Spring Break 2013 - Day 4

It just hit me when I sat down to write this entry, but my spring break is basically half over now. How the time flies.

Today was a pretty nice day. After a relaxing morning, Kyle and I grabbed an early lunch at a chicken place he really likes and then we hit up the Studebaker museum. I'm not sure who/where I heard it from, but one of the Studebaker's in the original Muppet Movie is part of that museum. I didn't expect the museum to be so big, but it did cover the 115-ish years that the Studebaker name was associated with making methods of transportation. Oh, and the carriage Lincoln rode to Ford Theater was there too - another unexpected surprise. When I got to the cars from the 30s and 40s, I had the music from L.A. Noire in my head. (If you haven't played it, it's a video game set in post-WWII Los Angeles where you are an officer on the rise, but since it's a homage to film noir, everything doesn't turn up roses.)

So, the Muppet Studebaker. It wasn't on any fancy pedestal, although it did have some plushes of Kermit & Fozzie and various Muppet memorabilia. They had a picture from the movie of the car (this is the car that got painted all different colors) and the car has definitely gone through a lot. Most of the paint has faded and there are notable rust spots and areas that are falling apart. There was a donation box to restore the car to the look from the movie, but I would imagine that that inflow of donations has decreased now that it's been a little bit since The Muppets came out a couple of summers ago. Of course, since the car actually had to drive in the movie, the trunk was open to reveal a second steering wheel. Based on where the pedals were, the driver would have to be lying on his/her back with a video monitor on the "top" of the inside of the trunk. I had read beforehand that they used a TV camera in the nose cone and a monitor in the trunk, but when I saw it, it hit me by how little space that person actually would have.

Before the museum, Kyle and I walked around downtown South Bend for a little bit. As Kyle admitted, there haven't been huge draws to the downtown area outside of restaurants and nightclubs. They used to have the college football hall of fame, but that recently (within the past year) re-located to Texas because of low visitor counts. After the museum, we went back to Kyle's apartment where we played some games and watched more Archer. We tried out a Chinese buffet Kyle hadn't been to before for dinner and then back here again for a movie (Argo, which was quite suspenseful) and more downtime. After Kyle went to bed (since he has developed an earlier sleep schedule than me), I watched Super with Rainn Wilson. What a messed up movie...

So yeah, the day wasn't groundbreaking from start to finish, but it was still a good day. I gloss over it when blogging, but simply spending time with a good friend has been quite fun, from the random jokes to catching up on life. As for tomorrow, there isn't some big "we have to do this" item, but I'm sure we will figure something out. Night!