Five on Friday - Dedicated to Mr. Tucker and Travis

Travis, our host for Five on Friday, had the difficult task of helping his friend Mr. Tucker to cross the Rainbow Bridge yesterday which he wrote about here.  Travis didn't write the post to make people cry but to express his love and sadness over the loss of his beloved family member whom he loved very much and who made Travis' life that much better but still, I cried because that's what you do when a fellow human being is feeling pain and loss.

Pets bring so much to our lives and wrap their furry little selves around our hearts which is one of the reasons I resisted getting one for so long. Heck, I cried when Amanda's lizard Evra died and again when Tardis the snake had to be buried so how was I going to handle a four-footed friend eventually passing on as they all do? Well, I don't know how I'm going to handle it but I hopefully have a good long time before Tesla goes anywhere.

Anyhow ... for this week's Five on Friday I picked some songs for Travis that may not make him feel better about Mr. Tucker's passing but if crying helps and he needs to do so then these songs are going to help him do just that. Grief and loss is all a part of living but it's one of the harder parts.

Thoughts and best wishes to you and Pam, Travis, as you deal with the hole that Mr. Tucker has left in your family; may it eventually be filled with happy memories of a life made all the better by having had your friend in it for as long as you did.

Getting Trivial With Travis

Recently in an effort to stay out of the dungeon at Bloggingham Castle while thinking about the old Trivial Pursuit game that I'm sure so many of us have played, Travis @ Trav's Thoughts created a new meme that I just had to have a go at called -

Travis' rules are pretty simple:

1. Choose a category from one of these: Television, Stage & Screen, Nightly News, Publishing, Lives & Times, Music
2. Find 8 bits of trivia about your selected category
3. Be sure to let me know when...ok, if...you decide to play along so I can see what you come up with. (You can do that just by clicking here!)
   
4. You may tag, or simply offer the meme for borrowing or stealing as you like.

Travis did his first-ever-made-all-by-himself-and-really-cool-meme on the 8 Films In Which John Wayne's Character Dies so I thought maybe I'd select the movie category myself and do my meme on 8 things about one of my favorite movies, For Love of the Game which was released in 1999 and is one that I can watch over and over again and do!

1. The movie is based on the book, For Love of the Game, written by Michael Shaara and published posthumously in 1991 following his death from a heart attack in 1988. Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his novel The Killer Angels which was about the Battle of Gettysburg and the source for the screenplay for the 1993 movie Gettysburg, another of my very favorites.
2. The story is about Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner), a 40-year old pitcher, who is forced to re-examine his priorities in life when he is confronted with unexpected circumstances—not only is he being traded after 20 years as the heart and soul of the Detroit Tigers, but Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston), the love of his life, is leaving him for a job in London. During the course of the movie, Billy flashes back on his last four years with Jane and his baseball career as he pitches a possible perfect game against the formidable New York Yankees in "The House That Ruth Built".
3. The movie was shot in both New York and Los Angeles with a short stop in Aspen, Colorado for some off-season scenes. Most of the East Coast scenes were shot on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn along with five weeks at Yankee Stadium during one of the warmest Novembers in New York ever.
4. The production used between 800 and 2000 extras for filming at the stadium along with cardboard characters and computer graphics to fill out empty seats in the stands to make it look like a typical packed-house game at Yankee Stadium.
5. The shots of Billy Chapel's parents at the beginning of the movie are Kevin Costner's actual parents.
6. Both the Tigers and Yankees management insisted that anyone who wore their uniforms had to be either a former or current member of their organization or an actor. Ultimately, every player cast was either a professional or an actor with at least some organized baseball experience. Even actual major league umpires Rick Reed, Jerry Crawford and Richie Garcia were cast in their real-life profession.
7. The soundtrack features 15 songs and some of the best music from a movie ever featuring artists such as Lyle Lovett, Roy Orbison, Vince Gill, Steely Dan, and others. I suspect I've just about worn it down!
8. My very favorite song from the movie does not appear on the soundtrack album - "It Don't Matter to the Sun" by Chris Gaines, a fictional alternative rock singer created as an alter ego for Garth Brooks. The song can be found on the CD Garth Brooks: In the Life of Chris Gaines or you can listen to it here!

So, there you have it, eight rather long trivial facts about one of my favorite movies. I know it's been out almost ten years now but if you like a good baseball movie and a good love story and haven't seen it may I suggest you rent a copy at some point and indulge yourself? Just to get you more interested, here's the trailer:


Thanks, Travis, for this great new meme! It was really a lot of fun and I hope you get lots of people playing along with it. I'm not going to tag anyone in particular but come on people, you know you want to do this!

Three Wishes

I was quite happy and excited to see that three wishes have already appeared in the heavens of the Blogosphere as a result of the new Make a Wish Meme that I posted about yesterday. And good wishes they are, too! ...

Travis @ Trav's Thoughts
A lover of fine classic automobiles, I bet Travis would look great in this beauty!

Ralph @ Airhead55
A proud father of two fantastic children, Ralph's wish speaks volumes of his love for them.

Morgen at It's a Blog Eat Blog World
A man who wants to get the past behind him and head unencumbered into the future, this is a great wish for Morgen!

How about you? What's your wish?

A Roar for Powerful Words!

Sandee of Comedy Plus awarded me the following award on the 25th of November and - believe it or not - since then I've been mulling over who I would like to forward it on to -

A Roar For Powerful Words!

The originator of this award is Seamus of The Shameless Lions Writing Circle and this what Seamus had to say about this award:

"When I set upThe Shameless Lions Writing Circle, one of things I had in mind was that we as a group could encourage and celebrate good, powerful writing on the Internet/blogosphere. This is why I've come up with a new project to try to do exactly that, while of course at the same time increase exposure for the 48 members and their individual blogs. A Roar For Powerful Words is the chance to scream from the mountains the good news about the powerful posts that are produced every day in the blogosphere, despite what some mainstream columnists and journalists claim. This is also a good chance to examine exactly what it is that makes writing good and powerful."

According to Seamus, this award can be distributed "to those people who have blogs we love, can't live without, where we think the writing is good and powerful." Considering that Sandee chose to pass this award on to me, I am quite honored and flattered both as that means she felt that my writing was worthy of such recognition. Thank you so much, Sandee, that really means a lot! In addition to myself, Sandee passed the award on to a wonderful group of other bloggers:

1. Mo @ It's a Blog Eat Blog World
2. Ian @ EDog's Everything Page
3. Ann @ A Nice Place In The Sun
4. Richard @ Untwisted Vortex
5. Mimi @ Mimi Writes

Needless to say, I am in some most excellent company but now it's my turn to pass this award on to several others. This has been a tough choice because I love all of the blogs that you see listed on my sidebar and feel that they are all written by excellent writers with a lot of different styles and personalities. However, I can't just blanket-award it to everyone so after a lot of painful wracking of my brain and nail-biting decision-making, I award "A Roar for Powerful Words!" to the following powerful bloggers:

• Travis of Trav's Thoughts - Travis writes some of the most detailed and well-written posts that I have seen anywhere in the Blogosphere. I am always impressed and awed when I stop by his blog - plus he leaves some damn fine comments, too! Even though it isn't a requirement of this award, he is a man with a romantic streak who isn't afraid to show it and that speaks volumes because it means he writes from his heart and I applaud that, I really do.
  
• Maddy of both Whitterer on Autism and Alien in a Foreign Field - What an amazing, amazing, amazing woman Miss Maddy is as she not only writes two excellent blogs with thoughtful and thought-provoking posts but she does so while raising two autistic sons and a daughter. Add on the fact that she's a Brit transplanted in the San Francisco Bay area and she deserves a lot more than this little ole' award!
  
• Patois of Whee! All the Way Home! - From Haiku to her Jump One Jump Twosday feature to her Weekly Wonderings and so many other great posts in between, Patois writes posts that are just wonderful and moving and - yes - powerful! She is a most excellent writer and compared to her, I feel a bit like a hack!
  
• Jeni of Down River Drivel - What can I say about Jeni other than the fact that this Old Avon Lady writes from her down-home heart and soul and one of these days I'm going to drive to Pennsylvania simply so I can sit down across from her with a pot of coffee and plate of cookies and just gab, gab, gab, gab, gab!
  
• Jamie of Duward Discussion - Even though she is currently stomping me in several on-going Scrabulous games (which doesn't surprise me in the least as I've no doubt at all that she is a much better Wordsmith than I!), Jamie was one of the very first people who came to mind when I was debating who to pass this award on to. I always learn something when I read one of Jamie's posts and I always feel something which means even more. Knowledgeable, witty, and compassionate are three of the best words I can think of to define Jamie. Plus, she has the same name as my youngest daughter!

These five people are just the tip of the iceberg of wonderful writers that I read on a daily basis but in keeping with the theme of the award, I am limiting the number of recipients to just five and am hoping that they, too, will pass this award on to five of their must-reads.

Travis, Maddy, Patois, Jeni, and Jamie - please go by Seamus's post to choose the color of your award (they're available in three colors) and let's see if we can keep this wonderful award going, shall we? Oh, and keep up the wonderful writing!