Napoleon Dynamite's hometown

I am a big fan of the movie, Napoleon Dynamite...the movie is quirky and there are lots of great movie quotes!

The movie was filmed in Preston, Idaho in the summer of 2003. It cost $400,000 to make and it grossed over $46,000,000 in the theaters.

I am in Ogden, Utah on business and Preston, Idaho is a 90 minute drive, so I decided to make the drive and see if I could find some exterior locations from the movie.

I went online and found this website that gives the address of the movies exteriors.

In the below pics, I have the pic I took today, followed by a screen cap from the movie...

Please click on my pic to see the bigger version

To see all of the pics click here...

First on my list was, of course, Napoleon's house. It sits mostly by itself on a dirt road outside of town.





Next to the house is the area where Tina, the fat lard of a Llama lived...the fence is gone, but the fence posts are still there.





The pic below is the actual mountain Uncle Rico bet Kip he could throw a football over...good luck with that!



Next, I swung by Pedro's house, no sweet jumps to be seen here...





Literally around the corner is Preston High School...



There are a lot of scenes in the movie that were filmed on these steps, the liger scene is one...





The tetherball scene does not actually take place at Preston High School, but at a nearby elementary school...there was no tetherball to be found on this day.





This next house is Tricia's house, the girl that Napoleon took to the dance. It took him like 3 hours to finish the shading on her upper lip...





The Pop'N Pins lanes is where Uncle Rico and Kip decide to have some ID's made so they "look official, like they have all the answers."





Summer's house looks like it is being renovated...I guess she moved out.





This is Kings, which is a drug store in town. This is where Uncle Rico embarrasses Napoleon in front of Summer, telling him to go get some Pampers for him and his brother.





Last, but not least, this is Rex and Starla's house, Rex as in Rex Kwan Do and his American flag pants!





It was a lot of fun driving around town and looking for the various exterior landmarks. I felt like a bit of a fool taking pictures of peoples houses, but it's been almost 6 years since the movie was filmed and I am sure I was not the first to do it.

I am off to go get some chapstick because my lips hurt real bad, gosh!

Easter Weekend...

PLEASE CLICK ON THE SMALL PICS TO SEE THE LARGER VERSIONS...

Well, Easter was two weeks ago, so I guess it's time for me to go ahead and update my blog.

The day before Easter we all went to our church's Easter egg hunt...it was a lot of fun and there were thousands of eggs to be "found".









After the egg hunt we went home and colored eggs for the Easter Bunny...I wonder how much longer we will be coloring eggs? We had a great time and there was no spillage of dye!













After Easter, I made sure to send all the egg hunt candy and the Easter Bunny candy with the boys back to their mothers house...any candy left here would have been eaten by me! That is one thing I do not need...

Flight of the Conchords in concert

Flight of the Conchords...I totally missed the bandwagon last year. They have a hilarious show on HBO and since I don't have HBO, I knew nothing about them. Last Fall, my co-worker, Sarah, let me borrow her Season One DVD's and I devoured them in 2 nights!

For those of you in the dark, here is Flight of the Conchords Season One in 4 minutes...



I found out that FOTC was coming to Nashville on their music tour and I made sure to be ready to 10 am when the tickets went on sale. It was a good thing I was, because, from what I hear, the entire concert was sold out in 15 minutes!

Finally, last Friday, the day arrived. Unfortunately, my day started in Ogden, Utah. I was there on business. I had an early flight from Salt Lake City and although there were bad storms across the southeast, my flight to Huntsville was only an hour late.

I immediately headed to Nashville ( 100 miles to the north) and arrived just in the nick of time! Here are a few photos I found on the web from the very same concert in Nashville...



The concert was at the historic Ryman Auditorium. It was built in 1892 and opened as the Union Gospel Tabernacle. It was used for Grand Ole Opry broadcasts from 1943 until 1974. We were sitting in wooden pews, which is a reminder of the auditoriums origins as a house of worship



They were so funny and tried to speak with southern accents...which was hard for them to do because they are from New Zealand! At one point, they invited the audience to make fun of their accents. Because there were only 2362 of us there, they could mostly hear us talk to them. Although one drunk guy rambled and Jermaine told him, "You need to get a microphone" meaning he mumbled too much.





I had a great seat and with an awesome view...the above picture was NOT my view, but it was almost as good! Needless to say, I had a great time!

The 16th Annual Moonbuggy Race!

Please click on the smaller version to see the larger ones...thanks to David and Doug for letting me "steal" these pics.

This weekend was the 16th annual Great Moonbuggy Race, here in Huntsville, AL.

Here is what the NASA press release says about the race...

"More than 500 high school, college and university students from 21 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico and Romania are expected to gather for the 2009 event, to be held April 3-4 at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. "



"Each moonbuggy must be human powered and piloted by two students, one female and one male. There's no official weight limit, but just as pairs of Apollo moonwalkers had to unload and prepare their lunar rover for travel, race drivers must be able to assemble their collapsed vehicle, then pick it up -- with no help from other teammates -- and carry it some 20 feet to the start of the race course."



"The twisting, half-mile course includes sand and gravel pits, simulated lunar craters, humps and other obstacles. Top prizes are awarded to the three teams in the high school division and three in the college division that post the fastest buggy assembly and race times. A variety of other prizes, including best buggy design and rookie team of the year, are awarded by the corporate race sponsors."

Marshall TV was out there to shoot video of the races in HD so that the footage could be used for the various live shots the moonbuggy teams participated in with their local TV stations.

Here is a pic of me shooting video of one of the teams...



Months of work goes into preparing these buggies, but sometimes the course got the upper hand...



This high school team flipped over, but the got up, turned the buggy back on it's wheels and finished the course!



It was quite a weekend and I am always amazed at the complexity of these vehicles!