Children's Book WTF

Although I don't read as much as I did before Elizabeth was born, I now read a lot of children's books. This heretofore unexplored realm of literature is full of awesomeness: there are many beautiful, clever, fun, wonderful things going on in children's books.

There is also the occasional (and delightful) discovery that makes me think, "What the hell?"

Example the first: we've got this nice, older book called I Like the Country. It tells the story of a year on a farm in prose and song.


The simple farmer milks the cows. His playful, hardy children feed the chickens and pick apples and roam the fields with their faithful dog. His handsome wife tends a vegetable garden. In the spring they plant, in the fall they harvest, in the winter they cut wood.


It's a really good book.

And it gets even better at the end of the book when the simple farmer gets into his airplane and takes off for the city to buy groceries.


Either the author was hopelessly out of touch with the fortunes of mid-century farm families, or I am. If the latter is true, and it was indeed common for family farmers to hop into their closed-cockpit plane for a milk run to the nearest metropolis, I can only ask what the hell went wrong. If Farmer Bob in 1962 can have a plane like that, I should be flying around with a jet-pack right now.

Death Star, Seattle

 

I guess I'll continue with the Star Wars-theme that got rolling last post. This is the underwater dome at the Seatle Aquarium. Barb, bless her heart, pointed it out as being "Very Star Trek." I hadn't noticed when passing through it, but it definitely does seem to be the early work of the architect who went on to design the Death Star.

Beating a Dead Horse

As everyone who cares enough about Star Wars to read a blog entry about it knows, Star Wars is over. Done. George Lucas killed it by making the three prequels, which were so poorly done that they damned and destroyed all that came before (well, maybe not really). There were many things that bothered me, and a lot of other people about the prequels's treatment of the Star Wars universe: Jar-Jar Binks, the fact that Darth Vader built C3PO (?!), the fact that the tech looked more modern even though it was set in the past, the goddamn midichlorians (if you don't know, don't ask!), etc.

The thing that bothered me most I've never heard anyone else complain about: the way the Jedis dressed.

In the first Star Wars movie (A New Hope), Obi-Wan Kenobi dressed in robes and cowl of brown and beige homespun. Why did he dress this way? Because he was in hiding as Old Ben, the desert loon, the crazy hermit of Tatooine.


The next Jedi we meet in the original trilogy is Yoda, also in hiding, also as a hermit, but this time in a swamp on a different planet. He, too, dresses like a peasant in simple, crude garments. Remember, he's hiding out from the Empire, trying to look like anything but what he is: a Jedi Knight.

When Luke in the third movie becomes a full-on Jedi, he adopts a uniform that mixes elements of military and clergy, but it ain't robes or a serape. The man is wearing a shirt and trousers.


Then we come full circle to the first prequel, featuring Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, and future desert hermit, Obi-Wan Kenobi.


Hello! They're both dressed like hermits of Tatooine! So apparently when "Old Ben" Kenobi was hiding out in the desert backwater of Tatooine from Darth Vader (who, according to the prequels, was born and raised on Tatooine -- good place to hide, idiot), he decided to say, Fuck it, and just dress the way he always had, which is to say: like a Jedi.

It's so dumb it literally causes me pain.

Retro Camera

For three months I resisted Retro Camera, despite the fact that it was named on almost every list of must-have applications for my Android phone. It's free, so there was no compelling reason not to get it. It just sounded dumb: an app that would make the pictures from your phone's camera look like an old Polaroid picture, or the product of some other, well, retro camera.

Then, in a moment of boredom I downloaded it, tried it, and understood it. It's pretty much awesome. It essentially offers five filters for your phone cam that can, under the right circumstances, transform a lame, limping image into one that runs, sprints, flies!

It adds a few more tools to allow the mediocre-at-best phone camera to meet the expectations of your imagination (if you are the kind of person that attempts art photography no matter what kind of camera is in hand, as I am.)

The one that I like best and use most is called the Fudge Cam, a Kodak Box Brownie clone, presumably. It helped me take the picture of Elizabeth's trike. The other retro cameras (a pinhole camera, the aforementioned Polaroid, etc.) are more gimmicky, less useful -- at least to me. I'm sure some other photographer has figured out awesome things to do with them. Maybe in time I will, too.

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I Didn't Take His Advice

 

Galen Rowell, as you may have read, below, advised against taking pictures of the sunset. He said turn around and take pictures of the people/buildings/landscape/detritus that are illuminated by the sunset. I forsook his advice on Friday night at the beach, and took this picture. It's a cliche, but it's my cliche, darn it.

I like it.

Mountain Light

Galen Rowell was a hero of my youth. He died in 2002. I learned about this tonight, when blogging on Elizabethtown. Kind of a shocker.

Rowell was awesome. He was primarily a photographer, but also a writer, and an "outdoorsman" -- a sort of generic term to encompass his various outdoor activities, but mainly he was a rock-climber. He said more than once that although he was known for his photographs, he spent 75% of his professional life writing, and 25% taking pictures.

He was a good writer. However, his pictures were incredible.

I got turned on to Rowell through his 1984 best-seller Mountain Light. I was very much into photography at the time and was duly amazed at what this guy could achieve with a Nikon FM2, a 28mm lens, and Kodachrome 25. This very evening I was showing Aaron HDR photos on Flickr. (He didn't know what HDR was, so I was trying to edify.) After learning of Galen Rowell's death, I reviewed some of his photos and realized that what he achieved with his brain, very basic camera, excellent film (and a neutral density filter) was comparable to what HDR is attempting to get now.

He and his wife Barbara died in a small plane crash. Guy was 62, so not a spring chicken, but he was a healthy bastard, one of those California types that made the type famous the world 'round. Point being, if the pilot hadn't crashed, he probably would have lived to 92, vigorously.

Rowell's best piece of advice to me, as a photographer, was: turn away from the sunset and photograph what it is illuminating.

My best advice to you, in two parts: 1) learn more about Galen Rowell; 2) avoid small aircraft.

Spiders II

Perhaps you thought I was exaggerating about the spider situation? It's friggin' out of control! They're everywhere!!

Illness or Prediliction?

 

I wonder, when you see this picture, is your first thought, "Bloody toddler... vampire toddler, psychopath toddler... satanic toddler."

Maybe I was warped by movies in my developmental stage, but those are my thoughts. If you see this picture and think, "Awwww... toddler really loves cherries." I can only say, More power to you, good citizen.

I'd Like To Do This To My House

I wonder how much it costs... .

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Spider Season

There's a William Shatner movie from the seventies in which a town is overrun with spiders. In typically bleak seventies style, the heroes lose: the haunting last shot of the movie is an overhead of the small town completely blanketed by the snow-white webs of the freakish arachnids.

Portland at this time of year is like the first reel of that movie. Spiders and their horrible webs are everywhere.

Yep, we're experiencing Spider Weather.

Set a glass of water down on the picnic table, and next time you pick it up for a sip there's a strand of webbing across the mouth of the glass. Set your bike against the fence and two minutes later it's a vital structural support for a bug-catching web.

Every single day I blunder through at least two webs, often ending up with a recently evicted and none too happy eight legged freak in my hair, or rampaging across the lenses of my glasses. Yesterday, my flailing reaction to this ocular horror sent spectacles and spider sailing from my head. Luckily, both found a soft landing on the welcome mat and the glasses didn't break.

As summer transitions to fall, nature will resolve the issue as it always does, sending the spiders back to wherever they go when it's too rainy to spin a nine foot web across my back yard.

I hope.

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