The Big Day...

...has once again come and gone...and here we are on the day after already...hope your feast with friends and family was filled with gratitude, good times and laughter.

We ended up with a houseful eventually...12 of us altogether, which I know pales in comparison to some family gatherings I hear about...but for us, that's twice as many as the year before.

And Karen did a masterful job of preparing and presenting the meal...

...she's such a great cook and so very gracious...truly was a wonderful day.

Here are few happy faces from my side of the fence...

....but what can you expect when you're watching yet another Lion's loss on Thanksgiving Day...

apparently that's from 2009 but 9 years later the tradition continues...

In spite of the inevitable in Detroit, a good time was had by all here in our neck of the woods.

And speaking of woods...

...that's a friend's blind out in the woods...did you spot it on the right?  He's up north this weekend hunting Bambi's Dad and celebrating Thanksgiving with his family...and this is what he drove in to...

...I'm sorry, but snow in November is just too early...at least they were kind enough to keep most of it up north...here's Larry and his family doing the traditional Happy Thanksgiving selfie...

Larry, his brother, Dad and Mom...

Well, even though it's only November 23rd, I guess we have officially started the Christmas season...Karen's been itching to start decking the halls but I insisted we wait until Thanksgiving is over..so...here we go, up on the roof top click click click 'cause I gotta put up Old St. Nick...and his reindeer...and all the other stuff out in front of our home...and inside.

I expect by Sunday Christmas will have arrived in grand fashion..

...if Karen has anything to say about it...and of course she does.

Updates to follow...until then...

later, mcm fans...

All The Leaves Are Brown...

...and the skies are gray...or so sang the Mamas and the Papas in California Dreamin', and it's true here in Michigan, too...

...definitely past peak now, and when the wind blows we have swirling leaf storms...

...pretty, if a little bit depressing.

Still fairly scenic on the golf course, however...

...and I enjoyed a couple of almost decent rounds yesterday and today.

I say "almost" because I had 8.5 pretty good holes...did very well with my cleek and niblick, but both days I had a minor crisis with my mashie on the last half of the 9th hole...just suddenly and completely forgot how to hit it, which was actually fairly unnerving, especially since I'd been doing alright up until then.

Came home and spent some time in the backyard with my wiffle golf balls and finally got it straight.

As usual it came down to the basics of the grip and my personal mantra of "relaxed swing, lead with my hips, head down".

But it perfectly illustrates something the great Bobby Jones...

...said way back in the day:

"Golf is assuredly a mystifying game. It would seem that if a person has hit a golf ball correctly a thousand times, he should be able to duplicate the performance at will. But such is certainly not the case."

To which duffers everywhere offer a heartfelt "amen".

Karen's "to do" list for this weekend was to vanquish Halloween to the bowels of the garage for another year.

The problem is Karen's "to do" list is like The Blob from the 1958 horror flick of the same name...

...it just keeps getting bigger and bigger every time it consumes something...in the movie of course The Blob ate people...thankfully Karen's "to do" list isn't that carnivorous, but it does have a growing appetite and the more you feed it the hungrier it gets.

I usually try to disguise myself as a piece of living room furniture and wait for the storm to pass...

...but alas, that didn't work.

Actually, for some reason that never works, but hope springs eternal in the breast of desperate men who willingly, nay eagerly, do desperate things.

Driven on by the sting of the cat'o'nine tails...

...we did get Halloween all packed up and stored away, and then moved on to packing up all the various and sundry summer items still adorning our yard...adirondack chairs, umbrellas and the like.

Have to admit everything looks better and the place is starting to have that "buttoned up for winter" appearance...both a good and bad thing.

But speaking of The Blob...Steve McQueen was the star...

...well, human star anyway - and it was his first role, for which he made the less than impressive sum of $3,000.

He had the option of taking less up front and getting 10% of the profits, but since it was a low budget ($110,000 total cost) B movie that was marketed as the 2nd feature of a 2 movie teen Drive-In package, he didn't think it would make any money...and he needed the scratch up front for rent and food.

Little did he know it would become a hit that grossed over $4 million which in 1958 was pretty ding dang diggety dong good, and he definitely kicked himself for that.

However, weep not for poor Steve...he managed fairly well later on...The Great Escape, Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven, Papillon...

Don't forget this is "time change" weekend...

...and we turn the clocks back an hour...and thus begins months of increasing cold and darkness...o joy...

And on that happy note, The Atomic Monster Cafe Express...

...has arrived at the terminus of yet another thrillin' edition.  Thank you for traveling with us and we hope you enjoyed your journey.

If in the future your intellectual plans should necessitate sparkling wit, literary excellence and stunning imagery, why don't you just scale back your expectations a bit and travel with us instead?

Who do you think you are, anyway?  Einstein?

Don't try to fool us...we've seen your elementary school report cards.

And don't get us started on your behavioral reports.  We know you used to pull Susie's pig tails and dip them in the ink well.

Besides, we're so much easier on the brain than all that high brow stuff.

Just downshift your cerebral cortex into neutral, sit back and let us wash over you like someone's used dishwater thrown out their kitchen window.

later, mcm fans...

The Big Day...

the Jolly Roger announced we were open for business...

...has come and gone...and we finally had good weather on a Halloween night...gave away 85 treat bags / boxes...each one filled with candy / toys and a gospel tract.

That's a dozen or so more than last year...happy about that.

Here are your hosts for the evening...

...along with a beautiful vampiress who stopped in for a bite...

...and my grandson who apparently is now some kind of rock and roll legend...

We had lots of happy faces and positive comments about all the decor...

the driver is a VERY old friend of mine...

...so we posed for pics...

...both of us have arrived at that age where we look better in the dark from a distance...

...there was the walk of fear...

...which included our zombie friend...

...found this guy climbing out of our Black Lagoon...

...and this guy hanging out in the courtyard...keeping time with a haunted clock...

...the harmonica playing skeleton was a hit...

...and Jack Skellington functioned as our greeter...

...while Mr. Bolts was his usual welcoming self...

Franky was spotted roaming here...

...there...

...and everywhere...

...and we bid a fond farewell to All Hallows E'en for another year...

Safe to say a good time was had by all.

I'm exhausted.

As a famous frog once opined, it's not easy being green.

Or formerly deceased for that matter.

Time for bed...

later, mcm fans...

A Mi'racle...

...on # 4...chipped in for a par 5.

That's pronounced "my-ra-cull" by the way...it's a contraction of "minor miracle"...not one of the big ones, but unusual enough to make the cut.

My usual plan when golfing is to try to be on the green with a chance to 1 putt for par.

I can sometimes do a little better than that on par 3's, occasionally hit my goal on par 4's.

Then there are those loooong par 5's...

In general I agree with Brookins and MacNelly's "Shoe" when it comes to them...

...but this time things were actually going along pretty well...after a decent tee shot with my brassie and 2 nice mashies, I was hitting 4 and only 100 yards away from the green.

That's too long for my niblick, but not a full mashie either...so I had to swing about 3/4 speed and ended up leaving it a little bit short of the green.

Apparently that was the exact moment all the stars aligned...

...and voila, I actually parred a 500 yard par 5 with my hickories.

I am hereby and officially retiring from golf since it's obvious I've hit the pinnacle of my career and there's nowhere to go but down from here.

Well, retiring until the next time I decide to punish myself with another 9, that is.

The fact that you have to plow through renditions like the above is really Karen's fault.

When I come home from the links I try to regale her with a fascinating retelling of my exploits but she's having none of it.

I usually end up chasing her around...

...shouting out random golf phrases...

"...and then a short niblick to the green left me 2 feet from the cup for a gimme!"

...while she covers her ears and sings snippets of polka songs...

"Roll out the barrels!  We'll have a barrel of fun!"

...to drown out whatever it is I'm trying to yell at her.

Can you believe that?

Scandalous.

Gotta give a happy birthday shout out to # 1 son, Micah...

...I won't say which one it was, but he recently enjoyed a big celebration for the 11th anniversary of his 29th birthday.

Happy birthday, Micah...as the Scriptures say, "...thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power..."

God's richest blessings to you, my son...hope it's a great day for you.

All Hallows E'en is fast approaching and we added a new inflatable to our front yard...

...and a closer look...

Think I like this one best...left to right we've got a black cat, a ghost pumpkin (The Mummy would have been better), Franky (always my fave), some kind of purple bugaboo, a jack'o'lantern, and Count Dracula...pretty nice job covering most of the essentials.

And of course I've resurrected the star of the big day...the one and only, the incomparable, the tall, formerly deceased science experiment we all know and love...

...Mr. Bolts...wouldn't be Halloween without him.

Last night we watched "Benjamin Button" again...

...a  truly wonderful movie, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story.

This is one of those rare movies that takes an unusual short story and vastly improves it, fleshing it out in ways the original author wishes he'd thought to...it's spectacular, cinema at its best.

You have to be over a certain age and of a certain mindset to appreciate it...but assuming you have the breadth of life experience and depth of personal character required, watching this will be a fabulous experience for you.

If you actually watch this movie without shedding a few tears you should check your pulse since you've obviously died and simply haven't realized it yet...but don't worry, the people around you know.

Reminds me I should visit New Orleans again.

And that, dear readers, catches you up on all the big doin's around the Atomic Monster Cafe and so I shall take my leave and exit gracefully, stage right...

later, mcm fans...