I’ve been working on some commercial photography for Shannon’s company Little White Lye Soap. This Sunday was the most recent photo shoot. I can’t reveal any of those images yet, but I can show a couple pictures of Shannon taking pictures of her soap.
Some soap pictures should be posted in the near future.
I returned to my table.
I enjoyed the company of the people at my table for a few moments. Up on stage at this time was two guys singing in AC/DC’s TNT. The were pretty dreadful, but they were entertaining. One guy sported a Danzig shirt. The other guy cracked out his air guitar at nearly every conceivable opportunity.
I was deeply locked into the performance when Shannon got my attention.
“Check out your friend.”
She pointed over toward the woman that had asked for a light. Jeff was making the moves on her. At least I think that is what he was doing. It looked like he was just trying to rub up against her.
“Now do you admit that he is scarier than Larry?”
Shannon actually conceded my point, “Yes, he is scarier than Larry.”
I was actually surprised that she had admitted that I was right but I did not get a moment to gloat. A male friend of the woman that Jeff was romancing got up and grabbed Jeff and pulled him off of her.
Jeff tried to make his case, but the guy just gave him a little nudge and told him to go away. Jeff retreated back to his table. Then he looked back to me.
“I don’t know what that guy’s problem is. It is none of his business.”
So I told him, “It was worth a try. Maybe when you get your music going again?”
“I can’t get my music going because I don’t have a car.”
“But you have a job now. You’ll be able to get a car pretty soon.”
“I have tomorrow off.”
I’m not really sure why I said what I said next. I think it is because I had considered taking the following day off to watch the Way of the Cross in Des Moines, but I had decided it wasn’t worth it because I was less than impressed by the fact that they put wheels on the bottom of the cross.
“You have Good Friday off. That’s cool.”
“I’m celebrating Good Friday tonight.” He raised his drink to me in case I had missed what he meant by celebrating Good Friday.
“I suppose that is one way to do it.”
Then he got really serious.
“Is Jesus important to your life?”
“Yes. Jesus is very important to my life?”
“That’s good. Jesus is important.”
“He’s very important.”
“When I broke my back it took me 6 years to recover. If it wasn’t for Jesus I wouldn’t have made it. Even now I get so depressed. Sometimes I get so depressed I don’t want to go on. He is the reason I keep going on.”
“I’m glad for that.”
Then I returned to my table.
The extremely unfunny David Lynch wannabe guy in the corner said something that I didn’t really think would ever happen.
“The next competitor has been bugging me all night about when it would be his turn. Jeff, it is your turn. Get up on stage.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
Shannon started her new gig with United Way of Story County. Her new job is worthy of a press release and she needed a head shot for this press release and their website. I got the pleasure to take this picture and below are some of the results.
My Old Friend Black & White
But this one is my favorite
I think we put in a good day’s work.
I walked towards the lonely gentleman. I’m a nice guy, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him to join our table. I decided to join him at his table.
“So are you going to go up there?” I asked him.
“I’m a lead singer. This is what I do. This is nothing for me.”
“But are you going to go up there?”
“Wait until I get up there. I’m doing Last Dance with Mary Jane. You know it?”
“Yeah I know it.”
“I’m a lead singer. That is what I do. Wait until I get up there.”
“Are you signed up?”
“Yeah, I’m signed up. I’m tenth. I’m doing Last Dance with Mary Jane. These people suck. Wait until I get up there.”
“I look forward to it.”
I knew that this guy was drunk or high or some combination of drunk and high. I am pretty sure that he had been drunk for quite some time because his breath reeked of stale alcohol and every word that came out of his mouth was drenched in an odor that I don’t care to ever smell again.
I moved back to my table.
Peggy asked, “Did you make a new friend?”
“He says that he is a lead singer in a band.”
“What is the name of the band?”
“I’ll have to find out.”
I was kind of doubting that I would find out, but I have to admit that although I was 50% sure the guy was full of it, I was a bit curious to find out if he was in a band. He didn’t appear that he could be in a band, but I had to remind myself that I’ve known a lot of musicians in my day. A few of them are/were way more screwed up than this guy.
I said to Shannon, “You can say what you want about Larry, this guy is way scarier.”
“He is not.”
Somebody new took the stage. I think they sang Zombie by The Cranberries. Charby had predicted earlier in the evening that if we were able to get Shannon to go up on stage, this is the song that she would pick.
It turned out that he was double wrong. We couldn’t get her to go up on stage. She would not have picked this song.
Shortly into the song I could hear my friend from the next table yelling:
“You suck.” Then he looked over at me and said, “Wait until I get up there. I’m doing Last Dance with Mary Jane.
My curiosity got the better of me. I went back to his table.
“So you are a lead singer?”
“Yeah. That’s what I do.”
“What is the name of the band that you are in?”
“I’m not in a band right now. I don’t have a car. When I get a car I’ll get my music going again.”
At this point a waitress interrupted our conversation. She was carrying a full pitcher of beer and she sat in down on the table. The guy began looking through his wallet, but determined that he didn’t have enough money to buy the pitcher that he ordered. He waved her off. She picked her pitcher of beer back up and returned to the bar.
The guy turned towards me and stuck out his hand. I grabbed it and shook it.
“My name’s Jeff.”
“Uh, Chris.” In a moment of weakness that does not make me proud,I thought about giving out a false name.
“I just got a job. So now I can get a car. When I get a car, I’ll get my music going again.”
“What was the name of your band?”
It seemed that he didn’t hear that question or didn’t want to answer it.
“Back in 1993 I was big. I opened up for Sheila E. Then I moved to Colorado.”
“Wow, Sheila E. that is something.”
“Yeah. Then I got a DUI and got in a car accident. I broke my back. It took me 6 years to recover.”
“But you have a job now. That is a good thing.”
It was then that a woman with an unlit cigarette in her hand broke up our conversation.
“Can I get a light?” She asked.
Jeff found his lighter and lit her cigarette. She thanked him and returned to her table. I looked at Jeff. He looked like he was about to fall over. I think he might have looked genuinely happy.
He turned to me and said: “She can do anything she wants to me, you know what I’m saying?”
“I suppose that I do.”
Jeff watched her in silence for a moment. I thought that this would be a good chance to get back to a table where I enjoyed the company of its occupants on a less Tod Browning level. However, the moment wasn’t long enough. I was not able to make a clean break.
Jeff snapped out of his lust fueled alcohol haze. He pointed to Shannon and Jamie.
“You hustling those girls?”
I have to admit that this question took me somewhat by surprise. I wasn’t sure what the best answer would be to protect the table. Was he afraid of competition? Was he looking for a wingman?
“No, not exactly.”
He pointed to Shannon.
“That one is really good looking. But I can tell that she is with that guy.”
Then he pointed to Charby. Charby is married, but not to Shannon. However, I kept that fact to myself.
“Oh yeah. They are together.”
Then he pointed towards Jamie.
“When that one first came in I thought she was a guy. But now I can see now that she has all the right parts.
I wish that I had an adequate way of portraying the way that he said those last four words. My best effort is to implore you to imagine the most leering manner possible.
“She’s married.”
This night was the first night that I had ever met Jamie. I don’t know if that statement is true or not, but I think that it is.
Then Jeff looked back at the woman that had asked for a light.
“Do you think I should ask her to dance?”
Did I think that he should ask her to dance? No! Not in a million years. Before I responded he continued with his thought.
“It doesn’t look like she is with anybody.”
I made a snap decision. Perhaps it wasn’t the best decision, but it was in the best interest of my group. I decided to throw that woman under the bus.
“You should ask her to dance.”
“My only problem is that I only have enough money to buy her one drink. I don’t think that is going to get it done.”
I don’t have great enough command of the world of mathematics to even make an estimate of how many drinks it would take for it to get done, but I gave Jeff a small bit of encouragement.
“You are a lead singer.”
He looked at me like the fact that he was a lead singer was completely new information to him.
So I continued, “Maybe when she hears you perform, one drink will be more than enough.” He still looked at me kind of confused. So I threw out one last thing, “Women love musicians.”
He finally responded, “It looks like she isn’t with anybody.”
I decided that I had encouraged him enough.
His attention returned to the person on stage.
“These people suck. Wait until I get up there.”
I told him that I was going to go back to my table and I turned around and made good on my word.
…TO BE CONTINUED
I’ve been an usher at church the last two weeks. I usher again this coming Sunday. At first I was a little bit leery about being an usher. The main problem is that our traditional worship service begins at 8:55. That means to begin fulfilling the many usher duties (handing out bulletins, taking attendance, collecting tithes, taking compliments on how good you look in a suit and tie… the list just goes on and on) you have to be at the church at 8:20.
Getting to church that early is a bit of a struggle for me. Actually getting to church at 8:55 is a bit of a struggle for me. I’m not sure why. I don’t have to get up any earlier than I get up for work and Saturday nights are not a big social night for me. In fact, it is rather frequent that I don’t make it to the church on time. I frequently have to pull the move where I sneak in when people are shaking hands and greeting one another, which is about 5-10 minutes after the service has started.
Being an usher I can’t pull that slick move. The bulletins aren’t going to hand themselves out and who are the people going to tell that they look good “all dressed up”.
However, I have realized that their is a plum benefit to being an usher that more than assuaged my doubts about the position. More than offset my fear of screwing something up during the big time Easter service, but I need to give a bit of backstory before I explain this benefit.
I was hoping to lead of this entry with a picture of the FUMC’s cornerstone, but I just never made it down to the church to take such a photo, so I settled for the picture of our outdoor cross. If memory serves me, the church was built in 1890.
Now I don’t know how much it has changed over the last 100 or so years because I wasn’t around in 1890. However, in the Fellowship Hall, there is a picture of the sanctuary from 1893. The sanctuary has changed since 1893, but the pews in the picture appear to be the same pews that are in the church to this day.
On a personal note, I really like the picture of the sanctuary in 1893. I love old photographs. I love old photographs of places I know even better. What I don’t like is that whomever put this picture together, put the mat in wrong side out. What should be the back of the mat is facing out. It annoys me a little bit, but that is my own set of baggage.
I made a trip to Living History Farms the last time I took some vacation time from the computer mine. While I was touring the 1900 Farm, I heard a couple of guys comment to Shannon about how people were shorter back then.
This was the highlight of the tour for me. I knew what was coming. I know it is a deep felt issue for Shannon that people learn that people were not shorter back then. I had heard this information from her before.
She calmly explained to them that people weren’t shorter back then. Furniture was smaller back then. Dressers were shorter because people had less clothes. Beds were shorter because people slept sitting up.
I have no reason to doubt the veracity of Shannon’s statement. She took the time and energy to do the research. What she says is undoubtedly true. However, when I sit in our church’s 1890 era pews almost every Sunday, I have to wonder if she checked on the average height of Methodists from the 1890 era. Almost every Sunday that I’m packed into that dinky little pew, I feel like Methodists must have been shorter in 1890. I feel it in my legs and knees.
The plum benefit of being an usher is legroom. I don’t have any when I sit in the pews. It is infinite when I am an usher. I am basking in it. I’m bathing in it. If I haven’t made it clear enough yet, I’m loving every second of it.
When you are an usher you get to sit outside of the sanctuary. You could say that having to sit outside of the sanctuary is a drawback to being an usher. I don’t think it is really much different than being inside the sanctuary. When Andrea leads a prayer she says, “I invite you to be in an attitude of prayer”. I think the attitude just outside the sanctuary is the same as it is in the sanctuary.
So I’m looking forward to one more week of legroom and then it is back into the sanctuary with the rest of the sardines.
I spent my Thursday night engaged in Jaycee activities. It started at 6 PM with a new member orientation ran by Shannon and Charby. The highlight of this meeting was getting a new pen.
I have a reputation for being an elitist because I think Dan Brown is a talentless hack and you have to be a first-class moron to enjoy the movie Transformers. I am not an elitist, except for when it comes to pens. Frequently when I’m put in the unenviable position of having to borrow a pen I will look at the first pen that is offered and say, “don’t you have something that doesn’t suck?” This pen meets my high standards. I take great joy in writing with it.
After the orientation was a Membership Meeting. This mostly consisted of the guy that runs the ISU Organic Farm giving a presentation on organic food. That was interesting. I learned that organic food is not a diet. It is not necessarily healthier. It doesn’t cost much more to produce. It is just more expensive because of the laws of supply and demand.
After the meeting the Band Selection Committee and a few others went down to People’s to scout a band for Ames on the Halfshell. At this point we have only one slot open and the band Kountertop came highly recommended.
When we left Buford’s, the meeting spot for the Ames Jaycees, we were split up into a boy car and a girl car. The boy car included me, Charby and Todd. The girl car stayed behind at Buford’s for a long period of time to file paperwork or something. That car held Shannon, Jamie and Peggy.
The boy car was supposed to blaze a trail and secure a table in People’s. Meanwhile the girl car would catch up with us later.
Soon after we hit the interstate it became apparent that nobody in the boy car knew the location of People’s. We had part of an address. People’s is on 3rd & Something. That something was most likely Court, but that wasn’t for certain.
As it turned out, People’s was harder to find than we assumed. We must have driven around downtown Des Moines for 20 minutes without finding anything. We even went out to the East Village. Finally after driving around the same 4 block area for the fifth time, we parked. I don’t think that we parked because this had been my suggestion about 15 minutes before, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I got out of the car and started walking around and looking for people that knew the Des Moines area well.
Meanwhile Todd called Peggy to find out an exact address for People’s. As it turned out, I was standing right in front of the address, only the building didn’t say People’s, it said Legend’s. There was a sign that said that People’s entrance was around the corner.
We went around the corner and after a half block found a minuscule sign that proclaimed the presence of People’s. As it turned out, People’s was in this building that we had driven by at least 5 times, but it was on the third floor.
When we got where we were going, there were strange sheets of paper on all of the tables.
As it turned out, this was not a straight concert. This was karaoke with a live band.
I was not blessed with a beautiful voice. I have done karaoke on a handful of occasions. However, there is no way I would consider doing karaoke with a live band. It is one thing to waste the time of some DJ, but it is quite another to waste the time of actual real musicians.
The girl car group arrived shortly before Kountertop took the stage. They had no problem finding the bar because of the groundwork and trailblazing that the boy car had done.
Shannon came back to the table with a drink that was called Yellow. Apparently you can order drinks by color at this bar. That made me slightly uneasy because Nate and I had an idea a few years back that will one day make us millions. We are going to make a market a brand of alcohol called BW. The types of BW will be labeled by color. We are going to have a Periwinkle and a Fuschia and a few other colors.
Soon after everybody was at the table Kountertop took the stage. They were dressed in a consistent theme and were all wearing ties.
I said to Charby, “Wouldn’t it be badass if they were a punk cover band.”
“That would be pretty sweet.”
“I would love to hear some Ramones or New York Dolls…”
“Or Sex Pistols”
“Or The Stooges”
“Or the Dead Kennedys”
“I would love to hear some Jello Biafra. California Uber Alles or Stealing People’s Mail.”
“Or some Dead Milkmen”
“If they played The Badger Song that would make my night. But I would certainly settle for The Clash. If they play The Clash, I say we book them right now.”
I have to say that I was highly impressed that Charby brought up both the Dead Kennedy’s and the Dead Milkmen. I’ll definitely have to keep my eye on him.
Kountertop played the first chords of their first song. Somehow along the way I had managed to convince myself that they were playing The Clash. This was going to be phenomenal. A few seconds in I realized that they were playing Midnight Oil’s Beds are Burning. Not a bad song, but if they would have played London Calling or Lost in the Supermarket, that would have been something.
After their first song was over, Kountertop announced that they would play a few songs and then the karaoke competition would begin. They gave the directions that if you wanted to participate in the competition that there was a guy sitting on a couch in the corner of the bar. You had to go check in with him.
Kountertop next played a song by The Pixies and then Folsom Prison Blues, which is one of the greatest songs of all-time. Then they stopped for the karaoke competition to begin.
While they were waiting for people to sign up, the guy in the corner began to speak into the microphone that had been placed in front of him.
I have two impressions of this guy. He was backlit and in a corner. This made his physical appearance mysterious and his voice to feel somewhat disembodied. His voice was monotone and never fluctuated. It gave me the real strong feeling that this guy could have been a character from a bad David Lynch movie that had all of his scenes left on the cutting room floor.
My second impression is one of incompetence. My old boss was blazingly incompetent. I don’t feel that there is a word in the English language that properly encompasses just how inept he was at his job. Any characteristic you would not want in a boss, this guy had it. He was lazy. He was negligent. He was capricious. He didn’t know what he was doing. Why did he keep his job? His father-in-law owned the business.
This guy in the corner with the monotone voice must own the business. He spoke for almost 10 minutes in between the time that Kountertop played their last song and the first karaoke contest hit the stage. He told many an unfunny joke. He made many a pointless observation. He tried to engage Kountertop’s lead singer in witless banter. He was so unfunny that it was painful to endure. The only thing positive I can say about the time that guy started in on the microphone is that it was surreal. It was like being transported to another universe where a lifeless, bodiless, monotone voice amuses only its self.
After about 5 minutes of this I leaned over the table and said: “This is exactly how I imagine hell.”
Only this wasn’t hell. It only felt like an eternity. Finally a guy took the stage and the competition began.
The first guy sang a song by The Eagles, I think. He was actually pretty good. I figured maybe all of the people performing tonight would be pretty good since who would want to waste the time of live musicians by going up there and sucking.
The next guy up there proved that my faith had been ill placed. The next guy up sang Radar Love. He was pretty bad. In fact I was not able to keep my attention focused on his performance despite the fact that I consider Radar Love to be one of the Top 5 Greatest Roadtripping Songs of All-Time.
My mind wandered. I thought about whether or not they would play the space sounds at the end of the song. Then I began to look around the bar.
I made eye contact with the guy sitting by himself at the next table.
“This guy sucks! Wait until I get up there!” He said to me.
“Are you getting up there?” He started to walk towards my table, so I got up and walked towards him.
…TO BE CONTINUED
I was told a few weeks back that I had made an appearance in the Ames Jaycees Newsletter. I had kind of forgotten about that news until today when I was doing my monthly mail sorting and I saw my mug on the back of the newsletter.
Currently I think there are only 6 Jaycees that can identify me. I’m quite certain that most people that examined this newsletter and looked at that picture and wondered why they included a picture of some random guy from the bar in the newsletter.
Last week I had a heated debate with Andree, Russell and Andree about what is the best Asian restaurant in Ames. This happened because Andree had the temerity to badmouth Hu Hot. Somewhere in the debate, the good name CoCost was slandered, everybody agreed to the greatness of CHC and the restaurant China One International Buffet was discussed.
China One International Buffet was brought up by Andree as a place that I would love if I loved Buffet City. I do love Buffet City and sometimes I’ve been known to take their crayfish home to photograph, but that is another story.
A plan was hatched. Last night Jay and I met Jason, Andree and Russell after they concluded their work day at Principal and hit China One. We hit it hard. It was everything that Andree had hyped it up to be and I ate eel sushi.
After the meal was completed and we parted company with Andree and Russell, Jay, Jason and I loaded up into the Rideshare van and headed towards the Des Moines River because I wanted to snap off a couple of photos.
As we headed in that general direction we passed a parking ramp. I remembered a night after Sara’s graduation party where I stood outside that parking ramp in the middle of an ice storm lamenting the fact that this parking ramp was locked down tight as a drum.
I pointed out the parking ramp to Jason and told him how I wished that I was able to get to the top of that parking ramp.
He looked at me and said some magical words:
“I can get into that parking ramp with this card.” Then he picked up a card that was sitting near the dash.
“Then lets go to that parking ramp.”
We made a quick turn and entered the parking ramp. When we got to the top after about 10 minutes, the view was even more beautiful than I had dared hope. We were right across the street from the cheesy*, rotating cross that adorns the FUMC of Downtown Des Moines.
My only problem was that I wasn’t prepared for such a development. The lens that I wanted for this moment was sitting 30 miles away, in my car, in Huxley, attached to the Maxxum 5 (not to be mistaken for the Maxxum 5D). I was also planning on using a polarizing filter for when I came face to face with this beauty.
However, I shouldn’t complain. This was not the ideal circumstance, but I could get some shots and be satisfied with the knowledge that I could come back at a later date all prepared and with more time. As it turns out, Jason Baier makes a poor photo assistant with all of his whining about wanting to get home to see his family before he has to go to bed because he works at 7 in the morning.
So I present some of what I got on top of that parking ramp and some of what I got down by the river.
You might notice that some of these pictures are a bit crooked, more than usual. I broke the piece of my tripod off last night that I would use to straighten out the camera. I decided not to fix the slant in post to remind me of how angry I was when that piece broke of my tripod. I hope nobody thinks I’m into Dutch Angles.
*I do not condone the use of the word cheesy in connection with this beautiful cross, but I would not know this cross existed if Shannon wasn’t complaining about it being cheesy.
Shorty often refers to going to church twice on the same day as building up credit. On Friday night I went to The Venue to attend the Church of the Inebriated Saints. I think by Shorty’s logic, I get credit for that and can skip church some time in the future.
I took several pictures of Inebriated Saints and I’m going to unload a large collection of them right here. I left shortly after their show concluded, but based on then names of the other bands, they sounded like yelling-screaming-angry-white-male-feel-sorry-for-me music, I’m just going to assume that they were the victors.
It is a fact that many of these pictures aren’t really your standard picture and might be kind of artistically pretentious, but I felt the need to get a bit creative because bar photography is not my forte. There is limited light, so you are really kind of limited in your options. You can crank up the ISO, but that results in digital noise. You can crack out the blinding flash and my Top Photo Assistant can tell you, I don’t really like flash photography. The only other option is to get a little creative. Admittedly you will find examples of all of these in the photos above.
On a more personal note. This trip out to The Venue was my first trip to a Boone bar in almost 2 years. I saw some people that I hadn’t seen in several years. Anybody that has ever seen me knows that I’m not a big personal appearance person. (Although I have really gotten into color coordinating my beanies lately.) If I know somebody, I know them and don’t even really think about what their personal appearance might be saying to the rest of the world.
A couple different people came up to me and asked me: “You are Christopher Bennett, correct?”
One of these people was a muscular looking gent with a shaved head and a goatee. I had a brief conversation with him and then he returned to his job duties. I never thought of him as being scary looking. Although I might not ever be muscular looking, the clock is ticking on when I will be a bald dude with a goatee. The only thing to be determined is whether or not I will have the guts to keep the sideburns.
Shannon said that guy was really scary looking.
I thought, really? I mean maybe a guy that looks like that can be intimidating, but I only see Larry Sprecher. One of the kids (along with his brother Mike and Kelly Wilson) that I played G.I. Joe with.
Becky came to the concert with Shannon. This resulted in a bonus photo session that I call “The Get Your Picture Taken with Shannon Session”. Check out these bonus photos:
One other person that talked to me at the bar was Jamie’s friend Bonnie. She wanted to know if I had a “little, short, blonde guy with me”. She was referring to Jay. When I relayed that story to Jay on Saturday morning, he became distraught. It turns out Jay doesn’t like to be referred to as both little and short.
I’m part of the way through a commercial photography for an up and coming entrepreneur’s website. I can’t say much about the work yet, but below is a preview of the work that I am currently doing.
More to come in the future.