"Monsters of the Amazon" wins awards!

My "masterpiece," Monsters of the Amazon has been given its just deserts:

I try to make my travel videos fun to watch, using humor and music to distract from other incompetencies.  I was pleased to learn that the pseudo-travel-horror story Monsters of the Amazon has been awarded two prizes in contests hosted by the American Motion Picture Society (AMPS):

• "Best SciFi" in the American International Film & Video Festival
• [One of] "Ten Best 2012" in the North American Movie Makers awards

This is the story of our 1999 trip to South America, edited thirteen years later.  The people are real, but the facts are questionable.  I've written more about it on my other blog, HENBC.com.

If you haven't seen the movie, punish yourself by clicking on it (below):

Clairemont Crazy Guy

Another oddball thing found in our neighborhood:

He's the official Clairemont neighborhood spokeperson for shoe repair.  Though he could just hold the sign, he'd rather dance and do a balancing at on the curb!

Dive into this ...

There's a bar in a nearby strip mall:

They measure success in an odd way ...  proud to be "Second Best Dive Bar in San Diego".

Drink Up!

Though I've watched plenty of old Bogart movies, I won't pretend that I know a lot about these sorts of places.  If I needed to commiserate with a bartender, I'd probably look for either the "Best Dive Bar" or the "Worst Dive Bar."

But who goes to the 2nd Best place?  Maybe folks who want to be able to say, "I've been thrown out of nicer places than this!"

(Peter D's is a neighborhood institution.  And every neighborhood needs a dive like this!  We wish them continued success.)

I Was A Pig At Greenwood Dairies

Greenwood Dairies

I have always loved ice cream.  Once in a while, back in the 1950's and 1960's, on a hot summer night Dad would take us for a car ride.  Forty minutes north from our home in Northeast Philadelphia was Langhorne, PA -- home of Greenwood Dairies!

Greenwood was famous for their huge portions; a "single" was actually about a dozen regular scoops crushed together into something huge -- the size of a cantaloupe?  Imagine a little kid with an ice cream moustache, dwarfed by his cone with one or two "Greenwood" scoops piled on top!

Years later, my friend Eddie occasionally got the keys to his father's Rambler.  John, Neil and I would pile in for the drive up U.S. Route 1.  I was now able to handle a three-scoop cone or one of their giant sundaes.  Neil was another ice-cream chowhound, but Ed could manage only normal portions.  My cousin John had a big appetite but he didn't like ice cream, choosing their pretty-good Philly steak sandwiches instead.

The "Pig's Dinner" was served in a glass boat.  FIVE of those huge balls of ice cream plus every imaginable topping.  Originally, if you finished unassisted you got it for free.  Later the prize became one of these buttons:  

This is photo of an actual Greenwood Dairies button that I re-discovered a few days ago.  Yes, it's true.  I was a pig at Greenwood Dairies! (more than once)

There's not a whole lot of information about Greenwood on the Internet, not even a photo of the old building.  I discovered that the dairy closed in 1985, followed by the restaurant two years later.  One person remembers that his parents surprise-ordered a Pig's Dinner for him when he was ten years old!

The following is from page 104 of the book Images of America: Levittown  (This book is one of many available on the Internet because of Google's archive project.)

Now, if you go back to the previous blog posting, you'll see a photo of me in a burger eating contest at Boomerangs.  This proves that I'm a multi-disciplinary pig, capable of consuming mass quantities of many things including beef burgers, ice cream, and beer!