A few months ago, I read a news article about a homeless man who kept a weblog. Well, beginning Saturday, or possibly Monday, depending on when I have to move out, Up Too Late will become Up Too Late Cause I Got No Place To Sleep. Unless something drastic happens, this weekend I will become a member of the homeless middle class. In preparation for my new homeless status, I will probably put some throws over the passenger seat and some area rugs in the back. I might even plant a garden in the trunk; a few cucumbers, maybe some strawberries.

You will now have to sit through my Family Dinner Re-cap. (I'm pretty sure my sister will be doing one soon too, and she has a knack for doing family impressions, but in the meantime, you'll have to read mine.)

Saturday Aug. 9, 2003

To keep up with my family, you need a thorough knowledge of old movies, books, broadway, Buffy, Mormons and my sister's brief but enduring stint at Potiphar's wife in West High School's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

We get the ball rolling with dinner conversation that consists of literary criticism of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck and then...

Kathryn: "I must visit the necessities." Walks by my dad and heads for the bathroom.
Dad: "Kathryn, passes."
Family: Laughter, laughter, laughter.
If you are unfamiliar with "1776" (and by unfamiliar I mean "do not have entire script memorized") this will make no sense.

After dinner we head to the CD player.

Listening to Footloose soundtrack.
Kathryn: "Which pair of shoes did you always want to be?"
Mom and Sister simultaneously cry out: "The one with the foot that turns backwards!" Proceed to catalogue each pair of feet from the opening credits of Footloose.

Listening to Queen.
Kathryn and Me: "All the words to Bohemian Rhapsody. la la la"

Showed Grandma how to line dance to Sean Paul's Get Busy.

My sister opens her birthday presents.
1. Buffy: Season 4 on DVD. Leading to a discussion between her and my mom of the pros and cons of owning Season 5. A pro being Buffy the Musical, a con being Willow becoming a lesbian. My mom will not own it. My sister will.
2. Mormon Doctrine. The first word she looked up was, "exorcism."

Grandma interrupts, "Remember when you played Potiphar's wife? Do we have that on tape?"

Listening to "Tramp Tramp Tramp" full blast so Grandma could hear.
A conflict arose over the words to the Nelson Eddy song, "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," from 1934's Naughty Marietta. I thought the words were "bramp, bramp, bramp," and I think Kathryn thought it was, "stamp, stamp, stamp." She redeemed herself though by pointing out that the plot of Singing in the Rain was based on Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald movies, "if you've seen one, you've seen them all." Our family hemmed and hawed and finally agreed that she had a very good point.

If I were ever to start reading this book, I'm pretty sure "To the Lighthouse" would be given a new lease on life.

This site, from Metafilter contains different elements of airplane crashes, including a touching and disturbing last words link containing CVR transcripts and MP3's. The site also includes unusual accidents like this:

"Not really an "accident" but:
On November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a Boeing 727, Northwest Airlines, Flight 305 at Portland Oregon bound for Seattle Washington. Soon after the plane took off , Cooper, seated in seat 18C, stated he had a bomb. He demanded $200,000 in cash and several parachutes. After the plane landed at Seattle, the passengers were allowed to leave. Cooper and four crew members took off with his instructions to fly towards Mexico. The pilot was instructed to fly no higher that 10,000 feet and below 200 mph. He asked the flight attendant how to open the tail stairway and ordered her to the front of the plane. Shortly after, the crew felt a thud and Cooper jumped from the plane with a 21 lb. package of money tied to his waist. He was never heard from again. Despite a massive search, no sign of him was ever found. The FBI calculated he landed somewhere near Ariel, Washington. Cooper jumped into the darkness at 7 below zero temperatures with strong winds and freezing rain. He was not equipped to survive in the wilderness. Cooper, who became somewhat of a folk-hero in succeeding years, was probably killed in the jump or succumbed to the elements. The day after the skyjacking, FBI agents checked out a Portland man with the name D.B. Cooper but quickly cleared him. The newspapers picked up on it and incorrectly call the hijacker D.B. Cooper which stuck and was never corrected. In 1980, a boy playing on the banks of the Colombia River found 5,800 dollars in 20 dollar bills buried in the sand which matched the serial number of the money given to Cooper. Cooper’s lasting contribution to aircraft design is the "Cooper Vane," a latching device on Boeing 727s that prevents the tail stairway from being lowered in flight."

I cannot lift my arms today. Everything I do is done with my elbows pressed firmly to my sides, like a wounded T-Rex. "Ah yes, a wild weekend of waterskiing, or perhaps bench pressing?" you ask...but no. It was a wild night of Contact Reflex Analysis. It was determined, based on the resistance level of my arms, that;
1)I do not like radiator sealant.
2)I need a diet high in onions, low in sugar and
3)My roommate's body is incapable of knowing whether she will marry a Mexican.