon t-shirt

On By Rick McIn humour, product endorsementsLeave a comment

This is the favourite shirt of Internet Geeks. You can see why.

Chick’s dig it.

… I think my brother has one.

t-shirt
This is the best product review I’ve ever read. ” 15,044 of 15,180 people found the following review helpful”

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet …, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

Europe on the cheap – airfares

On By Rick McIn product endorsements, travel1 Comment

There are millions of things to do in Europe.
Millions more if you have money.

I spent the past summer there. It was easy to decide what to do. I had a focus. Hiking.

Lonely Planet Western Europe provided me a list of best hiking regions.

Hitting many of the “best hikes” did involve a lot of travel on the 3 main kinds of airlines:


Full service Airlines
Discount Airlines
Charter Airlines

airplane1rgb

I flew no full-service airlines. Here is a sampling of the flights I took during high season:

Halifax to London = CAD$200 – Thomas Cook (Charter)
London to Venice = CAD$100 – EasyJet

Glasgow to Barcelona = CAD146.96 – RyanAir (world’s worst airline)
Bilbao to Glasgow = CAD$159.36 – EasyJet

Glasgow to Calgary = CAD$227.24 – FlyGlobeSpan (Charter)

I highly recommend flyglobespan.com. Their charters run only seasonally. And only once a week. But flying direct from Calgary or Vancouver is wonderful for that low fare.

fly-globespan

Average airfares are still increasing, I believe. But lowest airfares are as low as they’ve ever been as airlines get better and better at filling all the seats.

I normally start with two websites:

Mobbissimo.com
Yahoo Travel (formerly Fare Chase)

From there I might compare with other aggregation sites like Kayak, if necessary.

Then I try to find the flight / fare on the website for the carrier, and buy direct, online.

If you are flexible on dates and times, you can often get a low fare. The further in advance of the flight, the better. For Charters it’s worth cross checking with a travel agent.

Flying to and from Europe … and between European nations is very inexpensive. Cheaper than train or bus in most cases.

retire to the Sunshine Coast, B.C.

On By Rick McIn product endorsementsLeave a comment

CAD$405K

Friends of mine are selling. Guaranteed no rain, ever.

3 bedroom condo on Sechelt’s beautiful waterfront, Downtown locaton, concrete building, recreation, exercise and hobby room. Wood burning fireplace, hardwood floors

Royal-Terraces

interior

details

testing Google Wave

On By Rick McIn Google, product endorsementsLeave a comment

An online friend sent me an invite to try their latest greatest experiment …, Wave:

… “a personal communication and collaboration tool” …

… a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking.

… a “preview release” of Google Wave has been extended to about 100,000 users on September 30, 2009. …

This 8min video will give you an idea how it works.

Click PLAY or watch the tutorial on YouTube.

Very cool. But perhaps not particularly useful except for group projects. I don’t have any other “invites” to hand out. Perhaps they’ll send me some eventually.

Bilbao, Spain – Guggenheim Museum

On By Rick McIn product endorsements, travel2 Comments

This past summer I finally got to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, a town that has astonishingly reinvented itself from grungy sea port to a hip tourist and arts mecca.

… opened to the public in 1997, it was immediately hailed as one of the world’s most spectacular buildings in the style of Deconstructivism, although Gehry does not associate himself with that architectural movement. Architect Philip Johnson called it “the greatest building of our time”.

The museum’s design and construction serve as an object lesson in Gehry’s style and method. Like many of Gehry’s other works, it has a structure that consists of radically sculpted, organic contours. Sited as it is in a port town, it is intended to resemble a ship. Its brilliantly reflective titanium panels resemble fish scales …

Wikipedia – Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Guggenhein

more interesting photos of the Museum

It definitely looks better in photos than in real life.

I spent a couple of hours walking around the building. No two perspectives are alike.

Very cool. I like it.

A French hiker warned me that the highlight was the architecture. He was disappointed with the collections. And felt there was much wasted space. Form over function.

I didn’t get any further inside than the gift shop.

My favourite vantage was The Puppy, “a forty-three feet (12.4 m) tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy, executed in a variety of flowers on a steel substructure”.

The Puppy
The Puppy

It reminded me of the Spinx guarding the Pyramids. But a light-hearted variation.

Bilbao is the largest city in Basque Country.

Aside from the museum, about the only subject I hear about the region in Canadian mainstream media is Basque nationalism, especially the terrorist organization ETA.

… Since 1968, ETA has killed over 800 individuals and undertaken dozens of kidnappings. The group is proscribed as a terrorist organization by both the Spanish and French authorities as well as the European Union as a whole, and the United States. …

This wall painting in Bilbao to me seemed to celebrate ETA.

Basque-painting

Perhaps I’m wrong. But compare the colour and style to the ETA symbol.

ETA

I have no sympathy for ETA. The Basques must work towards more independence, if they choose, through peaceful means.

when did CBC radio get cool?

On By Rick McIn audiocasts, product endorsementsLeave a comment

For decades I was a devoted listener of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation AM radio.

Commercial free talk radio was the best option for me … until the launch of audiocasts.

Now I listen only to these CBC programs, downloaded to me automatically as podcasts:

Definitely Not the Opera
Dispatches
Spark

Brian and co. just convinced me to subscribe to Wiretap starring Jonathan Goldstein. That’s easy to do from the iTunes store. And free.

WireTapArtistPoster

People are telling me that both Radio One and Radio Two have been much improved in recent months. Modernized. Much more hip. “Chasing a younger audience” (age-35+), some say.

Nice. I’ll have to give it another chance.

CBC Radio operates three English language networks.

CBC Radio One – Primarily news and information, CBC Radio One broadcasts to most communities across Canada. Until 1997, it was known as “CBC Radio”.

CBC Radio 2 – Broadcasts music, arts and culture programming, including opera, classical music, jazz and theatre. It was previously known as “CBC Radio Two”, and before that “CBC Stereo”.

CBC Radio 3 – Broadcasts a youth-oriented indie rock format on Internet radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.

Wikipedia

One more thing, Jonathan Goldstein’s most recent book: Ladies And Gentlemen The Bible!

BIG performance art media event Friday

On By Rick McIn Cirque du Soleil, product endorsementsLeave a comment

I posted the details on my Gymnastics Blog:

Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté is orbiting the Earth. He spent $35-million to become only the 7th “tourist” to leave the planet. …

His space trip is part of a huge campaign to raise awareness of the need to provide clean water to everyone in the world.

The main event is happening this Friday though the specific details are not yet revealed. You can get some hints on what to expect from the OneDrop.org website. …

details – why is Guy Laliberté in space?

[picapp src=”7/1/8/6/Soyuz_TMA16_spacecraft_1a53.JPG?adImageId=4760197&imageId=6732852″ width=”500″ height=”335″ /]
Astronaut tourist Guy Laliberte – The Right Stuff

My personal favourite charity causes are Clean Water and Education of Girls and Women in the developing world. So I’ll be all over this latest stunt from Cirque.

RickMcCharles hacked

On By Rick McIn blogs, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Just happened upon this old post in my archive:

site-hacked

I assume that happened back when Bluehost.com was unable to protect me from those vandals. The current host, WordPress.com, is never hacked.