Of Andrews and I Dos

Back in May our son, Andrew Weber, served as best man for his best friend, Andrew Wheeler.

Although we know the bride and groom well, we were not able to attend the wedding as it was just a few days before we left for New York, and it was Mother's Day weekend, and everything got too complicated at the last minute.

So I was excited when Andrew (Weber) called to tell me where I could go online to see all 799 wedding pictures on the photographer's blog.

And I did look at all 799, and yes that took me a while, and I enjoyed it very much indeed.

Because I never knew when the next click would result in a cute picture of my handsome baby.

I love the way he is standing (to the bride's right) in this next pose. He looks like an undertaker.

In the end I decided to buy these four prints in order to make a collage frame to hang on my wall.

The happy newlyweds, Andrew and Megan, are now living and serving the Lord in Alaska.

They are precious Christian kids who met and courted while at Bible college, and who want to honor the Lord with their marriage.

Take that, godless amoral heathen liberals.

I wish the Wheelers pretty babies and every other joy imaginable.

Heartfelt thanks to Joe Atkins of JoPhoto of Knoxville for permission to post these pictures on IHATH.

And thanks, Joe, for writing to me in an email: I remember Andrew well. He was very helpful and a joy to be around that day.

My little boy! I think he's something else.

Bada Bing

TG has gone and done it.

Got me hooked on Bing cherries.

As in, lately it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Bing.

I cannot stop eating them.

The house is littered with pits and stems.

My teeth are pinkish.

My front is stained with drips of red.

I am practically delirious. Much too happy.

Can one become ... er, inebriated on Bing cherries?

Perhaps I'd better be careful. Stepping away from the cherries now.

We'll always have liberals

I don't guess anyone can simply enjoy a cultural event anymore without mentally-ill progressi-liberals taking center stage to mock all that's ever been decent about this country.

What's she hissy-fitting about this time? You are likely asking yourself.

Allow me to elaborate.

Here's looking at you, kid

My daughters Audrey and Erica cooked up an entertaining outing for themselves several weeks back. Sisters! Single and living la dolce vita.

Erica, who lives in the Atlanta area, noticed that Turner Classic Movies was hosting TCM at the Symphony, an evening consisting of an open-air screening of the 1942 classic Casablanca.

Some people believe Casablanca is the greatest movie ever made. I myself would have to go with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

Second-place honors would be shared by a close tie of Singin' in the Rain and the expletives-deleted versions of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and My Cousin Vinny.

Make 'em laugh!

But to each his own.

As time goes by

Anyway, the event took place last Friday night at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Alpharetta, Georgia. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was on hand to play the movie's score while the film in all its black-and-white glory flickered on three huge screens.

Audrey left work in Knoxville at lunchtime and drove down to Erica's place in time for dinner and the one-hour trip to Alpharetta.

The girls had opted for "inside" pavilion tickets rather than rusticating on the lawn. The place was packed out.

Ben Mankiewicz was in the house to introduce the movie, which in my opinion needs no introduction, but that's just me. TCM has a human intro for most of their movies.

You're lucky the bar's open to you

Although I think the manky-monkey qualifies only as sub-human. On a good day. But then I doubt he has many good days.

The way of transgressors is hard (Proverbs 13:15). That's my proof text. Let God be true but every man a liar (Romans 3:4) would be another.

A perfunctory perusal of the Twitter stream of @BenMank77 will sum up for you nicely what a brain trust he is. Not.

This, folks, is his Twitter bio: Turner Classic Movies host. I like gambling, long walks on the beach at sunset, Bruce Springsteen and gambling. I don't like mean people and gambling.

All crass, no class. I would imagine putting his flippers on the floor every morning and getting out of the rack is a gamble. But I digress.

By way of introduction, the mankster-prankster explained how the Casablanca project began casting at Warner Brothers early in 1942, shortly after the events at Pearl Harbor that got America into World War II.

Or aren't you the kind that tells?

He said an early contender for the role of Rick was Ronald Reagan.

Now, Manky could've left it at that and gone on to point out the obvious: Humphrey Bogart was eventually chosen for the lead, alongside Ingrid Bergman.

Themselves poster children for the godless immoral adulterous commie pinko liberal ideologic agenda. And Bogie was a drunkard into the bargain. Once again I digress; apologies.

But Mankless either did not possess or could not locate the inner strength to resist. He had a live audience heavy on libs (read: light on grey matter) for whom he was itching to show off. The rest -- like, for example, my girls and I'm sure at least ten or twelve more people -- he was eager to rankle, Mankle style.

So he went on to opine in his trademark homely-boy whine that it would've been better if Ronald Reagan had stayed in Hollywood and kept on being an actor.

Because then Ronnie never would've become Governor of California, and he wouldn't have been elected the 40th President of the United States, and then George H.W. Bush never would have become the 41st President of the United States, and then of course George W. Bush wouldn't have been the 43rd President of the United States ... and then of course -- of course! -- there never would have been a war in Iraq or anywhere else.

Just like any other liberal, only more so

*sigh*

Talk about your amoeba-shaped reasoning.

First let me get this out of my system: Ben Mankiewicz taking a pot-shot at Ronald Reagan is like an anemic gerbil hurling its six-ounce carcass against the blade of a six-ton Komatsu super-dozer.

Utterly ridiculous on its face and ultimately devastating in its result.

Tempting as it must have been to stand and deliver his petulant mini-jeremiad a la The Dixie Chicks (look what happened to their career) and throw his itty-bitty stones at arguably the greatest president in modern American history, in this case restraint would definitely have been the better part of valor.

When's the last time skanky Manky (a/k/a American Zero) put his precious Hollywood hiney on the line for his country like American heroes Reagan (who survived an assassination attempt), Bush 41, and Bush 43 did, both in the military and as lifelong public servants?

And what makes this pea-brain believe there is a single living breathing human being of any consequence who gives a flying flip what he thinks about Ronald Reagan, the Bush family, or the war in Iraq?

We don't even care what he thinks about the movies he introduces.

You are becoming your own best customer

Is it lost on anyone that when showbiz libs living in the land of fruits and nuts aren't lecturing the rest of us about how we're destroying our delicate ecosystem, they're holding forth on the evils of our imperialistic warmongering society?

As if capitalism has not been very, very good to all of them.

Don't forget that Hollyweird celebrities (of which the mankmobile, I admit, is a decidedly marginal variety), with their immoral and decadent lifestyles, are among the most conspicuous consumers of goods and services on the planet.

The energy and resources required to fulfill their every whim for a single week is more than I'll use at my house in an entire year.

In other words, liberal America-haters indulge in profligate waste of the majority of that for which much finer Americans laid down their lives.

So quit preaching -- or should I say reaching -- you idiot lib, about Ronald Reagan, whose memory you are not fit to even remember.

Keep amongst yourself and your peurile, mouth-breathing, bottom-feeding co-conspirators your asinine belief that if Ronald Reagan had stayed in Hollywood with the rest of your nitwit ilk, America wouldn't have eventually had a lethal showdown with those who despise all we stand for.

We said no questions

What, you think the mooselimb terrorists would've taken a pass on their "Death to America" jihad and started singing Kumbayah at the top of their lungs, holding hands, turbans toward the setting sun, if there'd been a liberal Democrat in the White House on 9/11?

Is that what you parasitic narcissistic hypocritical traitors tell yourselves?

And if we had had the misfortune to have a Dimocrat in the White House on 9/11 when the terrorist attacks went down, do you really think that president would NOT have been obliged to recognize that event for what it was: an ACT of WAR?

Do you? Do you think?

I think not. Because thinking would require morality and decency and actual intelligence, and whatever spark of any of those things you ever had long ago dissolved into the soft mist of a utopian dreamworld where pastel-colored unicorns frolic while spoofle dust swirls in sparkly clouds around their little prancing hooves.

And the rarefied air you breathe makes you so superior to those Americans who now lie in early graves -- having given up their right to breathe at all -- to ensure that you continue to enjoy freedoms unprecedented in the history of mankind; right?

Right.

Pathetic presumptuous pointy-headed prig, thy name is Benny Mankiewicz. You're not worth the suicide bomber it would take to blow you to kingdom come.

Round up the usual suspects

I'm sick of the socialist progressilibs' elitist stake-claiming of the arts. Liberals did not invent and do not own exclusive rights to beautiful music and good movies and great paintings and other forms of creativity instilled in human beings by their Creator.

But since libs're convinced they are the primary purveyors of and principal partakers in all things artistic, why would the muling manko-brat think it necessary to ruin a perfectly lovely evening by bringing up politics (which, by the way, he kept insisting he "hated to do, but ...")???

I know why. Because there's a little speck on the horizon called a presidential election and it gets closer every minute, and they are terrified.

Why else all the agitation, the name-calling, the mud-slinging, the hand-wringing, the intimidation, the muckraking, the invective-hurling, the lie-spinning, the general sturm und drang that seems to attend liberals' every waking moment?

I'll say it again: They're quaking in their five-thousand-dollar boots at the mere contemplation of their useless O'bummer opposite just about anyone we care to run against him.

Why, I bet we could put the late Ronald Reagan on the ticket against Obama and the mere mention of his name would take Texas and the entire Southeast, if not win the whole banana by a respectable margin.

This time I know our side will win

So they'd better be scared. Because there's something else coming around the bend like a two-mile-long freight train and it's called Conservative America.

Casablanca ... White House ... get it? I don't think the oblique reference is coincidental.

Well, they're all about to get it. Permanent letters of transit, as it were. Just be patient.

NObama 2012. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Oh, and Bruce? Mr. Springsteen? Word to the wise. Manky-panky's got a man crush.

Life without Fakebook is ... life

Perhaps you don't know this about me because I do not necessarily advertise it (much), but I despise Facebook.

Now, I know ... I know I know I know I KNOW everyone reading this is "on" Facebook. Don't get your knickers in a twist.

By saying I loathe Facebook I am neither judging nor criticizing anyone, either directly or indirectly.

I do not consider myself superior to Facebookers. As you're no doubt aware, I'm all about the Internets. I read a few blogs and I am a blogger, and I enjoy the occasional tweet on Twitter.

I think either or both of those things have way more relevance than Fakebook, but again, that's only my opinion.

So you can see why I like that commercial. I do not drive a Toyota and you're not likely to see me riding a mountain bike anytime soon, but I'm seriously down with that commercial.

Now go! Go update your status. Write on your wall and tend to your crops. I'm gonna keep on rolling. This is living.

This is gonna accost you

I avoid fueling my automobile, preferring to let TG fill that important office.

Ergo, I rarely visit gas stations.

However.

When we travel, inevitably there are fueling stops.

I always go inside to take stock of the snack and beverage offerings, believing it's the least I can do.

And because we usually travel with our pet, he gets out too ... to check his messages, et cetera.

The other day as we were on the Ohio-to-Tennessee leg of our return home, at a fuel island somewhere in Kentucky we offered Javier a drink of water. Like his own little private oasis.

I fetched his dish from the trunk and Erica stepped up to fill it from her personal monogrammed water container.

He was very grateful and I must say, so cute lapping up his water I just had to grab my camera.

Lately I've been doing a lot of shooting where I just hang my camera down near something on the ground or floor, and without even looking into the viewfinder, I take several pictures.

I like that unique perspective. Some of the shots remind me of Alfred Hitchcock movies, you know, with a small object looming in the foreground, dwarfing the larger object behind it.

(Think the teacup in Notorious. If you can get your mind's eye off Cary Grant, that is.)

But this time it really paid off because in addition to making his water dish look like a small swimming pool, I accidentally made Javier into a one-legged Chihuahua.

That's not something you see every day and I'm not sure you could plan it even if you actually were Alfred Hitchcock.

OK now all of the above was really just to set you up for this next part.

The day after the aforementioned trip, we embarked upon the last leg of our peregrinations. The one that would take us all the way home.

Erica left for Georgia. TG and I headed for South Carolina.

Audrey stayed in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she lives. Something tells me she was glad to see the gray car and the red car drive away.

Ten days on the road with one's family is ... well, ten days on the road with one's family. Good but at times requiring, shall we say, extra patience.

Anyway, before hitting I-75 South, Erica stopped to fill her tank.

She had just swiped her card and adjusted the nozzle and begun watching fifty dollars take wing and fly out of her wallet when a lady approached her.

The lady's male companion waited in a nearby car, smoking a cigarette.

Erica listened patiently while the lady politely asked for, not money, but gasoline.

As in, she wanted Erica to fill (or at least partially fill) the tank of the automobile in which the smoking man sat.

Erica declined to acquiesce with her request and later, she told me, "felt badly about it."

That's my girl, sweet as the day is long and with a guilt complex built right in.

To which I say, PUH-LEEEEEEZE.

PEOPLE. IF YOU CAN AFFORD CIGARETTES YOU CAN AFFORD GASOLINE.

I don't even know what a pack of smokes costs but I am sure the same amount of money would buy at least one gallon of gas, and that should be enough to drive you to work.

Yes, I said WORK.

Speaking of work, a few weeks ago TG was fueling his truck at another gas station. A man walked up and asked, not for money, but for work.

See, TG was wearing old paint-spattered clothes because he'd been painting some doors at our church. Perhaps giving the impression that he could maybe use a helper.

And I don't want to criticize the man who asked for work, because he did after all ask for work. Not for a ten-spot or a happy meal or a tank of gas.

Unfortunately TG had no work to give him, and told him so, and I'm sure he was very nice about it because he always is.

But a few minutes later as TG drove off down the road, he passed the man, who was on foot.

And as he walked, the man was smoking a cigarette.

PEOPLE. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A JOB, WHERE DO YOU GET THE MONEY TO BUY CIGARETTES?

Wait. Don't answer that. I'm not at all sure I want to know.