Riley's Farm Journal June 14-19, 2009

Stupid I-Phone Tricks - June 14, 2009

We attended a home school high school graduation last night, and two different celebration parties afterwards. Mary volunteered to pick up a cake for one of the graduation moms and the Iphone GPS pointed us to a non-existent Sam's Club on Perris Blvd, a full 8 miles from its actual location. Borrowing the language of "Galaxy Quest," I kept doggedly advising Mary to allow the "little blue thingy" (indicating our position) to overtake "the little red thingy" (the non-existent Sam's Club). We bowed to this new technology right until...read more.

Pinning Hope on Beasts - June 15, 2009

It might work at birthday parties, but in real life, you would never pin a tail on a donkey, and you certainly wouldn't do it blindfolded. I've watched enough election cycles to know that is exactly what we do as voters. We pin our hopes on a candidate, or, even worse, a party, and we usually get kicked in the teeth. It doesn't matter if..read more...

Shaping Fate - June 16, 2009

One way of remembering the weddings of your life is to chronicle the roles you've played at them: guest, ring-bearer, usher, videographer, present-boy. All of those parts, even that of a guest, has a kind of peril attached to it. People want weddings to go just right, and what if you are the guy whose cell phone blares "La Bamba" right at the "husband and wife" moment? What if you stretch your legs at the wrong.. read more.

Heah, kids, gather 'round the set!

It's time for another episode of..

Customer Service in the

Post Christian World - June 17, 2009

I'm not in the habit of giving consumer financial tips, because I don't know what I'm talking about, but I will extend this advice with respect to dining out and credit cards: if the waiter makes a fishy mistake, have him void the ticket and give you a receipt for the void, then sign the corrected ticket. The other night, at a high concept restaurant called The Inquisition (not really), the waiter handed me a sub-total..read more.

Flat Out Gorgeous This Morning ..AND..

Four Riley's Farm Web Scripts - June 19, 2009

The farm is beyond beautiful this morning--a whole leafy-green salad field of strawberries out there, climbing red roses everywhere, grapes fattening up. You just have to see it... read more.

Wedding or Gang Initiation?

In a few minutes, I'll let you know how long it takes to pick a pint of strawberries. I suspect it will be less than two minutes. They are at that "ridiculously easy" stage of harvesting, so if you like strawberries--and you want a bargain activity with the kids--come on up.

Yesterday a group of location scouts from the Inland Empire Film commission tooled around the farm taking their panorama shots. I think there were some pretty big television shows represented. We let film companies look around, but we turn down an awful lot of them, if we don't think the project is worth promoting. I turned down MTV twice, and about a month ago, I took a gander at the photography of a guy who wanted to do a "fashion runway on the farm." I concluded he he was one of those fruits who enjoy demeaning women for profit, so I told him no thanks. If you ever have a chance to participate in a reality show, by the way, say no. The producers of reality shows are liars--from start to finish. So, we get a lot of lookers, but we don't always ink a deal.

We have a vaguely similar problem with respect to weddings on the farm in that we very heavily promote traditional music to the point that if someone mentions their own band or a D.J., we usually say no. One bride brought up a really neat Irish band and we went along with that, but when someone proposes a D.J., or even a CD of favorites, those things can descend into rap-and-rave-fests within a matter of minutes. (You try telling a juiced-up band of big guys in tuxes their music doesn't fit the Riley's Farm theme.) Some contemporary music, (not all), can make a wedding look more like a gang initation than a celebration of holy matrimony.



Okay, so I'm a folk music snob; it's actually a pretty broad standard though. I would say yes to Mariachis, Big Band, Irish Folk, Blue Grass, Classical, Island music, but if someone put Eminem on the platter and he started in with his F-fest, you might as well turn the old farm into a strip mall and give everyone an Ipod and some face paint. A country wedding should sound at least something like a country wedding.

The kids were watching a wedding reality show last night up at grandma's and the theme seemed to be "Really Extravagant Expensive Could-Have-Purchased-A-Home-with-the-Money-we-Spent-on-this thing" Weddings. No kidding. One of the weddings had a price tag of $450,000. Both of the grooms seemed, um, sort of--how do I put this?--girlish. You would have to be a bit of a femme not to tell the ladies, "look, ladies, with the money you're spending on this we could host a stadium tractor-pull--and make money on the deal."

Anyway, we can host a wedding--a nice, traditional, non-experimental affair for considerably less than half a million dollars.