The term ‘Black Friday’ is finding widespread usage to describe the shopping frenzy that occurs the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t know that it’s all that bad – I’m posting this from work today, and it promised to be a quiet calm day.

So what’re everyone’s plans for Thanksgiving this year? Doing anything that you haven’t done before? Adding any new delicacies to the menu?

As for me, since I have to work on Friday, I won’t have a chance to get out of town this year. Instead, I’ve been invited to share the holiday here in LA with some friends of Carol’s. The weather sounds like we’ll be around the pool for our post-prandial nap.

So what will you be up to? C’mon, register and comment (it’s easy!)

I’m going to be selling a lot of stuff on eBay over the next few weeks, and I thought I would post a partial list and give my loyal readers first crack at this first-rate merchandise:

Sony Playstation 2 game console with a few games, controllers, memory, remote, 2 dance pads, cables
DirecTV with TiVo satellite receiver with DVR built in (works only with DirecTV)
Samsung 14′ Flat Panel Monitor/TV
Tivo Series 2 DVR with lifetime subscription
Sony DirecTV satellite receiver with Dolby Digital
Sony TAE-9000 5.1 surround sound preamp with remote
Sony TAN-9000 5.1 amplifier
Apple Mac Mini computer with 1GB memory, keyboard & mouse
Lexmark inkjet printer
Epson inkjet printer
Kenwood R5000 high-end shortwave receiver (after capacitor replacement)
Sony MiniDisk 4-track recording deck
HP Jornada 568 PocketPC PDA with accessories
Dell Axim X30 Windows Mobile PDA with accessories
Sony Ericsson T68i mobile phone (as is)
Spaceorb 360 game controllers
Icom PC100 PC-controlled shortwave receiver
Radio Shack Trunking Police Scanner
Hawking 802.11g wireless router
Sony Minidisc portable recorder
Sony Minidisc portable player
Minidiscs
Sony Minidisc component deck (after repair)
Firewire/USB 2 PCI card
ATI AGP video card(s)
Sony linear tracking turntable (as is)
Sony DAT recording deck
Lexicon audio processor rack unit
BBE audio processor rack unit
Cambridge Soundworks 2.1 computer speaker system

If anything sounds interesting, let me know and I’ll provide some more info and we’ll see what we can work out.

Two new galleries of Dad’s slides for your perusal:

Slides II are of Randy’s & Laurie’s junior high graduations and Karen’s high school graduation. Slides III are of Steve’s and Karen’s junior high school graduations.

For some of the long-distance photos, I took the liberty of enlarging the subject of whatever the heck Dad was trying to shoot (if I could figure it out) – before the telephoto lens days.

As always, leave some comments!

Okay, here’s something I bet all youse Starbucks addicts (one of which I am NOT) didn’t know: one grande Starbucks has the same caffeine as SEVEN cans of Red Bull. That’s right, 550 mg of caffeine (the government has determined that 300 mg a day is safe for most adults). Read about it here.

Not only that, about 20 cups in a day would kill you. Read about it here.

Steve and Denise came down yesterday to have some fun in the sun. So they, Carol and I drove through Topanga Canyon to Malibu and followed Pacific Coast Highway down to Venice Beach (where this picture was taken) and walked up and down the boardwalk, looking at all the people, having a little lunch, and soaking in the sunshine. Then we took Sunset Boulevard from the ocean to West Hollywood, cruising Sunset Strip and ending up at the Farmer’s Market where we had a little dinner, wandered around a bit in the Market and the nearby Grove shopping complex. They had to head back early to pick up their granddaughter Hannah, so they took off at 7:30 or so – it was a wonderful day, lots of laughter and conversation.

I got the slides yesterday, and there are a LOT of slides to go through. Not all of them will hold much interest, so my intention is to concentrate on people, events, and places meaningful in our collective pasts. As a rule, no flowers, no mountains, no rocks.

Having said that, here is the first installment – the subject: Steve & Denise’s wedding. Also note that there is space available to comment on every picture in the gallery, so please add your own memories and while you’re at it, identify the faces you recognize that may be unfamiliar to others. Click here or check out the Galleries listing in the sidebar on the right.

Last night Carol and I saw an excellent play called Wild Party at a theater in Hollywood. The cast was composed of people who’ve been doing live theater for a long time, but they were people of whom I had never heard (save for Sally Kellerman, who played Hot Lips in the original movie M*A*S*H – but she was by no means the star of the play). My friend has seen the play in New York where the cast included Mandy Pantinkin and Eartha Kitt (along with others in the cast that, again, I wouldn’t know). In fact I saw someone in the line for the ladies’ room (Ellen Crawford, who used to play a nurse on ER) that was more recognizable to me than practically the entire cast.

That got me to thinking about the concept of celebrity v. artist. None of these people would call themselves celebrities – it was probably not their goal to become famous, but to ply their trade for a fair wage. Some of the actors last night have been nominated for Tony awards for their work on Broadway, and no doubt enjoyed some notariety (mostly in their own theatrical community) in and around New York. But now they’re in LA to work. They don’t get paid a lot for what they do, they don’t work as much as they would like to, no doubt, but when they do, they’re doing what they love – it’s their job to act, not to be famous.

The theater last night had 99 seats, and not all of them were full. The production has gotten rave reviews. They perform it three times during the week and twice on Sundays. And it’s a workout, and it’s their job.

It’s been said that people in LA seem to have a ‘leave them alone’ vibe when they see people out and about that they recognize from TV or the movies. When people do approach, I’m sure it’s with the best of intentions, to compliment them on their work and whatnot, but I imagine that there’s also a sense of ‘I recognize you, and I feel like I know you and I want to let you know that I do’. I suppose that if I worked as a checker in a grocery store and one of my regular customers comes up to me and acts like they know me, it may be flattering in a way, but mostly really freaky. Performers must get that all the time.

I’m just saying…in case I get famous someday.

So here’s my list so far (not counting people I’ve seen in performance): Jack Black, Ruth Buzzi, Leslie Ann Warren, Edie McClurg, Jessica Walter, Ellen Crawford – hmmm, mostly women. I wonder if that means anything?

Looking at these slides of the house we grew up in, I suddenly remembered something that Dad used to do – he would playfully lock himself in the bathroom then suddenly appear without having opened the door. We kids would run outside while he was in there to see if he was crawling out of the (impossibly-small) bathroom window to make good his escape. Was he lifting the tub and crawling under the house?

I never figured out how he did it – and he took the secret to his grave.

Well, now I’ve gone and done it…I’ve been thinking about doing it for a long time now, and today was the day. I canceled my DirecTV service and am now a no-TV household. Hard to believe, eh? No more satellite TV, no more TiVo, no more sitting in front of the boob tube stuffing my face with food I shouldn’t be eating anyway, no more hypnotic trances on the weekends, and no more $80 a month. I’ll keep the TV for now to watch movies, but the DirecTV with TiVo gets stored in the closet, along with the small flat-pane TV, DirecTV receiver and separate TiVo in the office.

A superior flush has washed over me. Now instead of Family Guy reruns, I have some classical music playing on the living room system. I still have my XM radio, my Internet streams, my iTunes and of course good old fashioned radio in all its forms – AM, FM, Amateur, scanners. And reading, lots of reading which I’ve already been ramping up over the past year. And lots of distractions from my sweetie, too.

I’ll keep you advised of how it’s going.