Elvis Impersonator in Simi Valley

We went to The Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center last night to see Raymond Michael, an Elvis impersonator. We used to see him at Knott's Berry Farm when the kids were little, and even Glen enjoyed the show at that time.

Interestingly, Raymond Michael, who is a nationally known Elvis Impersonator, lives in Moorpark, right next door to Simi. He teaches chorus and musical show production at Moorpark High School during the year and tours during the summer with occasional shows on weekends. He also does a "Superstars of Las Vegas" bit featuring Tom Jones' and a couple of Engelbert Humperdinck hits.

Since it was a local show, he had friends and family, including his younger two sons, four and six, in the audience. He was quite proud to introduce them, and he mentioned that his nineteen-year-old son has started starring in local musical theater productions. When I talked with him a bit after the show, he mentioned that his older son used to perform with him occasionally as the Young Elvis. I'd like to have seen that, but I never even knew about it before.

As for Raymond Michael himself, he's getting a little arthritic to be doing the Elvis moves as smoothly as he used to (he's my age or a bit older), but his voice is still supple. His range also exceeds that of the original Elvis, and he's still slender. The Tom Jones section was less engaging than the Elvis tribute, but that is partly because only Lee recognized most of the songs. I think the theme from Thunderball might have been the only one Glen had heard before, and I remember "It's not Unusual," "What's New Pussycat," "Delilah" and maybe a couple of others from the olden days.

Now we need to see about getting tix for A Chorus Line at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza next weekend. We can get them as part of a three show season that includes Smokey Joe's Cafe and Beauty and the Beast.

Molly Ringwald in Sweet Charity

The four of us went to see Sweet Charity at the Pantages last night and enjoyed it greatly. I kept thinking Catherine could have done it better than Molly Ringwald, though. Cat certainly has a better voice; Molly can carry a tune but gave the impression of shouting melodically in many of her numbers. The supporting cast was superb, however. The lowliest chorus girl's bio was more impressive than those of the leading ladies we are accustomed to seeing at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center where we are season subscribers. This isn't to say that we don't see some very talented performers in Simi, because we do. It just brings home how much luck and connections have to do with success in the entertainment industry.

Scoring Big in the Genealogy Online Game

The Morning Light - Sam's Ship to Australia in 1856

MMORPGs - Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games - are huge. Worlds of WarCraft, Everquest (aka EverCrack) and Second Life have caused a lot of people to spend massive amounts of time and money without ever leaving their computers. I understand that some have installed refrigerators and microwave ovens within easy reach, and I expect the next generation of gaming chair will include relief facilities along with motion and force feedback.

I, too, have a MMORPG addiction. I spend more than $250 per year on a subscription to Ancestry.com (a notorious farm where I can get all kinds of evidence without having to go to Salt Lake City or London), and I have a dozen websites I visit regularly to help me with my favorite game: Family History Quest. I collect clues and virtual artifacts and sometimes collaborate with other players to level up quickly.

Yesterday, I scored big, and on my own. Following various clues, I made my way through the Australian section of Cyndi's List to the State Library of Victoria. I've been there before, but this time I searched the Pictures Catalog and hit paydirt. Since I already knew the names of the ships Sam and Martha Isaacs went to Australia on from earlier research, I entered those names on the off-chance I could get pictures of some kind. I found them both.

According to the Unassisted Shipping Index, Sam arrived in Australia in September 1856 aboard the Morning Light. Martha and their two baby daughters, Sarah and Ellen, made the trip in 1858, arriving in Melbourne in April on the Essex.

TheEssex Passenger Barque

This is what the dock in Melbourne would have looked like when Sam arrived in 1856. It probably hadn't changed much by the time Martha arrived a year and a half later.

I've also found numerous pictures of Bendigo (Sandhurst) where the Isaacs Family lived from about 1861 to 1870. This is where Robert Wolff spent his childhood, so it's no wonder he later felt right at home in Clayton, New Mexico.

P.S. I stripped out all the italics because Blogger seemed to have difficulty with HTML tags today. Imagine that the game names and ship names are italic, please.

Tech Creep

It was only a matter of time before we had a computer in every room of the house except the bathrooms. And I often take my PDA in with me, along with my phone, so I guess we even have coverage there.

Lee is currently in the process of repackaging what's left of Glen's old gaming computer in a small case to use with the TV in the guest room downstairs. This all started because I proposed that we might want to trade our upstairs Viewsonic 32" flat-panel TV with the old Sony 19" CRT downstairs to not only give our guests a better TV, but to give ourselves a more comfortable place to sit than our bed when we want to watch something when Glen is using the family room TV. Remember that four years ago, the Sony was our BIG television.

We still don't actually watch that much TV. On Sunday evenings after dinner, we sit down as a family and watch Top Gear (which we discovered when we were in England), MythBusters and/or an old BBC documentary series. Other than that, Glen watches Star Trek in a variety of incarnations; we now have a digital video recorder from the cable company, so he records them all and can watch when he feels like it.

Tranferring old home videos to DVD started the computer+TV business, but once Lee had a digitizer, he found he could also record off TV. This gave him a new use for his long-time hobby, which has to do with souping up, or "upgrading" computers. I figure it's cheaper than golf, boats, sports cars, hot women, or any of a number of other popular male hobbies, and it has the advantage of usefulness to the rest of the family, too. We are careful not to calculate a cost-to-benefit ratio, however.

This works so well that Lee decided we ought to have a computer with the new 32" TV in the guest room, too, as well as a second digital cable tuner box. This way, he can record MythBusters at the same time Glen is watching Jean Luc Picard or James T. Kirk, and we're trying to sleep upstairs.

Isn't technology grand?