Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.

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That's a Christmas card picture if I've ever seen one

While normal people were making their final plans for their assault on the next day’s dinner table, my dad gave me what is probably the coolest early Christmas present on the face of the planet. No points for guessing, because the photo makes it pretty darn clear. But wait! There’s more!

For a modest rental fee and the price of ammo, you too can fire fully automatic weapons and a sniper rifle with an effective range of more than 1.5 miles. I had a few moments with five fully automatic machines guns: an MP5, an M4, a Bren MkII, a TP9 and an AK 47. After that, I took a single shot with a 50-caliber AR50 sniper rifle that is longer than I am tall.

It was loud, it was violent, it was destructive and it was glorious. My mother more or less thought it was a waste of money (and you do go through the ammo quicker than you can blink) but both my dad and I had a blast (pun very much intended).

The machines guns were harder to handle accurately than I expected. Unless you’re trying to mow down entire units of advancing soldiers, I’m not convinced that (non-mounted) fully automatic weapons are very useful (granted, soldiers are presumably better trained than I). Here’s my target at 25 yards with the AK 47:

This was firing 4- or 5-shot bursts and just look how inconsistent I was: Half landed in the upper right hand corner and missed the target entirely! The first and second shots would more or less be in the center and after that they started flying off to the upper right. I’m not a terrible shot, either. With a semi-automatic handgun I can get every shot in the 10 ring from that distance on a good day, and within the nine-ring on a terrible day. After the first two or three rounds go off you lose your sight picture and your more or less just pointing the gun the direction you want the bullets to go. And this was at just 25 yards!

Out of the five automatic weapons, I think I preferred the… well, they were all awesome. It’s pretty much a toss up between everything but the AK 47 (IMHO it’s just a lump of metal designed to intimidate). The M4 was the one I was the most accurate with; the Mp5 was awesome because it as suppressed and barely louder than a hand clap; the Bren Mk II was awesome because it was loud, heavy, mechanical and straight out of WWII; and the TP9 was awesome because it was so ridiculously compact.

The TP9 had an awesome holographic sight. WANT.

Look at the size of that cartridge compared to my keys!

Since this was an indoor range, things are going to be a loud. A .22 is loud and the suppressed MP5 was loud. But every now and then, in between the various pops and bangs of the “normal” guys firing all around you, you would feel the ground shake then instantly hear a tremendous BOOOOOOOM that rattled your bones. It was the Big Kahuna: The Armalite AR50 sniper rifle, firing a monstrous .50 caliber round. (For comparison, check out this pic to the left. The Mp5‘s 9mm cartridge is the puny-looking one on the right)

I settled in for my single shot, and prepared for the boom. At 190 decibels, the .50 is not only loud, the sound by itself will actually harm you if you don’t wear ear protection. I’m not talking about hearing loss; I’m talking about bleeding of your ears. Then I lined up on my target 50 yards away and pulled the trigger. The sound was amazingly loud, but it was the concussion wave that  quite literally blew me away. If I had hair, I’m pretty sure it would have blown it off. My dad was standing behind me and said it was like someone shoved him very hard.

Watching the video (it’s embedded below) still cracks me up when I see that shot. It’s just… violent. And we’re on the polite end of the gun!

Anyway, I have precisely zero experience firing a scoped rifle, so I wasn’t look for a bulls eye or anything. An expert marksman can put a bullet between the eyes of a terrorist at 1.5+ miles. I would be lucky to hit a man-sized target at 50 yards (1.5 miles is 2,600 yards). Still, I was very proud of my proverbial “lucky” shot:

Be sure you watch the video below (it’s short) and check out the rest of the pictures on Facebook.

A month or so ago, I took part in a fantastic project known as Snail Mail My E-mail. The idea is that you sent an e-mail to this dude in California and he farmed it out to a team of scribes who copied it down longhand and physically mailed it to its final recipient. It was weird and crazy labor-intensive, but all kinds of awesome as well.

Here’s the letter that some dude in Tennessee copied from my e-mail and mailed to Megan:

Megan and I both volunteered to write 25 letters each, but alas our pens and paper were not called upon to do our duty… UNTIL NOW! I’m very proud to say that we’re among 234 letter-writers writing 10,457 letters to 71 countries on all seven continents.

A few letter-writers apparently got a little overwhelmed with the volume (could’ve been deadly hand cramps, who knows), and now the organizers are redistributing the remaining workload. We aren’t getting the full load of 25, but we do get to write six strangers’ letters to six other strangers, which again, is pretty amazing.

Of our six combined letters:

• One is headed to New Zealand
• One is headed to Germany
• One is headed to Australia
• One is headed to the UK
• One is headed to California
• One is headed to Florida
• Two are poems
• One is a birthday greeting including the words “you’ll always be a lot more more mature, wiser and knowledgeable than me I’M A PLASTIC BAG WHOOOOOOOSHHHH!”
• One uses the phrase “I miss you like a pedophile misses driving an ice cream truck.”
• One asks that we include a doodle of a mustache.
• One appears to a be a Canadian stalker letter to this YouTube “star.”
• One is to “Putt-Putt” from “Little Foot.”

I'm not gonna lie: I'm rather proud of my illustration

In an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, here’s a combined entry on my night in Cole County Jail and my 12:01 review of Harry Potter 7 (2). Spoiler alert, they’re more alike than you might think:

Why?
Harry Potter: I’ve seen three of the previous films at midnight, so it would seem a shame to leave out the grand finale. It’s kinda fun to say you were among the first to see it. Alas, I wasn’t crazy enough to attend the eight-movie marathon playing in St. Louis (which started at 5 a.m. and ended at 2:30 the next morning). It’s my favorite of the series, and not just it solidifies the romantic connection between Luna and Neville.

Cole County Jail: For the past two years, I’ve watched this thing go from a hole in the ground that blocks my entrance to my parking lot a giant behemoth of a building that only two weeks ago stopped blocking the entrance to my parking lot. I had to see the inside. Plus, how many times in life do you get to spend the night in the slammer and it not go on your record? I was the first to ever sleep on that “mattress,” and the first to ever eat powdered eggs off of that tray. What an honor!

SEE OTHER BED, BREAKFAST AND BARS POSTS: Introduction, The Going-to-Jail Playlist, Pre-Lock Up Movie Review and Last Meal

Waiting times?
HP: We wanted to be in the middle and get seats together, so we arrived 3.5 hours before showtime. Once 12:01 arrived, there was still a 10-minute delay.

CCJ: Booking takes a LONG time. It seems like that’s half your sentence served right there. Really, that’s what jail time is: waiting. You eat dinner then there’s literally nothing to do but wait for lights out. In our case, we ate dinner at 8 then waited until about midnight for our “VIP” tour.

Crowd control?
HP: Not good. Terrible, even. The lines were very nebulous and kept shifting. I know it’s not an every day event for the theater staff, but they didn’t do a great job keeping things organized.

CCJ: Nothing if not controlled. In my cell, jailers could see in, but I could never see out. There is no privacy, even though there is a toilet and shower in each 6×12-foot cell. ZERO PRIVACY.

There are eight “pods” (I call them “blocks”) in the jail, with 12 cells in each pod. Each cell sleeps two inmates. Blocks are arranged in a ring, with the cells on the outside and each has a common “day room” toward the center. In the very center of everything is a satellite control room where a single jailer can see into each pod’s day room through one-way glass.

There are eights pods in reality, but I realized that after I

Action sequences?
HP: The Battle for Hogwarts did not disappoint. Aside from the distinct lack of galloping desks (more on that later), it is probably the best action sequence of the eight-movie series.

CCJ: If there is a riot in the “pod,” the jailers warn you to go back to your cell and shut the door. If you don’t, they release a “grenade” loaded with a hundred “superballs” which ricochet around the room, each hit stinging and giving you a nice bruise. If that doesn’t work, they have an “emergency response team” that will enter the pod, the lead man carrying a riot shield that also acts as a giant taser. If that’s doesn’t work, the next guy in line has the short-barrel shotgun that shoots bean bags, then the next guy has the taser shotgun. They wouldn’t tell us what comes next, but they don’t anticipate ever having to go beyond the “grenade.”

I stole this picture from the local Rotary club, because for some reason they were allowed to bring a camera. This shows the satellite control and you can see into one of the pods in the background. You can

I kept count, and when I was in my bed with my cell door closed, there were nine locked doors between me and the outside (and only one of those nine could be unlocked at the same time). And these weren’t like the locks on your house door. They didn’t budge, rattle, give or flex. Once they locked, it was like they were carved in stone.

Soundtrack?
HP: I loved that David Yates kept things very quiet and very still, especially in the opening moments. Until the finale, there’s very little music in this movie.

CCJ: In the day room, voices echo and bounce around like one of those “superball grenades.” If I was in for an extended stay, my fellow inmates and I would have to have some rules about volume. Things weren’t too quiet in the cells either, even with the doors closed. I didn’t hear any snoring or conversations, but I very clearly heard each and every flush of the toilet. I think this may be intentional.

Desks?
HP: The one thing above all else I was looking forward to in the HP finale was the galloping desks McGonagall magic-ed into protecting the castle. They were in the book, but not in the movie. FAIL

CCJ: Suspended from the wall in the cells.

Boredom?
HP: I got a little bored waiting in line, but the people watching made the time go by pretty quickly.

CCJ: If you’re an inmate in CCJ, boredom is your life. You never ever leave your pod. You shower in your cell, and eat in the 700-sqft day room (that you share with 23 other inmates), so you don’t ever have any reason to go anywhere. If would be worth getting sick just to visit the infirmary. The only colors you ever see are white (walls) and orange (prison garb). You don’t even get to go to a visitation room; there’s a video visitation station in the day room. You have an “exercise yard,” but those quotes around the words are there for a reason: one hour a day (if you behave), you get to go through the locked door into an adjacent concrete room about the size of your day room. It has vents that bring in air from the outside, and if you stand near the wall at an angle, you can see daylight through a grate about 25 feet up. This is the legal definition of “fresh air.”

From what I understand, prison (as opposed to jail) is much less boring and much less strict, though there’s significantly more chance of violence.

Costumes to show enthusiasm?
HP: It wouldn’t be a HP premier without ‘em. I particularly enjoyed two very pink and frumpy Delores Umbridge fans, and a very convincing Bellatrix and Ron practiced their wand-dueling (see video here). There were tons of Harrys and Hermiones, but I liked it when someone busted out a lesser character like Luna (lots of radish earrings), a Death Eater or Professor Tralawney. But nothing can beat Hedwig from HP7(1). [Affectionate sigh] Nerds.

CCJ: Surprisingly, yes. A great many wore stripes, and one woman even sported a homemade shirt that said “Prisoner to Zumba.” There were also quite a few wearing shirts memorializing Elizabeth Olten.

Outside food or drink?
HP: Nope, although if Megan had let me, I would have left her in line and purchased some H2O and snacks at a nearby convenience store.

CCJ: Absolutely not. I only brought in my chapstick, my car key and wallet. I was quite sad I couldn’t bring my camera or iPhone, but I understand the desire for a measure of secrecy. And really, as long as I have my chapstick, do I really need anything more in life?

Concessions:
HP: The usual fare: popcorn, nachos, boxed candy and various carbonated beverages.

CCJ: One of the things I was most interested in was trying “prison food.” Dinner was served warm (not hot), and was turkey + noodles, coleslaw, navy beans, cornbread and bread pudding. My fellow “inmates” and I discussed picked the raisins out of our bread pudding to make jailhouse hooch, but we didn’t have the time. I ate everything but the navy beans and coleslaw. Breakfast was lukewarm at best and consisted of “scrambled eggs,” grits, coffee cake and turkey baloney. The coffee cake was quite good, but everything else was terrible. I asked one of the guards the food rotation, and he said it’s two weeks, meaning it’ll be 14 days before the prisoners have to repeat the baloney/eggs combo. I think that’s more than generous. The sheriff told us that a common prisoner complaint once they get out is that the jailers starved them. To guard against this accusation, they weigh each prisoner during booking and when they’re released. On average, they gain three pounds.

Again,

In 3D?
HP: Yes, although I’ve got to say that I’m over the whole 3D thing.

CCJ: Yes. At times I was convinced I could reach out and actually touch that prison toilet if I wanted to.

Dim?
HP: Yes. Very. It’s a dark movie anyway, and once you add in the 3D murkiness, it was even darker. It’s almost black and white, with very little color.

CCJ: Just barely. When the guards said “lights out in five minutes,” you’d be justified in thinking that 300 seconds later the lights would be turned out and you’d be able sleep in darkness. You’d be wrong. They want to be able to keep an eye on you even at night, so they lower the lights to about the level of a 40-watt bulb instead of a 100-watt bulb. I was on the lower bunk, so I was at least in the “shade.” It would take some serious getting used to. Not only does incarceration take away your freedom, it takes away your night.

Capacity?
HP: It was sold out. There were 980 people crammed into the theater lobby, which has got to be a violation of some fire code.

I

CCJ: Inexplicably, the spend-a-night in jail program was not sold out. They can house 180 prisoners (expandable to 360 in the future), but there were only about 95 of us there. I had a private cell. Coincidentally, it was absolutely up to fire code. The only thing more common than security cameras were fire sprinklers. And that’s in a building that has virtually nothing that will burn!

Did you sleep?
HP: I was tired, but after waiting in line for 3.5 hours, I was not about to fall asleep mid-movie.

CCJ: Not really. I was exhausted from my HP thing the night before, but we didn’t even get back to our cells from our tour until 2:30. They woke us up at 2.5 hours later at 5.

Free fortified calcium beverage?
HP: Nope.

CCJ: Yep.

Souvenirs:
HP: We got Harry Potter-style rounded 3D glasses, but to be honest, I didn’t like them. Normal 3D glasses are a pain with regular prescription specs, and these were even worse.

Actually, now that I see the picture, I make this look work.

CCJ: A free t-shirt and a mug shot. Now that I think about it, it probably would be in poor taste to have a jailhouse gift shop full of Wish You Were Here Postcards.

Tattoos?

HP: If you count the dozens of lightning bolt scars Sharpied onto peoples’ heads, then yes.

CCJ: My fellow residents of my pod got ink pen tattoos on our arms, showing that we were from C-Block and proud of it (see the video linked below). We were the fun group, in case you didn’t realize it. Seriously, some people heard we were enjoying ourselves and requested a transfer from boring old E-Pod.

Was it worth it?
HP: Yes. Go see the movie if you haven’t already. The kids have grown into fine actors, and the adults are absolutely incredible to watch.

CCJ: Yes. Not only did it satisfy my curiosity AND get me and my tattoo on the evening news, but it gave me an entirely new respect for the sheriff’s department. They don’t lock people up because they get a kick out of it, they do it to protect the other 99.995 percent of us on the outside. They truly are professionals with a heart to serve their community.

What could have been better?
HP: Somehow, some way, I would have loved to have seen Ginny written out of the movie. Bleh. Go away, Ginny! Go away! Boo!

CCJ: I would have loved to be able to wear the orange pants, orange shirt, orange sock and orange Crocs (yes, inmates wear Crocs). I’m also sad my prison nickname never caught on.

Would you go back?
HP: Yes, hopefully in 2D.

CCJ: NO.

I’m still very pumped about getting a crack at “prison food” (I “turned myself in” at 5 p.m. tonight).

Plus, it’s a really good excuse to have a decent “last meal,” and where better than Prison Brews, a local eatery near the old Missouri State Pen, complete with “razor wire” decor? I should also note that this dining establishment is a microbrewery – though I do not drink – and a Mecca of sorts for intramural Bocce Ball. I’m not sure which I’m less likely to partake in. You can’t say it’s without character, that is certain.

I ordered the bacon cheeseburger, but what to get for a side? I waffled between the sweet potato fries and the fried green beans, before finally settling on SPF. It was a good choice. The sweet/cinnamon flavor always surprises my palate. The burger is probably one of the better ones in town; very simple and juicy.

Anyway, it should tide me over for a few hours, at least until I can get my hands on that “meat substitute.” Bon appetite!

I called the Sheriff and he said no, I cannot bring a Rita Hayworth poster to jail.

My just-for-fun, unofficial stay in the clink is going to be barely 12 hours, but another innocent man, Andy Dufresne, served 20 years behind bars without committing the crime. OK, so The Shawshank Redemption is only a movie, but since I’m in an unjustly imprisoned kind of mood and it’s one of my all-time favorite movies, we’re going to take another look at it:

The only reason Shawshank didn’t win the 1994 Best Picture Award was that it was up against two other of the best movies of the decade, Forest Gump and Pulp Fiction. While it didn’t have the scope and star power of Gump or the flair of Pulp Fiction, this is a quietly wonderful and moving movie. (At the box office, it didn’t help that it has a strange-sounding title. Roger Ebert observed that: “People like excitement at the movies, and titles that provide it do well. Films about “redemption” are approached with great wariness; a lot of people are not thrilled by the prospect of a great film – it sounds like work. But there’s a hunger for messages of hope, and when a film offers one, it’s likely to have staying power even if it doesn’t grab an immediate audience.”) There are a few gunshots here and there, but this is no Michael Bay ‘Splosion-Fest. Throughout each and every one of its 142 minutes, every beat, every pause and every glance has a meaning. There is plot (an extremely well-thought out and well-paced plot) but Shawshank is about more than being locked up and then breaking free. The movie passes through time, hope, friendship, brotherly love, loyalty, betrayal and murder, but the greatest of these is – to mangle scripture - hope, just like Ebert said..

Based on a fantastic novella by Stephen King, Shawshank is a movie all about the hope. About keeping that hope alive even when the circumstances around you are dark as night. About not giving up the hope even when the truth is obscured. Also, it’s about a poster of Rita Hayworth and fighting off unwanted romantic advances by your cellmates in the prison laundry, but yeah, mostly it’s the hope thing.

Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is falsely accused of his wife murder, earning him two life sentences in Maine’s (fictional) Shawshank Prison. His fellow prisoners see him as soft and ready to crack, but his quiet confidence, intelligence and hope set him apart in the eyes of the cons and the prison staff. “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really: Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’” he tells his friend, Red, after 20 years behind bars. After prison beatings, corrupt guards, lying wardens and all other manner sufferings, Andy stands tall, maintains his hope, and “get’s busy living.”
Red, played by Morgan Freeman, who also narrates the film. A Morgan Freeman or Freeman-style narration has become somewhat of a cinematic joke, but this was before all that. His voice work is calm, warm and perfect.

In one of my favorite scenes, he risks a month in solitary confinment for the simple pure joy of playing the Marriage of Figaro over the prison’s PA system. Check out that look on Andy’s face at around the 3:22 mark. At the end of his stay in the hole, he explains that it was worth it because he had the music in his mind to keep him company, just as he carries hope in his heart. Red, Andy’s best friend heard the music and though he didn’t understand the lyrics, he heard hope: “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t wanna know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

1. Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash

2. Chain Gang, Sam Cooke

3. I Fought the Law and the Law Won, Bobby Fuller (or The Clash, or Greenday)

4. Jailhouse Rock, Elvis Presley

5. Prisoners of Love, The Producers Soundtrack

6. Jailbreak, AC/DC

7.  Riot in Cell Block #9, Dr. Feelgood

]]> http://brianon.com/2011/07/13/bed-breakfast-and-bars-jail-house-rock/feed/ 0 brianon Picture4 http://brianon.com/2011/07/12/movie-review-cars-2-4-out-of-5-stars/ http://brianon.com/2011/07/12/movie-review-cars-2-4-out-of-5-stars/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:59:08 +0000 brianon http://brianon.com/?p=3068 Continue reading →]]>

Cars 2 is a fine movie. In fact it’s very entertaining. It’s just that there’s no magic this time around. It’s good; but coming from Pixar you just expect it to be awesome.

The sequel to the original Cars has our uber-vanilla hero, a anthropomorphic hot rod named Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson), jetting around the globe to compete in Japan, Italy and London. But McQueen soon takes a backseat (pun very much intended) to tow truck buddy Mater (voice of Larry the Cable Guy) who moves things from a racing flick to a James Bond inspired spy thriller. The two plots are tied together by an international conspiracy headed by Gremlins and Pacers and there’s a rather muddled message about alternative fuel, both of which were a little hard to follow, especially for a children’s movie.

Michael Caine voices the lead British spy car, a silver classic Aston Martin named Finn McMissile. It’s easy to go to far giving cars human attributes, but the original Cars did a fine job at it. This time, it crossed the line for me, especially with McMissile’s spy gadgetry. Maybe I’m just cranky. And even if the spy gimics got old, listening to Michael Caine’s voice never does.

But still, this is Pixar so the animation is amazing (we saw it in 3D but it didn’t really add anything). Kids will like the bright colors and funny voices, and adults will have fun picking out all the various automotive jokes sprinkled liberally throughout (Big Ben in London is now Big Bentley, among a thousand others).

Thinking way too hard: At the end of Cars 2, I’m struck with the same question I had leaving Cars: There are old cars, and there are new cars. The cars all have parents and are in love, but how do they reproduce? When a mommy and a daddy car love each other very much, do they just go to the factory and get a baby? Who made these cars in the first place?

The answer is “pretty flippin’ awesome!”

I get to have a “mug shot” taken, tour the facility, and (per the JC Chamber of Commerce) “see tax dollars at work.” I’ll also get to experience two prison meals and assist hard-working jail personnel “work out any unexpected problems before the [actual] inmates move in.” Did I mention you get a commemorative t-shirt? Because you totally get a commemorative t-shirt.

You too can join in the fun by calling the Sheriff’s office at 573-934-9160. Tell ‘em Brian sent ya.

Now all I need is a good prison nick name. Something like T-Bone, Mad Dog or Knuckles, ya know? Post your suggestions in the comments!