Alaska | Youseph Tanha

Sherlock Homes

When I was still in high school I read all of the Sherlock Homes Adventures by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Something about the way Sherlock Homes could solve problems and see things others couldn’t always interested me. I say this about my brothers a lot but, I love how Sherlock’s thinks, how his mind works. I wish my mind fired as fast as theirs.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skillful use of “deductive reasoning” while using abductive reasoning and astute observation to solve difficult cases.

Not long after I finished reading all the Homes books I found The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes tv series on the A&E Network. My mom and brother would sit with me and watch it. I don’t know why, but not long after I moved to Juneau I started poking around the internet looking for the DVD’s of this great show. I was able to find a few disks on Amazon.com, but never the complete series. Then a couple of years ago I found myself walking through the DVD section of Costco when I spotted Sherlock Home: The Complete Granada Television Series. I picked it up, No questions asked.

The actor who plays the master detective in this series is Jeremy Brett, who many consider to be the definitive screen version of Sherlock Homes. His story is quite sad actually if you read up on him. His acting though, is masterful.

I would love to hear what you think of Sherlock Holmes and how you feel Jeremy Brett’s version stacks up with Robert Downey, Jr’s version.

A Good Cigar

I enjoy a good cigar. There is nothing like it. I thought I would share with you a couple of my favorite cigars that I always have in my humidor.

Arturo Fuente creates a cigar known as the Hemingway Classic. It’s a mild to medium strength cigar in a medium brown colored wrapper. My brother, Abe turned me on to this guy and I have always had one close by ever since. It is probably my favorite cigar that I smoke. The box these cigars comes in too is really quite nice as well and I think could be repurposed into a great many things.

Romeo y Juliet is another brand I really enjoy and discovered early on when I first picked up cigar smoking. I was actually attracted to the logo first. It just worked out that I liked the cigar too. The 1875, or the Reserve are both great options under the Remeo y Juliet brand. The 1875 is the more mild of the two and I tend to smoke them more than because of that. Just depends on my mood.

Because I smoke cigars I get asked how I like to cut my cigars and what do I use to light them with. I don’t think this matters. I don’t think the cigars you choose to smoke matters either. Just smoke what you enjoy and cut and light them the way you want. But, to answer the question I use a punch to cut my cigars and a Zippo lighter to light them.

Wearable Art

My wife is quite the creative soul. I find myself impressed and amazed almost daily by the ways she expresses herself creativity. One of the ways I have seen her harness her creativity is with a program called ‘Wearable Art’. The Juneau Arts and Humanities Council puts on an annual event called, ‘Wearable Art‘ where people create artistic clothing and for one weekend a year they show it off on a runway in down town Juneau.

For months my wife has been working on her second entry into the Wearable Art event. Inspired by her nursing career, she started sketching out designs for a dress made entirely from materials found in a hospital operating room. I watch as she slowly brought the dress to life. It really is amazing how her mind works and how she is able to put things like this together.

This past weekend was the annual Wearable Art show and My wife, along with her model showed off all the hard work that had gone into her dress. Below I would like to share with you some photos from the event.

The Current State Of Childhood

The current state of children’s toys and cartoons really bothers me. Maybe its because of my age and the fact that, I myself have started thinking about having kids. But whatever the reason is that has brought on this train of though, the idea of exposing my own offspring or any children to the current state of toys and cartoons that are at the store and on TV right now makes me sick to my stomach. I have talked about this in the past.

Being a child of the eighties, I grew up and felt privileged to be exposed to what I think are some pretty awesome toys and cartoons. Some of them just off the top of my head are…

I have some really good childhood memories of watching these cartoons and playing with these toys. Toys and cartoons that, to this day, I still enjoy and collect. I am really looking forward to the day that my children and I can enjoy them together.

When I turn on the TV nowadays, I am embarrassed by the cartoons (which all seem to be computer animated now and not hand drawn) that networks broadcast to children. What the hell is Sponge Bob Square Pants anyway? I don’t even recognize the Transformers anymore and their toys just look scary to me.

I am going to go on a Transformers side rant here. So bare with me.

Anyone who has been following my blog knows that I am a die hard, old school, Transformers fan. (TILL ALL ARE ONE!) Something about that cartoon and the toys just clicked with me on an emotional level when I was growing up and I think that is why I am such a fan of them to this day. It might be because it was one of the first toys my older brother ever got me. It might be because when you see an old school Transformer cartoon or toy transforming it makes sense. Just by looking at the thing you can get an idea of which pieces need to move where and when to transform it. I never needed an instruction booklet to transform a Transformer. Because of that the toys made me feel smart. Like I was teaching myself and learning something at the same time. But nowadays you open up one of these “newer” Transformers toys or watch one of the movies or cartoons your head just hurts. Nothing about it makes sense.

Whenever I go to the store, I always check out the toy sections (because I am a kid at heart) and I am applied by what I see. Isles of action figures that don’t look fun or easy to play with. I have also noticed that they have not moved from their shelf from one week to the next. No one is buying this crap. I find myself spending the most time looking at Hot Wheels toys because they are about the only thing in the toy section of stores that I used to play with when I was a kid.

One of the few stores that still carries old school Transformers products is Hot Topic. Whenever I travel down south from Alaska, I make time to go into a Hot Topic and I ask the clerk every time “Do you sell more old school Transformers Products or the newer Transformers Products. Each time for years the answer has been the same “Oh we sell way more old school Transformers. It’s hard for us to keep them in stock.”

Now if that is not telling about the current state of Cartoons and Toys I don’t know what is. I have also noticed this with Transformer cartoon DVDs. The local stores can’t keep the old school stuff on the shelves, but every week, I still see the same new school DVDs on the self right where they where last time. I said it before and I will say it again. No one is buying this crap.

Even Legos have changed over the years. How the hell do you screw up interlocking plastic bricks? Well somehow they did to the point where they are not recognizable anymore. It used to be that kids had buckets of legos from which they could build anything they could imagine.

Cities
Planes
Spaceships
Cars
Trucks
Boats

Now you buy sets to build Hogwarts, or some Star Wars space ship and that is it. You want to build anything else? Well, you’ll have to buy a different Lego kit. WTF?

My mom is currently visiting my wife and I and I was talking to her about the current state of cartoons. She had a brilliant insight which was that cartoons these days are one of the reasons why kids are failing in school (besides the fact that the current educational system sucks). She said it is because cartoons are killing children’s attention span. Eight minutes into a show and BAM, commercial. Kids can’t focus in class because there attention span only lasts eight minutes. I can’t help but think there must be some truth in that statement.

One of the reasons why I collect TV shows and Cartoons on DVDs is so I don’t have to watch commercials. The idea that my doing this might be improving my future child’s attention span made me happy.

What do you think of cartoons now a days? For that matter; What do you think of toys now a days? What is or was your favorite cartoon and toy growing up?

Ice Road Juneau

Snowy Juneau plows The snow has really been coming down on us this year. It is safe to say that the city and borough of Juneau, Alaska has forgone any responsibility toward keeping our roads safe to drive on.

I can understand a place like Seattle not keeping their roads clear of snow an ice. Weather conditions like the ones they have recently suffered, have been dubbed SnowPocalypse or SnowMageddon, are not a daily, monthly, or even yearly occurrence. They are just as random as achieving a critical hit in Dungeons & Dragons. So I can let places like Seattle slide on having bad to unsafe road conditions every few years. It’s hard for a city to justify having plow trucks for a meteorological even that happens randomly and lasts for such a short time.

A place like Juneau, Alaska on the other hand is much harder for me to forgive. The city and state know that each year it is going to snow. They know each year what the roads are going to be like. Yet, for some reason this year they do not seem to be taking the task seriously.

snowy Juneau In years past I could rarely drive down any road in Juneau and not see a city plow truck scraping snow and ice off of the streets during the winter. This year it has been a rare occurrence that I have seen a city plow truck and when I do they are not scraping the streets as they plow the snow. This has resulted just about every road in Juneau is covered in ice. Everyday that I have driven to work or driven home in the last several weeks I have seen a car accident of one kind or another.

What is more astonishing to me is that it is currently January, almost February now, and the city has still done nothing to correct this behavior. Even after citizens have complained. Sadly, I think it is going to take a vehicle accident involving some kind of official for them to step up their responsibilities to normal levels.