A new layout, travel movies and Michael Jackson's kids.

New look to The Balanced Guy. Not sure I'll stick with it, might even try a few other of the available formats. I know I do have to fix the title block, but I'll get to that later. Let me know what you think.


For worthwhile and (usually) humorous sports analysis, visit my buddy Dave over at The Savage Truth. He does a far better job than I ever could.


 

Movie Review - What do you get when you throw together two guys, some video cameras, a loose concept for a story line, a sense of adventure and a bit of luck? The answer...a great weekend movie called Last Stop for Paul. In a nutshell, Cliff and travel-hound Charlie work together. When Cliff's childhood friend Paul dies (who was planning an around the world trip), they decide to take his ashes and spread a little bit here and a little bit there around the world.

A low-budget sleeper with absolutely no stars (and actually very few professional actors), the movie is unique in its composition. It's a fictional story about a fictional trip but was filmed on a real trip using real people as actors. The writer/director/actor, Neil Mandt, simply recruited people he came across to play parts in the movie as he traveled around the world on his real/fictional trip. If for nothing else, the film's unusual pedigree should pique your interest. While the acting is at times not Hollywood-polished, the charm of the overall story and sense of adventure more than make up for it.

Last Stop for Paul left me wanting to pack my bags, ready for whatever I might come across, and it makes for a great watch-with-your-gal or even buddies movie while you quaff a beer or two...or three.

Michael Jackson - OK. Let's get something straight here. This guy is supposedly the father of these kids, Paris and Prince (Blanket too).

Not claiming he was biologically incapable of it, I'm just saying that when you take a look at what Michael Jackson looked like as a kid (pre-pre-pre-pre-pre plastic surgery, skin lightening, and God-knows-what else), I'm having a hard time believing he's their biological father. I dunno...

 

Basic Tree Identification- Growing up I didn't know a maple from an oak tree but a summer job while in college working for a tree pruning company changed all that. Today I enjoy knowing the majority of common native trees in the region to the point that my friends will ask me what tree this one or that one is. It's also a point of pride for me that even my young sons have picked up a bit of that knowledge by knowing the basic trees in our area as a result of me pointing them out over and over on our hikes and walks in the woods.

You might think "What's the point? They're just trees." Well for one, it makes a walk in the woods with your children more interesting by having knowledge to share with them as you point out various trees. It can also be helpful in figuring out why all the bushes or other trees in your yard around that one tree seem to do poorly or even die (the reason: it's a Black Walnut and secretes the chemical juglone into the soil which can inhibit respiration in other plants). If you want to buy a load of firewood for the winter it's good to know you aren't buying any pine or fir (the resin in the wood can gum up the flue with creosote even more so than hard woods and result in chimney fires). If you have to have a large tree in your yard taken down, it's nice to know if it's a valuable species or not. If it is, you might be able to negotiate to have it taken down for a reduced cost or free while the tree service gets to sell the lumber.

There are a number of ways to identify trees with the most common being its leaves. But during the winter it may not have leaves and you have to reply on the bark, size, location and general shape to identify a tree. Following are the leaves of a few basic trees in the Mid-Atlantic Region; notice I've included several species of some types of trees so you can see the family resemblences. In other cases, some leaves look similar (such as maple and sycamore) so you need to rely on other factors to help identify the tree.

From top to bottom, left to right: 

Silver Maple, Norway Maple, Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Striped Maple

Pin Oak, Burr Oak, Chestnut Oak, White Oak, Red Oak

American Holly, ??? (honestly, this one stumped me), Sassafras, Bass, Sweetgum

Wild Cherry, Locust

Book Review - 13 Bankers If the financial crisis has left you scratching your head wondering how the heck it happened, I submit to you 13 Bankers by Simon Johnson and James Kwak. While there are undoubtedly some who will disagree with the conclusions, it's hard to argue with the facts presented especially with respect to the slow-but-steady dismantling over the last 30 or so years of financial regulation put in place after the Great Depression. As said John Adams, our 2nd president, "Facts are stubborn things..." The book has been generally well-received on both sides of the political aisle and by pragmatists. Digging a bit deeper into the problem, management guru Bill George at Harvard Business School simply stated "This crisis wasn't caused by subprime mortgages; it was caused by subprime leadership." Read the book and draw your own conclusions, then vote according to your conscious.

Tubing the Delaware - If you are busy putting together your summer family calendar (or even if you're a last-minute kind of guy), think about tubing down the Delaware as a great summer activity. I've done it a few times in the past and we're planning on taking the kids later this summer.  There are several outfitters ready to help you have a day of fun, two of the local ones are: Bucks County River Country (in PA) and Delaware River Tubing (in NJ). After arriving and picking up a tube, a bus takes you upstream to one of several drop-off spots (depending on how long a trip you want to take). You hop in your tube and away you go floating lazily down the river! In most places the river is shallow enough to stand and moves along at a leisurely pace. The scenery is very pretty with older summer cottages, woods, fields and even some rocky cliffs along the way. Bring along a cooler with drinks & lunch (and rope to tie it to your tube) or stop off at the River Hot Dog Man (www.riverhotdogman.com) to grab a bite along the way.

Stupid Is... I've decided to begin including with each posting something stupid I've done lately. It came to me that I should share my hiccups as a "lesson learned" section in the hopes you might avoid the same mistakes. A couple of postings ago I talked about opening my pool for the season. Having come from Florida where our pool was open all year, the spring opening was something new to me. So in undertaking it I ignored one of my rules of pool care - don't overdo it. Messing with the water chemistry too much can cause wild swings in one direction that tempts you to jack around, spend stupid amounts of money and dump even more chemicals into the pool, resulting in a wild swing back in the other direction. Long story short - the pool looked pretty good (albeit a tad cloudy) and chemistry seemed right  for our Memorial Day opening party. Obviously not as after a couple of hours of kids jumping around in it the pool turned green, green, green. How'd I solve it? I left it the heck alone for a few days...and it turned crystal clear.

And of course I'm heartbroken now that Kim has a new beau...just when I thought I had a chance (of course, not sure what the wife would say!)