My very own epic fails, part 1

I had an epic fail yesterday so as I laughed at the mistake I made, I thought about other times in my life where I’ve had major goof-ups. A few solid ones came to mind, and a few that I was hoping I’d forget about. The first I’ll share with you takes place in a Coast Guard Day softball game. My dad was in the Coast Guard and on this particular day, he let my brother and I play in the softball game. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time. I had seen this on TV so at one point when I hit a ball to the infield, I decided to slide into first base… head first. Let’s just say I ended up back in the dugout because the mud I slid in wasn’t as slippery as I thought it would be. Dove towards first, slid a little, stopped sliding before I even reached first base! Embarrassing. Then to top it all off, I cried. What a sissy.

There’s another embarrassing softball story, but this was in college. And again, I was sliding. I rounded second base and sprinted towards third. The throw came in and the third baseman tagged me, I was out. But we were arranged in such a way that when he pulled out of the tagging position, he had to toss my legs to the side. I took that as an arrogant assault so I became visibly angry. Realizing I took this the wrong way, he offered his hand to help me up, to which I rejected and popped up on my own. Unfortunately I got up too fast for my own good and ended up falling backwards. It was the most embarrassing moment of my college career, and that includes the few times I crashed my bike riding down a hill.

Another epic fail while I was in college involves my brother, yet again. This time it was his college graduation. Me, being the techy video fanatic, brought along my video camera to record the once-in-a-lifetime event. It was a great day! The battery was charged, I had a tape in the camera and things were looking up. I recorded clips throughout the ceremony and when it was his turn to walk across the stage, I was ready. Or so I thought. Checking the video afterwards, I made a giant mistake. You know how sometimes you can be recording when you don’t think you are, then not recording when you do think you are? So I recorded him walking up the ramp to the stage, then nothing, then him walking back to his seat. I completely missed him receiving his accolades as he shook hands with faculty crossing the stage. I’m such an idiot!

I owe an apology to my brother-in-law for the next epic fail. It was a beautiful day in the Gulf of Mexico. The guys in my family went out for a fishing trip in hopes of catching grouper, snapper, rock bass, whatever we could. My bro-in-law hooked something big. It took him a good while to reel it in, and whatever it was put up such a fight that we all took turns reeling. Towards the end he took the pole back and I assigned myself video duty. It was a huge nurse shark from about 90 feet down! It was amazing. I’d show you the video here but much like the disaster that was my brother’s graduation, I hit record to capture the event, only to realize when I hit the button to start recording, it was actually stopping the recording. I got about a 1-second view of that big fish. Dang it, Ben!

And to circle back around to my most recent epic fail… it was yesterday. I set out to capture the total solar eclipse in video fashion so I planned and prepped. Practiced and packed. On eclipse day I was ready. I arrived a couple hours ahead of time to get a good spot. I wanted to record 2 separate videos… 1. A 360-degree view of the park where I watched the eclipse and 2. a timelapse of the Parthenon there at the park. The 360-video went off without a hitch, but when I went to start recording the images for the time-lapse on my GoPro, the information window said “no SD card.” My attempt at a cool time-lapse was eclipsed by my own silly forgetfulness. As it turns out, I was practicing time-lapse shots in my back yard and after transferring footage from the SD card to my computer, I forgot to return the SD card to the GoPro. Soooooooo instead of a cool shot of the Parthenon, enjoy my practice time-lapse of mushrooms in my back yard. You’re welcome, America!

-Out of the Wilderness

 

 

The girl in Brett Eldredge’s video “Somethin’ I’m Good At”

JUST POSTED: Check out fun facts from Brett Eldredge’s “The Long Way” music video, starring Sadie Roberts.

I like to find out little tidbits of info about music videos that come out, and more specifically the (possibly-) lesser-known stars of music videos. Here are a few I’ve researched in the past:

Who’s the girl in Omi’s “Cheerleader” video? 

The dancers in Keith Urban’s “The Fighter” music video.

Uptown Funk: Smoother than a fresh jar of Skippy explained.

Well, I forged ahead to tackle the lead actress in Brett Eldredge’s music video “Somethin’ I’m Good At”…

…but sometimes it’s hard, y’all! In all my efforts to find more about her so you, as a fan, can share in the knowledge, I’ve come up empty. Sometimes that’s the way it goes.

I’ll keep searching but all I have so far is that the video was shot on January 31 and released on Feb 27, all in 2017, and it was directed by Ethan Lader. A couple of street addresses seen in the video are 19816 and 19825.

I searched Instagram and Twitter, no luck. I’ve Googled with no luck. If you have any info, please do share in the comments below! 🙂

-Out of the Wilderness

 

 

How I trick my dogs almost every day

I don’t consider myself a morning person. Sure, when I was young I loved waking up on Saturday morning to watch A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Muppet Babies, Tiny Toon Adventures, Bugs Bunny, Alvin and the Chipmunks, all the amazing shows back then.

After these messages, we’ll be riiiiiiiiight back!

But because I’m a man now, I put that childish behavior behind me. It has completely nothing to do with those shows not being on anymore. Not that I check the TVGuide every Friday night or anything. So Saturdays I am free to sleep in.

My dogs love to sleep in, too. I think they’d sleep till noon if I wasn’t so noisy in the morning. But don’t take their side just yet. Sure, they might sound like good little companions, but no, no, no, not so fast mi compadre!


You know how they say nothing good happens after midnight? Well, it’s true. Especially around 4am when my dogs wake me up because they’re hungry for breakfast. What do they think this is, Waffle House??

This behavior is not something I agree with. In fact, I disavow it on many sides. But they have the power, call them tri-color supremacists, because beagles, if nothing else, are stubborn and persistent. They don’t let the white man sleep.

Wake me up, before you go, go.

It starts as a whimper as if to say, “HE FORGOT THE LAST TIME WE ATE WAS ALL THE WAY BACK YESTERDAY!!!!!!!!” So the whimpering will continue till I adhere to their evil plan.

Piper is almost 8 years old so we’ve been getting up in the wee hours of the night for many moons. That’s only half the problem, though. I also let them outside when we wake up, and this is where I’ve been outsmarting them for about a year. The usual routine was to wake up, feed them, then let them outside. They’d get to carrying on and quite selfishly stay outside till they felt like coming in. Sometimes it can be 2 minutes (if, Lord-willing, it’s raining), or 20 to 30 minutes if they want to punish me. So I’d lay down on the couch and wait.

But I hear sounds in my mind, brand new sounds in my mind.

Sounds of trumpets and confetti because I started thinkin’, and now I trick my dogs into doing this whole morning routine the way I want. Hey, it’s 2017 and “dog owner lives matter,” too!

Well, they still get what they want because we still wake up around 4am for breakfast. But after waking up, they go outside then it’s time to eat. Beagles are so food-driven that once I let them outside and they do their business, they greyhound it back to the door to be let inside. This nearly eliminates all they time they spend outside smelling the grass, or wandering around, or pooping.

And this is how I trick my dogs. Until they read this and start waking up at 3am just to keep the white man on his toes.

-Out of the Wilderness

Thoughts about Virginia…and why I love the Nashville Police Department

In the wake of the horrible event that took place in Virginia last weekend, I was reminded of a couple of things. #1 Sometimes people can be atrocious maggots, and I’m speaking of the one guy who drove his car into the crowd. And #2 How much I love the police department here in Nashville. In my experience, they’ve been nothing but top-notch, literally the guardians of the city.

One story I can share happened a few months back on a Thursday I went downtown to watch the Predators play in the Stanley Cup finals. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous because the crowds there were so big. Someone might have seen it as a perfect opportunity to inflict harm on people. But I decided to go anyway, so I met up with a friend a couple miles from downtown. We walked from Centennial Park all the way down Broadway to set up our camping chairs at one of three giant screens they erected for fans to watch. As we neared the organized chaos of that night (CMA Fest was also happening at the same time) and saw thousands of people scattered throughout the downtown streets, we also noticed something else.

This…

Those are a dump trucks. Those are giant dump trucks lined up back to back. This was at the intersection of Broadway and maybe 10th or 11th Avenue. From there down the rest of Broadway was all blocked from vehicle traffic and these giant blockades would prevent any sort of “terrorist” from driving anything smaller than a tank into the crowds that night, and the entire weekend. It made me so proud. SO PROUD. Our police department, and city officials, plus CMA and Predators folks as well, were thinking ahead and planning in ways I never thought of to protect me and everyone else who just wanted to have a fun, safe night.

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I know this is just one example and I’m sure there are plenty of other stories about the police here. We’ll never know what possible barbaric acts were prevented the nights Nashville hosted the Stanley Cup finals and the CMA fest on the very same nights. But my memory from those nights will be how Metro Police officers were our guardians.

-Out of the Wilderness

The solar eclipse in middle Tennessee

A few months ago the buzz around town was the Predators playing the Stanley Cup. Now what’s cooler than ice is actually hotter than hot, literally. The sun! On August 21st the sun will be blocked by the moon for a period of time in what’s called a total solar eclipse. How this natural occurrence can be predicted is beyond me but I do think it’ll actually happen.

Solar sunglasses are pretty much sold out all across town. I, personally, have been to Kroger, Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, and the public library, all without success. I’ve heard there are still glasses available at the city’s science center so if I can score a pair from there, I’ll add a pic at the bottom of this post.

The news has been covering the upcoming event in most, if not all, broadcasts, adding specials here and there throughout the weeks leading up to the event. Now I’m sure we can all agree that starting on the evening of August 21st images will be flooding the internet. I’m sure there will be video clips, too. My goal on that day is to record something, or take pictures of something less obvious. Maybe time-lapse of the crowds watching from a park? Or a time-lapse the Nashville skyline? I haven’t fully committed to one idea yet, but I’m hoping to get something good on that day, and also get a look at the eclipse myself, that is, if I can get my hands on the hot commodity called solar eclipse sunglasses!

UPDATE: I got a pair of sunglasses from the Adventure Science Center, thanks to a dog-sitting client!
img_20170816_091825400.jpg

-Out of the Wilderness