The real and imaginative adventures of Dennis Spielman

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HeyDay Entertainment with Uncovering Oklahoma


Yesterday, I went to the ribbon cutting event at HeyDay Entertainment in Norman. They reopened their doors with more fun. HeyDay features laser tag, a ropes course, miniature golf, an arcade, food, and bowling. In this video, I interviewed Trey Bates and Brad Little.

As for my personal thoughts, the place is fun and it’s really cool looking inside. The improvements they’ve made are simply incredible. I do wish they would’ve expanded the arcade more as with the few people that where there, it felt cramped. I’ll be going back for date nights and hanging out with friends.

The Dinner Detective

The Dinner Detective
The Dinner Detective is a national interactive murder mystery dinner show and made it’s debut in Oklahoma City in early June. Each Dinner Detective show begins with a cocktail interrogation session. During this time, all of the guests are encouraged to speak to the other guests. Unbeknownst to them, the show has already started.

Last night, Leslie and I attended one of the special Halloween shows where people had the option of arriving in costume. I received complementary passes for running an article on them on Uncovering Oklahoma. I had been looking forward to going to the show as I’ve never been to one before, other than ones I’ve made myself with my Movie Murder Mystery Party book.

The Dinner Detective with Detectives Guns and Roses
We had some hesitations about the show as the last few live shows we’ve seen fell flat. Those hesitations went away when Detectives Guns and Roses burst down an imaginary door because the Sheraton Hotel wouldn’t let them bust down the real doors. The actors were fantastic and energetic–and I’m not saying that because I knew most of them. It was a bit strange for me when I first saw someone I personally knew and I was given a look that told me, “I don’t know you.” When I saw more of my friends, who all turned out to be actors for the show, I had to play along that I didn’t know them. It’s kind of weird pretending not to know someone. After the show, I apologized to some of my friends for not being like friendly, but they knew I was playing along and were glad I didn’t blow their cover.

The show included a simple four course meal. Leslie and I had gotten the fish. Some of the other people at our table got the chicken. No one at our table had any complaints about the food other than that dinner could’ve be brought out a little sooner and maybe some more bread. The cash bar was standard, which a good selection of drinks.

The Dinner Detective
As for whodunit, I’m not going to tell. I will tell you we didn’t guess the murderer correctly, despite the edge of knowing which some of the guests were actors. The person who I thought was the murderer, ended up getting killed in the show. I was told after the show, that several people guessed I was the killer. Perhaps it was because of the clue I found? Yeah, let’s go with that answer.

In summary, The Detective Detective was fun a evening. If you do go, plan some extra time for parking and bring some friends.

V.S.P. Wars

For a contest to win $50 each, my co-workers and I made this Star Wars parody video as part of a company campaign to get employees excited about taking V.S.P insurance. We spent a few days working on the script, about an hour recording it, and I spent three hours editing everything together. We all had fun filming this video. The whole store thinks our is the best video out of all of the submitted videos. 🙂

Dennis Spielman as Director/Editor
Melanie Cotanny as Princess Hoya
Cody Jones as Luke Spherewalker
Jimmy Alston as Obi One Base
Darlene Flores as R2-Diapoters
Katrina Parham as Jedi Sales Associate
Daniel Hardy as Jedi Customer
Phyllis Cole as Jedi Customer

The Office of Dennis Spielman

Dennis Office Sept 2014
I thought it would be fun to show off my office. I enjoy seeing other writer’s offices so I’m sure someone will enjoy mine. I recently bought a new monitor to connect to my MacBook Pro and sold my old iMac. I’ve had my iMac since early 2009 and it was started to show it’s age, especially compared to my beast of a laptop. I bought the ASUS PB278Q 27-Inch WQHD LED-lit Professional Graphics Monitor. The colors and screen resolution are phenomenal! I wish the speakers were too. I cleaned the desk and the room for that matter to take this picture today.

The paintings on the wall to the right were either done by me, Leslie, or for me by my friend, Anthony Nguyen. Not pictured is a corner to the left of two of my photographs as canvas prints.

What’s that on my laptop? A Spotify playlist for The Time Traveling Troupe? Yes, I’ve been collecting songs that fit or inspire the show. I have the first 12 episode season outlined with a few notes for the second and third seasons. I’m still a few years away from filming the first episode. My current book I’m working on does have a guest appearance from a character from the series.

Anyway, I wanted to share how my office was coming along.

The Atlanta, Georgia Trip

2014-08-30 Downtown Atlanta. Photo by Dennis Spielman
During an extended Labor Day Weekend trip, Leslie and I flew to Atlanta, Georgia to visit my family and explore the city. We took a 5:30 a.m. (blah, so early) direct flight to Atlanta, arriving there around 9 a.m. local time.

2014-08-30 Highland Bakery photo by Dennis Spielman
My parents took us out for breakfast at Highland Bakery located in the Old 4th Ward. We all had seen them on a food show on Netflix, and since my parents hadn’t been there yet, we HAD to go. I had their french toast, pictured above, and it was delicious. The $10 meal was made with thick slices of challah bread and topped with fresh fruit and French cream.


After breakfast, they drove us to the tiny town of Juliette, which was on my Mom’s To-Visit List. If you’ve seen the movie Fried Green Tomatoes then the town will look familiar. I personally hadn’t seen the movie. Along with handful of antique shops and sets leftover from the movie, there was the actual Whistle Stop Cafe. We didn’t eat there as it was busy and we were still full from breakfast.

2014-08-30 Mystic Falls sign-01
Keeping with the movie locations theme, the next town we visited was Covington. We didn’t explore too much as Leslie and I were tired and needed to check into our hotel. I did snap a picture of the Welcome to Mystic Falls sign from the TV series Vampire Diaries.

The rest of the Saturday evening consisted of us people watching the cosplayers from Dragon Con (which we weren’t able to fit in), roaming downtown as we had dinner at Jalapeño Charlies.


On Sunday, Leslie and I went to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Go see it. My photo gallery barely scratches the surface of it’s size and beauty. We spent half the day there. Just, go visit.

The other half of the day we took my first taxi ride, a completely stereotypical experience with the driver honking and rolling the window down to yell at people. Our ride brought us to Lenox Square a.k.a. the rich mall. In one of the stores I picked up a $2,000 pair of boots–and then quickly put them back down after seeing the price tag. $2,000 for shoes! Nope. Not for me. Still a cool mall. There was a cupcake shop called Sprinkles where we enjoyed some yummy cupcakes.


Monday morning was spent with my family at Underground Atlanta followed by shopping at Atlantic Station, which we enjoyed more. For lunch we ate at The Pig and The Pearl, where I had the Knife & Fork Brisket Sandwich. It was good, but too smokey for my tastes.


In the evening, we took a long drive to Helen, which I had visited before with my family, but not with Leslie. We didn’t go tubing–didn’t want to carry around the clothes for it–but we explored the shops that were still open. We didn’t get back to our hotel until very late that night.


Our final day, Tuesday, was spent in Five Little Points (again, been there before). Leslie got herself a spa treatment while I wandered around. Front Page News was for lunch before we caught our flight back home.

While we did a ton things, we didn’t do everything we wanted. I guess we have an excuse to go back. 🙂

Page 153 of 180

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