#SecuredThePorch: Accomplished
BK Guests:
BK Guests:
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Reminder:
On Saturday, June 3, BK brother Al and Beverly DelPizzo are being recognized for their community service at the Elizabeth Schrum-Cook Scholarship Fund cocktail reception. For a good time and a great cause...
Saturday June 3rd
St. John Neumann Conference Center
146 Metlars Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854
St. John Neumann Conference Center
146 Metlars Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854
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Mike Haggerty - you were on your game last week going 2 for 2. You correctly identified the theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Jack Ryan as the main character in Hunt for Red October. This is a feat that is highly unusual at the BK club. Long term memory recall is something that is becoming more and more challenging. It is fairly common for questions to arise at the BK club on Saturday's. These questions could be in any field: science, sports, politics, history, etc., and are usually met with blank stares. It is at this point that somebody, in an attempt to sound smart, provides an answer, known to be false, but cannot easily be refuted. Sometimes the guilty party gets caught by a little google fact checking. But, often times, they survive with a reputation a little greater than the previous Saturday. Of course, the error in all of this is believing the rare feats of knowledge and memory recall will be remembered for a few days or more and that is where this blog comes in...to capture and highlight those times when one of us exercises a degree of mental aptitude. So, Mike, you are definitely on your game but, remember, we are talking about the BK club.
You can't beat a good quote from the Great Generation. Rick Black shared a quote he often heard from his dad back in the day.
"Sometimes life is a shit sandwich and eventually, we'll all take a bite."
-- Joe Black
Cindy B. - Get well! A full knee replacement. Yikes! With your support staff, I expect you will breeze through rehab in flying colors.
Brother Al - Happy Birthday. Time has been very kind to you.
Rob Sarosa - Happy Birthday! We haven't seen you in a while at the BK club. Please! Drop by.
Patty Bets - Yes! That's correct. Patty Bets of PattyBets.com. I briefly heard bits and pieces of your golf injury: a swing of a golf club, contact, ball in flight, a ricochet of some sort, and a swollen cheekbone. Sounds interesting. Please share if you care to. Think of it as a public service announcement. You could be saving a member of the BK club.
Check out PattyBets.com if you want some advice on sports wagering. This guy knows his stuff. There is rumored to be an industry leader in sports analytics behind this operation. I just don't know if it's Patty Bets himself or his anonymous partner. Maybe it's a true partnership like Lennon and McCartney, Shack and Koby, Marx and Engels or maybe Patty Bets is carrying his partner. I just don't know. It's a mystery to me.
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BK Book Review
Stephen King | On Writing - A Memoir of the Craft (reviewed by Ed Bauer)
This was such an unexpected and enjoyable read. The book is part memoir and part writing manual. Prior to being a successful writer, King had a rather routine and ordinary life while growing up in Maine and getting into the kinds of trouble that many young boys find themselves in. Many of his stories are hilarious and ended up being the seeds of his best works of fiction. One story was about Stephen and his older brother Dave playing in a wooded area they called the jungle. While exploring the area, Stephen asked his brother to take him home so he could "drop a load". After persistently being told "no", Stephen decided to do what the cowboys and Indians had done...squat down and let er fly. After completing the task, he grabbed a handful of green shiny leaves (poison ivy of course) and cleaned himself. "Two days later I was bright red from the back of my knees to my shoulder blades. My penis was spared but my testicles turned into stoplights. My ass itched all the way up to my ribcage."
There are countless stories like this peppered throughout the book. I simply didn't expect Stephen King to be so darn funny.
Some of King's advice on writing:
1. The adverb is not your friend. "The road to hell is paved with adverbs. Avoid them at all costs and I will shout it from the rooftops."
2. Write in the active voice, not the passive voice. The passive voice is the voice of little boys wearing shoe polish mustaches and little girls wearing Mommy's high heels. Ex. "My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun."
Oh, man - who farted, right? A simpler way to express this idea might be "My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss."
3. Read a lot and write a lot. If you want to be a writer, you must do these two things. King reads between seventy and eighty books a year... simply because he loves stories.
This is a very entertaining book on so many levels. I highly recommend this book.
