David and Bonnie take a campus ‘Swim’
and all they get are these lousy T-shirts
We checked out of our luxury room at the Virginia Tech campus hotel in late morning Monday and headed back to the Drillfield for Bonnie to take more photos of the massacre memorial and attempt a 360-degree panarama with multiple images while rotating her camera kept level on a tripod.
Interesting to me? Not really. That’s way too technical for this word manipulator, so I wandered across the grassy expanse to investigate what appeared to be a small carnival.
Talk about juxtaposition: On one side of the Drillfield is the memorial to the 32 victims of last year’s mass killings here, on the other a one-day carnival promoting the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim.”
Of course I hauled Bonnie over there to enjoy the human circus as it was opening at noon. We got in line early and only had to wait half an hour for the Adult Swim T-shirt giveaway – you pick the shirt and any of several designs to be imprinted on the fabric while you wait. So we picked these messages: “Free Shirt Limit 1” and “I Will Rock Your Face.”
I’ll leave it to my blog fans to guess who got which shirt.
The 20-something gal handing out the newly-minted shirts eyed the latter design, and smiled at this 60-something.
“You’re never too old to rock,” I said.
She laughed.
So nice to help folks laugh – although having a job on the road setting up one-day campus carnivals for Adult Swim must have its moments.
We tried out the Peep Show, in a row of booths equipped with flat-screen video monitors showing mundane video clips of a bunny, baby chicks, an underwater swimmer, interspersed with quick-hit images of some weird-professor dude. But as a grouping, it elicited smiles. If it had anything to do with the Cartoon Network show, I haven’t a clue. I’ll confess to never having watched more than five minutes of it. (And that purely the result of late-night channel surfing.)
Not that I am totally unhip. Just that there’s only so much time in a day of time-wasting to choose your mental poisons. My current addictions include the AMC network’s sophisticated soap opera “Mad Men” and HBO’s vampish “True Blood.” Plus baseball and football, and entirely too much CNN.
Before we left, we checked out the Sleeping Clairvoyant Cat (remember the fortune telling machine in the movie "Big" -- substitute a curled-up kitty, and fortune cards that all say the same thing: "Many years ago today, something grew inside your mother."
and all they get are these lousy T-shirts
We checked out of our luxury room at the Virginia Tech campus hotel in late morning Monday and headed back to the Drillfield for Bonnie to take more photos of the massacre memorial and attempt a 360-degree panarama with multiple images while rotating her camera kept level on a tripod.
Interesting to me? Not really. That’s way too technical for this word manipulator, so I wandered across the grassy expanse to investigate what appeared to be a small carnival.
Talk about juxtaposition: On one side of the Drillfield is the memorial to the 32 victims of last year’s mass killings here, on the other a one-day carnival promoting the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim.”
Of course I hauled Bonnie over there to enjoy the human circus as it was opening at noon. We got in line early and only had to wait half an hour for the Adult Swim T-shirt giveaway – you pick the shirt and any of several designs to be imprinted on the fabric while you wait. So we picked these messages: “Free Shirt Limit 1” and “I Will Rock Your Face.”
I’ll leave it to my blog fans to guess who got which shirt.
The 20-something gal handing out the newly-minted shirts eyed the latter design, and smiled at this 60-something.
“You’re never too old to rock,” I said.
She laughed.
So nice to help folks laugh – although having a job on the road setting up one-day campus carnivals for Adult Swim must have its moments.
We tried out the Peep Show, in a row of booths equipped with flat-screen video monitors showing mundane video clips of a bunny, baby chicks, an underwater swimmer, interspersed with quick-hit images of some weird-professor dude. But as a grouping, it elicited smiles. If it had anything to do with the Cartoon Network show, I haven’t a clue. I’ll confess to never having watched more than five minutes of it. (And that purely the result of late-night channel surfing.)
Not that I am totally unhip. Just that there’s only so much time in a day of time-wasting to choose your mental poisons. My current addictions include the AMC network’s sophisticated soap opera “Mad Men” and HBO’s vampish “True Blood.” Plus baseball and football, and entirely too much CNN.
Before we left, we checked out the Sleeping Clairvoyant Cat (remember the fortune telling machine in the movie "Big" -- substitute a curled-up kitty, and fortune cards that all say the same thing: "Many years ago today, something grew inside your mother."
I also cajoled Bonnie into yet another couple of silly photos of me – one sticking my head into a cutout cartoon character (and I took a similar shot of Bonnie), the other with my arm around a gal in a bunny suit in front of the Heavy Petting Zoo.
So very collegiate.
Then we hit the road, out of Blacksburg, Va., and onto some blue highways to enjoy fall foliage, lush countryside, and the snaking-for-miles Wolf Creek. At one point a huge wild turkey ran across the road, prompting me to stop briefly (until two vehicles speeding up behind us nearly rammed our Toyota – mea culpa!).
We ended up for the night on the outskirts of Kingsport, Tennessee, in a $65-a-night (AAA/AARP rate) Comfort Inn. We walked to the chain Perkins Restaurant & Bakery on the opposite side of the parking area, and pigged out on the 55-Plus seniors menu, which was unexpectedly very good.
And for some reason, I ordered the turkey.
Tomorrow: Maybe we’ll search for President Johnson (Andrew, not Lyndon)
So very collegiate.
Then we hit the road, out of Blacksburg, Va., and onto some blue highways to enjoy fall foliage, lush countryside, and the snaking-for-miles Wolf Creek. At one point a huge wild turkey ran across the road, prompting me to stop briefly (until two vehicles speeding up behind us nearly rammed our Toyota – mea culpa!).
We ended up for the night on the outskirts of Kingsport, Tennessee, in a $65-a-night (AAA/AARP rate) Comfort Inn. We walked to the chain Perkins Restaurant & Bakery on the opposite side of the parking area, and pigged out on the 55-Plus seniors menu, which was unexpectedly very good.
And for some reason, I ordered the turkey.
Tomorrow: Maybe we’ll search for President Johnson (Andrew, not Lyndon)
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2 comments:
You can add the T-shirt to your collection. If I remember correctly, you once had a pair of Mickey Mouse ears custom-embroidered with "PRESS" on them. Still relevant after all these years.
I will have to show Bonnie the episode of "Robot Chicken" that her picture is from. I'm sure she'll get a good laugh :)
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