Memorial Day

Memorial Day is not a day to wish "happy Memorial Day" although some have said so to me this weekend.  They are good people with good intentions but they don't understand the reason for the day.

I had several people tell me "thank you for your service" this weekend; I politely thanked them for their sincere sentiment, but today isn't about veterans, it is about those who served and gave their lives in that service.  

To absent comrades....

Happy Mother's day!

Happy Mother's day to all the mothers in my life and especially to the mother of my children, the Missus!

Nethercutt Auto Museum

Several weeks ago Young Son and I took a Saturday drive to Sylmar to see the Nethercutt auto museum.  The museum is free and open to the public and the (mostly) autos are surprisingly accessible to the museum viewers.  Carving your initials in the paint is prohibited but flash photography and craning your neck to get as close a look as possible is encouraged.

http://www.nethercuttcollection.org/

A little over a year ago the Grouch family got to attend a Wurlitzer organ recital at the other collection accross the street from the auto collection.  There is an auto collection in that building also.  You can read about our visit that evening here:

http://citizengrouch.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-grouches-visit-nethercutt.html

My mind and eyes boggled at the sight of so many beautiful and rare automobiles.  Rather than trying to describe each picture, I will present them here with few comments.

Young Son next to a Hudson Hornet (I just love that name!)

Out back of the museum building is the 'Royal Hudson' a steam locomotive all the way from Canada to Sylmar via New York

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A night at the theater

The Missus, Young Son, and I saw "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder" at the Ahmanson theater in downtown L.A. last night.

http://www.agentlemansguidebroadway.com/

It was a great show, very funny and clever and well done musical numbers.  I particularly appreciated the number "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun" where a Lee-Enfield rifle was waved around and handed back and forth between the characters.  The person signing mentioned his service in the Boer War and a "Martini-Henry Mk II rifle".  Yep, got one of those too.

Young Son performed in a show at the Ahmanson as a small boy.

Here he is standing next to the poster from his show in the lobby of the theater last night!

"Brooklyn" movie review

Last night the Missus and I rented the movie "Brooklyn".  It is the story of a young Irish woman in the early 1950s who emigrates from Ireland to Brooklyn.  

It is a quiet story, happy and sad and full of wonderful Irish brogues and lots of Irish red hair.  The woman (more a girl at first) is sad and desperately homesick in Brooklyn on her own and living in a boardinghouse with other mostly Irish girls but in time she begins to make a life for herself until suddenly she must return to Ireland.   

It is a movie were the priest is kindly, the girls in the boarding house who seem to be catty are actually nice, the Italian-American boy who loves Irish girls is a gentleman...in short just how we wish live to be.

The movie gets the period right, all the way down to the fashions and the look of the streets.

I enjoyed it a lot and highly recommend it.  4 stars

P-51 Mustang - Cadillac of the Skies! (for my birthday)

So here it is, my 62nd birthday which finds me eligible for Social Security and certainly eligible for AARP (I'm not taking either, thanks).  Feeling like what could happen on a birthday when I'm getting older and closer to geezerhood, when my loving wife and children presented me with a certificate for a ride on a genuine P-51 Mustang WW2 fighter!!!!   Suddenly 62 is looking like a really good age to be.

The Mustang is everyone's favorite warbird, and how can it not be with its combination of beauty, speed, and barely suppressed lethality?

Here is a  short dramatic presentation of the Mustang in action from the excellent film "Empire of the Sun". The scene has violence as it is portraying wartime so be warned.  The whole film is very much worth seeing.

Thanks so very much to the Missus and the Grouch kids.  You have made my decade and the best birthday present ever, even surpassing my bike on my 11th birthday!

Star Trek Heaven Update

The Missus, Young Son, and I traveled to the Pantages theater in Hollywood last Sunday to see and hear the 50th anniversary orchestral and visual tribute to the Star Trek universe.

Read the original post here:  http://citizengrouch.blogspot.com/2016/04/star-trek-heaven.html

The theater was packed with Star Trek fans with what looked to be not a seat left unfilled.  Some attendees were wearing Federation Fleet uniforms and one young lady sported a dress made from Star Trek print fabric!

The music was great, taken from the various shows and movies and accompanied by film clips on the big screen.  Everyone including us enjoyed it immensely and even if the performance hadn't been wonderful, the people watching was great fun in itself!

If you have the chance and are at all a Star Trek fan ( I saw the first episode when it aired in 1966 and immediately dropped my allegiance to Lost in Space and switched wholeheartedly to Star Trek) I highly recommend this production if you are lucky enough to have it stop in your home town.