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All of the old posts from my old website bfooter.com.

Can’t Buy Me Love

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The movie itself is OK, nothing special, but it was on HD Movie Net the other night and I figured why not watch it. Hadn’t seen it in a while…

Besides being the 41st best teen movie according to Entertainment Weekly and one of the first movies appearances of Dr. Derek Shepherd, aka McDreamy, aka Patrick Dempsey, it has a very well done “Slow Clap“, so hilariously made fun of in in Not Another Teen Movie. The Slow Clap really is a highlight of 80s movie making that is still in use today.

Added bonus… a young Seth Green. Best part is he’s already got a twisted sense of humor. Already showing signs of the brilliance that is Robot Chicken.

Here’s a montage I found showing a good selection of Slow Claps…

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International Talk Like A Pirate Day

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“Aye, today be Talk Like a Pirate Day! On this fine day, everyone can talk like a pirate all day long.”

My pirate speak typically sucks, but today, everyone can try out their pirate speak and not be looked at like a complete idiot… if people do look at you like an idiot, just tell them what day it is and everything will be cool.

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Quiz #1 – TV Quotes

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OK Peeps,

First off, the rules… no cheating by using Google or anything like that to search for where these quotes are from. You need to do this the old fashion way… use your brain. Next up, that’s the only rule. Finally, there is no prize, other than your personally pride. How do you enter? Just come to this post on the my blog site and make a comment. If this works, I may do some other quizzes.

Here are the quotes… They are from the same series.

“I learned how to handle delicate social situations from a little show called 3’s Company.”

“I never thought I’d escape with my doodle, but I pulled it out.”

“Normally Healthy Baby, Super-Size it for 49¢!”

Is anyone up for the challenge?

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Adventures in Beaverland (and Lodi)

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So my posting lately hasn’t been as frequent as it has been all summer… my bad. I had a pretty significant computer issue to recover from and there just hasn’t been as much skiing to talk about lately. Not that I haven’t wanted to go or had the time, but the Madison lakes are still pretty much slow now wake (although they have gone to a 500 foot no wake just recently).

So with the Madison lakes shut down for all practical purposes, I’ve had to resort to road trips for my skiing fixes.

The first road trip was a team road trip. The Mad-City Ski Team did a co-show with the Beaverland Must-Skis on August 26th. Both the Division 1 and Division 2 State Champions skiing together. A rare opportunity to see the best ski teams in the state together. Basically it was just a large exhibition show as we put out some pretty large acts. Our big act that night was soooo big, it needed to be in two acts. I skied in a few acts that night and here are some pictures…


Going out to OP


Opening Pyramid… I’m 3rd from the left, bottom row obviously


Conventional Doubles Start… far right


We are skiing into the sun… that’s why my eyes are closed.


The joy of conventional doubles… so much fun… I’m far left in this shot.


The Front Angel – I’m on the Right
I’m looking at the crowd and all the other guys are looking…
I can understand why 7 is looking straight ahead, but everybody else?


The Mad-City Conventional Doubles Intro…
she didn’t know she was getting picked up on to my shoulder…
worked out anyways.

All pictures in this section are from Jim’s Photos.

The following week, really didn’t get much skiing in. No wake in Madison was still going on… Did manage to get out on Memorial Day weekend, Sunday morning in particular. I headed up to Lodi, Wisconsin to do some skiing on Lake Wisconsin in Okee Bay. I met John, Sandy, Paul & Joey up there and we hit the water about 830 or so in the morning. It was a little breezy and we did get scolded by some of the locals for not waiting are turn (we knew them, so no big deal), but we did have some fun… here are the pictures from this nice last day of summer.


I started off the morning with a footing run…


Sandy decided to cut the water up with her slalom ski…
Here she is throwing a nice wall of water up!


I tried to get a good picture of John driving for Sandy…
This is a good one of Sandy skiing… but I kinda missed part of John


This is a good one of John driving, but the cut in the background isn’t as nice.


Joey busted out her swivel ski.


She’s a good swiveler… here she’s doing an overhead 360 or 720.


And the falls can be fun to watch!


John did some footing too!


I did some some surfing…


Paul on the board.


He’s doing a walk around on the board.


Occasionally, even Paul does fall and here is one caught on film.


John took a turn on the surf board…


John on the board…


Need to keep the nose of the board up…


Sky cam view…


John standing tall!


Another face plant at 9 miles per hour…


Our driver Sandy, alone in the front of the boat because everyone else is ballast…


Joey on the surf board…


…wishing she had the rope.


Joey and Paul


The Whole Crew… Paul, Wedge, Joey, Sandy and John

That night, John, Sandy, T-Bell and myself were up in Beaver Dam for the Must-Skis last show of the season. We were all hoping to ski, but they were only in need of some more male skiers, so John & I suited up. We mainly played the parts of chick haulers, but that’s why we were there. Sandy and T-Bell did a great job opening the show singing the National Anthem. Sandy does a very good job singing the harmony. Here are some pictures Sandy took during the show for me…



Pretty good size group getting ready for conventional doubles…


And the ropes are tight right NOW!


Front Angel…


The Must-Ski Conventional Intro


John hiding behind his Fat-O’s with Chad behind him


The Ending Pyramid that I was in…
the little girl was a new climber and didn’t make it to the top.


The Other Ending Pyramid


My Ending Pyramid Group


The Ending Pyramid Teams


Smooch!

After our cameo appearances in their show, we all raced back to Madison for the Mad-City End of Year Party at Jugsy’s Mansion. Jugsy is the new term for John and Bugsy. The party went late, we all had fun, and nobody was much use on Monday.

There was still high water in Madison so my boat stayed in the garage. I headed back up to Beaver Dam on the 5th with Paul. We wanted to jump and their jumpers wanted some tips from Paul. Their jumpers didn’t want any tips from me.

Paul went out with one of their newer members whose been working on an inverted trick for a while. Paul gave him some feedback on what to work on with the trick and made a lot of progress that night, but didn’t land the trick. He did make the very next day.

Meanwhile, I hit their ramp. This is the first ramp I’ve gone off that wasn’t a Mad-City ramp. I had heard it was a bit slicker than our ramp so I wanted do a ride over before I try out a heli. Here’s the first time off the ramp…

Next I tried some helis… didn’t make much progress on my helis, but it was fun. Enjoy the crashes…

That was it for the night up in Beaverland. Afterwards we headed to Morrey’s for some pizza and beer and talked shop, ski team shop. Generally had a good time.

I went up there again on the 12th for some more jumping. Tried some more helis, took some more falls… some not so nice. Here’s my first fall of the night… I land backwards.

What I was really working on while trying these it I use to go up the ramp with my hand that was on the braid literally gripping the rope. This can cause the spin to be slow, especially if there is slack between the hand on the braid and the hand on the handle. To correct that, I’ve been working on just holding my hand next to the rope to keep me from spinning so instead of needing to let go of the rope to start my spin, I now just move my hand away from the rope. I was doing good at this part, but I was doing this way too late. So even if I was spinning quicker, I was starting latter again which was negating any increase in my spin speed. I was also working on turning my head to the left to help initiate the spin. I don’t think I was doing this.

So I have a few things to thing about for next time… First, I need to spin sooner. I need to start on the ramp. Next, I need to turn my head to the left to help initiate the spin. Third, I need to pop as I leave the ramp (during my initiation of the spin).

Watching all the heli videos, I can see another thing that is probably contributing to my many falls. As I spin, my hand holding the handle comes away from my body when I get about 2/3rds of the way around. When it comes away, that will slow my spin, much like when you are sitting on a chair and spinning, if your hands are in you spin fast, put them out, you slow down. This same bit of physics is affecting me in my helis… I’d spin good and then my hand would come out and my spin would slow and I get pulled off access resulting in the many falls you’ve hopefully enjoyed watching…

After getting beat up by the ramp, a group of us headed up to a bar called Cocktails… it has a rooster on the sign. We had some drinks, talked, laughed and had a good time. At the end of the night, Ma & Pa Bell figured out they are locked out their vehicle. They have On-Star, but the vehicle account number is covered by a real estate flier. So I ended up driving them home.

I went back up there the next day, not for jumping, but to do some chick hauling. Did some pyramids and conventional doubles and then we hit Cocktails again. Had a lot of fun as they admitted that they are recruiting me hard to ski with them next year… I’m just visiting though, getting my skiing fix in.

To sum everything up… not enough skiing, a trip to Lodi, lots of trips to Beaver Dam, lots of fun skiing and many helicopter falls. Not nearly enough footing either!

For full quality versions of the pictures, you can get them at the links below.

Links:
Jim’s Photos – Beaverland Must-Ski Co-Show Album
Mad-City Co-Show
Skiing in Lodi
Skiing with the Must-Skis Again

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For Your Viewing Pleasure… This is me, trying to do a dance…

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Back on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, I skied in a show with the Beaverland Must-Skis (we were (and still are) experiencing high water in Madison.) Well, I was in the ending pyramid and after the ending pyramid, there is an ending dance. I knew this, but didn’t know the dance. And by didn’t know the dance I mean not at all. I tried to follow along but that didn’t go well.

Sandy, who was taking pictures, decided that pictures just wouldn’t do my dancing justice, so she capture it on video. I hope you enjoy the video…

Trying to do the ending dance with the Must-Skis

They’ll be some pictures and stuff coming from the last couple shows that I skied with the Must-Skis posted soon.
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And Now Back to Our Regular Broadcast Schedule…

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OK, so my schedule is anything but regular… The computer is back together with a new hard drive, new operating system and a better backup plan… still re-organizing some stuff from before the crash, but basically, things are up and running again. Still trying to decide how to organize and backup the 100’s of gigabytes of ski team video that I have… Still bummed about some of the stuff I lost (skiing log from the last few years and good crash videos to mention just a couple things that other people might care about.)

I’ll be posting an update soon with pictures from the couple shows we did with the Must-Skis and video of some heli’s I tried up there last week.

For those that need a sport or comedy fix, check out the links on the right in the “What I’m Reading” section… They’re mainly random things from around the web that I found entertaining. One guy in the UK is trying to patent a hydrofoil wakeboard… they’ve been towed behind boats for a long time in the form of an Air-Chair or Sky Ski and now he’s trying to patent it just because now they are standing on it. They’ve even taken the Air Chair & Sky Ski and chopped off the chair to surf on the things (Laird Hamilton been doing this for years)… he isn’t doing anything new.

There’s also a post titled Rankings and Other Stuff about the UW game in Vegas this past weekend. Seems they held the world’s largest tailgate party and the Wisconsinites drank a lot of beer. The Vegas Notes post is pretty good too.

The water is still high in Madison, although they did open up Lakes Mendota and Kegonsa to just a 500 foot no wake limit, I feel it is still hard to go out in the middle of the lake, and with good conscious, start making a big fat wake to go surfing with while people are still dealing with high water in the yards. So I’ll still be road-tripping for a while. [Z- I’m looking for a place to jump on Wednesday night. -W] In case you didn’t notice, it rained today for pretty much the whole day. Not helping my cause.

It is late and it time for some shut-eye. Watch for a new post with pictures and video soon.

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[Technical Difficulties]

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To say I’ve had some technical difficulties at home this weekend would be an understatement. My main PC had hard drive die on me… it faded away as I tried to get stuff off of it. Of the many hard drives in my house, it was the one I’d least like to see go. It had a lot of stuff on it. During my recovery effort, it looks like I had some other dead hard drives in my other computer. Needless to say, I’m not happy.

For those looking for pictures from Sunday skiing and the Beaver Dam show, please be patient, I’m working on it.

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2nd Line

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Tonight, after a busy day mowing the lawn, cleaning, doing laundry and watching the Badger’s win their first game of the year, I caught up with my old friend Brent. He’s in the navy now, so I don’t get to see him very often, so it was good to catch up with.

We stopped at BW3’s first for some food and our first frosty beverages of the night. Then we headed to the UW Memorial Terrace for another beverage. They usually have a band playing there as well, which is always nice, but tonight, they really had a band. A very good band. They weren’t playing your typical music though. The band was Orleans Avenue, a project of a musical virtuoso named Trombone Shorty.

Trombone Shorty dong the 2nd Line

If you read up on the guy, he’s been “leading bands” since he was six years old. He’s that good. And after watching him in person, he is. My reaction was wow. His band that he plays with is really good too!

Initially, I’d think to describe the music as Dixie Land Jazz… but there more to it than that. Way more. A little funk, a little bit of a rock edge and a whole lotta fun. He manages to get a crowd of Wisconsinites up on their feet dancing and singing along to the song “When the Saints.” Yes, we all know the song, everyone does, but to get a huge crowd up and dancing and singing… now that is a very big feat in my eyes. The crowd loved it.

And then after that, he busts out the next song… “Back in Black”. Everyone knows the riff that opens that song. Everyone. Well, you haven’t heard that riff until you’ve heard it done on a trombone. Wow! The song will never be the same.

Trombone Short doing Back in Black… yes, that is the song by AC/DC

If you ever get the chance to catch this act, do it. You might be thinking that the music doesn’t sound like something you like. I would think the same thing and I’d know I was wrong. The music is great.

My buddy Brent and I at the end of the night. We’ve known each other since we were like 6 years old.
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I Have A Problem Here…

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…the lakes are high and the no wake on the lake went lake wide today. That means no skiing in Madison for me. Can’t blame them though, here are a few shots of our ski site from Monday and the area where the crowd would sit is flooded.



This shot shows our blacktop stage that is normally a couple
feet above the water level and it is now at the water level.


Here is where the crowd will typically sit. Now it is under water.


Here is the bike path…. once again it is normally a couple feet
above the lake level and now it just barely above the lake level.
You can see debris from when the water was higher.


Finally, here is a line of debris across the middle
of the park showing where the water level was.

With no skiing in Madison, that means I’ll need to road trip to The Beav or Lake Wisconsin to find water to ski on. Not a huge problem but it does cut into the ability to do after work skiing. Finish work at 5, best case, home by 530, on the road to one of those two places by 540, launching the boat at 615. And that is really the very best case. More than likely, it would be 630/645 for launching the boat and that means just 60 minutes of skiing. Getting everyone to arrive at exactly 530 at my house to meet to go north is just very unlikely. I’m just crossing my fingers the water goes down somewhat quickly. 2 weeks would be nice.

Anyways, that just means I have a whole lot more free time in the evenings that I need to find something to do with.

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Mad-City in the News (Kinda?)

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I took it upon myself to scour the web looking for news about the Mad-City Ski Team (actually, I’ve automated this process, but want to make you think I work hard to find these random tidbits) and stumbled upon this site called Daily Motion which kinda seems like another type of YouTube type site. Anyways, on this site someone produces a show called “The Boaters TV” and they had a story about show skiing and the Mad-City Ski Team. The show skiing related stuff starts about two thirds of the way through the episode. The video is below… check it out.

The Boaters TV Episode 30

Finally, if you watch the credits for the news broadcast closely, you’ll see that our very own Bugsy (aka bugsroll) supplied some of the video featured in the episode. Then you’ll see that the episode was brought to you by the word “cleat”.
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