Hilo Days: YMCA Summer Camp

Here’s another story from my old “Hilo Days” website, an excerpt from the limited edition book I made for my family.

YMCA Summer Camp

Practically every kid has been to summer camp at least once. I went to mine in 1957. For some reason, I didn’t say no when Dad asked if I wanted to go to the YMCA summer camp, but when it came time to go, I was sure that I’d only stay the one week I’d signed up for, then would return home for a normal summer vacation.

I ended up staying the full six weeks. God, it was fun. Every Friday I’d call up Dad and ask him if I could stay another week. During my fifth week, they made me a Junior Counselor so I got to stay the last week free.

There was this neat bus that made its run into the YMCA headquarters on Saturday, dropping off the previous week’s campers and picking up the new ones to join us veterans who were still there.

Just like in the movies, the camp bus was a rickety old thing that rattled, wheezed and puffed up to the campground, which was along the way to Hawaii Volcanos National Park, about a half-mile from the volcano road store and post office. You could easily miss the campground if you didn’t know exactly where to turn.

The campground complex consisted of a main building, a small cabin, a large front yard, and a flagpole.

The former YMCA Camp Main Building

The main building was a two-story job. The camp director’s office and bunk, a dining hall and kitchen, and the counselor’s bunks were on the top floor. The bottom floor, which was on ground level, consisted of the showers and toilets, and a bunk-room for the campers.

The slightly older male campers slept in the small cabin, on double-decker bunks. I stayed in the main building for three weeks, then transferred to the small cabin for the last three weeks.

We split into teams, each headed by a counselor and an assistant (the aforementioned junior counselors). Our team was called the Kilauea Lumberjacks (“We’re the Kilauea Lumberjacks; man, we’re gone! We ain’t got brains, but we got brawn!”) and we were always challenging the other groups to wrestling.

We hardly ever won, but after all, we ain’t got brains …

*     *     *

(Note: The summer camp site, built in 1938 was sold in 1986 and converted to the Kilauea Lodge and Restaurant. a bed and breakfast  inn.)

The Wise Young Boy

The kid's got a point! Be a kid, don't grow up so fast. And just to let you know, I STILL don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

A New Memorial Day Memory

I was flying home from Las Vegas in the first-class section of Omni Air International yesterday and made a remarkable discovery. Of the 20 seats in first class, 18 were filled with seniors older than I am.

The wheelchair-bound were loaded first, and by the time they called for first class and we were able to board, all but four of the section’s seats were occupied. That’s a lot of old folks and others traveling with them. That was a lot of old folks.

A very senior couple sat behind my brother-in-law and me – an 89-year-old man (I know his age because I heard him enter the “Oldest Person On Board” contest) and his slightly younger wife, the same couple going to Vegas and returning home to Honolulu. She was jibber-jabbering through both flights, from take-off to landing. He kept answering with a gruff “Huh?”

They each went to the toilet four times both ways, grabbing the back of my seat for balance and jostling me out of whatever airplane-drone daze I was in. The elderly man kept hacking and clearing his throat, belching up lots of gas, and coughing up what I presume was handfuls of greenish-yellow phlegm. And no, I didn’t turn around and look.

It was pretty disgusting, and I knew I’d never forget this flight to and from Vegas.

But you know what? Yesterday was Memorial Day holiday on the flight home, and I happened to notice he was wearing a jacket that said "Iwo Jima" on the back. The man was a Navy veteran of World War II and had been there when the Navy transported U.S. Army troops to Iwo Jima. I immediately banished all irritating thoughts out of my head and changed my attitude completely.

As we were deplaning, I caught his eye and silently mouthed “Thank you.”

God bless his heart.

Leeeeaa-ving On a Jet Plane

Gonna do it again. Gonna spend a few days in Las Vegas (flying out this morning), so the Wandering blog will shuttered until early next week. My other blogs will run on the usual six-day schedule; watch for the posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Cya next Tuesday. Y'all take care of yourselves ... heah?

Where Hawaii Ranks 12

The University of Hawaii leaves the Western Athletic Conference on July 1 of this year, joining the Mountain West Conference in football and the Big West Conference in most other sports.

That’s given USA Today a chance to update its rankings of which schools are tops in subsidizing their sports programs in 2006-2011.

Hawaii is nowhere near the top in these categories, but if you flip the list and rank the conference schools by LEAST subsidized, the University of Hawaii’s stature (or lack of it) becomes more evident.

To wit:

Athletic Programs Least Subsidized in the Mountain West Conference

1.       Fresno State (27.8% of programs)

2.       Boise State (28%)

3.       HAWAII (32.6%)

4.       San Diego State (40.1%)

5.       New Mexico (41.2%)

Athletic Programs Least Subsidized in the Big West Conference

1.       HAWAII (32.6%)

2.       San Diego State (40.1%)

3.       Long Beach State (65%)

4.       California State Fullerton (71.4%)

5.       University of California at Davis (77.6%)

Lie In My Shade

Lie in my shade and rest your eyes

Protected from the midday light,

Dream of peace and azure skies

With snowy feathers high in flight.

Give pause to dream our gentle touch

Accompanied by gentle sighs,

Of whispered words that say so much

Postponing thoughts of late goodbyes. 

You were with me yesterday.

Walk in my path and follow me

To where together we shall find

A land of rest forever free,

Our complications left behind.

Keep your sight focused ahead

Release your worries long confined

Cast them back where you have tread

Leave them languishing behind. 

You are with me today.  

Bask in my light to warm your heart

And break the day when tulips bloom,

The loving thoughts that I impart

Will mingle with your sweet perfume.

Let me become your morning sun

Illuminating every room,

Leaving nothing wished undone

‘Neath the alabaster moon. 

You’ll be with me tomorrow.

Laugh in my rain and raise your head

Up to the mist that I will send thee,

Let Heaven’s kisses ever spread

And join our joyous jubilee.

Skip to the rainbow up ahead

Its beauty arc will always see

A message in our hearts instead

That you and I … will ever be. 

You are with me always.

(I wrote this in 2007 when I was in a good mood.)

Hunky Lizard

While wandering around Almaden Winery Park near my son's home in San Jose, I heard some rustling in the bushes near one of the walkway bridges. Turning my attention to the ground, squinting and focusing carefully, this is what I saw -->

To those of us in Hawaii who don't see lizards often, save for little three-inch brown anoles, the sight of a husky eight-incher can be quite an adventure. All I can say is it's a good thing the wife wasn't with me or the entire neighborhood would be rousted outside by what they would have thought was a fire alarm.

Actually, I saw three or four of these things, and snapped maybe a couple or three dozen pictures, sneaking up on them and hoping that I could blow the picture up enough to get a decent picture. Wouldn't you know it, the one picture I didn't know I was taking, because of the sun's glare on the camera monitor, was the one that turned out the best.

In fact, the lizard filled almost the entire image; all the pic needed was a little bit of cropping.

Sometimes, it pays to be lucky instead of good.

Greens, Greens, Greens

Wandering around 99 Ranch Market in Cupertino, I always stop by the leafy-green vegetable cooler that's full of "choy" of all kinds, as well as some green veggies that I've never heard of.

I call it the "choy cooler" (which is likely a misnomer) and it's overflowing with a wonderful selection that'll brighten your dinner plate anytime.

They've got a terrific selection of cabbage and other leafy greens, crunchy stuff like Taiwan bok choy, large gai choy, taku choi, baby bok choy mui, long bok choy sum, baby bok choy sum, baby bok choy, as well as Chinese celery, lettuce stems, snow pea leaf, Vietnamese spinach, fresh yam leaf, and sher li hon.

I tell you, it's a veggie heaven.

Three-Generation Haircut

A special first-time event for me was the three-generations haircut that my son, my grandson and I had at the same time, same day, same place.

We all trucked over to Focus Hair in Cupertino, where my son (right yellow arrow) has been getting his hair trimmed for many years, since he started working at Hewlett-Packard 'way back when. He and I had been there together before, but not with my grandson.

So this was a special day. Little grandson (left yellow arrow) wasn't too keen about it, though, and whined up a storm until it became evident he was trapped in his mothers arms on the chair. Being a neat kid and a nicely behaved boy when he has to, he settled down, cringing every now and then when he felt tickles on his ear.

I got my usual #1-1/2 trim all around, which rather distressed a couple of the women barbers. But y'know, that's okay, Because they thought I looked good anyway.

It wasn't easy setting up this picture, but it's the best I could do. Thank gawd for mirrors, huh?

The Disney "Cars" Franchise

"Cars" Toy Display at Toys R Us in San Jose

I have no idea why I was taken aback by the huge "Cars" display at Toys R Us. After all, we have all seen similar displays whenever a movie has hit the big time. I guess I never thought of how pervasive the Disney Cars and Cars 2 animated films have become.

Instead of buying my grandson's birthday present in Hawaii and taking it with us to the mainland, it was decided that the more prudent thing to do would be to wait until we got there and then take the boy to the store so he could pick his own present.

The kid sure knew what he wanted. As soon as we got into Toys R Us, he made a beeline to the correct aisle and proceeded to investigate ... inspecting each and every item on the shelf, one at a time. He must have spent an hour doing that, so while the wife and his father helped him, I wandered around the store looking at what they had on the shelves.

I did the whole store, went back to the "Cars" aisle, and they were still at it. The kid knew the names of all the car characters and what happened during the World Grand Prix races in Cars 2. Amazing.

He finally made his choice. And you know what? He picked a wall-mounted track system that wasn't even a "Cars" item - Hot Wheels Wall Tracks. That's not to say he's lost interest in the Cars cars. Nearly all the gifts his friends and preschool classmates gave him at his birthday party were cars of some kind.

There must be a conspiracy we don't know about.

The Palazzo Atrium

The Atrium at the Palazzo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas doesn't receive the acclaim that the floral displays at the Bellagio Conservatory, but that doesn't mean it isn't spectacular.

The Palazzo display is located at the juncture of the Palazzo and Venetian hotels, where a beautiful waterfall heralds the entrance to The Shoppes at Palazzo, which then segue into The Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian.

A wonderful spring scene welcomed us with gigantic flowers and what probably is the largest butterfly with flirty eyes that I or the wife have ever seen.

It's one of my favorite stop-and-snap points in Las Vegas.

Red Rock Canyon Visitor Center

I’ve been to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Las Vegas before, but this past April was the first time I’ve been to the visitor center. Red Rock is situated west of downtown Las Vegas, a 17-mile straight shot on Charleston Boulevard from Las Vegas Boulevard.

You’ll drive past Summerlin, then as the housing becomes sparse, find yourself heading up into the mountains. Look for a sign saying “Red Rock Scenic Drive” on the right, with a low-level building in the short distance. That’s the visitor center.

It’ll set you back $7 to get into the conservation area, but that entitles you to take a 13-mile scenic drive through geologic formations that took 65 million years to create (give or take a century or so … that's silly of me, huh?). It also gets you into the visitor center where you’ll learn all about how the canyon and the spectacular red rock formation was created.

We didn’t get to take the scenic drive this trip, but I’ll make sure to do that another time (we were kind of in a rush, unfortunately). We did wander around the displays and exhibits at the visitor center, however, bringing back a plethora of pictures for our album of memories. I was particularly interested in the wildlife displays.

Here are a few to tickle your interest: 

The Air Pavilion

The Fire Pavilion

Golden Eagle

Great Horned Owl

Giant Desert Hairy Scorpion

Desert Tarantula

Picnic Area
(Click on picture for larger panoramic view)

Bellagio Conservatory’s Spring Display

One of the Las Vegas “must see” venues that is always on my visit list is the floral display featured in the Bellagio Hotel & Casino’s Conservatory. If you read Left Field Wander in early February, then you might have caught my post on the winter display, complete with pictures.

The last time I was in Las Vegas – this past April – the wife and I took in the conservatory’s spring display, which was Dutch spring themed with a bounty of flowers, especially tulips.

It’s always a pleasure to wander around with the crowd, and gaze in awe at the magnificence of the garden before you. They pull out all the stops in the presentations.

Consequently, I make sure my digital camera’s battery is well-charged, and that I have plenty of capacity for the dozens of high-resolution pictures that I plan to bring home with me. That’s exactly what I did, and I’d show you all of them, but that’s not possible.

So … here are a select few for you to enjoy:

Carousel

Flower Bed

Parasols and Bees

Tulips

Hyacinths

Large Swan

Floral Interpretation of Claude Monet's
"Fisherman's Cottage on the Cliffs at Varingville"

I can’t wait to see how they’re going to theme the summer display. Shall we all plan on going?

Happy Mother's Day



Mother Dorothy and Craig, c. 1945



How Life Began on Earth

Have I ever told you my theory about how life came to be on Earth? No? Okay, here goes:

Everybody’s heard lots of theories, and those who are smarter than I am theorize that the chemical soup was just right at the right time, and some kind of energy burst (say, a lightning bolt) caused them to bond together into some sort of bacteria that divided and conquered and eventually morphed over millions, perhaps billions of years, into us.

Then of course, there’s that “So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing” belief.

My take on it, however, is that billions of years ago, a space vehicle full of refugees from another cosmic world was passing our solar system on its way to the outer edges of the ever-expanding universe. Maybe they were escaping a tyrannical ruler, maybe they were just explorers. Who knows? Actually, who cares?

The point is that, no matter what planet you’re from, everybody makes garbage. And consequently, everybody has to get rid of the garbage. That’s what the Garbage Disposal Shuttle is for. Everybody knows that.

Anyway, when the refugees (or whatever) passed our solar system, they needed to get rid of their garbage. So they filled up their Garbage Disposal Shuttle and sent it out to dump the garbage where it would get sucked into, and consumed in flames by, our sun.

However, instead of sending out an experienced Senior Waste Disposal Engineer/Pilot, they decided to give their young Apprentice Waste Disposal Engineer/Pilot some experience and assigned him the task. Never mind that he sported a spinal stripe Mohawk and had Velupian rings hanging from his elbow ears … just give the guy a chance.

So he gets into the shuttle and takes off. As he nears the Asteroid Belt, his pocket communicator ding-a-lings. It’s an incoming text message. (Don’t get ahead of me, now.)

The young alien guy takes the elbow-earphones off and turns his attention to his pocket communicator so he can read the message. It’s from his girlfriend (or whatever it is they call the female of the species). She’s sending him some pictures of herself in intriguing poses, which totally captures his attention.

Suddenly, there’s a huge jolt as he bounces off an asteroid, and the Garbage Disposal Shuttle careens out of control, heading straight for this planet that’s looming larger and larger before him. He panics and ejects in his Garbage Disposal Shuttle Escape Pod, leaving the shuttle to its ultimate fate as he zoots on back to the mother ship.

Meanwhile, the shuttle itself enters the Earth’s gravitational field and crashes on land – land that is nothing but cooled, black lava. The garbage of course, spills out and covers the lava.

Now, inside the garbage are some microscopic, wormy, creepy-crawly things that continue to munch away on the detritus of the alien space travelers. They multiply, leaving their own waste behind, waste that creates the first patch of soil on the barren lava-encrusted planet. From that patch eventually emerges more thingies, which make more soil, which encourages more creepies.

And so forth and so on. Creepies become bigger creepies, which grow fins, or legs, or wings, or a combination of all these things. They evolve, grow larger, and next thing you know … billions of years later, we have mankind.

Someday, humans are going to travel to distant worlds, creating our own garbage along the way, and disposing of it responsibly, by shooting it into a star. But who knows? We might send a novice pilot out in our own Garbage Disposal Shuttle, someone who might become distracted by a text message and who might accidentally dump our garbage on a lifeless planet.

It’s a lesson written in the stars: “Don’t text while driving!”

I Ain't Payin' No Stinkin' $10

I was actually looking forward to checking out the Ferraris on display at The Wynn Resort, so after I cashed in my slot machine winnings (see the post of a couple of days ago), the wife and I wandered down the shops concourse to check out the Penski-Wynn Ferrari Showroom.

Pinchy was with me, and I was planning to take a few shots of him ogling the outrageously expensive cars. Yeah, yeah, I was going to take pix of the wife too.

We stopped short at the entrance. There, on a stanchion, was a notice that admission (ADMISSION!) was $10 a person. Ten bucks to walk around and look at cars that they were going to try and sell you. Balk, balk, balk.

It's not that I'm cheap. I mean, I've paid a lot more to see other things, including some rather tacky tourist attractions. But c'mon, I'm not going to lay down a sawbuck just to drool over a car or two or three.

Consequently, I just stuck my camera into the entrance, smiled nicely at the beautiful young women eagerly waiting for me to hand over my money and escort me and the wife around the showroom, and snapped a few pictures.

As a consolation, we checked out the Ferrari Store adjacent to the showroom. There were some nice t-shirts but they too were out of my league. I didn't want to spend $250 for a Ferrari shirt, and neither was I going to buy my grandson one that costs $100. I mean, the only result of wearing those shirts is that I'm going to spill spaghetti sauce on the front, and my grandson is going to slather some noodles all over his.

No Ferrari souvenir. Shucks.

The 'Dirty' Channel Guide

Conversation in my mind:

Me: Hey! This channel guide has coffee stains on it! What kind of classy hotel is this anyway? You'd think Wynn's housecleaning would replace something like this, don't you?

The Wife: Put on your glasses.

Me: Oh, okay.

The Wife: Look at the channel guide again.

Me: Ah, it's a classy design on the side. Never mind!

Where are the 40s?

This is a new one on me.

I've heard of hotels eliminating certain floors for whatever reason. Example: Many hotels still don't have a 13th floor, skipping from 12 to 14 for superstitious reasons. Their philosophy, I guess, is "Why take chances?"

But I've never been in a hotel that eliminated a whole series of floors until I stayed recently at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas.

One of the first things I noticed when I got into the elevator to go up to the 52nd floor was that floors 40 through 49 were missing. And it's not as though they were there and the elevator skipped them entirely. The floor-indicator went smoothly from 39 to 50, confirming that the 40s were missing.

I wonder why that is? Yeah, I know, I should have asked someone.

So all I can do is speculate. Does it have something to do with the Chinese superstition that the number "4" is unlucky? I dunno. Anybody have a better answer?

Thank You, Mr. Wynn

For about a year, I’d been receiving an offer from the Wynn Resort to enjoy three complimentary nights at The Wynn in Las Vegas. Really, I don’t know what I did to earn that offer, but as it so often happens, I was never able to take advantage of it.

Until this past month when the wife and I took a break and visited family in San Jose. Since both my son and his wife work, and since our grandson goes to preschool, weekdays there for us are usually spent on our own.

Not this year … I took Steve Wynn up on his offer. Not only that, but I got a ridiculous roundtrip airfare on Southwest Airlines too.

It just may be we’re lucky this way, but the nice young man who checked us in at the front desk was from Hawaii and gave us his best service, including getting us a couple of bottles of ice-cold water from the back.

Our room at the Wynn
(Click on the picture for a panoramic view)

The Wynn Resort is beautiful, and the room they gave us was top notch – not as nice as the ones I stayed in at The Venetian and Palazzo the other year, but mighty nice indeed. The bed was sumptuous and mega-comfortable, and the lights and drapes were all remote-controlled.

Just press an image on either the bedside control screen or one of the two screens on the wall, and the drapes and/or sheers opened or closed, and the room lights turned on, dimmed, or turned off.

The view from our room

And at night, when we turned the room lights off and opened the drapes, we were treated with an awesome view of the Las Vegas Strip.

Part of the package was a $300 slot credit. They didn’t give you the money, of course, but they entered it into my slot card account. Whenever I’d place a bet on a slot machine, the money I bet was replaced by the credit. Until the credit ran out.

So, the first thing I did after we got set up in the room was to play with the $300. I don’t remember the name of the slot machine I played, but whenever a certain symbol showed up, it activated a display that lit up three bills ranging from $5 to $1,000.

Now, you need to know that whenever the wife watches me play, I have bad luck. And she knows it too, so after I’d spun the reels a couple of times, she walked away. As soon as she walked away, I got that symbol and won $40. She came over and I explained what had happened. Then I started losing again –playing $2, getting it replaced by the credit, playing $2 more, getting it replaced, and so on and so on.

When the $300 credit ran out, I had won $353, which was mine to keep. Subtract the $20 I put in to start the process and I was $333 ahead. Not bad. Meals! Free! Courtesy of Mr. Wynn!

Thank you, Mr. Wynn.

A Touch of Hawaii

Only on an airline that flies many travelers to and from Hawaii will you find a "Keep Your Feet Off" sign like this one.

It's not a very clear picture because I had to take it from a couple of rows back. It wasn't very well-lighted in the cabin when I noticed it, and I didn't want to call attention to myself by turning on the camera flash.

Under those two bare feet is the word, "Mahalo," which in case you're not from Hawaii or aren't familiar with Hawaiian words, means "Thank You."

So ... keep your stinky feet to yourself and don't plaster them toe jams on the bulkhead wall!

Beware the Mustachioed Man

Here's a twist on the "Guns don't kill people, People kill people" slogan. I wonder if this bumper sticker that I came across recently was distributed by the "Clean Shaven" branch of the National Rifle Association. Whatcha think?

And do you think that Storm Trooper on the left of the sticker has anything to do with the message? Or the fact that the two are situated above the word "Frontier"?

Hmmmm ... gives one pause.

The Angry Birds Phenomenon

The Angry Birds game for smart phones, iPads and tablets has taken the world by storm. I discovered this when I finally converted to a smart phone a couple of years ago (my son turned me on to the addictive game).

It’s gone far beyond tech … you can find Angry Bird characters is every aspect of kiddie life – towels, toys, toothbrushes, you name it, it’s being merchandised. Last Christmas, we bought our grandson a hoodie towel of the red bird. The cowl was the bird’s head.

When we went to pick up my grandson’s birthday cake while in San Jose a week and a half ago, I wandered around the bakery while his father waited in line to be served.

You know what I saw? This:

The people at Aki’s Bakery in San Jose did a marvelous job on the birthday cake, but I was more impressed with their Angry Bird cupcake creations. I mean, look at ‘em again. Terrific, huh?

Just in case you live in San Jose or in Silicon Valley, Aki’s is situated at 355 Meridian Ave., San Jose, CA 95126, phone (408) 287-5404. They have a website as well: www.akisbakery.com.

Great Hertz Service

When the wife and I motored into the Hertz Car Return lot at Norman Mineta San Jose County Airport on the day of our departure back to Hawaii, we got a pleasant surprise.

The nice gentleman who checked us in offered to drive us to the Hawaiian Airlines gate in the car we’d just turned in so we wouldn’t have to catch the rental car shuttle bus to the terminal.

This is something they’ve started doing at Hertz, a little added customer service, according to the employee, who by the way emigrated from India 27 years ago to America. He’s a pretty distinctive-looking gentleman, with a bushy gray beard and wearing a turban. In fact, there seem to be quite a few East Indians employed by Hertz in San Jose.

He even hauled our bags out of the trunk and rolled them over to the curbside check-in stand for us. I thanked him profusely and tipped him, but I think the gratitude I expressed far outweighed the couple of bucks I gave him.

What a nice way to leave San Jose.

The Best Lobsters I’ve Eaten

Last week, as I reveled in the opulence of the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas, I began thinking of lobster tails, mentally going through the list of restaurants that served me the best lobster I can remember.

I came up with four, all of them in Las Vegas:

William B’s, Stardust, 1989. William B’s is no longer there; neither is the Stardust. The restaurant closed before the casino did, and now all that remains there is an empty plot of land awaiting redevelopment on the Las Vegas Strip. The William B’s lobster dinner consisted of two large tails, as succulent as all get out, preceded by a large crudité platter.

The Broiler, Palace Station Casino, 1993. One of the sweetest lobster tails I ever had was at the steak and seafood restaurant situated on the casino floor of this off-strip hotel. I don’t know if it was still called The Broiler when I ate there, as I haven’t been back in a long, long time. All I remember is that I practically swooned when I put that first piece into my mouth.

Nero’s, Caesar’s Palace, 1995. This is where I had my first $100 meal in Las Vegas – everything from soup to nuts (sans the nuts). They brought out a huge whole lobster, let me gaze at it in wonder for a while, then proceeded to prep it for me. They popped out the tail and cracked open the claws. Lawdie, I wish I had a camera with me at the time. I had dreams of that lobster.

Hugo’s Cellar, Four Queens, 2008. This was the most recent great lobster, enjoyed during a dinner meeting of a group that had gathered in Las Vegas. Sweet, sweet, sweet! The lobster tail and the company.  Hugo’s is a great place to have dinner. Again, no picture of the lobster, as the dinner was before I started my restaurant blog. But take my word for it, if you dine at Hugo’s Cellar, you won’t go wrong ordering the lobster.

To be sure, I’ve had lobster at many other restaurants, but none quite measured up to these four.

Er, You Were Saying?

You gotta say the words, Earl ... you just gotta say the words. G'wan, you can do it. You da man.