messiestobjects

Meh Pictures From Meh Trips

...And by Meh I mean interesting enough to shoot a dull photo of, but not interesting enough to have blogged about before. I hope that the dullness of these photos has more to do with the meh-ness of the subject material and my inexperience with a fancy new camera than it does with my overall picture taking ability. Though the fancy new camera excuse can only hold so long... I just got done taking a digital photography class at the local night school / Vocational Tech institute. And surprisingly, the Vo-Tech school uniform is NOT actually jeans, Metallica T-shirt, jean jacket and tan workboots. Which really surprised me because I wound up being the only one in class who was prepared for that eventuality.

ANYway, I learned some good stuff in the class, but I still have a lot of practicing to do. None of these pictures display any sort of new knowledge, however. I think I've gone backwards, if anything. One of my Meh trips was to Colonial Beach, VA a few months back. I know, I know KC, I should've called. But I was only there for a night, I had to work, and I just had time to make a quick run to GW's birthplace before heading home.

GW is a hero of mine, by the way. I got all teary eyed while walking around his family's estates and read stuff about him and everything. He could have been King of America, you know. The people were madly in love with him, and they didn't really understand this newfangled business of elections and Democracy and all that rubbish. Had he wanted, he could have retained power easily after his 2nd term, and the people would have cheered. But, he willingly stepped aside, as the political geniuses of the time had seen was a necessary step in not having power rest for too long in the hands of any one man, and set the stage for a Democratic political experiment that appears to have succeded until the 1950's when J. Edgar Hoover ruled the world with a gay iron fist. Just because Democracy has finally failed in the end doesn't mean that our Founding Fathers weren't awesome, and GW had the manliness required to turn his back on power; hence the teary eyes.

Also, I went to Cleveland the other week. Cleveland seemed to have a nice vibe, however the only cool thing there that I got to do was of course the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.

Cleveland may very well be the birthplace of Rock-n-Roll, or at least, birthplace of the term Rock-n-Roll, but Cleveland overall does not, in fact, rock. And the Hall of Fame? Check this crap out!

I'm sorry, but "no photography" is not very rock-n-roll. I wanted in the worst way to get a shot of John Lennon's Sgt. Pepper uniform, Bootsy Collin's crazy shoes, and Elvis' purple cadillac. And Janis Joplin's painted porsche. And that wack wardrobe Hendix liked to sport.

Actually, there was a lot that was not very rock-n-roll about the place. Run-D.M.C. is getting inaugerated this year. Why? Because they did a song with Aerosmith? Nirvana hasn't even been included in that prestigious list yet. But Nirvana does have a signifigant presence in the museum, however. They pop up in videos and exibits here and there, but this is also very un-rock-n-roll because I didn't see one single mention of the Pixies, whom Kurt Cobain freely and reverently admitted to ripping off. If the Pixies don't wind up in the Hall, that place is a joke. But The Velvet Underground and The Ramones were there, so that's good. But perhaps the most un-rock-n-roll thing about the whole place was the presence of several Guitar Hero kiosks. Guitar Hero is the Anti-Christ of Rock-n-Roll. (I did not take this picture. I lifted it from the interwebs. "the interwebs", as a term, is beginning to irritate me. So that is officially the last time I will ever say it.)

Also, I just got back from Detroit. I drove through Grosse Pointe and other suburbs of Detroit on the way to the airport. I didn't get any pictures, mostly because I was too scared to get out of my car. And I used to live in Baghdad, folks.

I've Been Framed!

Is the phrase "Fateful Coincidence" an oxymoron? I think that on the surface of it, yes for sure. But I'm going to go ahead and use it anyway. I've blogged about fateful coincidences in my life before; Now I have got another good one which serves both as a nice little bookend to the post I just linked to, and allows me to go into the latest bit of news quite nicely.

Now, to be clear, when I say coincidence I mean coincidence. People, objects, and events are like pool balls on the pool table of time. An infinitely large pool table with billions of balls, where everything just careens around and bangs off each other until you're knocked into a side pocket. I don't need greater explanations of why things happen, good or bad, than that. And by fateful, I mean fate as it appears in the rear view mirror. A person's trajectory can appear to have meaning in the background because you can only see a trail once you've blazed it. Ok, enough of the clunky mixed metaphors and onto my latest epiphany of a fateful coincidence.

Back in '96, when I realized I needed to get out of town to seek my fame and fortune, I was pretty cash poor. Well that's misleading... I didn't have anything of value, I was just poor. My plan was to get a bus ticket to Bellingham, WA just north of Seattle and then from there a ferry ride up to Petersberg, Alaska. Those tickets were expensive enough on their own, but I also had to survive for a month or two up there before I'd get paid by the fishing cannery. So, having thrown myself all in, I sold my entire CD collection, about 200 CDs for $800. I sold them to Tom, the owner of the then relatively recently opened Main Street Jukebox. Now, I don't know if you young whippersnappers can appreciate this, but back in '96, $800 was a lot of money. I took it right up the street to Alice's Travel Agency, and bought a Greyhound bus ticket all the way to Bellingham for $88. If it hadn't have been for Tom, I would have had a lot of trouble trying to scrap together enough cash to begin what was to become my fantastic ten years of travel.

What makes this a fateful coincidence? Well that's my news. Tom is hosting my travel photography at the Main Street Jukebox for the month of April! It's my first show, possibly my last, and it makes quite a nice little wrap up to my adventure. My opening is on Saturday April 4th, and there is also a great musician by the name of Nicole Erin Carey playing at 7:00pm. I'm not sure what time I'll be there, probably around 6, but you're welcome to stop in whenever; then or anytime during the month of April. I've spent the last few weeks matting and framing about 30 pictures of mine, the ones I put in my typepad portfolio in fact, and obviously those will be the ones on display. I'm contemplating selling them as well, but I'm hesitant as setting myself up for disappointment is something I generally try to avoid. It's cool enough for me that someone is willing to hang them up!

Now, the best part of this fateful coincidence doesn't stop there. There's more. Alice's Travel Agency? Alice is Alice Luongo, the fabulous mother of the fantastic Julie Luongo, author and artist extraordinaire, love of my life, and also the person who has been nagging me for well over a year to print out some of my photos and try to get them displayed somewhere. Back in '96, do you know what Julie was doing? Working in her mother's shop, is what! It was a long time ago, but I'm positive that the person who sold me my bus ticket was a young pretty girl, and Julie assures me that she was the only young pretty girl working there at the time... Well, you can do the math. Ain't the fateful coincidence game grand?

My basement framing studio.

This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land, From East I-80, To West I-80, But No Tress-pass-ing, On That Private Pro-per-ty, Because That's The Man's Land, And Not Your Or My Land

It's been awhile since I've done a travel post; maybe because travel doesn't turn me on like it used to, or maybe because the places I've gone for work haven't been worth hitting the 'new post' button for. Maybe it's trying to keep a blog going with YouTubes, rants, and silly pictures that has me down. Well, whatever the case may be, this morning I've decided to throw one out there. It's not that I haven't been traveling. I've actually been quite busy at work. But the travel hasn't been quite as exciting lately.

Indianapolis. I spent a couple of days south of Indianapolis. If Sarah Palin's claim that that's the type of place where the real Americans abide is true, then I am certainly not, nor ever will be, a real American. For one thing, I went to a grocery store in Odon, Indiana, to find some food for a couple days. There was a whole aisle of marshmallow fluff and snicker doodles and the like. Lot of frozen dinners. Meals in a box. But, for a farm state, surprisingly limp-looking produce. And aside from this sad produce, not much else in the way of actual food. And this was a real grocery store; the only one for 30 miles in any direction, in fact. The countryside reminded me of a bad set from an M. Night Shamalamabing-bang movie. Indianapolis was pretty sparse as well. It's major attractions were an elevator ride to the top of a 150 foot Civil War monument in the center of town, and the shopping mall.

I also just got back from an overnight in Columbus Ohio. I stayed in the downtown area. Lot of Insurance companies in Columbus. And people who work for Insurance companies.

But before that exciting trip, I did spend a few nights in northern California. That was very cool. I spent a day and night in Calistoga, in Napa Valley. Did some wine tasting. I'm pleased to announce my pick of the year: Bennett Lane Winery's Maximus red feasting wine. Disclaimer: I am partial to red wine, and Maximus feasting wine? Impossible to resist a name like that. And it tastes great too. It's a mix of reds, is great with Roman-style overeating, and is a favorite at Calistoga's best wine bar, the Bar Vino. Could I write for wine aficionado rags or what?

The best part of that trip, however, was that I got to knock another item off of my childhood list of things I've always wanted to see, the Redwoods. There is a section of the Redwood forest about an hour drive away from Calistoga called the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, and it pulled me to it like a wooden magnet. Uh, with enough bits of metal in it to actually have magnetism. Yikes, bad simile. Anyway, that place was awesome. I wish my camera had smell capabilities; the Canon Smellshot 1000 or some such, because I've never smelled anything so good and Grove-alicious. I'm still learning how to use my new camera, and although I'm getting better, there's still nothing to shout about. But anyway, it would be hard to capture the awesomeness of Redwoods without a person standing in the shot to give a size comparison, and even so you can't fit a whole tree in a pic taken from ground level anyway. But here are my best shots. To save you from squinting, the sign says:

Colonel Armstrong
Height - 308 Feet
Diameter - 14.6 Feet
Approx. Age - 1400 Years

Colonel Armstrong? Sounds familiar, like something I saw in some book or toy store once... Oh. Never mind. Don't know what I'm talking about. Carry on. And this sign says:

Parson Jones
Height - 310 Feet
Diameter - 13.8 Feet
Approx. Age - 1300 Years

This is an obligatory picture of an upended redwood stump.

And here's a part of the redwood trail that got flooded by some earlier rains. I'm a sucker for reflection, of late.

So that was really gorgeous. I've always wanted to see a Redwood, and it was worth the wait. It was beautiful and exhilarating, but it also made me sad. It was such a lush grove, the smells were amazing and the colors and fresh air vivid, but I've read that the whole of the American continent was once like that. Not so much covered in Redwoods, but lush and smell-erific with other vegetations. It makes it even more depressing when you travel around and see what "real Americans" have done with the land we've taken custody of. Not to get all Native American philosophic or anything, but.

SO, on my last day in California, I flew out of San Francisco. I didn't get to spend much time in the city, because I really had wanted to do Napa and the Redwoods, but I drove through Berkley and Oakland, and wandered around Pier 39 for a bit. I didn't have time to do Alcatraz, dammit, but I got a picture anyway.

 

So that's that for now. I think I have a job in Cleveland in a few weeks. Rock-n-Roll hall of fame, here I come!