Homer's Travels: Entertaining the MoH and BM - Day 2 Recap and Day 3

Monday, February 18, 2008

Entertaining the MoH and BM - Day 2 Recap and Day 3

The end of day 2 (Saturday) was different than I expected. Instead of me going to bed early while the rest partied, we all sat down and played Scrabble for almost 4 hours. The Best Man and I were the only ones that were sober which made the games ... interesting. Some of the words were questionable and many of them can not be repeated in Homer's Travels. It all started with the BM putting down "BONER". The MoH put down "CRY" which led to her saying "Boner Cry" several times throughout the night. This seemed very funny to many at the table. I just wondered what a Boner Cry sounded like. In the end, I won one, the Wife won one, and the Best Man won one. I've confirmed that silly intoxicated people irritate the heck out of me. I really need to get over it.

Day 3 (Sunday) started off with breakfast at Mrs. Olsen's Coffee Hut. This place which I've mentioned many times, has terrific food. We had pancakes (Buttermilk and seven grain), eggs, bacon, sausage, and the Wife's favorite, bangers and mash. We left very full and very satisfied. A good start to the day.


We left Oxnard and headed into Los Angeles. We ended up at the LA Cathedral where we celebrates Mass. The Mass was ... well it was a Mass. We walked around the Cathedral a bit and stopped by the gift shop. I took some pictures which I added to my
Cathedral Flickr set.

It was about 11:30 when we were done at the Cathedral. It was too early to go to the Mythbusters and we were all feeling full from breakfast (Mrs. Olsen's breakfasts tend to stick with you in a good way) so lunch was not a priority. We decided to drive to Olvera Street and walk around there a bit. We did some more shopping. The Wife purchased her third skull bracelet - you can never have enough - and we watch folkloric dancers in the central plaza (I've added pictures to my Olvera Street Flickr Set). We walked through the Chinese-American museum
nearby which I'd try to see several times before but had always been closed. It was interesting. One more thing checked off the list.

We realized it was time to go so back to the car we went and we drove up to Thousand Oaks. I downed some nasty tasting Emergen-C on the way which helped the rest of the afternoon. We arrived about 30 minutes before the show. We got in and it turned out our seats were just as good as I thought they would be. We had a great view of the stage and the large screen that hung over it. The theater, which houses 1,800, was sold out from what I could see. The audience was a mix of parents and kids. When the lights went down there was enthusiastic applause and the show started.
The host of the show was some lady from the local NPR station. She came on stage with Adam Savage and Jaime Hyneman. As the interview started I was amazed at how much they sounded like themselves. They pretty much said that everything you see on the show is them and that they basically do their own stuff. The banter on the stage was very similar to the banter on the show. Adam kept talking over Jaime just like on the show. It was all very interesting and funny.

Next they talked of shows that Discovery Channel wouldn't let them air. They actually showed rough segments for a show that will never air - Myths about Flatulence.
Now, if you know the Wife's family, and yes I am a member of that family now, you will know that we often obsess on the passing of gas. For some awesome reason, it just the peak of humor. So watching the segments about flatulence were soooo us. The first myth was that Pretty Women Don't Fart. Adam rigged up a pair of underwear with a Hydrogen Sulphide meter and a microphone and then they convinced Kari Byron to wear them for a day. She was ... reluctant ... but she relented. The Hydrogen Sulphide meter malfunctioned resulting in multiple false alarms and embarrassment. At the end of the day no sound was recorded so Adam asked her to come back the next day at which point Kari responded with a totally awesome fart amplified by the loudspeakers.

The next segment was, of course, Can You Light Farts. Adam builds a chair and films himself lighting farts using a high speed camera. For all of you who want to experience what we experienced,
here's a video someone recorded in another live show.

After the videos they set up a couple microphones and let people ask questions. It turns out that most of the questions the Wife had, about if the show was scripted or spontaneous, had already been asked during the interview so we ended up not asking any questions. A lot of the questions and myth suggestions came from 8 to 12 year old boys and girls. The questions and suggestions were surprisingly good. There was one little boy whose question was pretty much incoherent. The question came out something like this: Can ... ummm ... shoes ... really fast ... Buster .... Shoes ... On Fire ... If you run .... can ... ummm ....really fast ... This went on for about a minute but he eventually got the idea across - Can you run fast enough to start your shoes on fire?


What was really scary were a couple of
fanboys who looked like they spend their entire waking life playing video games and watching Mythbusters, asked some really hideous fanboy questions. One actually asked Adam to repeat a two word line that he had said when doing the Diet Coke-Mentos myth. The line was "It's Soda" and apparently the fanboy thought that was totally awesome. Scary.

They ended the show with a blooper reel and an explosion montage that was totally cool. Just the water heater explosions alone were amazing.

We all left the show thoroughly satisfied. A great show and a fun time.
It was now almost 4:00 and the Mrs. Olsen's glow was finally wearing off so we ended up a BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse. We had some good food and the MoH and BM, both beer connoisseurs, declared the beer to be good. If you every go to BJ's, don't forget to order desert - the Pizookies are great! We ate, drank, and had great conversation before we headed home to relax and chat some more.

Day 3 was the best day of entertaining the MoH and BM yet. We all had a good time. The Mythbusters put on a good show and definitely was the high point of the day.

8 comments:

  1. Silly intoxicated people only works if you're also silly and intoxicated at the time. Being the lightweight that I am, I usually avoid such things.

    Sounds like the Mythbusters show is a lot of fun. The flatulance stuff (if your family just can't get enough) can also be found on the website. The water heater shots were great, although I saw that episode at the time my own water heater was leaking, which didn't give me a lot of confidence at the time...

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  2. GH: The Wife, MoH, and BM are happy drinkers. It is irritating when you a being serious about playing a game and everyone else is being silly.

    The show was totally entertaining and fun. That water heater show gave me the willys. Fortunately the safety equipment on those things work.

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  3. Ahhhh... Scrabble. I believe we had some silliness playing that game once.

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  4. MH: If I remember right the silliness was me letting you win.

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  5. Intoxicated people only really bug me if they are sloppy drunks (want to hug and tell you how wunnerful you are) or puking drunks.

    What? Girls fart? Noooooo!

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  6. JaG: The Wife and MoH are more silly than sloppy. Since I don't drink, I think it's hard to be around all these happy people - I always feel like I'm not in on the joke.

    I heard the girl poot with mine own ears - tis true, bonny lasses pass the gasses.

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  7. Scrabble for Unix geeks:

    Wildwords "...wild tiles can represent any sequence of one or more letters".

    Shell syntax for Scrabble. What's next, Perl regular expressions?

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  8. Best Man: I bow to the ultimate of Geek Comments!

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