What are you made of?

Photo of a TAG Heuer poster in the window (watch and hand) and a nearly seamless reflection of the street behind me.

This advertising campaign is really effective, in my humble. I'm not the world's most materialistic dude (or anywhere close to it) and I have no sense of fashion it would seem. (As friends delight in telling me.) But I must say that I like these watches. Basically I need one. Yeah, need.

And a BMW. I need one of them, too. But other than those two things, I'm good to go. (Except for my future camera.)

So when my buddy Andy let me drive his new BMW, I was stunned by how many thoughts of sumpin sumpin came immediately to mind. I know, it's cliched. But they weren't lascivious thoughts at all. But the ride sparked a parallel line of thinking. That machine allowed for a very pleasing connection between mind, intentionality, body and external responsiveness. Plus the engine growled.

In German.

I'm just saying.

Nasty.

Prom Queen

No, YOU'RE inactive!

Be more constructive with your comments, Red Sign!

Rude.

Half-naked building-sized Ubermensch

The images of the half-naked woman were moving though I don't remember the building having a screen--perhpas the images were projected onto the building directly; I don't remember. If you haven't been to NYC's Times Square it's hard to conceive how large these images are. To the right of the woman was a huge billboard of Sean Combs looking to his right (i.e. at her). I got a few pictures of him looking at this woman, as it were, but the images didn't turn out well. Drat it all.

This woman's eyes are gi-normous. Is this our future? A race of giant-eyed beauties? I hope so.

Is LeBron going to play for the Knicks? (Probably not.) And am I the only one on this blog who cares? (Fo shizzle.)

And who IS better, LeBron or Kobe? LeBron has (slightly) better stats in virtually every category. Yet Kobe has the rings. (Kobe. But LeBron wasn't brought to court for...oh, forget it.)

And is a city filled with fantastically oversized images of gorgeous and charismatic persons crushingly depressing on account of how tellingly they remind you of your own comparative insignificance and utter lack of being, or is it thrilling by how it reimages the boundaries of human possibility?

(Yes.)

Oh, and yes, these images were heavily manipulated. Yes. But no, I did not digitally remove her shirt. Or his.



Okay...I couldn't help but take up the challenge. So I just isolated S-Combs and punched dem s---s up, Diddy style. Not bad.

It's beyond my powers to describe how intoxicating this town is. Crazy alive and huge and gorgeous and a reawakening of senses and imagination and pure adrenalin for a heart pump pump pumping.

NYC Cigarette

The best kind of cigarette. Natch.

Prometheus. And muffin.

Or, as you know what I really think: Muffin. And Prometheus.

Mmm...blueberry muffin.

So good.

So so good.

Guggenheim from the outside

I think it's safe to say that 2009 has done about all the photographic damage it can do on the blog. On exclusively, or nearly so, to 2010.

not my fault, pt. 2

More German techno Christian music to blame. This is Debanor.

Vulcanized

post-mortem

not my fault

These photos of water were manipulated under the influence of German Christian (Satanic?) Techno music. I had no control over the outcome.

Trey and the bones

Taken at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX.

Stone shadow

I find it interesting how the stone's own contours and coloring create imagery that allow the viewer (or me, at least) to mentally fill in the image of the dress, so to speak, making the dress and girl (Emma, I believe) look more substantial than mere shadow.

Recycling plastic

Beauty even in the trash.

Tiepolo Toes

Lydia has monkey toes, so naturally she’s keenly tuned into other folks with monkey toes. Including the subjects of paintings and their monkey toes. I think the entire painting was constructed around these winners. That’s Lydia’s hand pointing them out to me.

Cleveland Institute of Art. A Tiepolo, I believe.

Deborah, my niece

Deborah listening attentively to a speaker discussing the architecture of a home in Michigan. The light hit her eyes just right.

From a great height

Yes, I've used this title before. It was that or "Get behind me, Satan." I chose well.

Lydia the Lioness

Was taking Lydia to swim practice with the car windows down. I noted Lydia's hair whipping around in the wind. I had my camera with me so I just pointed it behind me and clicked. She looks different here than in any other photo, or so I think.

lilypads and the infinite regress

I've posted bunches of photos that I've taken from 2010, but before I left for my vacation a few days ago I finally organized (i.e. deleted about a billion of) my photos from 2009. I'll be posting a few strays from that year before moving on exclusively to the 2010 photos.

Now see, this is the kind of conversation left entirely in me own brain. You didn't need to know any of that.

Nor did you need to read my self-criticism about my inability to filter what I should say.

Nor the above sentence.

Oh, it be turtles all the way down from here on out.

Sanitized sledding

Beloved--I've taken to heart your criticisms, and I am SO sorry for what I did on the last video. I hope this sanitized version meets your approval.

Update on our fridge magnets

As Dave Barry said, there's a fine line between hobby and insanity. I'll let you decide which side of the line I'm on.

Regardless:

The good: The magnets are very cheap little souvenirs.

The bad: I want to buy a bigger refrigerator to display more cheap little souvenirs.

The Judgment Eyeball!

And part two. I couldn't decide which one to post since both are, to quote our friend Shinigami-Sidhe, right bloody fabulous. The top is a better photo but the bottom is a better image.



Anyone else out there see the Brando-esque quality (Think Apocalypse Now) to the dude in the top photo?

Sledding

This is a huge file; it took me five minutes or so for the video to buffer completely. My suggestion: start it, push pause immediately, then go eat a donut (or some prunes if you prefer), and come back to view it when it's fully buffered. Enjoy.

winter picnic

Snow dusting on two adjacent picnic tables.

Anonymous, FTW!!!

Beloved—

There’s a wonderful little book by Cornelius Plantinga called Not the Way It’s Supposed to be: A Breviary of Sin which is a brilliant exploration of sin and its ramifying effects. It read virtually autobiographically for me, and I found myself time and again hearing the equivalent of Marv Albert’s voice in my mind saying, “Yes!!!” Been there, done that. Yep yep yep.

But you already know all this if you’ve read this blog three times or more often. Shoot, I could practically rename this blog: Not the way it’s supposed to be.

And most of you would say, "Amen, brother."

But see, the tide has turned. Big time. Now I’m living a phase of my life that can only be categorized as “Things is goin’ like they should for a white boy with soul.”

Cuz here’s why. My blog peeps are buying me extremely cool stuff. First Andy D sent me the star-signed poster of The Godfather. Most def very cool. And now one of my readers, known to you as “Anonymous,” returned from Italy with a most extremely cool gift for me—a 45 rpm record issued in April of 1972 of the theme to The Godfather. In Italian. Be still my friggin' soul.

I mean….

Score

Word

Respeck

Yes’um

Fo shizzle

Mos def

Anonymous, FTW!!!

So I got the single matted and framed and put it in the guest room--now known as “my room” on account of its extreme thug life gangsta vibe (Italian Style). I moved the painting of the dead rabbit (or, as my daughters now call it, “the dead bunny”) and put up a great painting of a bunch of Mafioso types that my sis-in-law gave to me. Her husband (or so he tells me) is a frequent visitor to the blog, but despite being extremely witty he simply refuses EVER to make a comment. So now with those three gifts I’ve got a Blog Peeps Corner.

----
On a completely different note, I shouldn’t like “Drop the World” by Lil’ Wayne and Eminem. But I do. Despite its mortifyingly hateful lyrics. What I love in particular is the creepy and crazy circus merry-go-round background counterpoint melody. I’m just saying…I like the creepy circus music.

Is what I’m saying.
-------

I’m back. So please remember this. If you know only one thing it should be this: If you buy me cool stuff, that definitely makes you a cool person. That’s just a good life lesson to absorb and to live by my dear friends.

Oh, Justcurious once mailed me a single sock in an envelope along with a wildly inappropriate and politically incorrect joke. It made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

That counts, too. That made her hood in my book.

But this is Anonymous’ moment. Thanks for the brilliant gift, A

---

P.S. Technoprairie and her family sends me marshmellow "peeps of the month," yes, every single month.

Please note: This. Does. Not. Count.

Respeck

I love gettin' all thug life and sh with my insect bugs. Yo, I'm bigger than than them, so they respeck the man.

Truth.

Nessie

FYI, I deleted the horrid ten-toed monstrosity. You're welcome. I could hardly come back to my own blog with that thing on it.

Caleb

...doin' his thang.

Bright sunny day

Just when you thought I would NEVER go back to the 2009 NOLA photos.

Church

Our church meets at the DeSoto Theater. The DeSoto Theater is, as you may have guessed, a theater. The theater has a really cool, very cluttered, and funky smelling control room (da bad kind of funky, not my cool white boy brand of funkiness). When especially inspired during church I sometimes I go back there snooping for photo opportunities and/or rodents. The control room is two rooms, actually. The larger room of the two has a big spotlight and trash from, oh, 1978. (So it's basically pretty cool.) The smaller one's special function, best I can gather, is to house a non-functioning toilet. Or something that looks a lot like a non-functioning toilet. I'm not sure what it is, actually. But in any event that tinier room is very dark (I couldn't find a light source) and has two tiny windows overlooking the theater. For this shot, I backed up as far as I could without actually falling into the toilet and took a picture of the praise band on the stage while they were, you know, praising. I haven't doctored the shot; I wish it came out clearer, and all my attempts to improve the original just made it worse.

Thanks to Justcurious, Paul Atkinson and Jeffrey Field for their help in building a resume for our friend, Tony Hayward. I invite your help as well. (See a couple posts down.)

Self-portraits

Lydia and I missed our flight coming home from KC in January. The shuttle driver had apparently never driven in snow before, and she also refused to use the shuttle's GPS system to find the residences of other customers. So we had to take a plane that diverted us to St. Paul, Minnesota. The winter sun was at such a low angle it was nearly blinding. I unsuccessfully tried to wire-up at the airport, but inspiration came when I decided to take advantage of the extreme glare of the sun off the laptop's screen. These are reflections off the computer screen.

Let's build a resume together!!!

So...I'm not worried for Tony Hayward. He'll land on his golden-slippered feet just fine, but he may need to look for a job elsewhere soon. Therefore I thought that together we could help him write a resume. I'm not feeling inspired, so I've set the bar very very low. (Justcurious and Paul Atkinson and Jeffrey Field are now all in the house with their contributions. Respeck!)

Tony Hayward

Objective: Ruining every major body of water, culminating in the Pacific Ocean. "May the sun never set on the British Petroleum empire."

Employment

British Petroleum

CEO, 2007 - Present

• Skill set
o Busting out fantastic “I truly care” looks on command.
o Biting my lip and empathizing with the persons whose lives I ruin.
o Self-pity
o Ruining large bodies of water.

• Accomplishments
o Ruined Gulf of Mexico.
o All-time safety violations king!!

Notable Past Achievements
• Peed and pooped in my bathtub until the age of nine!
• Killed all the fish in my aquarium as a teenager with only two pints of oil.
• Shut down summer camp swimming hole by releasing “mystery” fluid.
* Ex Officio member of Ducks Unlimited.
* Founder of "Crudites," theme restaurant chain known for tasty oil-soaked seafood appetizers
* Diverting attention away from Arizona immigration controversy

Technical Skills:
* More than proficient in WordImperfect and CAD(ultra).

Education:
* Bachelor of Bankruptus Moralis,
* Masters of Mucking
* Currently completing fieldwork for Doctorate in Dissembling

Philanthropy:
*Donated hundreds of millions of gallons of petroleum to needy Gulf coast residents during the summer of 2010.

Most Inspirational Quote in Time of Crisis:
* "I want my life back."

References: Capt. Joseph Hazelwood (Ret.)

Reflections of church in sheen of piano

I couldn't decide which photo I like better, though I'm leaning toward the b&w.

Ice Skating at Rockefeller Center

Wind

All that glitters...

I am the owner of a new camera!!!

I picked up my daughters from swim practice this evening at 7:00. Somewhere between the time I picked them up and the time I got home I decided apropos of nothing to buy a new camera. It wasn't gradual. It came like a lightning shot. And forty-five minutes later I had purchased a Canon PowerShot SX120 IS. I don't know what that means. Its zoom capacity was significantly larger than my present camera, and that's a big draw. It didn't have the swivel screen which facilitated my nook-and-cranny shooting (as Steven Taylor nicely dubbed it), but no camera features that any longer for reasons I don't understand at all. Also the lens looked bigger than most other compact cameras. Now I'm going to purchase an SLR and be a real photographer. Fo shizzle. Here's what my camera looks like with all the protective panels having come off from too much lovin.



This was the first picture taken with my new camera.