Interesting, Unusual, or Funny - Volume 1

What the hell is going on here?

Our rental house on Lake George had a serious problem. Overgrown trees and bushes blocked almost all view of the water from the house. The best angle was a lost cause, but there was the potential to see this little gravel beach with just a bit of a trim.

Fortunately for us, it got more than just a bit of a trim. What would you think if you had a vacation renter do this much landscaping?

My favorite part of this video is that it makes me laugh in real life exactly where it made me laugh when it was being shot.

We started out with a priceline room with the worst possible view. We didn't know it was the hotel assistant GM who had brought up our luggage, but he responded when Heather opened the window and said, "Well, that sucks."

I should have been snapping pics on the evening of the 22nd. The sunset was much prettier, and we would have caught a tall ship that passed and had the drawbridge open so that it could go through. Not much really happened the evening that I was set up, but it's kind of cool anyway.

BTW, this is my first experiment making a time lapse video. I wish I had taken more pics, to smooth it out a little, and I thought the sky would be more interesting, but in watching it, a smoother capture of the coming and going of boats would have been better.

On June 1, 2011, we left work early, drove to Slidell, went out into the lake, and got ready to race. Everyone sat and waited for the marks to be placed, but they couldn't be placed at all. It's impossible to find a spot for an upwind mark when there is absolutely no wind at all.

We sat out there for close to an hour before the race was called on count of heat and boredom. Summer was officially on the lake.

We were taken to this unbelievable Christmas decorating display some 30 minutes south of Birmingham, AL. This is a glimpse of one feature, but there are hundreds and hundreds of items spread over an acre. The scene blazes with lights as little fake people celebrate Christmas in any way you can imagine. Clark Grizwold would weep with envy.

I love the carousel in New Orleans's City Park. It's one of the biggest and one of the fastest that I know, and it's ancient beams, bars, and mechanics reek of days past. The whole room is beautiful, and confusingly symmetric.

This is just a 17-second clip showing its canopy, and then coming down into the animals at the very end.

Mike the Tiger (Mike VI) plays in his habitat on October 12, 2010. Accompanying blog post on https://theskinnyonbenny.com/blog2/archives/887

I've spent lots of times on boats, but I had never been through a lock, until we took the rental pontoon through on July 31, 2010. There's not really a whole lot to it, but you can follow the process here.

Crystal has her children trained all about the evils of every ingredient that they might encounter. In this video, we're shooting Annika on the tube, but talking about an incident in a bait shop on the lake earlier that morning. This one is all about the story.

There are so many things I like about this minute of French Quarter Festival on 4/10/10. Despite the t-shirt and jeans, the lady plays the liquorice stick as well as anyone I've heard. Then, there's the barely-mobile old dude who dances through with the shirt that says, "Don't ask me for shit." And the old lady who is just going to pass by but then has to do a double-take once her ear catches the solo. By the way, this was around 10:00 or 11:00 on Royal Street on Saturday of the festival of this year. If anyone knows who this band is, I'd love to get their name.

I actually thought that this would show her inhaling her food much faster than it really does. Stick around for her being bum-rushed at 1:02 for a chuckle.

At Vanya's fourth birthday party, Sharples makes an amusing observation.

Scene: vacation in Maine, August 2009. Brent has some time to kill, and finds some primitive grass-cutting implement, probably similar to ones used by early man outside their caves. Coincidentally, the grass needs to be cut. The problem of having time to kill is solved.

I'm not sure why it's funny, but you can hear me chuckle at the end of the clip, and it still makes me laugh today.

Having dogs is exhausting.

A glimpse of the amount of respect I garner with my own pets. If you haven't watched this one yet, get someone else to bet you on the number of times I get humped in a minute and a half of video. The over/under is 2.5.

My nephew was over, and he does a good job of taking a lot of footage with the video camera. We spent about 90 minutes throwing this together using the dumb windows video editor. I'm kind of amused, but no one I've shown thinks it's worth a damn.

The title says it all on this one.

Chicken Dance Elmo dances his way right off the ledge. I'm not sure why I find this so funny.

Blossom steals ice out of a stranger's cooler during an LSU tailgate party.

While I'm posting fims made by my nephew, here's a movie he made three summers ago. It's a bit crude, to be sure, but it has its upside. For example, the Nancy Grace bit that leads it off. The credits are also amusing.