Too Many Tales, And Sleepytime Troubles

Posted By on May 16, 2013

I am going to have to say that it is pretty obvious that a television show like Game of Thrones is one that is probably very hard to produce. Coming at it from a swordplay mindset, I have to say it is probably one of the worst medieval shows ever created. I just do not think there is a kind of battle that I would like to see on an everyday basis. I’m not saying that it should have to be exactly like Conan the Barbarian, but at the same time it would be nice to see a scimitar or a broadsword once in a while. I feel like they spend way too much time talking about God and other stuff and very little time and with overall battle choreography.

You Know Where I Stand

Ok, she's cute, but her storyline? Lame!

Ok, she’s cute, but her storyline? Lame!

I also think that the sheer number of stories in Game of Thrones is starting to get a little bit excessive. There really only so many character stories that you can follow before you start to think that you are going insane. I mean, this is TV. Television is not one of those modes in which you can follow 15 different stories at once, nor are you expected to. I can certainly understand how you would want to follow this many stories if you are reading say, a 10,000 page book of madness, but on television it just doesn’t seem to work very well.

If anything, I feel like they probably could have divided the show up into four different television shows, one with the battles, one with the story about the Starks, one for the Lannisters and one for all the other boring bits. Obviously, this is why I’m not a television executive.

Trouble Sleeping

I’ve always had very easy times when it comes to sleeping. I remember through college I had a few bouts of insomnia, but overall I have been a pretty heavy, and up until now, silent sleeper. But recently my wife began to bug me about the fact that I was snoring. I was really surprised about this because there isn’t really a history of sleep apnea in my family, nor have I ever really been told by anyone that I snore. I guess what is also strange is that I thought that snoring was a natural thing that most people had starting from a young age. I didn’t realize that you can just be a silent sleeper for half your life and then suddenly become a really loud snorer. But I guess these things happen!

After a little research into the snoring problem, and what I could do, I decided that it was probably a good time to look for some kind of stop snoring device so that my wife didn’t end up killing me sometime in the middle of the night. I found this website, and was surprised at the wide variety of anti-snoring devices there are out there. I never really had any idea that this was such a huge problem and that there were so many ways in which you can cure it.

I guess, as with anything, it’s out of sight, out of mind. At any rate, I ended up ordering a Good Morning Snore Solution from this page, and I’ll let you know how it goes for me. I am told that you can wear it even if you have had pretty major dental work (I still have a bridge from my old hockey days).

Let’s hope that this silences the Dragon once and for all.

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Swordplay In Game Of Thrones? Not So Much. Fun? Yes.

Posted By on April 2, 2013

If you are a fan of anything that is medieval, you owe yourself a deep, dark favor, and that is to watch Game of Thrones. This show is just absolutely mind blowing show. I have to admit that I just watched the season three opener and was absolutely no around with every minute of action. I am not a big television watcher, but this is one of those shows that I recommend to all of my friends and really do not like to miss even a minute of.

Why Not Before?

gotOne of the things that surprises me about this particular series is the fact that there hasn’t been something this compelling in the medieval realm pretty much ever on television. Yes, I understand that the series is an HBO series, and that they have a very high bar for quality, but something like this certainly could have been on television five or even 10 years ago. I will give you that this show is perfectly made for HBO because of the random bits of nudity and overall extreme violence, but for me it is less about fighting and the swordplay (which frankly is very limited overall and certainly is not something that would attract somebody who is a fencing enthusiast), and more about the fantastic plot.

Now, I am certainly not one of those people who reads a lot of massive books, so obviously reading any of the George R. R. Martin series was probably absolutely out of the question for me. I have some good friends who have read the books, and they tell me that while they are very compelling in general, they typically take an amazing amount of time to read because they are so descriptive. Actually, I do not have time for that because of everything with my job and other sources of study, so I haven’t had the opportunity to read the  books. All of my friends have said to me is that the plot is very close to that of the books and that although there are some differences, it does fit the major points of the story.

That is certainly interesting, but I’m sure they probably tighten it up a little bit so that it makes for racier TV.

I guess what surprised me about the situation is that there really aren’t very many classic bits of swordplay. In fact, in all the battle scenes there seemed to be very little in the way of overall fencing. Instead, it just becomes a massive hack and slash-a-thon, which certainly makes for entertaining viewing, but is not particularly interesting for those who are more interested in the fencing aspect.

Still, this is absolutely great fun. Not only that, but some of the women in the show are absolutely unbelievable looking. Not only are they attractive, but there is not that Hollywood plastic surgery-based look that seems to be so popular with most television series these days. It’s nice to see this.

So whatever happens this season when the dragons or with the Lannisters, or John Snow, or any of the several subplots currently taking place in the show, I can tell you that I’m going to be watching every step of the way. I have not seen a television show this compelling in quite some time, so it is nice to be a part of it. I think this will be one of those classic television series that will continue to be fantastic years from now, much like 6 feet under or some of the other HBO shows.

It’s great stuff. Truly must see TV.

 

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Ironman Of The Ozarks

Posted By on February 25, 2013

David Mathews moved from Alabama to Stone County, in the mountains of north central Arkansas, in 1973. He was 19. He and his pregnant wife bouth 40 acres of wooded land off a map, for $111 an acre. They spent $60 more for a chain saw and $175 for a 1960 pickup truck.

“I came here wanting to be a farmer,” he recalls. “I wanted to grow cabbages and sell them to the lcoal markets. My big thing at that time was to show that you can have a wholesome life without a lot of money. It’s a bit of a conflict with who I am now, I guess, but I hope not too much.”

A fine example of Stone County Ironworks furniture.

A fine example of Stone County Ironworks furniture.

What Mathews is now, at the age of 37, is one of the two or three biggest employers in little Stone County (1990 population: 9,749). More than 100 people work for his company, Ozark Mountain Enterprises. Under the name Stone County Ironworks, it produces handmade iron furniture, fireplace accessories, and other pieces that are sold by such stylish retail stores as Bloomingdale’s and Neiman-Marcus.

Stone Count Ironworks is a blacksmith’s dream come true, but, as Mathews says, he had different dreams when he first moved to Stone County. He refers to his youthful self as “a long-haired hippie in the woods. For a while, people thought I was a drug dealer.”

Rural, isolated Stone County fit his requirements because “these people were friendly, they were accepting, and they were still doing what I hoped to do. You could go into a hardwae store and buy a well bucket.”

He and his wife–they have since divorced–lived very frugally at first, doing without running water and electricity, but finally, he says, “I had to make a living.” In 1975 he took a job mowing grass and cleaning rest rooms at the Ozark Folk Center, a state park in Mountain View that showcases the crafts and culture of the Ozarks. The people running the center noticed, Mathews says, that “I had an interest in folklore,” so in 1976, when someone quit in the blacksmith’s shop, “they threw that at me.”

Mathews took easily to the job. “I’m a real physical guy,c he says. “I like hard physical work. I like to shovel, I like to hoe.” But what really attracted him to forging “was the magic of being able to heat a piece of iron red-hot and manipulate it and make it into anything you wanted.” An older man at the center taught him how to make a few things, and he also learned from books, but mostly he learned by doing the work.

The center employed Mathews as an independent contractor and paid him very little, he says, “so I still had the potential of starving to death.” To generate income, he made products for sale at the center’s craft shop–triangular dinner bells, fireplace pokers, and so on.

In 1979, he left the Folk Center and started his own shop in an abandoned gas station outside Mountain View, and by 1981 he had hired one or two other blacksmiths and a part-time secretary. Every weekend, he drove to craft shows in cities like Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., offering his ironwork for sale directly to consumers. Then he quit selling retail and began exhibiting only at wholesale trade shows.

From there the curve has been steadily up, until last year Stone Country Ironworks had sales approaching $3 million. It is most likely the largest blacksmith shop in the country–large enough, Mathews says, to be “consistent and reliable,” and thus appealing to retailers in a way that smaller shops cannot match.

Likewise, Mathews produces ironwork that is not as costly as the “sculpture” some smiths turn out, and yet it is far more elegant and attractive than ironwork of the stamped-out, mass-produced variety, “We’re kind of staying in the middle,” Mathews says. “Everything we make is functional, yet it still makes an art statement.”

Forging is hot, hard, noisy work that does not draw delicate types. The 50-odd smiths work in clusters around propane-fed furnaces, each with this own power hammer, hand hammer, anvil, and vise; they heat iron rods and pound and twist them into the desired shapes. Even with only a few of the power hammers pounding away in the 15,000-square-foot steel building where the forging is done, the din can be ferocious. The pool of potential employees thus tends to be dominated by high-spirited young men.

“Blacksmithing requires a lot of energy, a red-blooded gung-ho kind of a drive in people,” Mathews says. “The people here work hard, they live hard–we all heat with firewood, we all fix our own trucks–and that spirit is necessary in blacksmith work.” He says that every year “I have a bigger family of real quality employees,” but putting that family together has not been easy. He thinks that the community might esteem him more highly if he had been hiring more genteel workers.

The headaches that come with assembling a work force are a classic growing pain, though, and Stone Country Ironworks has been experiencing others. “This place almost got away from us,” Mathews says, because production costs were rising faster than production, “but we figured out a way to pull it back in. Now I think we’re poised to be a much bigger company.” He has even gone back into retail sales, on a small scale, by opening a store on Mountain View’s picturesque courthouse square.

Late last year, Mathews hired someone’s to replace him as president and chief executive officer–his own title is now chairman–and he hopes that the change will give him more time at the forge. He has always designed most of the company’s products, and he still has what he calls a “personal studio, where I go to do prototypes. I’m not real good on paper; I have to go out there and get my hands dirty.” But even if he becomes more active as a smith, his role in the company can never be what it was.

“It’s been a struggle for me,” Mathews says, “because always in the old days, I felt that the way to keep respect on the floor was to work out there with them, and to make sure that when I asked somebody to do something, I wasn’t too proud to do it myself. But I’ve had to forget about that, because I can only work 80 hours a week before I burn out.”

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