Monthly Archives: September 2007

Animals, Flowers, Nature, Night

New Toy

In the ancient history of the family Bennett there has been one family that has stood by its side as friends. That other family is the Herricks. What I’m getting at is that Amy Herrick an old family friend (her dad and my dad were friends) is getting married very shortly. For reasons unknown to me, she has asked me to do the photography for her wedding. Now I am a lot of things (brilliant, funny, dashing) but skilled portrait photographer is not on the business card. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t mean to give a game effort.

However, when I was taking stock of the situation I realized that I was missing one ingredient that I would need to even give this thing a shot. A decent flash. That is correct, I do not own even a passable flash. So I went out and purchased one. Then I went out to Ledges to run some tests, also known as playing. What unfolds before your eyes below is what I captured.


09-09-07

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09-09-07

The color saturation in some of those pictures is off the charts and I dig it!

Yes I know there is an obvious flaw in my test, my “top” photo assistant has already made me aware of the situation.

Football, Iowa State

Culbertson 15-13: A Parable of Redemption

When I look back on it, I believe that Saturday was a nearly perfect day. There is perhaps only one more thing that would have made the day better. I got to spend the day in a series of social interactions with some of my favorite people in the world. Plus, Nebraska and Notre Dame were humiliated. Oh yeah, and we beat Iowa.

USC 49 Nebraska 31
Michigan 38 Notre Dame 0
Iowa State 15 Iowa 13

I don’t know if there is anybody out there that would describe me as being a romantic, but when I think of the glowing scoreboards hanging in those stadiums proudly displaying those scores I automatically think of a song. You might have heard it, the lyrics go something like this:

Some day, when I’m awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you…
And the way you look tonight.

Yes you’re lovely, with your smile so warm
And your cheeks so soft,
There is nothing for me but to love you,
And the way you look tonight.

With each word your tenderness grows,
Tearing my fear apart…
And that laugh that wrinkles your nose,
It touches my foolish heart.

Lovely … Never, ever change.
Keep that breathless charm.
Won’t you please arrange it?
‘Cause I love you … Just the way you look tonight.

I have so many things to say about the Iowa State-Iowa game from Saturday that I don’t even know where to begin.

Here are some quick observations:

A Ten Letter Word for Redemption?

I was not very excited when Chizik clearly started laying up for a field goal with a minute to go in the game. Culbertson has been a good kicker throughout his career, but he was nobody’s idea of clutch. He had missed two field goals that would have given the Cyclones North Division Titles. When Culbertson drilled that ball right between the uprights, all of that was forgiven. However, I have seen ISU miss so many field goals in similar situations over the years that even though that ball went right between the uprights, my mind saw him miss wide left. While everybody else in my section was celebrating, I wasn’t going to believe anything until I saw the refs hands go straight up in the air.

A Lucky Injury

Steve Johnson left the game in the second half. Steve Johnson had been playing a pretty good game, but when Chris Brown came in, he made one huge play after another. He rocked Young on a 3rd and 1 run up the middle that put Young down in the backfield for a loss of yardage. Then he broke up a huge third down pass that forced Iowa to settle for a field goal attempt. As big as Culbertson was in this game, don’t forget about Chris Brown and his contributions.

Shades of Billups

When Iowa State went to the Insight.com Bowl a few years back, we had a stud running back recruit by the name of Billups. All he really did his freshman year was return punts. For 11 games I thought that this was the biggest waste of his talent. In my mind they should have clearly redshirted him so that he would have more years as a starting running back (of course in the end he would end up moving to safety where he did prove to be a stud) after Haywood had graduated. However, my reservations about his wasted freshman season were washed away when he took a Pittsburgh punt sixty-some yards for a TD to secure the first bowl victory in Cyclone history.

I felt that way about Bates’ freshman year. Why not redshirt a guy with that much talent if all he is going to do is be a 5th option receiver and run the occasional trick play? If he doesn’t make another play the rest of the season it was worth it to see him haul in that 38 yard reception that setup the game winning field goal.

Iowa Fans

I am a firm believer that there are two kinds of Iowa fans. Those that are intelligent, incisive, thoughtful, and well spoken. Then there are Iowa fans that are arrogant, ignorant, (once again it is always surprising how arrogance and ignorance are so tightly intertwined) brash, and Pavlovian. The first type of Iowa fan you can sit down and discuss things rationally. The second type of Iowa fan you really can’t do much with them. They are dreadfully un-self aware. Incapable of actual meaningful communication and can only utter the dumbest of comebacks or fathom any world where ISU has beaten them 7 out of 10 times. The surest way to know which type of Iowa fan you have is to check their walls for a degree from the University of Iowa. If they have one, they probably are a pretty good chap. If they don’t have one, then they probably are a rabid freakshow without a good grip on reality.

I believe the best entertainment in the world (relatively speaking) is listening to Soundoff! after Iowa has lost a game. However, this year I was a little bit disappointed. It seemed that only drum that Iowa fans have left to beat is there supposed and inaccurate supposition that “the game means more to Iowa State than it does to Iowa”. This excuse didn’t work when you got beat by a girl in dodgeball in the 4th grade. It doesn’t work now. If you guys didn’t want to win the game, over 30,000 of you wouldn’t have made the trip to Ames knowing full well that you couldn’t get into the game.

There is a third classification of Hawkeye fan. It is the Uncle Tom. The best example is my friend Mark, but I like to pretend that these fans don’t exist.

Rivalry

You know it is a rivalry when the fans were booing Iowa’s marching band so loudly during their pre-game show that I couldn’t even hear them playing and I sit really close to the field.

I can’t wait to see what kind of billboards Pollard puts up in “Hawkeye Country” next year.

Pictures

I do have the pictures up now, but I made a couple of mistakes and I will have to change the gallery sometime in the next few days. Yes, there is a picture of the scoreboard with the final score on my computer and I will get it posted when I make the other corrections.

IOWA STATE 15 IOWA 13


Jay, Self-Portrait, Work

One Question IQ Test

There are probably only two people out there that understand what this is all about. That is okay, I’m really writing this because I need to vent some frustration (which has actually already dissipated) and because I borrowed something from Jay to make this possible and if I didn’t go through with it, this episode would have ended up just like when I bugged Jay until he went out to the Harrier Wildlife Management Area to take the picture below, but never actually wrote the blog that was supposed to go with this picture.


Spoof

Yes this picture has been censored because it is too hot for the world wide web.

What lies below is a One Question IQ Test. For the sake of this IQ question I ask that you suspend disbelief and pretend that the knife is a really scary knife and the gun isn’t a plastic toy gun with the orange safety cap colored black but a really scary gun.

One Question IQ Test

Question 1:


IQ Test

Of the three items, which one is not like the other:

A. The gun, because killing people with a knife or a camera is a long drawn out process that gets pretty messy.
B. The knife, because killing people with a knife is quiet and killing people with a gun or a camera would make a lot of noise.
C. The camera, because it isn’t a WEAPON!!!!
D. It is a trick question. They are all the same. They are just instruments of hobbies and are perfectly safe to take anywhere. For example, a child’s birthday party.

If I have to tell you the answer to the question, you have failed the test.

Blogging

New Function . . . Slightly New Look

2 Comments

I have added one new function to “An Artist’s Notebook”. When you get to the bottom of a journal entry (sometimes known as a blog posting) you will see a little envelope on the right hand side next to the “Comments” link. If you click on that envelope, it will take you to a screen where you can e-mail that journal entry to anybody that your little heart desires.

Also, I’m changing around and experimenting with the background color and the text color. I’m trying to make it easier to read. I know that white text on a black background can be a bit taxing on the eyes over time and I don’t want any of my “fans” going blind. At least not on my account. So, this blog might start to look funky as I start making changes and making experiments.

The most likely end result is a gray background with black print. I like using gray because it reminds of a gray card. Plus I don’t want to make a drastic departure from the rest of the website.

Eventually I want to add one of those counter things to the website so I can know for sure whether or not I exist in a vacuum or if there are actually people out there that read this stuff. I need to know this because after I get my MySpace blog up to 10,000 hits, I’m most likely just going to let that blog fester and only post things over here. That is if I can establish some empirical evidence that this does in fact really have some readers besides those not on MySpace.

Or to quote the immortal William “One Shot” Beaudine: “You mean someone out there is actually waiting to see this?”

Baier, Elainie, Football

The Big Game

It is the week of the Big Game. I recently got an e-mail from Jason Baier that I thought that I would repost. The Iowa-Iowa State game is a big deal in this state. There are times when the rivalry does affect our lives because of how seriously a person or a group can take it. When the word’s “friendly rivalry” don’t really seem to apply.

I have been a victim of the rivalry once. Olivia and I were driving to Burlington to watch Elainie play in a softball tournament. I would like to say that I am making this up, but it is a true story. We were pulled over and given a fix it ticket for having a Iowa State license plate cover.

The exact words that came out of the cop’s mouth before he gave me the ticket was, “I know you like the Cyclones on your side of the state . . .”

Despite the inconvenience of getting pulled over and getting a ticket, I’ve never really feared for my safety in Iowa City or “their side of the state” because I was a Cyclone fan. It is this fact that makes this article below so ridiculous for me. The commentary in the story is also courtesy of Jason Baier as well.

Rivalry gone badLonghorns fan nearly castrated in bloody bar scuffle

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — To some Oklahoma football fans, there are things that just aren’t done in the heart of Sooner Nation, and one of them is to walk into a bar wearing a Texas Longhorns T-shirt.

That’s exactly what touched off a bloody skirmish that left a Texas-shirt-wearing fan nearly castrated and an Oklahoma fan facing aggravated assault charges that could put him in prison for up to five years.

The shocking case has set off a raging debate in this football-crazed region about the extreme passions behind a bitter rivalry. Some legal observers have even questioned whether this case could ever truly have an impartial jury.

“I’ve actually heard callers on talk radio say that this guy deserved what he got for wearing a Texas T-shirt into a bar in the middle of Sooner country,” said Irven Box, an attorney in this city 20 miles from Oklahoma’s campus in Norman.

According to police, 32-year-old Texas fan Brian Christopher Thomas walked into Henry Hudson’s Pub on June 17 wearing a Longhorns T-shirt and quickly became the focus of football “trash talk” from another regular, 53-year-old Oklahoma fan Allen Michael Beckett.

Thomas told police that when he decided to leave and went to the bar to pay his tab, Beckett grabbed him in the crotch, pulled him to the ground and wouldn’t let go, even as bar patrons tried to break it up. When the two men were separated, Thomas looked down and realized the extent of his injuries.

“He could see both of his testicles hanging on the outside of his body,” said Thomas’ attorney, Carl Hughes. “He was wearing a pair of white shorts, which made it that much worse.”

It took more than 60 stitches to close the wound, and police interviewed Thomas at a nearby hospital emergency room.

Beckett’s attorney, Billy Bock, concedes that his client commented about Thomas’ shirt, but said it was just good-natured ribbing (is there such a thing in a rivalry like that?) and that he apologized to Thomas when it appeared to upset the Texas fan. Later, Bock said Thomas approached his client at the bar and threatened him.

“My client is a little man, and this guy [Thomas] is 30 to 40 pounds bigger than him,” Bock said. “He’s bigger, stronger, younger and probably faster, and he aggressively leaned in (what does aggressively lean in mean?) and touched my client and threatened to beat him up. … My guy was defending himself and just took control of the situation.” (by taking control of his “boys”)

Thomas’ attorney disputes Beckett’s version. “That’s total malarkey,” (malarkey? we are definitely in the south aren’t we)Hughes said. “My client never said a word to him. He got up to pay and when he paid and left a tip, the guy grabbed him.”

Beckett, a 53-year-old church deacon, federal auditor and former Army combat veteran (he is an Army combat veteran and he grabbed the guys jewels instead of just beating him up?), has pleaded not guilty. His next court appearance comes Oct. 4, two days before the Sooners and Horns tangle in their annual football game at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

Thomas, who once lived in Houston and became a Texas fan during the heyday of star running back Earl Campbell, is still recovering from his injuries but has returned to work as a meat cutter at a Sam’s Club warehouse store.(this story is too good to be true)

Like Beckett and Thomas, many fans of the two college squads never attended either university, but have come to identify so closely with these teams that they attach banners to their cars, wear team colors on game day and even have programmed their car horns to play school fight songs.(do you know anyone like this?)

Dallas police Sgt. Andy Harvey, a 12-year veteran of the force, said it’s not uncommon for fights to break out between fans of the two schools.

“People are passionate about their teams and their universities, and that’s a good thing,” he said, “but when you mix a real passionate sports fan and then get a little alcohol in there, sometimes it’s not a good mix.”

On both Texas and Oklahoma fan Web sites, boosters trade familiar tales of having their car tires slashed or windshields smashed for sporting the opposing team’s sticker in enemy territory.

Assistant District Attorney Scott Rowland said the rivalry will have no bearing on the way the case is prosecuted.

“It appears that it played a part in the fight,” he said, “but that won’t play any more of a role in our handling of the case than would a fight over a girl or a car or a song on the jukebox.”

Source URL: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/football/ncaa/09/11/oklahoma.texas.fight.ap/index.html?cnn=yes

I mean the Iowa-Iowa State rivalry can be kind of intense (they did have to stop playing each other for 40 years because of the violence) but I’m glad nothing like this happens around here.

Football, Iowa State, Movies

A Cold Mountain

So Saturday was a pretty horrible game. Iowa State got completely smoked by a Division 1-AA opponent on its home field. Please don’t give me the line that if we hadn’t committed all of the turnovers or missed the field goal and the extra point we could have won the game or the score would have been closer. All of those things are part of the game and it doesn’t change the truth. That truth is that we flat out got smoked. We flat out got smoked by a Division 1-AA school. We got smoked on our own field. This is the equivalent of getting beat up by your little sister. No make that this is the equivalent of getting beat up by your little sister while all of your friends are watching it happen. Plus all her friends are watching it happen. Plus your mortal enemy is watching it happen and he gets to fight you next week.

The scariest part to me is that some Cyclone fans are starting to panic. They are starting to panic because it is already 2 games into the season and the realist is looking at our schedule and it is dawning on them that we are very likely looking at an 0-12 season.

That is a hard pill to swallow. Even Jim Walden never had a season where he lost every single game.

It is my sincerest hope that some of the what I like to call “New Age Cyclone Fans” that ran Dan McCarney out of town last year noticed what happened in Auburn last Saturday night. While UNI was making us punch ourselves in the face while saying “Quit hitting yourself”, McCarney was helping his new team beat nationally ranked Auburn. You can try to minimize his contribution to that victory if you want, but it is only a matter of time before you have to admit that he can coach. He did things at Iowa State that were considered practically impossible. Yet after falling 1 field goal short two years in a row of winning the Big XII North and then having a bad year, he was run out of Ames like he was Frank Solich.

I’m not saying that I don’t think Chizik won’t get it turned around. I just want it noted by some Iowa State fans at some point that Dan McCarney could coach and was not treated fairly. Essentially he was run out of town based on inflated expectations that wouldn’t have existed if he hadn’t made the Cyclone program into a program that had expectations.

I don’t expect this to happen. I hear the same people that ran McCarney out calling the call in shows and they are angry. They don’t get why we are this bad. They don’t get why a team with a first year head coach with no previous head coaching experience could be this bad. Why a team with virtually no talent on the offensive line could struggle. Why a team with no defensive line depth can’t get pressure on the quarterback or stop the run.

They have their scapegoats already. They already are demonizing Meyer. They think if we just threw the ball to Blythe more everything would work out. These people remind me of a quote I often think of when I see somebody that has created a bad environment, but don’t understand why bad things keep happening. This quote is from Cold Mountain and it is a reference to the South and the Civil War, but I think it applies to this Iowa State football season and the “New Age Cyclone Fans” that keep calling radio shows and clogging up message boards completely confused by why we are so bad this year:

“They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say ‘Shit, it’s raining!'”

If Dan McCarney wasn’t the high class person that he is, I would swear that he is sitting in his Tampa home laughing his ass off.

Don’t get me wrong, because I didn’t agree with the decision to fire McCarney doesn’t mean I didn’t agree with the decision to hire Chizik. After the betrayal had been completed, somebody had to pick up the sword. We had to hire somebody. I think Chizik is an excellent coach, but when you hire somebody without any head coaching experience, you need to realize that there is going to be growing pains. We are essentially paying him to learn on the job. The first few seasons might be pretty brutal. Eventually I have no doubt that he will get us back to being as good as we were under McCarney. Perhaps even a little further than that. Cyclone fans just need to be patient and lower their expectations. They just have to realize the criteria for success this season is not going to be wins and losses. The criteria is going to be whether or not we improve as the season continues. I just hope that we can keep filling the stadium.

The pictures from the game have been posted. I also posted a couple seemingly random bee pictures and a couple of pictures from the Pufferbilly Days 5K. I was going to combine the ISU-UNI pictures with Pufferbilly Days pictures, but in the end there weren’t many Pufferbilly Days pictures because I slept through the parade and I didn’t stay out on Saturday night because I had church in the morning and my Aunt Linda was going to be there and I hadn’t seen her for awhile. So I guess it is kind of random.


Iowa State Cyclones versus Northern Iowa Panthers

Faust, Football, Iowa State, Movies, Russell, Willy

Brush with Fame

I don’t have the pictures from Saturday’s butt whooping that UNI put on us put together yet, but there was one story that occurred on Saturday that I wanted to share right away.

I didn’t do my normal tailgating on Saturday. Instead I went to see 3:10 to Yuma with Russell. After we had spent the appropriate amount of time discussing the movie, I made my way to my normal tailgating party. The kickoff for the game was at 6 pm. I made it to the tailgate at about 4:45.

By this time Corey and Willy had moved their tailgate closer to the stadium by combining their tailgate with the tailgate of Corey’s friend Chief. No sooner had I tracked them down when B-Ross from SoundOff! walked by. I didn’t see him, but one of the other people in our group yelled his name as he walked by.

B-Ross came back and shook my hand and asked us who we were. I introduced him to Corey and Willy. Then I told him that he needed more airtime. When Andy left for Kansas City I knew it was going to be a major blow to the show, but the week that B-Ross co-hosted he showed that he was the best person to replace Andy.

For whatever reason, they decided to give the co-host job to Heather Burnside who is actually quite wretched and the show has suffered.

B-Ross told me that I should tell that to Keith Murphy.

I told him if I ever see him I’ll let him know.

B-Ross said, “Let’s go.”

So the Willy, Corey, and I followed B-Ross down to another tailgate where Keith Murphy was hanging out with his family.

B-Ross told him that we had something to tell him, so Keith Murphy got up and walked over and shook our hands.

I told him that B-Ross needed more airtime.

Keith looked at B-Ross and asked him, “How much did you pay these guys?”

I told him that he didn’t need to pay us anything and if I was ever lucky enough to win the Chili’s gift certificate (for answering the weekly trivia question) I would be honored to take B-Ross with me.

Keith said, “Nobody has ever done that.”

Then Keith saw my camera and asked if we wanted our picture taken with B-Ross.

We all wanted to. So Keith Murphy took the picture below:


Iowa State vs. UNI

After the picture, we talked about how years ago, Keith Murphy had compared Willy to Chewbacca after he and Jesse were interviewed before the Iowa/Iowa State game. Keith and Willy laughed over this story and he told me that with my beard I would have to be our Chewbacca now.

Then we bid them a fond adieu and Willy and I headed into the stadium. This awesome story helped take some of the pain of the loss away.

Movies, Russell

Once


It finally happened. I finally saw a movie that is worthy of being referred to when I utter the phrase: “that was the best movie I saw in 2007”. I don’t know why it surprised me that it took so long for me to actually see a movie that made me immediately want to see it again as soon as the credits began to roll. A movie that made me want to stay in my seat and watch the credits roll not because I was being blackmailed into staying there by the promise of a post credits scene (I’m talking about you Pirates 3), but because it is the best way I know to express my admiration for the people involved in the production of the film.

The last two years perhaps filled me with false hope. True my favorite movie of 2006, “Pan’s Labyrinth” didn’t come out until late in the year. The same could be said about my second favorite “The Prestige”. However, my third favorite movie to come out last year was “Little Miss Sunshine”. That movie was released during the summer.

Perhaps even more amazing was 2005. All three of my favorite movies from 2005 came out in the summer. “Crash”, “Hustle & Flow”, and “The March of the Penguins” all came out in the summer. As I stare at that last sentence, I’m blown away. When I compare these movies to the flotsam that I’ve seen in the theaters thus far, it seems unfathomable.

This summer was the summer of the threes. It was a summer of sequels. It was a summer of disappointment. I never look forward to the summer movie season. I have often classified the movies that come out during the summer as being filled with “shiny things to entertain the stupid people”.

In my naivety, for the first time I can remember I had high expectation for the movies filled with shiny things that were coming to the local multiplex. True it was certainly a ton of sequels, but these were sequels in some of the best franchises that Hollywood had produced in the last 20 years. We are talking about Harry Potter, Jason Bourne, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Spider-man. Plus there was the potential for makeup pictures. A sequel that could help make up for how dreadfully bad the previous sequel had been. “Shrek 3” could atone for the sins of “Shrek 2”. “Oceans 13” could wash the bad taste that “Oceans 12” had left behind.

Despite this potential, I left almost every movie this summer shrouded in disappointment. I don’t want to go into much detail, but I should have known that the summer was in trouble when “Spiderman 3” turned out to be so dreadful. I skipped “Shrek 3”, but Pirates of the Caribbean fell far short of expectations. Which was especially sad considering how well it started. “Oceans 13” was better than 12, but so is watching a bug zapper. “Transformers” confirmed my belief that Michael Bay will never make a movie that doesn’t suck. Harry Potter wasn’t bad, but was definitely the worst of the last 3 and took some real unnecessary liberties with the book.

The summer wasn’t completely devoid of entertainment. Two raunchy sex comedies provided me with plenty of laughter and guffaws and hearkened me back to my youth of watching “Porky’s” on HBO. “Knocked Up” was funny and sweet and only suffered when Seth Rogen was asked to do a little bit of acting. “Superbad” was perhaps even funnier, (which is to be expected, because Seth Rogen was back in a supporting comedic role and the kid from “Arrested Development” was in it) but really lacked a coherent story and the profanity really sounded forced and inauthentic at times. Similar to the swearing of Bill Wentworth if you know that cat.

There were two movies I saw that were actually worth dragging myself out of bed to go see. “Ratatouille” and “You Kill Me” both really hit the spot. “Ratatouille” was both beautifully animated and well written. Which of course is actually the most important part of the movie. You can have all the shiny things to entertain the stupid people you want, but without a well written story, you don’t really have anything at all. It is sad that Hollywood realizes this less and less. It is only a matter of time before screenwriting is relegated to a minor technical category at the Academy Awards.

“You Kill Me” is also well written and acted. Ben Kingsley plays a hitman attending AA meetings and falling in love with Tea Leoni. Although Kingsley is brilliant, Leoni is a slight miss as she spends large chunks of the movie staring off into space trying to look deep or tortured or something. She really looks just kind of vacant.

Then there was “Sicko”. I really hate Michael Moore movies. They are usually so filled with factual errors and his techniques are so sleazy that they are pretty much unbearable. Even if I agree with the political aim of his movie, I just can’t stand watching a propaganda whore like Moore manipulate facts even if I want to agree with where he is trying to go.

“Sicko” isn’t quite so bad. In fact I would say that it is easily his best film. Although the movie clearly has too much of Michael Moore’s “look at me I’m so clever” style. It isn’t as much as in previous movies. The movie does cloud the facts and praise everybody’s health care system a little too much and I was going to say bash our health care system a little too much, but the more I consider that statement I’m not sure you can bash our health care system too much. However, he was still playing fast and loose with the facts. Enough so that the Clinton News Network even called him on the carpet for it.

As entertainment, “Sicko” works. As propaganda, it hits the ball out of the park. As a documentary it falls short.

>Recently I’ve been to the theater to see “The Bourne Ultimatum” and “Balls of Fury” and “Stardust”. The “Bourne Ultimatum” is the best of the “3”s to come out this year. However, it still isn’t as good as the first two. “Stardust” is very bland and boring fantasy. There is nothing to really hate about this movie (except for perhaps Robert DeNiro’s highly overrated performance which looks more like gay stereotype than full dimensional character) but there also isn’t anything to really love about this movie. It is bland city.

“Balls of Fury” on the other hand is absolutely dreadful. As I was sitting in the theater I began to wonder how one of my friends could have made a better ping pong-martial arts parody movie when they were 15 than whatever this was on the screen. There is nothing about “Balls of Fury” that doesn’t scream straight to video. Although I have no doubt that it is a future “Employee Pick” at my local Family Video.

It was a summer that made me awful happy that I don’t pay to see many movies.

My inside man at the Varsity leaked me some bad information on Sunday. He told me that “Once” was leaving after Thursday. I had been wanting to see this movie all summer. It had finally came to Ames and I was in danger of missing it because my schedule was not lining up to see it.

Fortunately I had Thursday night free and I made the way to the Varsity with my sister Teresa. As it turns out, this movie is staying another week along with “Becoming Jane”, but I didn’t know this fact and I’m glad I didn’t wait to see this movie.

I loved it. This is my favorite movie to come out this year. This is the type of movie I wish filmmakers like Tony Scott, Michael Bay, and Uwe Boll were tied down and forced to watch over and over again until they got it. “It” being that it doesn’t matter how many shiny things you have, the most important thing is the story. The production qualities in this movie are almost nothing, but you love the characters, you love the music, you love the story, and you don’t want it to end.

This movie cost barely over 100,000 dollars to make and it is exponentially better than big budget tripe like “Transformers”. You can’t stop thinking about this movie after you leave the theater. When I left “Transformers” the only thing I could think about is why Bumblebee let Even Stevens make out with that chick on top of him. Bumblebee is into some sick stuff and that was only for a fleeting moment.

“Once” is a love story crafted around the music being composed by the two people that are falling in love. The story begins with Guy standing on a street corner singing a song about the girlfriend that left him. Girl stops to listen and when he is done she begins asking him lots of questions about the song.

Even though guy is frustrated she keeps asking him questions until he reveals that he is a vacuum cleaner repairman. She asks him to fix her vacuum. The next day she shows up in front of him pulling her vacuum cleaner behind her.

A relationship forms and you learn that Guy lives with his dad and works for his dad. Girl is a Czech immigrant that has moved to Ireland fleeing a bad marriage with her daughter and her mother.

Guy is content to just play his songs on a street corner. Girl is also a musician and seems content to just play a piano in a local music store because she can’t afford a piano for herself.

Girl believes in Guy and pushes him to make a real recording of his music. He consents and forms a band with Girl and more street musicians. I think the key scene in the movie occurs when Guy and Girl go to the ocean. He asks her how to say “Do you love your husband in Czech?” She teaches him how. When he asks the question, she responds “Miluji tebe”.

I would tell you what that means and what happens afterwards, but I think it would spoil the movie for you and I wish for you to discover the beauty of this movie for yourself.

It is simply one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve seen in the movies in a long time. It is a movie when you can feel the longing between the characters. It is heart wrenching. It is beautiful. It reeks of desperation. It is like real life.

Great story. Great music. It is more than enough to make a great movie.

To see more, watch the trailer below:<

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I’m just beginning to compile my list of movies I want to see in the fall. Tomorrow I cross “3:10 to Yuma” off my list. I’m attending this film with Russell as he is also a big fan of westerns, so he is just as excited to see this movie. Perhaps there will be another review in the near future.

Animals, Black & White, Candid Portrait, Contests, Derrick, Flowers, Jen, Nature, Night, Pufferbilly Days, Shannon

Pufferbilly Day Photo Contest Entries

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I believe I received feedback from over 20 people during the second round of voting. That was awesome and I appreciate all the time that everybody took to voice their opinion. In the end, I could only enter six pictures in the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest. So I now reveal the six pictures that advanced and a little bit about them.

I did not actually spend much time considering the names for each picture, so in the end the names are admittedly pretty lame. I can deal with it if you can.


Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest - 2007
Wheel

The first image is from when the #844 stopped in Boone on its Midwest tour a couple of months ago. I took this picture in the Boone train yard while it was on display. The train was surrounded by other people so I made a conscious effort to find interesting angles to shoot the train while trying to keep the other humans around out of the shot. This picture was originally captured in color, but I converted it to black and white as the palette was already quite monochrome.


Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest - 2007
Last, Loveliest Smile Redux

This second image was created sort of out of a collection of follies. I had been wanting to take a hammer to a negative and then scan the negative with my home scanner, but I have never really found the time, proper negative, or hammer for the task. However, I do have a job where I get paid to play with printers and scanners. I had a copy of “Last, Loveliest Smile” hanging on the wall over my desk. I had printed this a long time ago with a Canon 1700 when we had first switched over to that printer after the Canon 1600 had been discontinued to see if the Canon 1700 lived up to the bold proclamation on the box that it was “photo lab quality”. For the record, the Canon 1700 does not print photo lab quality. It does make a decent appointment card printer if you don’t mind replacing it every 4 months when the ink trap gets full. However, it was a decent enough print for me to put some tape on the back of it and throw it up on the wall above my computer next to “Blue Steel” and “Kentucky Appetizer” and “Grizzly McAlpine”.

A couple weeks ago one of our customers ordered a pretty decent document scanner. (Truth be known they ordered a label printer and the order was filled out incorrectly so I shipped them a document scanner) While I was testing this scanner I wondered if it would scan a crumpled up piece of paper. So I pulled “Last, Loveliest Smile” off the wall and crumpled it up. Then I crumpled it up some more. Then I threw it against the wall and jumped up and down on it. Then I uncrumpled the sheet of paper and ran it through the scanner. That is the story of the creation of “Last, Loveliest Smile Redux”. The creation of “Last, Loveliest Smile” is a whole other story.


Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest - 2007
Labour of Ages

I don’t know if there is much of a story to this picture. I was given the charge of watching over my friends Jen and Derrick’s dogs while they were off having fun in Wisconsin. While looking in on their dogs I walked past the flower garden and noticed this little flower fighting through several larger flowers to get to the sunlight. This flower had yet to fully bloom and I have always loved pictures of flowers that were not fully bloomed, although I usually find myself in the minority. I guess I believe in the end that flowers that haven’t fully bloomed yet are similar to humans. In the respect that all humans fall short and are never really fully developed. All we can do is fight through to our sunlight.

Jen worked very hard on their flower garden this year and it certainly paid off for me as I found quite a few fascinating images in their garden this year.


Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest - 2007
1900

This picture was taken of Shannon at Living History Farms. I spent about half a day at Living History Farms when I was on vacation. I had always figured that Living History Farms was one of the most boring places on Earth, but Shannon argued that nobody that loved history could be bored by such a place. So I went to visit. Shannon works at the 1900 Farm so she gave me the tour. (However, I don’t feel it was the full tour because she would not take me to see the boars.) We went up to the hayloft and the lighting up there was magnificent. Not boring flat light, but a bright beam of sunlight broke through the doors at the top of the barn and shone down on Shannon like a spotlight. I don’t want to say that it perfectly lit her, because I don’t think that does it justice. I believe that the light illuminated her. She says that she thinks the picture makes her look like an angel. I’ll leave that for the historians to decide. I did change the picture from color to black and white even though I loved the original color image because the black and white helped hide a bit of lens flare that was clearly visible across the front of her skirt. Ahh, lens flare! One of the hazards of shooting directly into light.


Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest - 2007
Faux Sunset

This picture is somewhat of a miracle. Not in the respect that it exists, but in the respect that it made it to the contest. It came very close to not making it to Round 2. In fact the only reason it made it to the second round was because of a last second phone call from Jesse Howard saying that he wanted to vote for this picture as well.

Even though it limped out of the first round of voting, it was a juggernaut in the second round. Absolutely crushing the competition in the second round. At the top of most of the pages on my website is a quote from Picasso:

“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”

I don’t know if there is a picture that lives up to this quote on my entry slate than “Faux Sunset”. Most people have told me that it is a lovely sunset picture. It might be lovely, but if they were to concentrate more closely on the first word in the title, they would know that this is not a picture of a sunset at all.

I took this picture on a foggy night in Ledges back in April. The picture is of a street lamp. I became enamored with making a picture of a mysterious light in the woods. My hope was to eliminate the light source and just capture the light through the trees. I thought it would be a curiosity. What was making that light? I’m a huge fan of 50s Science Fiction. People who spend time with me inevitably end up sitting on a couch watching the original “The Outer Limits” on DVD at some point. Movies like “Forbidden Planet” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” were my influences for taking this picture.

In the end, people didn’t find this picture mysterious at all. They saw it quite clearly as a sunset. I haven’t decided if fooling people is good enough when what I wanted to do was make people wonder.


Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest - 2007
Franklin

The final picture to sneak in is “Franklin”. This picture was taken back in June. I had committed to helping Shannon make soap, but at that time I had not realized that the soap making day was on the same day as Brian Beavers’ wedding.

I showed up to help make soap, but I had to leave early in the process to drive to Grinnell to attend the wedding. I wanted to take a few pictures of the soap making process because I thought that it made an interesting subject.

Shannon had let her cat Franklin wander around outside in an effort to make him tougher. The lessons weren’t sinking in because he spent a good portion of his time outside begging to be let inside. He stuck his head through the railing bars of the front steps and I took this picture.

There have been times in the past where I have been accused of not liking cats. Whether or not that is true, I have never denied that cats had interesting eyes. For that reason I chose to keep Franklin’s eyes in color and change the rest of the picture to black and white. I was hoping that because Franklin was already black and white a person giving a cursory glance to the image would not be able to tell that the eyes were the only part of the image that is in color. It would take a deeper examination of the image to reveal this fact.

This is a technique I have used before with “Outburst of the Soul” and “Lost Dreams”. I do like it, but hope not to over use it as its effects can be almost too obvious sometimes.

I end this entry with an e-mail I got from Derrick Gorshe. I don’t want to say that I rate or rank the correspondence I have with my amigos, but I would say that this e-mail he sent me is one of my favorite e-mails I have ever received. He was casting his vote in the second round:

When Storm Thorgerson of “Hipgnosis” (the man and company responsible for most of Pink Floyd’s cover art)was questioned about his design of the late sixties albumn “Atom Heart Mother”, he said that that particular photo of a cow was the most perfect cow photo ever. No photo before and probably ever would convey “Cow” as much as that particular photo, and while it really had nothing to do with the source material within the record, that was enough to make it memorable.

It is this reasoning that leads me to my two choices.

“Franklin” is truly a picture of a cat. And while that statement says very little in and of itself, that is enough to make it memorable. The other choice falls between two of the other photos.

I really like “Clouds with Color” for the same reason….it is the ultimate picture of clouds and as such is very memorable, but I also really like “Faux Sunset”. It may not be the definitive picture of a sunset, but it really is quite beautiful, and conveys a feeling of peace and a quiet end of the day. A little mystery remains with that sunset though. The day has closed quietly, but the night remains open to unlimited possibilities and anything is possible. Good or bad, it’s an evening you likely will never forget.”