The Sloped S, for those not familiar with a term I just coined a few moments ago, is a manner of hand writing that defies all convention and classical design. It spits in the face of two thousand years of S-writing. Essentially, the serpentine shape of the S is soured by straightening. Only half. Like an S with bed head, the top curve is angular and slanted like a ski ramp. Why? I have no idea.

I remember the trend starting in the first grade thanks to a group of girls. We had finally mastered the rules of basic writing, and so someone felt the need to shatter such rules. Over the summer, the Sloped S really took off. So much so that when we arrived in second grade, the wise nun who taught us was faced with quite the dilemma.

Second grade was around the time we had those printing and cursive tests. We had workbooks with various ruled lines, training us to write upper and lower case appropriately. Then cursive, with all its strange choices and messed up capital letters (thanks a lot Q.) When it came time to write a page of S's, however, I gave in to popular pressure. I can only assume, since we were never lectured as a class, that I was the only kid to actually attempt the Sloped S on a homework assignment.

In fact, I took things one stupid step further, and, for reasons I cannot to this day produce, created a Sloped Z. That's right, I took the normal Z, but sloped the top line like a full 45 degrees. Why on earth would I do that? No kids in the class were sloping Z's. Rarely did we have a reason to write a Z--and when you did, you savored that chance. I was just so caught up in the idea of totally destroying convention, allowing the popular writing style of the time to take over, that I took it a step too far. I completely botched that writing homework. I can only imagine the look on Sister's face when she saw my work--Zorro wrote cleaner Z's.

While the Sloped Z never caught on (thankfully), the fad of sloping S's also quickly faded. We grew up a little, and realized that there were cooler writing trends to adopt. Habits like dotting I's with little circles, printing words with a faked italics slant, or giant, hideous bubble letters. Those were the sorts of trends that could only happen in grade school. It was a impler time.

The premise for each film follows a simple path: one man surviving in a world overcome with chaos and danger. Each film stresses the individual and self-reliance, sometimes because you can't trust those around you, other times because there's no one left alive to trust.

In Planet of the Apes (PotA), Heston and company arrive in a savage, unknown world overrun by apes. After Heston's comrades get the ax, he has no one left to rely upon for any sort of saving grace. Sure there are folks (apes) who help him out along the way, but even they must be abandoned in the end so that he can find his own destiny--with his wild, silent girlfriend, Nova.

In Omega Man, Heston is Doctor Robert Neville, the only man alive after a virus turns most of humanity into vampire mutant cultists (a slightly different take on I Am Legend). He roams L.A. scavenging for food, checking out new clothes, and returning home to play chess and talk to himself. Sure it's a weird existence, but it's one that works... until he meets other humans. The conflict presents itself when Heston's character (a doctor) has to try and help these survivors who aren't used to his cautious way of life. Ultimately, their meddling is his undoing.

And in Soylent Green, Heston plays a different sort of individualist. This time he's in a world still filled with normal, healthy people. That's part of the problem, everyone's too healthy (aside from living in slums) and there's over-population. He's a detective who stumbles upon a hideous secret: the mega-corporation that's feeding the masses is using human flesh to make its food. Soylet green is people (if you didn't know by now, then Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time). In the end, Heston is captured by the police as they try to suppress his attempt at revealing the truth to the general population.

Each film offers, firstly, a different take on the individual, and each time the individual fails--not because of his own doing, necessarily, but because the acts of many. In PotA's case, it was the generations of humans centuries before him who nuked themselves to death. In Omega's case, it was both the restless outsiders and the evil infected. In Soylent's case, it was an overreaching corporation. Each applies, generally, to the time in which it was made, with a post-nuclear world being the common denominator. They each deal with more specific themes, like race equality (PotA), popular cults (Omega), and corporate America (Soylent), thanks mainly to their original source materials.

Most of Heston's career consisted of starring in films based on literature, history, or both. This unofficial trilogy is based on science fiction stories by Pierre Boulle, Richard Matheson, and Harry Harrison, respectively. I can't speak for Soylent's faithfulness to the source material, but I know that the other two films are fairly loose adaptations. They've been sculpted to fit the times in which they were made, which is totally fine when the movies are this good. Boulle's book, especially, is strange and much more akin to Tim Burton's terrible remake. The apes fly planes. The other main difference lies in the adaptation's hero: Heston, the quintessential Hollywood manly man.

Like John Wayne or Sly Stallone, he's playing variations on himself. Heston is a much more capable actor than those two, however. He emotes with a grit and a fierceness accentuated by his giant, white teeth. The man parted the Red Sea, and soon enough he would be responsible for nuking the very world he eventually inhabits (if you really want to count what happens in Beneath the Planet of the Apes as anything except an agent jockeying for a no-sequel clause in a contract). Obviously, without Heston these three films wouldn't be connected in any real way... but I'd also argue that their messages would be very different if other leading men were involved. Just look at Will Smith's portrayal of Robert Neville in I Am Legend or Marky Mark's whiny "Get me off this planet" astronaut in Burton's PotA.

If you have not seen these three films in the lens of an unofficial trilogy, you should revisit them. It's easy to chalk up each as a cheesy product of its time, but beneath all that goofy make up lies three tales of manliness, individualism, and warnings about the society in which we live. First lesson: stay away from cults.

The cave's diminutive tunnel system has opened up into a large anteroom. The place is caked in fine layers of earth. Some work will be required to learn the true contents of this room. I would like to report that I'm up to the challenge.

Dispatch, 11/10/99: It's been five days now, and the room is beginning to reveal itself. My team of interns has exercised great diligence in clearing away much of the dirt and debris. They've been carting it, via wheel barrow, through the six miles of 2-foot wide tunneling back to the camp site. I regretfully had to send a few of them to the hospital with scraped elbows.

The room, however, is quite extraordinary. Along the widest wall, I have found remnants of a wooden structure. It may have been what we know today as a couch. Nearby, I found smaller structures with similar intended purpose. I have the sneaking suspicion that this cave room was some sort of den. Perhaps a prehistoric living room?

Dispatch, 11/19/99: This room and its contents have consumed my every waking thought. The more my interns and I uncover about this room, the more I am astonished at its very existence. The chamber itself isn't of much importance; it was likely a natural occurrence. But the furniture! It's so familiar. So minimal and functional. I think we're on the verge of a major discovery here.

Dispatch, 12/01/99: There are only a few instances in my lifetime where a discovery has been of such great importance that it has virtually changed our understanding of history. I have a feeling I have just made such a discovery. I discovered what appears to be a book shelf, built by these cave men. Now, obviously, I doubt they put very many books on it, given that they weren't much for reading back then. Perhaps they had stone tablets or oxen-pelt-back romance novels... that's not what's important. What is important is that I was able to dissect the bookshelf.

I have found that the shelf was quickly assembled with next-to-no real tools. The shelves were held together with simple wooden pegs. This piece of furniture, and I assume most everything else in this den, was put together with lots of pounding and smacking. A crude system, to be sure, that was likely cost effective and attractive. Inscribed on one of the shelves was the word "GALANT."

Dispatch, 12/10/99: I have been at this now for a while, and I believe I have discovered the full picture of the Swedish prehistoric man. Painted in otter blood on a rock slab: instructions. Wordless, almost cute instructions beginning with a smiling cave man holding what appears to be the earliest known form of an Allen wrench.

This cave has confirmed what I, and many other archaeologists have suspected for some time: that the origins of cost effective, easily assembled, attractive, minimalist furniture from Sweden originated not with turtle-neck-wearing industrial designers, but instead with club-dragging Neanderthals. Given the means in which you must assemble this modern furniture, with a fair amount of smacking and pounding of small wooden pegs, this is a conclusion I suppose we could have made without spending two months in a cave. It would have saved us many scraped elbows.

Dispatch, 12/11/99: Having finished my work in what are now known as the Ikea Cave System, I am moving on to a possible new project: there is a semi-active volcano in Chile that may or may not be the source of slap bracelets.

The very purpose of this blog series was to chronicle my exploration and growth as a home-kitchen barista. I must, however, take this time to discuss coffee in the workplace--specifically my workplace.

I don't work in one of those big, cold offices filled with cubicles and ID badges. My company doesn't have a big kitchen with a Superior or Bunn coffee monster that brews two pots at once and has an internal water system. We have a small drip coffee maker used almost exclusively by two employees (myself and another). So our needs were relatively simple when we went shopping for a coffee maker two years ago. We needed a machine that would be able to brew 12 cups and keep them warm, in case we had clients in for a meeting. We also needed to buy a machine that had an attractive carafe, again for those client meetings. After doing some browsing on Amazon, the two of us chose a Cuisinart 12-cup thermal, programmable coffee maker.

At the time, the thing looked sweet. For one hundo dollars we assumed we were getting the top of the line. It had all these fancy TM'd features like a "Patented Brew Through & Pour Through Lid TM" and "Brew Pause TM." It promised to keep the coffee hot all day. It promised to make my mornings a little brighter. Its promises were about as trustworthy as "Columbian" beans from Maxwell House.

Allow me to break down each of the machine's features so that you can better understand how this expensive dripper actually operates:

1.) The Patented Brew Through & Pour Through Lid TM: This special lid offers up an airtight, labyrinthian journey for your piping hot coffee, ensuring that your joe will stay scalding hot and that any flavored coffee will linger in the lid for years to come. The lid features a screw top with a little white ball inside that will turn a dark brown after your first use and never be the same again. The coffee then travels around the lid for a while, getting in to all sorts of little cracks and crevasses, until finally meeting a second white ball before dripping into the carafe. There's no way to open the thing up, and there's certainly no way to ensure the thing is clean. Cuisinart!

2.) The Brew Pause TM: Because sometimes you don't want to wait until the coffee maker beeps, the Brew Pause TM method allows you to rip the heavy, steel carafe from the machine and pour yourself some coffee. The machine utilizes an advanced piece of technology to know when to stop dripping: a "spring." This "spring" expands when you take out the carafe. I don't know how they did it, but it's probably worth $100. Cuisinart!

3.) The Stainless Steel Carafe TM: This thermal coffee pot holds like 12 cups of coffee, and really does keep those cups warm all day long. Of course, if you let the coffee sit in there for more than thirty minutes, it congeals into an oily, bitter sludge perfect for keeping the breaks on your car from squeaking. Then there's the issue of actually cleaning the thing, which is next to impossible to do by hand because the opening to the carafe is about the size of a golf ball. In the office, your only option is to squirt in some dish washer soap, fill the thing with hot water, and swirl it around a bunch. If you're as lucky as I am, eventually the inner coating of the stainless steel will begin to flake off, producing lots of black specks in your coffee! I love metal in my coffee. Cuisinart!

4.) The Clock TM: You can set the clock on the coffee maker!

The Cuisinart 12-cup thermal coffee maker is a joke. Like so many other high-end coffee makers, you are paying more for the name and the look of the thing than the actual brewing method. Somehow, the Cuisinart manages to work worse than my parents' Proctor Silex machine at home, which cost $15. The lesson here being that coffee making should be kept simple: hot water, ground coffee, a filter, and something to put the liquid into (like a cup, or your hands). Adding fancy filtering systems and impenetrable carafes will just leave a bad taste in your mouth.

Needless to say, now that the Cuisinart is spewing enamel (or whatever it is that is flaking off the inside of the steel), we're replacing this piece of junk. I'm recommending we go with something under $20. Something with a sir name.

You can read my previous entries in the series here:
Volume 1: The Introduction
Volume 2: The First Run
Volume 3: The Blow-Up
Volume 4: The Failed Latte
Volume 5: Ready Set Joe

We rolled in to the city Friday afternoon and the streets were clean and empty. The boulevards of Columbus are wide, and on a simple grid system. I got the sense it was a leisurely sort of town; it didn't have the cold, stressful atmosphere of, say, Harrisburg. We spent most of our time in the Arena District, a part of town that's almost entirely owned by Nationwide Insurance. This side of town has the look and feel of a high-end shopping district--think Pittsburgh's South Side Works. It was as if city planners actually thought through the lay of the land.

Columbus was even better because it was swarming with Pittsburghers. At every intersection, we saw Pens fans marching around. Of course we were all wearing our various jerseys, including my mom, whose Ron Francis jersey got random cheers from passersby throughout the evening-- "Ronny Franchise!" As Pens fans passed each other, they exchanged a quick "Go Pens" and kept moving. The bars that surrounded the arena were packed with gold, black, and powder blue. We even saw two kids carrying around a homemade Stanley Cup.

That's not to say that the Blue Jackets fans didn't show up. Not only does this young hockey franchise have a devoted following, but it has a fairly friendly fan base as well. A lot of folks we talked to were former Pittsburgh residents who moved out to Columbus. It was a relaxed atmosphere, even with 19,000 people streaming into the arena. Before the game, Nationwide even had a little party tent set up outside with lots of free stuff (Blue Jacket blankets, cozies, cups, etc). I can't pass up free stuff.

This was all secondary, of course, to the task at hand: the Pens game. We had been planning this trip for a while, ever since we heard how many Pens fans turned out for last year's game against the Jackets. This year's attendance was made even greater because the Jackets' pre-season ticket code leaked online, allowing the Penguins blogs to spread the word.

I'd like to mention that the Blue Jackets have a cannon in their arena.

The team has a Civil War vibe going for it that's really cool, and they use it to great effect throughout the game; the best use of the theme is with the giant cannon they fire after every Jacket goal. They blast AC/DC's "For Those About to Rock" and fire a blank into the crowd. It's awesome. I was sort of glad the Jackets were able to score three goals on us just so I could witness this thing in action (it's okay, because we won.)

This was probably the most intense hockey game I've gone to. Sure the playoffs last year were incredible, as was the banner-raising game opener this year, but imagine two sets of fans, at about equal intensity, screaming for their respective teams at the same time. Chants for "Let's Go Jackets" and "Let's Go Pens" alternated almost the entire game. Things stayed friendly, at least in my section; when an overly-served Pens fan sitting in front of me lost his footing in a drunken exclamation, stepping on a Jackets fan's beer and falling on the woman in front of him, everyone was more concerned about the guy's well-being than about punching his lights out.

Even after the game, when the Pens came back in stunning fashion to tie it and then win in a shootout, Jackets fans were pleasant. The thousands of Pens fans marched around the arena, high-fiving one another, chanting and celebrating. An elderly couple, both wearing Blue Jackets jerseys, passed by me, and the man turned to his wife and exhaled, "Honey, we blew it." That just about made my night.

The Blue Jackets may have lost that game, but the city of Columbus came out big. The influx of thousands of Pens fans, all hungry and thirsty, surely made for quite a revenue bounce that evening. After the game, the streets, bars, and restaurants were packed with Pens fans of every ilk (even a dude wearing the bizarre "00" Zamboni jersey). It was a great evening for hockey, and it couldn't have happened to a more pleasant city.

I never moved to GeoCity. I never set up residence in one of its strange neighborhoods filled with tiled backgrounds so ugly they make MySpace look like the Louvre. No, I was a citizen of that burgh down the road: Angelfire.

The two were essentially identical. Both let users create a web site for free, either by filling out standard fields (like "my bookmarks"), or by coding straight up. I remember in grade school, especially 7th and 8th grade, really getting in to Angelfire. Everyone in my class did. I can distinctly remember running something like three websites at once, and reveling in each hit my little counter recorded. At the end of the school day, the home room teacher would let us all scribble our enormous URLs on the chalkboard to promote our websites. Then students would write down said URLs (usually taking up an entire line of loose leaf paper in our Trapper Keepers) and going home to check them out. Of course, the odds of someone writing the URL correctly on the board, and everyone copying down the URL correctly in their binders, and then typing it in correctly in Netscape at home were pretty slim. Angelfire was a beautiful thing.

I don't remember much about what content was on my websites. One extolled the virtues of artistic creativity. I accomplished this by loading the page with as many crazy animated things as I could find.

I do remember my most popular site: Jabroni Drive. You see, back in grade school pro wrestling was huge--perhaps the biggest its ever been outside of its '80s hayday. I named my website after one of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's key phrases, and began writing reviews and recaps of the weekly wrestling shows and monthly pay-per-views. I really put a lot of time into this thing, and probably produced a level of commentary only slightly harsher than what may have come from the wrestlers' parents. Still, I felt a sense of ownership about my website, I just regret not keeping it up long enough to earn press credentials.

Sadly, that site, and any of the other random Angelfire sites me and my classmates made a decade or so ago, is gone. And now, an entire city of lovingly crafted web relics are gone. Sure people didn't really need GeoCities or Angelfire anymore, what with the combination of blogs, social networking tools, and web applications, but it was always nice knowing they were there... keeping the GIF alive.

Up until this point, I hadn't read any Jane Austen. Maybe that's why I only have a minor in creative writing. There's an outside chance I read a short story--did she write those? Whatever the case, I appreciated her stories when loosely adapted into films (like Whit Stillman's Metropolitan), but never got around to actually reading any of her stuff. I'm at the point in life now (finished with school for the time being) where I'm not about to read something I don't want to. I won't go out of my way to read a classic "because I should." I'm reading what I love, and that's that. I happen to love zombies, and I saw this as a perfect chance to kill two birds with one stone. I'll get to fill a sizable gap in my literary references and check out a new piece of zombie writing at the same time.

If only it were that simple. You see, despite the book getting largely positive reviews, I found Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to actually be quite boring and underpopulated with undead. The story of the Bennet sisters and Mr. Darcy is pretty much in tact, and the zombies serve as background noise. The Bennet Sisters all have kung-fu skills acquired in the Orient, and they have a dojo built into their house, but it all feels under utilized. Occasionally the zombies bust through windows or attack the hired help, but they never really interfere with the story. I knew this going into it, that the story was the same and that the style of writing was the same, but I just thought I would enjoy it more.

I guess you could say there needed to be more zombies. While the actual fight scenes in the book were decent, the best part was when one of the characters (I won't spoil it) gets bitten by a zombie and slowly turns without anyone seeming to notice except Elizabeth. This character is living life as a zombie for months and no one says anything. It's funny, but probably not funny enough to carry the rest of the book.

A few weeks back I came across a kid who pulled that book out of his Borders shopping bag and exclaimed "Check this out!" I asked if he was a fan of Jane Austen. He said, "I hate her!" At the time I let it slide, but the truth is, this book is more Jane Austen than anything else. If you do like her, you'll get far more mileage out of this book than I did. If you despise Austen and her style, then you'll have to drag yourself through this paperback. I wouldn't go as far as to say I despise her, so much as I just found her rather dull.

I don't quit books when I start them (well, I did once: Texas-Israeli War: 1999 by Howard Waldrop), and I finished this one too. It was a noble experiment, and one that has made co-author Seth Grahame-Smith a very rich man; it made Jane Austen nothing, of course. This experiment is already inspiring plenty of sequels and imitators, all sure to attempt the same schtick: take a literary classic and sprinkle in some zombies, or monsters, or vampires, or whatever. The formula is now established, but I have to wonder if the zombie+literature micro genre has any legs... or brains.

In the end, I judged a book by its awesome, awesome cover. Just like that Texas-Israeli War book. That one had tanks and horses on it. This one had a zombie. I hear they're already planning on adapting this into a movie, which means, like other Austen adaptations, that I'll enjoy it on the big screen.

I've said many times on this blog that I have no problem with Starbucks. The chain fills a coffee void in my life, offering a little bit of consistency and later hours than most local places. Of course, their coffee isn't nearly as good as a local or regional shop, but it beats going to McDonalds. When I heard Starbucks was developing a line of instant coffee, I was skeptical. Especially since it's name means "road." Road coffee.

To digress for just a moment, I have to come clean to all coffee drinkers out there: I've had my share of instant coffee. In college, when Nestle first rolled out their Taster's Choice travel packets (think Crystal Light with coffee), I would keep packets in my backpack. Dumping one or two of those into a mug in the dining hall was a much better alternative than drinking the Aramark Oil they regularly brewed. Still Taster's Choice is awful, and has gone virtually unchanged since it showed up around World War II. It's freeze-dried coffee probably better used as a baking ingredient than anything else. I was surprised to hear that instant coffee accounts for about 40% of global coffee sales--while only about 7% of Americans drink the stuff.

So how could a more expensive Starbucks version be any different? They claim to have been working on this formula, which combines soluble coffee with micro-ground beans, for over two decades. Seriously, two decades? So it took them almost my entire life to come up with a new kind of instant coffee. I had to try it.

Thankfully, that barista wasn't just standing over by all these small things for her health. She was there to challenge me to a taste test. I gladly accepted. She pulled out two tiny paper cups and filled them with coffee from two unmarked, regular sized, carafes. The dude in front of my had tried his luck, and guessed wrong. I had flashbacks to when my dad brought home our first can of Crystal Pepsi and we had a blind taste test in our kitchen. I don't remember if I got that right or not... either way, I was going for a home run this time.

At first glance, both looked about the same. I assume they paired the instant coffee (which comes in two flavors, Italian and Columbian) with their Pike Place blend (a roast of coffee that has gotten steadily worse every time they serve it to me). I took a sip of the first cup, it was ok. I took a sip of the second cup, and it tasted different than the first one. Probably just as strong, but with a slightly disingenuous aftertaste. As weird as it sounds, the coffee was trying too hard to taste like coffee. I knew it was instant. She told me I was correct.

I like to think I have a discerning palette--at least I joke about having one whenever my family goes out to eat--and so I'm not just going to drink any coffee. I recently bought a bag of Eight O'Clock Coffee because it was on sale at the grocery store (again, something I used to drink in college), and I still regret it. I don't regret trying Via, but I also know that I would never voluntarily drink it. Maybe I should get a packet and tape it to the inside of my medicine cabinet, like an iron pill in case of nuclear fallout. Maybe I could drink the stuff if it was brought to me by a St. Bernard during a particularly dire morning. I might bring it camping, if I ever go camping again...

What Via did tell me was this: that the Starbucks flavor of coffee isn't beholden to the region of beans or their paper cups that tell me how to live my life. The Starbucks flavor is manufactured strong, bold, and possibly burnt. This is probably the best instant coffee I've ever had, but that's not saying much. In fact, it devalues the entire line of Starbucks brewed coffee because the taste is so similar. I almost wish that Via was worse, so that their Gold Coast, Pike Place, and other flavors would seem worth it. Now they've successfully told me that their coffee is generally about as good as the best form of instant coffee. That's not something to be proud of.

The Riot Act, as this set of episodes is titled, is all about anarchy, chaos, and confusion. Oddly enough, the idea came about well before any talk of the whiny protesters ascending on the city of Pittsburgh for the G20. The rioting in our show doesn't come from some geo-political disagreement, or an effort to get the president of Brazil to buy some windmills; instead, it comes from the simple incident of the mayor, Dodge's grandfather, being kidnapped. Because a town without a mayor, is like a chicken without a head... things get messy.

Turns out the military has had a plan, in case the city of Aliquippa was every consumed by total anarchy: they're going to wall in the city and let its residents sort things out. Little do they know, that contained within that city is Dodge's vast library collection, his beloved Grandfather, and a rare book called the Kryodex (whose powers are unknown). Dodge, and his faithful intern Pluck Gumption, have no choice but to go into the walled-in city and try and restore order.

Usually our shows feature a standard cast of main characters, and one or two of our secondary chums along for the ride. This time around, we've crammed almost every character we've created into the thing, allowing for some of the most ridiculous writing we've done (and giving ourselves a pretty big challenge in the voice acting department).

The Riot Act will be performed Saturday, October 10th at Cafe Kolache at 7:00pm. As usual, the show's free and friendly for most families--unless you're from the sort of family who gets uncomfortable hearing the voice of a gruff bail bondsman or a furious newspaper editor.

Last Saturday's yard sale voyage may have been good enough to make up for at least this summer's treasure drought. I found two items, sold together for a measly $5.00, that fall in the range of "just the sort of thing I was hoping for." I picked up a Bell & Howell Two-Fifty-Two standard 8mm film camera and an accompanying 8mm projector.

When I first spotted the 252's brown, leather case, I was sure that some sort of old camera resided inside. That's just the sort of case I keep my uncle's Pentax K100 in (and it's just the sort of case that gets people asking "Is that a purse?"). When I flipped open the case, it took me a moment to figure out exactly what I was looking at. The 252 is an odd camera, befitting the style of most regular 8mm cameras from the '40s (or so says a quick Google search), but it looks downright alien today. First, it has two lenses and a filter holder on a swivel thing. There's a wide angle and a telephoto lens. For a while I thought there was a third lens on there, but after close inspection, I see that it's just a dark socket where could you place a filter of some sort. Who knows?

Another interesting feature of the camera is the aperture-style dial in the front. I'm not totally clear on how it works, because it's labeled by standard f-stops; black & white or color; and cloud coverage. So if you're filming on a hazy morning, just turn it to the "hazy" setting. But that's only helpful in very specific filming conditions--unless it works the opposite way, and actually makes the film look hazy or cloudy or overcast. Nah, that's too crazy, even for the 1940s.

I've tried, throughout the week, to do some research on the camera, but information is scant. There are plenty of old time camera enthusiasts out there, but just about every one of them is trying to sell me a Xeroxed copy of the instruction manual. Nice try, but I think I'll figure this thing out myself. For example, I'm sure that an instruction manual would have simply explained to me that the crank on the side of this thing doesn't operate like a turn-of-the-century film camera (where one has to crank at a constant speed in order to maintain a proper framerate). It took me a couple examinations to realize that you actually wind the crank up like it's a toy car, and then you hold down a release and the film is exposed at a standard framerate. The manual would probably be able to tell me what the frame rate is (I'm guessing 18 frames per second).

So what does all this mean? Is this motivation just temporary, bound to subside once I realize how difficult of a task this might be? I'm hoping that's not the case. I plan on using this camera, and trying to make at least one film with it. Companies still produce 8mm film, and there are places that still develop it. This could be the sort of healthy lo-fi adventure I've been yearning for. There are plenty of hurdles to overcome in this process, like the fact that the camera doesn't record sound or that a regular roll of film may be as short as 7 minutes, but I think I'm up for it. Can you say Battleship Potemkin 2?

Tommy: What up?

Jessica: Annnnd Merisha!

Merisha: Heeey!

Jessica: And Derek.

Derek: Hey.

Jessica: Awesome. So guys, the president said some pretty incredible stuff today, didn't he?

Merisha: Oh my gawd, yes! He told everyone to stay in school! And to do work!

Tommy: I'm just glad he fit it in before lunch.

Jessica: We're just so lucky to have him as our leader. You know what I mean? So lucky.

Merisha: Fer sure!

Derek: No way. First off, because of this stupid speech, Obama totally wrecked my study hall. I had a big test this afternoon, and I didn't study at all for it last night--that's all your fault Beenie!--and when I was gonna study today I had to sit and watch him. Now I have to write an essay about how I'm going to help him do his job. Why does that guy need the help of a 10th grader to run the country?

Jessica: Um...

Tommy: I thought it would have been cool if it was like TRL and I could text in a message to the Prez.

Merisha: Totally!

Jessica: That would have been sweet.

Derek: Don't any of you find it at all weird that he took time out of his day to essentially say nothing to us... except that he was going to spend more money to make the school better. Just think about how much it cost for him to make this speech, and all the materials that they had to get made for teachers.

Tommy: I wonder what the President's favorite soda is. I'm guessing Sierra Mist, because he's from Hawaii.

Jessica: Good point, Tommy!

Merisha: You're so good at reacting, Tommy!

Tommy: That's why they let me kick the field goals.

Derek: Why did I agree to be on this dumb news show?

Jessica: Coming up after a commercial break, we're going to hear from T-Pain and Miley Cyrus and get their reactions to our awesome president's totally kicking speech today! Be back after 5 minutes worth of advertising!

The idea behind the $5 DVD bin was quite simple: Wal-Mart tosses in all of the obscure, over-produced, or out-dated DVDs that it has into a giant wire bin and lets customers have at it. I loved this bin for a number of reasons, and my recent discovery of its departure came as quite a shock (although I fully admit that I didn't drive around to other stores to check on their bins, nor do I have any idea if this bin-phenomenon existed outside of the Pittsburgh area).

First and foremost, the $5 Bin offered suburban shoppers a thrilling hunt. When I was a kid, my parents took me to this restaurant, and when I was done eating I got to pick a little plastic prize out of this wishing well next to the cash register. As an adult, I can't justify picking a prize out of any such well (and the restaurant is long gone); however, reaching into that $5 Bin created some sort of connection to my youth. The dream of finding that one hidden treasure amidst the scores of "50 Classic Westerns" and copies of Double Jeopardy was something every shopper had when he or she reached into that bin.

The $5 Bin was not only a way to kill a good 15 to 20 minutes, it was a frivolous reason to finally pick up a copy of some movie you wouldn't normally pay money for. "I was going to just go home, but hey Rambo III is in the $5 Bin; let's make tonight a Rambo night!" The bin was also good for collecting old versions of DVDs, which got the boot from store shelves thanks to movie studios' constant need to double and triple dip on releases. Who needs that special edition of Big Trouble in Little China when this regular version is five bucks? And then there was the rare occasion of actually coming across a treasure. I remember once I discovered the deluxe edition of Escape from New York in the bin, probably cast there because of some blind inventory gaff. Of course, the bin was more than just John Carpenter and Rambo movies... I think.

The only thing better than digging through the DVDs yourself, was watching others go to town. Like lions fighting over the carcass of a dead zebra, territorial instincts kicked in the moment two people tried to dig through the bin. The last thing you wanted was for the other guy to find the only copy of Karate Kid. Plus, the physical logistics of the bin made things all the more tense. One person could spend ten minutes digging through DVDs, but the second another person attacks the pile from the other side things start to slide. Suddenly the DVDs you scraped and clawed through come crashing down on you.

Occasionally some shopper would stop by the bin and actually try and stack the DVDs, as if organizing them was possible. The problem there is, like any sort of structure imposed on a society, not everyone is going to agree with your plan. You may want the DVDs stacked, but someone else wants to sift. Then a third guy shows up and starts diving in to the DVDs, scooping them out with two hands. It's a mess. It's anarchy.

If anything, the $5 Bin was a wonderful social experiment. It gave people hope, taught them how to hunt, and maybe gave them a taste of old fashioned gold prospecting. If anything, it showed me that people will value a good deal much more when it's thrown into a bin with other good deals. The $5 Bin created an atmosphere of "We're just trying to get rid of this stuff," and that's something I can dig.

Thankfully, the Turnpike will be reconstructed elsewhere within the park by 2010. This will give Kennywood, with the help of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, plenty of time to bring the ride up to the current trends of highway travel.

First and foremost, each jalopy will be outfitted with an E-ZPass, allowing riders to quickly enter and exit the ride without having to come to a complete stop. For decades, the ride has been plagued with curiously long lines—hopefully this will resolve that problem.

The old Turnpike ride was known for its calming, leisurely pace, allowing young couples to gaze into each other's eyes and fall in love (under the careful watch of Kennywood employees, of course). In keeping with current PA transportation trends, the new ride will have a varying speed of 75 to 15 miles per hour, with cars occasionally coming to a complete stop. The skeleton band, who has been out of work since the Old Mill was converted into a Garfield ride, have been hired as a road crew who will make minor, seemingly unnoticeable, changes to the ride over the course of 20 years.

Last but not least, halfway through the ride, park visitors will get to stop at a miniature Breezewood. From there, they can get on a second Turnpike ride that will take them to Baltimore, or they can just take the time to get out of the car, stretch their legs, and buy a Cinnabon that they'll later regret.

Since its inception, Kennywood has been constantly changing and upgrading its rides. The previously mentioned Old Mill has become a new Garfield ride. The once great Gold Rush is now a haunted house with lasers. The Le Cachot is... just a building with carnival games in it (they can't all be upgrades). Well here's hoping that this new Turnpike ride will capture the spirit of the road just like the old one did!

It's been almost a year since my last installment in the Mean Bean series. A friend, and valued reader, once asked me why I had stopped right when the series was picking up steam. Excruciatingly clever pun aside, the answer is really twofold. The failure of my first latte arrived at the tail end of my Starbucks Espresso Roast coffee supply. Suddenly I was sick and tired of the Starbucks Espresso blend, which seems to have such a distinct taste to it that it can haunt a man's dreams. I basically decided that going out and getting more of it wasn't really worth my time. Before I could get my hands on better espresso coffee, the kitchen was cleaned. I don't really recall why, but I think it had something to do with the holidays. Either way, the DeLonghi was promptly dismantled and returned to the basement, like the Ark at the end of Indiana Jones.

Someday the espresso machine will return; I was getting far too good at those Americanos to just give up, and the machine itself worked quite well. But in the meantime, I have obtained a new tool in my home-kitchen-barista arsenal: the Melitta "Ready Set Joe" Single Cup Coffee Brewer.

The Melitta is a manual drip coffee maker that brews a strong, single cup of coffee directly into whatever mug I combine it with. It's essentially a plastic cone that holds a filter. The first time I had ever seen anything like it was when I visited the barista competition last February. Local coffee roasters were using the manual drip method to brew individual cups of coffee for people. I was amazed at how quickly it worked, and how simple it all was. When I came across the Melitta perched unassumingly on the top shelf of the coffee aisle in Giant Eagle, I immediately recognized it. The best part about it was that it only cost $2.99. I was sold.

This evening I experimented with the manual drip method for the first time. I read some instructions online—because the side of the box is deceivingly vague—and felt confident that something would probably happen. I decided to crack open my bag of "Black and Gold" blend whole beans from the Gristmill at St. Vincent College; the blend is comprised of light and dark beans, which looks pretty cool until, you know, everything's ground up.

The first thing I did, per instructions from a couple of different sources online, was to moisten the #2 cone filter placed into the Melitta. I'm not completely certain as to why you'd go about doing this; perhaps it's so that the water flows a little better through the filter, or that everything sit more snugly in the cone. While the water was starting to boil, I ground the beans, and scooped in three table spoons (since I was only making one mug).

This is the part of the process where the Melitta's "Ready, Set, Joe-structions" are vague to the point of coffee-danger. They just want you to pour the water into the cone and be done with it; however, it's not that simple. When you first introduce the hot water to the fresh ground coffee, blooming occurs. That means that CO2 is escaping from the coffee, and that my little caffeine treat turned into a science experiment that looks like the La Brea tar pits. I stirred the coffee up a bit before adding in more water, so that all the grounds got moist. After I did that, I added more water, a little bit at a time, and stirred the whole way. It was a little tricky, given that the cone started sliding around on my mug's wide top (note to self, use a different mug next time).

After a while, the water flowed through the coffee pretty well. Things were going smoothly, and I could see through the Melitta's "cone window" (they actually tout that thing on the side of the box) that the mug was getting full. The first manual drip was finished. No coffee explosions, no broken glass, and no tipped cone spewing scalding hot tar all over my feet.

I was a little worried that the coffee would be too watery, given that I didn't really measure how much water I was going to run through those three tablespoons of grounds. I was also worried that my first impression wasn't going to be as definitive because we were out of half & half. I added a touch of 2% milk (desperation move), and found that I didn't even really need that. The coffee was as smooth and rich as can be, without as much acidity as the french press. Even better, there was no trace of grounds escaping from the filter into the cup. I love my french press, especially for making coffee that would wake Lazarus, but sometimes I don't have time for the cleaning process. The clean-up for the Melitta was a piece of cake: just dump out the filter, and stick the cone in the dishwasher.

The success of this first manual drip experiment is unparalleled. No disasters, just a delicious, single cup of coffee. If you've wanted to brew good coffee at home, but don't want to spend the money on a french press, then this is certainly the way to go... especially for $3. I'll gladly add this little piece of plastic to my array of coffee-making devices. Who knows, maybe this success will inspire me to get the DeLonghi out of the basement once again...

You can read my previous entries in the series here:
Volume 1: The Introduction
Volume 2: The First Run
Volume 3: The Blow-Up
Volume 4: The Failed Latte