James Brown Bingo I

I was finally able to see what all the hype was about. James Brown Bingo is one of the most talked about events at the station. Last night was the first iteration for summer 2007. The galley was packed, and all the cards were sold. This resulted in a $229 prize for the last game. My understanding is that this first go-round of JB Bingo was just an intro rather than the wildly outrageous event that it has been billed as. For me, the whole gig is the transformation of James Brown: Executive Chef, from mild mannered polar culinary expert into James Brown charismatic bingo host. He definitely gets into a different character than who I normally see around the station. Entertaining indeed!

Here's a shot of our MC. As you can see, the galley is packed. This photo was taken from the west end of the galley:

Naturally for such a high stakes games, we use nothing but the finest quality bingo equipment. It may be possible to see the rotating gold-plated bingo number selecting device just behind James. Below you can see the number-marking tokens used by a typical player:

A special thanks goes out to the fine folks at Crispix cereals.

After bingo, I decided to punish a perfectly good Gibson Les Paul for a while. I was going to play for a couple of hours, but the batteries in the afore-mention Pandora's Box quit after about 60 minutes. Before leaving The States, I purchased a bunch of Energizer Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries. They seem to do pretty good. Rechargables are the only way to go down here. 1: You won't thrown 'em away. They're rechargeable and expensive. 2: There are no convenient stores to buy replacements from nearby. It's a win-win.

Once done with the noise, I wandered back to the galley for a water re-fill. The place had been transformed into a disco. It was a little crazy. Not being one to dance, I was outta there ASAP. I then watched Raising Arizona (for the 20th time). It still holds up. It was great to see the UnFrozen Desert again. The scenes look they were shot in Apache Junction and/or Florence. It looked like home to me.

Upon another jouney (about 100 feet) to the galley, things had mellowed and pizza was being served for Mid Rats. Quite tasty as all the food is here. It was about 1am, and I wanted to stay awake for another few hours. Back to the movie lounge. Someone had just put in "Hustle and Flow". This is a movie about a small-time Memphis pimp who wants to become a rapper. Oh yeah, this is my kind of movie! Although I could not relate to it in any way, it was still somewhat entertaining, yo. In the end, the hero ends up in jail for assult with a deadly weapon; shocking. Don't blame me, I didn't write it.

Off to sleep for a few hours.

It's now Sunday morning about 10am. The fire-fighting crew will be taking a tour of all the out lying buildings to gain an understanding of their layout and hazardous contents. We leave about 1pm. This should make for some excellent photo ops!

Have a good weekend.