Shark Week 2026: Group Photo #6

    MEG: a Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Altin came out in 1997. I had a first edition hard cover, but I kept it in my classroom when I exclusively taught language arts, and it got really beat up by the guys who would fight over it during my required reading time. 

    The MEG movie came out in 2018, and I was disappointed the filmmakers didn't use the same opening as the book. In the book's prologue, a herd of Shantungosauruses are on a beach feeding on a smaller group of dinosaurs when a T-Rex breaks up the party and flips the script by making the herd his prey. But when he stumbles into the nearby ocean, a Megalodon emerges from the depths and kills the T-Rex with it's superior size and jaws. Or something like that... I think The MEG 2: The Trench used this idea for its prologue. Both films used Jason Statham, and that's always a good thing.

    Great White's LP Once Bitten came out in the summer of '87. I was working 60 to 80 hours weeks on a road crew so I could pay for my freshman year of college. I had my tuition covered by the end of June. I had enough cash for my dorm room, books, and food by late July. In August I bought a few records to bring with me, and Once Bitten was in that lot. I'm not gonna lie. Working the road crew was zero fun. It's probably also the reason why my dermatologist keeps coming at me with a scalpel. 

    The Black Demon movie came out in 2023, and the novel Extinct by Charles Wilson was published in 1997. Both also have a Megalodon as the antagonist. I like how the covers echo each other. Extinct's cover says a it was coming to NBC-TV presumably as a made-for-TV movie, but that - spoiler alert!- didn't happen.

    When I bought Shark Night from Goodwill, I didn't know the original title for the film was Shark Night 3D. Of the four Jaws movies, Jaws III, or Jaws 3D, is my least favorite. I also didn't know that during the credits the cast was going to be in a music video performing the song, "Shark Night Cast: Shark Bite."     

Here's Char hamming it up at Flix when she was about to turn eight

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #31

 October 31: Halloween's back, baby!

    From left to right: Betamax tape, VCR tape, Criterion Collection LaserDisc, DVD, novelization paperback. 

    Yay! I made it. 31 displays in 31 days. I haven't blogged in awhile, and I was feeling rusty. It's been nice to brush off the cobwebs. 

    That was fun, but not as much fun as this: 

    I moved here in August of 1992, and for the past 33 years my favorite holiday has been anticlimactic. The calendar would flip to October 31, but trick-or-treating was already over. Boo. That's not a scary Boo, but a sad one.

    Last year severe storms were predicted for Oct 30, so many towns in the area pushed "Beggars' Night" to the 31st, and guess what? Nothing bad happened. At least that what I was told. We had parent-teacher conferences that night, and I didn't get to hand out candy on Halloween night, again. I had my Flix Brewhouse employee costume all ready to go, and I didn't even get to wear it.

    That's another sad Boo. 

    But this year is different! After a survey was taken by Des Moines city residents, the Des Moines City Council voted last March to permanently move trick-or-treating to the 31st of October. Many local cities, like ours, made that move, too.

    I actually stopped my car and got out to take this picture. Yay!

    I'm not gonna lie. The name "Beggars' Night" has always rubbed me wrong. I'm so glad that tradition has been retired. 

    Our tradition, since 2018, is to project a Halloween family film on the garage door and hand out bags of popcorn and packages of M&M's. That combo is our favorite movie snack.

    I'm leaning towards showing Happy Halloween Scooby-Doo, but I know for sure what I'm wearing tonight.

    As the kids say, "Rate the fit."

Happy Halloween!

Halloween 2025: Group Photo #30

October 30

    Look out! The 31st is right around the corner (and it's holding a knife). 
    I had planned to blog about 1978's original Halloween on the actual day, but my friend Tim surprised me with an October gift, and I decided to stretch this topic to two displays for the last two days of the month. 

    From left to right: The first Halloween film is tense, violent, and scary, but it's not very gory. Still, to air the movie on network TV, they cut some scenes and added 12 minutes of new scenes that were shot during the filming of Halloween II. The "Extended Version" DVD is that television edit. It was released by Anchor Bay, and came with a 16mm "Original Film Cell" display.

    Tim gave me the Halloween / Ash vs. The Evil Dead cartridge for the Nintendo Switch. He also gave me the 35th Anniversary Blu-ray that's next door. I've known Tim for over 20 years, and I might have mentioned Halloween one or ten times to him. Thanks, bud!

    I've bought a handful of UMD movies for the Sony PSP after my friend Robert gave me one for Christmas back in the 2000's. I still have it, Rob, and it still works great! Thanks, again. Of course, Halloween was my first pick.

    The Halloween 25 Years of Terror DVD is still sealed. If I haven't watched in 22 years... I think it's headed to the donation box.

    This is the best Flix Brewhouse souvenir glass I have ever found while thrifting. And that's saying something.

  

Here's a closeup of the film cell. 

Scenes From 2020

I wrote this in January of 2021, but I didn't post it because it didn't feel right. Now, I can see that it isn't bragging to say that you are lucky that you can count your blessings. 

I can't say that 2020 was worth celebrating, but I don't want to forget some of the things that we were able to do.

We started the year off with a bang at Universal's Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

We now know how lucky we were to have gone to Florida right after Christmas. If we had waited to go during spring break, then the trip would not have happened.

Planning for our June trip to Nova Scotia began in February. Thematically, we ate breakfast poutine at the BeerStyles Taproom while we booked houses through Airbnb. 

We were lucky that all the places we booked refunded our deposit money when the border to Canada closed. 

Charlotte attended her first piano festival in March. Here a nervous pianist gets some support from Mom. 

It was lucky that the festival was on the 7th. Things began to shut down a few days later.

Charlotte made this Easter wreath for our front door in April. 

We were lucky that she was able to roll with the punches and not just sit around and complaining all day about missing her friends.

We brought Ellie home in May. Our two girls bonded quickly, and they are now best friends.

We were lucky to get a dog with such nice disposition. 

We enjoy walking down to the Johnston library during the summer, and we were pumped when we discovered that you could pick a private browsing time. We did this more than once for books and movies. 

I don't think you can book a browsing time now, so it was lucky we got in when we could.

We lost power for 18 hours, but other than that, we weren't really affected by the derecho in August. But in mid-July, we believe a small funnel cloud ripped through our neighborhood. 

Quite a few trees were left with a "V"-shaped bite taken out of them. 

You can see another tree like that standing behind the wood-chipper.

We were thankful that no one was hurt, and we were lucky and grateful that our house and property were okay.

On August 25, Urbandale schools opened their buildings in a hybrid model, and Char was able to return to class in person.

She had to wear a mask, and only half of her class attends on "J-Hawk" days, but Char was just as excited and nervous as she was on the other first-days-of-school.  I asked her when she got home, "How did it go today?"

 

Charlotte quickly replied, "It was great! We... and then we... our teacher... then we played... Ha! I love school!" 

Daphne and I gave each other a high-five. We had been telling Char, "No, we can't do that," all summer long. We kept reminding her that our major goal was to keep ourselves as healthy as we could so she could go back to Karen Acres and see her friends again. We were lucky that it worked out for her for almost three months.

I was almost as excited when Flix Brewhouse reopened two days later. We were only going to stop by for some takeout on a Saturday afternoon, but the rest of the tables were empty, and the precautions Flix had taken were well thought out. 

When they brought us our boxed lunch, we surprised ourselves by sitting down and eating there. 

We only removed our masks to eat (and read).

The menu was limited, but I had them add tomatoes to their meat lovers pizza to approximate a supreme.

They did have Daphne's favorite salad. 

Daphne and I each took our first bites and then looked at each other. I don't know who teared-up first, but it was Daphne who said, "This is how life is supposed to be." It was the first time we had eaten outside of our car or home in 165 days. I suppose it isn't too surprising that we got a little emotional.

I felt so lucky to be able to enjoy the atmosphere at Flix again. We went back for lunch several more times. The deal was if the dining area was busy, we'd get takeout. If the area was empty, we'd stay. 

Sadly for Flix, it was almost always empty. The Urbandale Schools District moved to online learning the same week in November that Flix was forced to close their theaters again. 

We are now back in our school buildings, so I am hopeful Flix can also reopen again sometime in 2021.

We reopened up the garage theater during Thanksgiving break. It was cool out there, but we were lucky to have Grandpa's propane heater to warm the space up before the movie started.

Here's where I taught school while UHS was confined to online learning only. I didn't enjoy working with students this way, but we did okay. I never thought I would get out of bed in the morning and walk past my school desk on the way to the bathroom.

We were lucky our internet held out, and we had enough data for three computers running Zoom all day.

We had a small gathering at Christmas, and Char was exited with her gifts.

It's lucky she likes to read so much. That will serve her well in the years to come.

For New Year's Eve, Char invited us to her movie party. Her goal was to stay up until midnight. She wanted to be there when 2020 finally said goodbye.

It's lucky we made it until 12:00. I mean that in more ways than one. 

In this post I used the word "lucky" 13 times. That isn't because I do not have a thesaurus. Lucky is the word I have used all year to keep my spirits up. 

I had to keep reminding myself that we were lucky to stay healthy. Not everybody did. We were lucky to have each other. Not everybody did. We were lucky to alway have food on the table. Not everyone did. We are lucky we stayed together. Not everyone did.

I know it's too early to celebrate the end of the pandemic, but it's never too early to count my blessings.

Still Having Fun at Flix!

Encanto was a good time, and last Sunday we watched Elf on the big screen. More importantly, Char isn't too old to pose for photos with her dad.

We Took a "Jungle Cruise" at Flix Brewhouse!

Here's our evening in three pictures. 

We played it safe and wore masks when not eating, drinking, or taking a family photo. It's been 17 months since we watched a film at Flix, and I have been waiting that long to finally wear my Flix t-shirt.

We found out that Flix was going to reopen while we were on vacation in Vegas, and we purchased tickets for tonight's movie without caring if Jungle Cruise was a good family film or not: we just wanted to give Flix our support. Luckily, Char gave the movie a ten, and our dinner was great. 

It just felt so nice to watch a movie with others again.

Whew. 

Fingers Crossed

Charlotte had the idea to take Daphne to Bath & Body Works for Mothers' Day. It just so happens that the Gameday arcade that Charlotte likes so much is also in the Merle Hay Mall...

Flix Brewhouse is at the mall, too, but the theater has been closed since November 17. I often check for signs of life when we walk pass their brewery equipment. On Sunday we noticed that two of the brewing vats had blue handles reinstalled. 

We also noticed that the other vats' thermometers read about 68 degrees, but the two with the blue handles were quite a bit cooler:

I'm 🤔, but this looks like a good sign... 

Char had fun at the mall:

Maybe soon we all will...

Can't Mask My Excitement

Celebrating at Flix is our family tradition. We like the food, the movies, the special programing, and the staff. Our favorite employee brings Charlotte a lemonade as soon as he sees us, and it doesn't matter if we're in his section or not. I'm not a bar-guy, but I am very comfortable at Flix.

After doing her best at her piano recital, we took Charlotte to Flix Brewhouse to celebrate with a shake.

That was on March 7. We had no idea what was coming our way. 

Businesses were still open when spring break began the next weekend, but shopping started to feel sketchy. The people at the grocery store were beginning to look desperate. Their carts were overflowing. We had heard about toilet paper disappearing from store shelves, but that idea seemed ridiculous. On that Monday we ate at a disturbingly empty Tasty Tacos. 

It was almost noon, and the restaurant should have been packed. There wasn't even a line at the counter. Char didn't notice my unease, but I started to get a little freaked out. I think this was the moment when I started to think, This doesn't feel safe. I think being here is a mistake. 

We drove over to Flix after lunch to fill up a growler for me and then headed home. Flix, like most of Iowa, shuttered their doors the next day.

As the weeks ticked by, businesses began to tentatively open. We stayed away from most of them. We were getting by okay. What we couldn't get at Hy-Vee could be ordered from Amazon. 

If you checked the Flix website during the past five months, then this is what you'd see:

I also stopped by the mall in mid-July to check for signs of life. It was bleak. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't a locked fence. 

As I walked back to my car, I tried to figure out why I missed going to Flix so much. Flix isn't the only place in town where I can get a beer, a pizza, and some ice cream. More theaters are now offering food and drinks during their movies than ever. So what is it?

I decided that what I really missed about going to Flix is that it's a family event.

Charlotte has a blast when we take her to see a movie there. Char isn't hard to please, almost any movie will do, and it is so much fun watching her laugh at the screen or hide from it when the tension rises. Charlotte was tell us her favorite parts on the way home, and if it was a funny scene, she'll squeal with laughter as she tries to retell it.

Daphne and I don't have many date nights, and so when we do go to a movie together, it is always one we really want to see. We both order our favorites off the menu, and we know that we are in for a good time. I suppose that is a far cry from a "night on the town." But it works for us.

I think we have done a pretty good job of keeping Charlotte entertained during the pandemic summer, but it would be so nice to let someone else do the cooking, planing, and clean-up.

When other theaters began to open but Flix did not, I was beginning to get worried. But then this appeared on their Facebook page last week:

I put that in my Google Calendar and began counting down the days!

I'm not interested in seeing any of the movies that Flix is showing, but I'm all for supporting the business by picking up a crowler or five. 

And then, around noon on August 27, the Governor made a new proclamation. 

I get it. The Covid numbers have spiked in Iowa counties where students have been returning to four-year colleges. I have no idea how people thought college kids were going to keep a social distance from each other. 

But then again, are you serious? I waited 162 days to have the Flix Brewhouse close on the same day it re-opened? I figured I had at least an hour after work to briefly enjoy the atmosphere. I high-tailed over there as soon as I could.

Whew. They have Covid-19 protocols in place, but the place was open!

Turns out, I should not have been worried. Flix is considered a restaurant because they don't make more than 50% of their profit from alcohol sales. I can't be sure, but our favorite employee sure looks like he's smiling.

The photo booth isn't there right now, but I took a selfie in its place anyway. I am smiling. That's for sure.

I'm taking the family to Flix this week to get some diner to-go. The menu is limited, but something is better than nothing by a long shot. We're still nowhere close to being "normal," but I'll take what I can get.