Our RV Adventures

I played hooky from work today.

Sometime during the night I rolled over and got a VERY sharp pain in my lower back and right hip. And when I got up about 8am, I was still having a lot of pain when I moved.

But just because I was home didn’t mean I wasn’t working. I continued with my usual online stuff, emailing out invoices, processing PayPal payments, and sending out our Bank Wire Transfer info to customers making large purchases, >$1000.

Thought I’d give you another in our series, What We Were Doing 12 Years Ago Today.

April 20, 2010

The Bonnie Hunt Show x 2

First, a repeat announcement

Our daughter Brandi called from the doctor’s office about 8:30 this morning to tell us that our upcoming grandchild is a boy. And his name is Landon. And he’s due the first week of September.

So now we will have a matched set.  One of each.

Landon –

And our beautiful granddaughter Piper –

And only 17 years apart.  Landon is due on Piper’s 17th birthday.

Anyway, back to today.

Today was a twofer. We were going to attend the taping of two episodes of the Bonnie Hunt Show at 2pm and 6pm.

The 2pm show will be aired tomorrow, April 21st, and the 6pm show will air on Thursday, April 22nd.

We left the rig about 9 am, because we wanted to have plenty of time to have lunch before the taping, and also allow for any traffic delays.

We decided to eat at a place about a block from the studio called Kay & Dave’s Mexican Cantina. Jan had a two item combo plate and I had a lunch special, with chicken tortilla soup, salad with lime-cilantro dressing, and a Chile Relleno. The Relleno wasn’t as good as Esther’s last week, but it all was good.

We had to check in before noon at gate 2 of The Culver Studios, where The Bonnie Hunt Show is taped.

The Culver Studios, under various names and owners, has been around since 1918. It has been called RKO, Desilu, and Hughes Studios, among others, and owned by such as Cecil B. Demille, Lucy and Desi Arnez, and Howard Hughes,

Movies such as Gone with the Wind, King Kong, Citizen Kane, A Star is Born, and E.T.  were filmed here. And TV shows like Batman, Lassie, The Andy Griffith Show, Hogan’s Heroes, The Untouchables, The Real McCoys, and more recently, The Nanny, Deal Or No Deal, Las Vegas, Mad About You, Scrubs, and, of course, The Bonnie Hunt Show were/are filmed here.

After standing in line a few minutes, we were given badges with our seating number on them, in our case, 80 and 81, After about 30 minutes we were lead to an outdoor seating area where we stayed until about 30 minutes before show time. At that time we were taken to our seats in the studio. But before that we had to go thru a security check, including metal detectors. This was to insure that we had no cell phones or cameras with us.

Which is why we have absolutely NO pictures of anything to do with the show.

And they fed us too. As we were walking in, they handing us a hot dog wrapped in foil and a can of root beer.

Then about 15 minutes, Bill, the warmup guy, came out and got things started by telling jokes, asking questions of the audience, and telling us how the show was going to work.

The show, like most talk shows, is taped in real time, In other words, It takes one hour to tape the show. When it’s time for a commercial, they keep the tape rolling in black, and everyone on stage takes a break for 60, 120, or however many seconds the commercial break lasts, and then the show picks back up.

During the break, people swarm out on the stage, ladies touching up hair and makeup of both Bonnie and her guests, sound guys checking mics, lighting people checking, well, lights, and other staff talking with Bonnie about things on the show.

Then, poof, about 5 seconds before the end of the break, everyone disappears, and Bonnie looks up at the camera and says “Welcome back”. It’s all very smooth.

The first show’s guest were Brian Austin Green and Yvette Nicole Brown. Toward the end of the show, Bonnie did her regular “Dessert of the Day” segment, which was a Boston Cream Cupcake, And we all got one. Staffers passed out boxes to each of us, but asked us not to eat them till later.

About 10 minutes after the show was over, they set up for a pickup. A pickup is a guest segment to be inserted into a later show. In this case it was Anthony Anderson from Law & Order.taped a segment with Bonnie that will be used in a show sometime next week.

After that, Bonnie came out in the audience and walked around, thanking people for coming. A really nice touch.

By then it was about 3:30 and we were told to be back for the second taping about 4:45 pm. We decided to go back to the same place we had lunch and just share an order of nachos and an order of apple-cranberry bread pudding, since we were still pretty full from lunch.

Back at the studio we were lead back in right on time. They also tried to give us another hot dog and root beef, but we turned them down.

Bill, the warmup guy, told us that one of the listed guest, Ed Begley, Jr., of Living with Ed, would not be there, but we were supposed to clap when his name was mentioned anyway. Bill said that Ed Begley’s would be taped later and inserted in the show, just like Anthony Anderson’s was done earlier.

The other guest were Patrick Warburton of “Rules of Engagement” and “Seinfeld”, and Robert Keenan, the director of the movie “Food, Inc.”

The other neat thing was we got some giveaways. We each got a T-shirt, a DVD and s book of the nature film by Disney called “Earth”, and a DVD of the movie “Food, Inc”.

Again, after the show was over, Bonnie came out and walked around the audience, talking to people and thanking them for coming. And this time Jan got to shake her hand.

It was about 7:45 pm by the time we were heading back to the truck, and it was about 9:15 by the time we got back home.

A long day, but a fun day.

And tomorrow, still more fun.

We going to take a tour of the movie stars homes.

I think we’ll probably just see a lot of big, locked gates, but we’ll see.

Thought For The Day:

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

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I got a new toy the other day, but I won’t be able to really play with it until Thursday.

It’s a Alexa-Controlled Smart Thermostat.

Made by Honeywell, it should be a direct replacement for the Honeywell one we have now.

Which was a replacement for the round one that was in the coach when we bought it in 2007.

Just one more thing that Alexa controls in our coach.

Things like our Power Converter, our Firestick, the fan in the bedroom, the coffee pot, the light over the sofa, the table lamp, our Jellyfish lamp, and the dryer fan motor. And probably a few others I’ve forgotten.

I fully expect that someday I’ll tell Alexa to do something and she’ll say, “I’m sorry, Greg. I can’t do that.”

And then take over the coach.

About 11:30 Jan and I drove over to Pearland to have lunch with Bonnie Horner, an old friend and former hospital co-worker of Jan’s. And we ended up having BBQ for lunch at an old favorite of ours, Central Texas BBQ.

We starting eating here back in the early ‘80’s, and it was a regular stop for us. But we haven’t eaten here since before we started RV’ing in 2008.

And it was good to be back, and just as good as always.

And it was good to be able to spend some time with Bonnie again. We’ll have to do it again soon.

Thought I’d repost this blog about our last visit to Las Vegas.

April 19, 2017

Cruising The Strip . . .

Again, thanks for the kind comments about my Paul Revere screed. I’ve always enjoyed history, especially the misconceptions and mythical parts.

In fact one semester in college I took 3 history courses all at the same time as electives.

One reader asked if there were all these other riders, how come Paul Revere got all the press? I guess you might say he had a better press agent. Or at least had Henry Wadsworth Longfellow write a poem about him.

So why did Longfellow write about Paul Revere when there were other riders, and Revere didn’t even make it to Concord? Well, one reason stated was that Paul Revere was the best known of the bunch. A well-known and prosperous Boston silversmith, he was well-connected with the Revolutionary leadership, and a prominent member of the Sons of Liberty.

But there are some whispers that Longfellow found the name Revere easier to rhyme than Dawes, Prescott, or Bissell. Or especially Ludington.

And not surprisingly Longfellow took a lot of liberties (artistic license?) with the storyline in the poem.

For example, Revere did not observe the two lanterns in the old North Church tower, saying the British troops were coming by sea. In fact he was the one who ordered the lanterns placed in the tower in the tower in the first place.

Longfellow’s poem was not written until 1860, but even then some people were upset that Paul Revere got all the acclaim. Helen F. Moore even penned a parody poem on the subject.

‘Tis all very well for the children to hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
But why should my name be quite forgot,
Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?
Why should I ask? The reason is clear—
My name was Dawes and his Revere

But note that she didn’t try to rhyme anything with Dawes either.

I did get my exhaust pipe strap hanger installed this afternoon and it works fine.

So that’s fixed now.

About 4pm Jan and I headed back down to the Henderson area to once again have dinner at Golden Flower Chinese Restaurant, and this time we had a dinner companion.

Boots Gibson, a long-time blog reader lives in Las Vegas and wanted to get together. So Golden Flower was the perfect place.

Turns out that Boots and Jan have a lot in common, both having worked in the medical field for many years, so they hit it off pretty quick.

We had our usual great meal and spent over two hours there. I think our waitress was wondering if we were going to start all over and order again.

Later, about 7:30 Jan and I headed over to the Vegas Strip to do our drive from the top to the bottom. We both enjoy watching some of the amazing outfits people actually wear out in public as they parade along the street.

Getting down to the bottom of the Strip at the airport, we head back over to Flamingo Rd. to have a piece of pie at Blueberry Hill Restaurant, known for their homemade pies. And it certainly shows.

And tastes.

Thought for the Day:

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it.” – H. L. Mencken

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