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I have never been to a wedding weekend so full of pain and injury, yet so full of love and happiness.

Last weekend, my cousin Michael married his new wife, Amber, bringing a wonderful, vivacious and joyful woman into our family. And getting to meet their son, and my new cousin, Ben, was also a treat.

I came down with a sore throat and fever that knocked me out for a day at least (thanks to whoever gave it to me; really, thanks) on the way back. I got off easy.

The day before the wedding, there was a death in Amber’s family. Her and her relatives are in my prayers.

The morning of the wedding, Amber cut herself while preparing food and had to go to the Emergency Room and get half-a-dozen stitches. She wore a splint during the ceremony on the beach.

Also that morning, the groom’s father (my Uncle Bill), got a piece of pork lodged in his throat that kept him uncomfortable all day long. After the wedding, he also had to go to the Emergency Room, where they removed it and ordered him to eat softer foods.

His wife also had to go to the ER when a blister on her foot became infected.

We lost my sister for most of the day after the wedding. Luckily, she was found and was fine. She was doing one of her favorite things: shopping.

And, strangest of all, my cousin’s husband was standing outside and got hit in the head by a hamburger that fell out of a tree. Yup, you don’t have to re-read that sentence. A hamburger fell out of the tree. As close as we can tell, a squirrel must have stolen a grilled burger at the campground and hoarded it.

But despite all of the strangeness, and folks saying things like “Is God trying to tell y’all something,” the show went on. And I can’t be happier to have Amber and Ben – and their family – be a part of mine now.

But if Michael ever does get married again (which better not happen!), I’m wearing Kevlar and a helmet.

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No, I’m quite that old yet, thank God. An app in the App Store will
take your photo and do a damn good job of taking 20 to 30 years off
your life. I think I may make this my FB pic for awhile, see what kind
of comments I get.

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It took some trudging around in the mud at a river, a lake and a
stream, and visits to local pet stores, but my native-themed
iMacquarium is now up and running with all of its inhabitants.

The rocks and such I got from a local riverbed. Several of the minnows
are from a stream and my one mosquitofish (Junior) is from a lake near
my home. There are also about half a dozen red rosy minnows (actually
feeder fish from a pet store) and now, the iMacquarium’s cleaner in
residence, Cajun the crayfish.

The levels have stabilized and everything seems to be on track.

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I haven’t given up yet, but so far I’ve only been successful in
netting one small minnow for my natural fish tank. I plan on trying
again tomorrow. For now, it’s one small eastern mosquitofish. I’ve
named him Junior, after Indiana Jones.

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>
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> I think I may have used too much rock and stone for my native fish > display, but the fish in here really are going to be very small. And > that’s tomorrow’s mission, finding the fish. If anyone knows of good > minnow spots in Chester County, let me know!

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After just watching it in HD, it’s hard to figure out a lead for this review of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” possibly the last written.

Cameron and I go way back, from “Aliens” (one of my favorite movies of all time) to “The Abyss” to the “Terminator” series, and yes, to “Titanic.”

But this one was different. Better? Not in all ways. It’s hard to turn your eyes from the beautiful colors everywhere on the planet Pandora. The Na’vi also were beautiful, but something about them distracted me. The plot? I figured out how everything would play out in the first 30 minutes, right down to the very last scene – which I saw coming from the beginning of the movie.

The message? Well at least there was a little more meat here. Obviously, it’s a cautionary tale on our plunder of our own rain forests. But there were other things jumbled in there, as well. There was the “Dances With Wolves” parallel of Jake’s rise in the clan of the natives. There was also a little “Romeo and Juliet” going on with his native girlfriend. I thought they were all going to turn into Jets and Sharks and have a rumble after the two first mated. And in the end battle, there was definitely a “Return of the Jedi” thing, paralleling the Ewoks victory over the Empire in the forests of Endor.

The whole thing made me a feel a bit like I was watching our old family movie from the 1950s of my Uncle Bill trying to overstuff the trunk of his Mercedes and not being able to get the latch to hold. Cameron may have put too much in.

And then there were the Na’vi themselves. Blue, tall, graceful – did I say blue yet? And for some reason, with all of this technology and the 3-D and everything, they still can’t get the mouths to move naturally when they talk. It still didn’t look smooth to me. I was disappointed. So, I spent much of the time trying not to dwell on the mouths by checking out how “Barbie-ized” all of the Na’vi female figures were.

Then, there were the obvious names. Not real obvious, like if you named your new town “City.” We’re talking super obvious. The planet itself, Pandora. Obviously humans opened up quite a Pandora’s box when they went there. The magical stuff they’re mining (we’re never really told what it’s for) is unobtainium. Lol. That’s right. You can’t get it. Then, during the military set’s final bombing sequence, a bombing run is code-named “Valkyrie,” just like the German plot to kill Hitler that failed. So it was doomed by its obvious name.

What have I taken away? That James Cameron now writes by formula, comes up with dorky, obvious names and still can’t get his animators to do digital speech right. And with it all, he still somehow made the highest-grossing film of all time in North America.

Well, at least we still have “Titanic.” Now there was an obvious movie. We all knew how it was going to end. But at least he didn’t name any characters “Drowned.”

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Another week, another episode of Syfy’s “Ghost Hunters.” Now, there have been allegations against the show in the past – Just plug “Ghost Hunters fake” into Google or YouTube. I’m not going into them in here, nor am I accusing them of anything. Besides an experience I had when I was young, the show was one of the things that got me interested in the paranormal.

I was, however, intrigued by last night’s new episode, “Spirits in the Night.” For the first time in a long while, the Hunters went back to a private residence to look into paranormal claims.

Besides their multiple experiences and EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon), they determined that a scraping sound they heard from the second floor might have been a child’s stroller. So, they set it up so it was barely in the DVR camera’s frame and let it go. Later, during evidence review, it was shown that the stroller later moved.

They told the family’s mother that they tried to get the stroller into the same frame as a window that had supposedly had activity. But despite that, I think it’s hard to say definitively that the stroller moving was paranormal because it’s at the edge of the frame and we can’t see the whole stroller itself. It’s entirely possible that someone off-frame on the ground pushed it. Am I saying that’s what happened? Nope. I’m just saying that the evidence would have been more convincing if we could see the whole stroller and it was at the center of the frame.

What do you think? Leave a comment.

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I love Showtime’s “The Tudors,” even if it did make me feel uncomfortable watching an episode once with my mother (there’s a sex scene in every episode). But one thing my mother and I agree on is this: While Jonathan Rhys Meyers is an excellent actor and does a great job of playing Henry VIII, he looks nothing like him. For one thing, Henry had fiery red hair and a full, bushy beard. What’s with the scruffy goatee?

The other thing is that Henry was a huge man, some put him at at least 6 feet 3 inches tall. IMDb has Rhys Meyers pegged at 5 feet 10 inches tall.

So I fired up Photoshop to give you an approximate idea of the difference. I used a height ruler picture as a guide to make the (unscientific – I used Photoshop’s grid to eyeball it) comparison. I think the results speak for themselves. As bad as Rhys Meyers’ Henry is on the TV screen, the real Henry could probably crush him!

(One other admission, and some you Photoshop hounds may call me on it: The only “Tudors” pic I could find of Rhys Meyers that was full body was still cut off at the knees. So I had to “guesstimate” and borrowed one of the real Henry’s calves to complete the shot!)

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I realized yesterday that Friday’s post on the Donner Party was my 100th post on the new SteveSobek_dot_net. Now, if I were a funny comedian with a TV show, I’d dedicate a whole show to highlights of all of my funny stuff. But, I’m not really that funny. So I turned to someone who is – Dr. Zibbs, also known as “That Blue Yak.” If you’re from Chester County, Pa., and you spend any time on Twitter, you’ve heard of him.

As The Blog Catalog put it, “Founded in the early 12th century as group dedicated to ‘keeping down the peasants,’ ‘That Blue Yak’ slowly evolved into the most important humor blog on earth.” I told Dr. Zibbs that I would send him just seven questions, and that some of the questions “would be very important in some other universe.” He was gracious enough to answer. And to be funny.

ME: Heels or flats?

ZIBBS: Heels for me. Flats for the ladies. But twice for Halloween I did dress like a lady and although I wanted to wear heels I couldn’t find them in size 13 which kind of ruined the outfit. And it kind of sucked because I wanted to be the super hot chick. And thinking of this reminds me that some dude was checking me out and then his friends said, "Dude, that’s chick’s a guy.”

ME: Would you fly through a volcanic ash cloud if you were a yak pilot?

ZIBBS: Actually, I’m surprised I haven’t been asked for advice. Like they call me up and ask me to lower myself into the volcano. But so far, no call.

ME: Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?

ZIBBS: Because the freezer light wouldn’t accomplish what the fridge light is intended to do: shine its light on you as you stand naked in your robe in the middle of the night looking for something to eat, the low shine of the bulb making you aware of how pathetic you are.

ME: Why does the Easter bunny have eggs? Rabbits don’t lay eggs.

ZIBBS: Consult your Bible. Page 127.

ME: How does a yak get blue, and how does a blue yak end up in Chester County, Pa.?

ZIBBS: After a three-second thought process four years ago when I was trying to name my blog. And for the record, the "that" in "that blue yak" is there as if people were having a conversation about several blue yaks and someone says, "No, not THAT blue yak. …THAT one … right there. THAT BLUE YAK."

ME: You seem to know a lot of things. Where is the Ark of the Covenant? The Holy Grail?

ZIBBS: It’s in the Detroit Sears. In the luggage department.

ME: Do you have a secret Yak cave?

ZIBBS: Yes. Decorated in orange, 70s-style shag.

You can find Dr. Zibbs’ blog on the Interwebs at thatblueyak.blogspot.com.

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