In the spring of 1995 the band Tesla rolled into Oklahoma City. Most bands lumped together under the “hair metal” umbrella fought to separate themselves from that label, and Tesla was no exception. Even though the band was named after the Nikola Tesla, that did little to set them apart from the pack. Tesla had a few hits in the 80s and 90s and are best remembered for “Love Song” and their cover version of “Signs.” Tesla was in town to play a show at the Diamond Ballroom. The Diamond is where bands who can’t sell sell out the larger… (read more)

I don’t remember what I ate last night before bed, but whatever it was, I need to eat more of it. Last night I had a bizarre dream. Last night I dreamed that Eddie Van Halen was having a meet and greet in the back of a restaurant in Florida. MTV had held a contest where people had to submit their dream vacation and in my entry I said I wanted to go on a cruise with Eddie Van Halen to Fiji and that I would write and blog about our adventures. MTV was announcing the winner at the meet… (read more)

A couple of homes were recently broken into in our neighborhood. We were informed at our last Home Owner’s Association meeting that the MO for all the robberies has been the same. The thieves knocked on people’s doors and rang their doorbells to see if anyone was home. When nobody answered, they went around behind the house and kicked the back door in. Yesterday, at 8:15 a.m., someone rang our doorbell, knocked on our front door, and then walked around behind our house. The reason I know this is because Susan and I were both home yesterday. I was upstairs… (read more)

Earlier this week on Facebook I posted a link to Disney’s “Lonesome Ghosts” cartoon. So many of you responded and asked for a top 5 list that I decided to put one together. (Just kidding. Nobody asked for a top 5 list. But I put one together anyway.) In no particular order… Lonesome Ghosts (1937) In this Disney short, Mickey, Donald and Goofy are called out to investigate a haunting. Little do they know, the people who placed the call are the ghosts themselves! In the end, Mickey and his pals end up covered in flour and giving the ghosts… (read more)

One of the things Susan wanted to see in Austin was the Congress Avenue Bridge Bats. Congress Avenue is a street in Austin. There’s a bridge on that street (the Congress Avenue Bridge). Under said bridge are hundreds of thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats — somewhere between 750,000 and 1.5 million bats, depending on the season (the bats migrate and are in Austin from spring until fall). At dusk, all of the bats fly out from underneath the bridge to go eat. If you are standing near the bridge near dusk, you will see a lot of bats. From what… (read more)

I’m on a quest to visit as many retro arcades as I can. We’re lucky to still have Cactus Jacks here in Oklahoma City. Four hours east of me is the Arkadia Retrocade and five hours north of here is the 1984 Arcade. I’ve been to lots of others as well, and the latest notch in my belt is Pinballz Arcade in Austin, Texas. Unlike most of the retro arcades I’ve visited recently, Pinballz does not charge a cover and the games are set to take tokens. All the arcade games I played were 50 cents. The majority of the… (read more)

Instead of sitting around the house this Labor Day weekend (my plan), Susan said, “let’s go to Austin, Texas.” Austin is roughly 400 miles/6 hours S/SE of Oklahoma City. We’ve been through Austin twice (both times while driving to Galveston) but had never stopped. In a span of 36 hours we: Ate at Happy Days Diner, Fricano’s Deli, Freebirds World Burrito, Hat Creek Burger Company, and In-and-Out Burger. Saw one of five existing complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible and the first photograph ever taken at the Harry Ransom Center. Played dozens of arcade and pinball machines at Pinballz Arcade.… (read more)

Last Friday (on my birthday) while performing some routine maintenance on my home server, I rebooted it and it never came back. It just left and never came back… like Judge Crater. The machine turns on (so it has power) and I switched enough RAM around to decide it wasn’t that, so either the processor or (more likely) the motherboard gave up the ghost. This leads us to three things I’ve said before. One, my blog is a great source of historical information for me. A quick search reveals I bought the old server in June of 2009. Six years… (read more)