In case you missed the sunset yesterday, here are a few images I captured.
The Sunset Yesterday
Category Archives: Photography
Minutia – Chapter 4: Failure
Thomas Edison failed on his first 100 attempts to invent the light bulb. When asked if he was upset with all of his failures he responded that they weren’t failures. He had learned 100 different ways not to invent the light bulb. I think of that story at times when I need motivation and I can’t seem to make the picture in my head and the picture on the screen the same. Then I also remember that Thomas Edison used to publicly electrocute cats and dogs to show the dangers of Tesla’s competing style of electricity. That reminds that the distance between genius and insanity is measured by success.
I had just got home from Ames. I had a belly full of Club sandwich. I had invites to not one but two swinging parties burning in the back of my mind. One party was in Des Moines. This party was to celebrate Nate and Ryan’s birthdays. If I attended this party I would get to see Ryan. He is the recognized master of the high five. This was a strong selling point.
The second party was for Sara H.’s graduation. She had recently graduated college and was having one last shindig before she left for North Carolina for a stint with Habitat for Humanity. While Ryan is an acknowledged master of the high five, Sara is an acknowledged master of profanity. Perhaps the only one I know.
Sara H.’s party was in Ogden. Nate’s party was in Des Moines. I considered my options. Then I considered that the sun was quickly fading in the sky. It had been a while since I had felt the Maxxum 5D in my hands, if you hadn’t counted the pictures of Bethany and her new camera I had taken an hour or so ago.
I was feeling restless. I grabbed the camera and loaded the car up with fake flowers. I hit the road. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, but I just didn’t know where I wanted to go. Plus, I was going to need an assistant.
There was really only one man for the job of assistant. With apologies to Baier, if I were an artistic genius like Van Gogh, Jay would be my Gauguin. This is for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that Jay would look great with a mustache. The second reason is that Jay is always riding me for being lazy.
Any time that I say that I should put up a tripod, but that I won’t do it because it is too time consuming, he is right on my back calling me lazy.
I dream that someday Jay and I can have a confrontation where he tells me that the only thing he can tell by looking at my work is that I work too fast. So I can get right back in his grill and tell him that he “looks too fast”. If this happens I would prefer that Jay was wearing red pants.
I had drove around aimlessly for awhile before deciding on giving Jay a call. He answered his phone and sounded a bit like a man that had been beaten down. I’m sure he had. He had probably spent 10 hours at work.
Without trying to sound pushy I asked Jay if he might be interested in helping me with a little photo project that I was working on.
“When?”
“The sooner the better.” In reality I had some disposable time, but I wasn’t in the patient mood.
“I’ll need to take a shower first.”
“It would be better if you didn’t.”
That sentence kind of hung there for awhile.
“What do you want me to do?”
“It might involve you getting wet.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want to go down to a stream and then you are going to throw these fake flowers into the stream. It might involve you actually getting into the stream, plus we might have to cross the stream, and you might have to help me find the flowers if they get lost. Plus there is always the chance of mud.”
“I can’t take a shower?”
“I wouldn’t see the point. You are just going to have to take a shower after we are done.”
“I really stink.”
“We both are probably going to stink before this little exercise (in futility) is over.”
“Why me?”
“Because you are my Gauguin!”
“Wasn’t he kind of a prick?”
“It would be better than being my Signac?”
“Yeah, that pointillism joker with his ‘scientific method’.”
“Yeah, screw that guy.”
“Screw pointillism too.”
“So you’re in?”
“The deal is that you can’t complain that I stink.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
I swung by Jay’s pad and picked him up. I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do. Although I knew this was going to be entirely a test run for a later photo, I needed to make the test run as soon as possible. The deadline for State Fair Photography Salon was quickly approaching and I wanted to be able to place my order with Adorama with plenty of time to spare. That way I would get the pictures back with plenty of time to discuss my matting options with Monica. After all, Monica is my matting expert because of her vast knowledge of the color wheel. Plus she can put a picture on different colored mattes and say “that looks good, it really brings out color X.”
I’m not at liberty to discuss what I am trying to do with this picture. Only Monica gets to see the four pictures I enter to the State Fair Photography Salon before the reception the Tuesday before the State Fair opens. At that point, Sara J. gets to see the pictures. Then, I might post them on my website. That is if I do well. If I don’t do well, I just pretend like I’ve never heard of the State Fair Photography Salon.
Jay got in the car. I didn’t smell any stench on the man. Which means he was either grousing for no reason or he had made haste to take the White Trash Shower. I didn’t smell an excess of cologne on him, so I think that he was really just trying to buy time until he could think of a good reason not to wade through a stream with me. His plan failed.
I turned the radio up and we headed towards McHose Park.
I had chosen the stream that ran behind McHose Park. Perhaps it isn’t the most sanitary stream in the world, but it had three things that I prized above all else.
The thing I wanted the most was solitude. I knew that if I was hanging around this stream, I would most likely be able to do my work in peace. As opposed to Ledges, where there would be people crawling all over the place. McHose Park is always busy on the front side, but not many people hang around the backside, unless they are engaging in an illegal narcotic based activity. If I ran into such people, we would leave each other alone.
The second thing that I liked about the stream behind McHose Park is that while it isn’t deep, there are sections of it that are fairly deep. The water can get as deep as 3 to almost 4 feet deep. Finding one of these deep spots would be key to my artistic pursuit on this day.
The final thing that appealed to me was clear water. Unlike portions of the stream at Ledges or Squaw Creek, the water that runs through this stream is very clear. At least in the parts of the creek that have a sandy bottom.
One of the sad truths about McHose Park is that despite being one of the largest and most beautiful City Parks in the state, it has come into disrepair lately. The main paved road that cuts through the park has huge sections where the term pothole seems to hardly even be appropriate. The gravel back roads are eroding away and the city does not seem to be interested in grading them. A couple of the bridges on the backside of the park are well past being called safe.
I drove down the one gravel road that is still passable for somebody in a sedan. I stopped and parked a few hundred feet past Turtle Pond. I parked right in front of the Water Treatment Facility.
There are no words that adequately describe the smell that first attacks your nostrils when you smell the air outside of the Water Treatment Facility. If Jay was worried about any body odor, this smell should have put him at ease. I don’t know the person that can produce an odor that can compete with this smell. For purposes of intellectual honesty, I should admit that I do know a couple, but nobody that I would ever allow in my car.
Years ago McHose Park had a road on its very backside that you could drive through. It was a gravel road that allowed you to drive through the stream on a couple of occasions. For some reason, the City closed down this road. Although you can’t drive on it any longer, it is still there. Slowly eroding away and being reclaimed by the forest. We walked down what is left of this road.
When I originally envisioned this project, I thought about a part of the stream that is on the very south edge of McHose Park. A part of the stream that was almost all the way to US30. There was a small waterfall at this part of the stream and a stretch of the stream that was a decent depth. However, we were quite a ways away from that part of the stream, so I decided to just make do with the first decent part of the stream I came across. After all, these were just test shots. It didn’t need to be perfect.
Those were the thoughts that crossed my mind as walked down the road, past a crane and a Bobcat that blocked part of the road. Those were the thoughts that crossed my mind as we approached a section of the road where the stream crossed the road.
Jay looked at me and said, “Now what?”
My plan wasn’t terribly thought out. I told him what I knew.
“You are going to stand down here. I am going to walk down there.” I said while pointing in the general direction of downstream. “When I give you the signal, I want you to throw the fake flowers in the stream.”
“That is it? You drug me out here to throw fake flowers into a stream?”
I saw that he had brought with him his particular brand of insolence.
“Yeah, that is pretty much it.” I conceded.
I decided to take on the stream barefooted. I loathe sandals and do not own a pair or their bastard offspring the flip flop. I can’t even bring myself to say flip flop. Last time I bought a pair, I made Olivia refer to them as “water related footwear.” Those “shoes” ended up in the bottom of the channel that separates Lower Cullen Lake and Middle Cullen Lake. It was either lose the “shoes” or go underwater with the Maxxum 5. Today I chose to go barefoot.
I do not know if Jay thought what I was doing was stupid, but he didn’t ask me any questions. If Jay knew what I was about to do was stupid, he has been conditioned in past encounters to let me make my own mistakes.
The other theory that I can operate under is that Jay might have noticed that I was wearing hiking boots. He may have considered the possibility that I didn’t want to get my hiking boots wet or muddy. They might have been my dress shoes. After all, we did have a friend that was vacationing in Spain that tried to pass hiking boots off as dress shoes on more than one occasion.
Whatever Jay’s motivation for not pointing out my stupidity, what I was about to do was a very stupid thing. I was going to try to make my way through a series of concrete blocks and rocks to a part of the stream that was just sand. These concrete blocks and rocks stuck out of the stream at weird angles. These concrete blocks and rocks were intermittently covered with algae.
I took off my boots and socks. I waded into the stream. The cool temperature of the water gave me an initial shock, but that gave way to a sensation of pleasure. The water was rather refreshing.
I inched my way off the road and onto a concrete block. My first step was decisive. Then I stood there and realized I didn’t really have a good second step. The rocks and the blocks were at funky angles. While I would have no problem handling this situation with two hands free, one hand was clutching the Maxxum 5D. True I could have left the camera dangling from its strap around my neck, but quite frankly I don’t believe in the camera strap. I believe in my right hand.
I was standing on a concrete block. On all sides of me was rushing water. About a foot a way was the bank. I could have stepped to the bank and walked about 20 feet and hopped into the stream in a place that wasn’t occupied by a mishmash of rocks and blocks.
It is possible that what crossed my mind was that taking the bank would have been a wimp’s way out. I would say the way of the pansy, but I have since learned that the pansy is actually a very hardy flower and does not deserve to be compared with people that are feeble or cowardly. The iris on the other hand . . .
In actuality I don’t think I ever considered the bank. I made a few more tentative steps. It seemed like I was going to make it. I made a few more steps. It seemed like this plan was going to work.
Then I tried to step up on to a concrete block. I placed my foot on top of a rock and began to push off. The rock was covered in algae. My foot slipped right off. I lost my balance and started to fall face first towards the concrete block.
I had an option though. I could put a couple of hands in front of me and stop my fall or at least push myself off to the side of the concrete block. The only problem was that I held the Maxxum 5D in one hand. If I tried to use it to help stop my fall it would surely be smashed into several no longer functioning pieces or it would have ended up in the stream. Then it would have been in one no longer function piece.
Out of my peripheral vision I realized that I still was only a few short feet from the bank. I tossed the Maxxum 5D in to a growth of grass and continued to let gravity take its course.
I put my hands out and pushed against the concrete block. My face was saved. My body shot upwards, but I was still not in equilibrium. I fell to the side and landed in the water.
“You alright?”
Jay’s concern was heart warming. I pulled myself and what was left of my dignity out of the water. I walked over to the bank to find the Maxxum 5D. It was sitting on top of the grass, looking as if it had not been flying through the air a few moments earlier. I picked it up. I looked it over. I tested it. It was fine.
I sat down on the concrete block and looked myself over. The camera was still in one piece. My face was still intact. There was a throbbing pain in my left foot though.
This term is not used with any kind of medical training. I believe that I hyperextended my left foot. When I was falling on the rock, all my weight went on the front of my foot and my toes bent upwards well past where they are supposed to stop bending. The result was a dull throbbing pain on the bottom side of my foot that felt like a bruise, but there wasn’t a bruise to be found. Further examination of my foot revealed a decent sized gash along the side of my big toe.
“I’m fine,” I answered. “Just a little cut.”
“We calling it a day?” He asked, but he already knew the answer.
I just gave him the look. The look that indicated that I wasn’t an iris, I was a pansy.
“Want your boots then?”
“Yeah, that suddenly sounds like a real good idea.”
Jay threw me my boots and I made the rest of the journey without incident. I stopped at a bend in the stream that was about 100 feet from Jay. It seemed like a good spot because on the west side of the stream there was a clearing on the bank. Plus on the outside part of the stream’s bend, the water was at least 2.5 to 3 feet deep. I gave Jay the signal.
He began dropping the fake flowers into the stream. I waited. He kept throwing them in. I waited. He had thrown them all in. I waited. I waited. I waited.
“This isn’t going to work.” He yelled downstream at me.
“Why not?”
“They’re sinking.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t matter what it makes, they all sank.”
I began to walk upstream. Sure enough, not even 20 feet from Jay I found all of the fake flowers. They had all sunk. Fake flowers don’t float. This didn’t make sense. The flowers were made out of plastic, which floats, and silk which I would assume isn’t heavy enough to sink. I had reckoned wrong. I reckoned that maybe that the part of the stream where Jay had thrown the flowers in was too turbulent for proper floating. I grabbed all the flowers and headed back to my bend.
I dropped the flowers into the calmer area of the stream. They floated for a second and then they dropped to the stream bottom.
This sucked. I looked up to call out to Jay. I wanted to tell him that this sucked, but he was gone. It was like that moment in the horror movie where two people are in the woods and one of them disappears. Either the person that disappears shows up moments later for a “fake scare” or their body shows up in the third act all distorted and mutilated.
This wasn’t a horror movie though. Jay showed up moments later. He had wandered off and collected some small real flowers.
“This sucks.” I was finally able to verbalize, but I had lost some of the venom.
He ignored me and threw the flowers into the stream.
“Real flowers float.”
Which was great, but not real helpful. If I was going to use real flowers for my picture, I would need a flower with a much larger bloom than what Jay was finding. I saw a grouping of the type of flowers that Jay was throwing into the stream and I took a few pictures of them so that I could identify them later.
I came back to the stream and tried to get what I could out of the sinking flowers. I figured it was good enough for a test run.
I walked back to Jay, got out of the steam and walked the uncomfortable walk of somebody with wet boots. While I was walking in these wet boots to the car I decided that I didn’t really feel much like going to a party. I felt like getting out of these shoes, taking a shower, and playing with Photoshop. This would be my Saturday night. Not exciting, but I would get plenty of sleep and be able to start up my church streak again. Plus I would be plenty rested for the next day’s graduation festivities.
When we got back to the car I came to the sad realization that even though this was a test run, I hadn’t learned how to take the picture that I wanted. I had learned a way not to take the picture that I wanted.
Broken Bridge of McHose Park
Back of the Crane
The Deceptively Tricky Rapids
“You should have worn your shoes and I would look smashing wit a mustache.”
The Small Flowers on the Bank
Coming Back from the Bend
Minutia – Chapter 2: Beans
I do not get many e-mails at work. The ones I get are either related to a phone system failure that doesn’t affect me, the aisle copier being broken, new orders, or loaner requests. If I get a personal e-mail it is usually a link to read a story about or watch a video containing somebody doing something pretty darn stupid. Then there are the occasional e-mails that are of an actual correspondence nature. I wonder if I end up being a person of consequence someday, whether or not future historians or psychiatrists will have access to my pile of correspondence e-mails and what they will decide they say about me. I wonder what theories they will postulate about my decisions. I wonder what theories they will postulate about my motivations. I wonder what theories they will postulate about my mental health. I then stop myself from wondering. It is a futile enterprise to wonder what future generations might make of the sum of your life. For when they are, you will not be.
My wonderings aside, if it turns out that I go on to a smashing career in the field of commercial photography, there is one correspondence and one date that will be considered the genesis of that career. Historians will remember that it was a Wednesday. The time was 11:45 in the morning. The following e-mail blazed across the server at the computer mine and landed squarely in my inbox.
My boss just walked into my office and asked me to call a photographer that we’ve been working with. She didn’t do what we needed to have done. I asked why we work with her if she’s been difficult to deal with in the past.
He said something about just being convenient. So, I mentioned that I know a guy…and I had him look through your calendar. He’s interested in talking to you about doing a shoot for us.
Right now we’re looking at needing some close-up photos of roasted corn and soy beans. Would you have time (or want) to swing by {COMPANY NAME CENSORED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT} today or tomorrow to speak with him?
You can say a lot of bad things about the Photography 139 calendar and its extensive use of free labor, but for the first time ever, it actually worked as a bit of advertising. 5 months ago when Shannon “purchased” her copy of the Photography 139 calendar and hung it up in her office at work, it began what would be the process that would on this day lead her to sending me an e-mail asking me whether or not I would be interested in an audition for a gig as a commercial photographer.
I read the e-mail and thought a second. Then I replied thus:
I could stop by and discuss it at least. I’m not what you would call a gifted commercial photographer, but I could give it a try.
What time were you thinking?
After a couple of more e-mail exchanges it was established that I would come in on Thursday and discuss the possibility of taking close-up pictures of soy beans and roasted corn.
I wasn’t sure really what they wanted. I wondered if they wanted to send me off to some farm to take pictures of somebody’s operation. I wondered if they would want me to do this photo “shoot” in their offices. I wondered if I was just to be a trained monkey for their amusement. You know, like at my old job, before I worked the mines.
I did know that one thing was likely. I would probably officially have to cancel the tenderloin road trip for Saturday. That was fine, because the tenderloin road trip that was planned was not tenderloin based, but was dance recital based. Frankly I wasn’t comfortable with the lack of purity.
So it was then that I sent an e-mail to Baier explaining the situation. He sent me a one word reply:
“Booooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!”
I know it hardly qualifies as a rebuttal, however his response is what passes for discourse for people from Audubon.
I arrived at Shannon’s place of work at 1 pm. I had been there in the past, so when I walked in and saw nobody around, I began to walk toward her office. I only made it about as far as their massive television set, when Shannon showed up from the back room and indicated her boss would be with me shortly and invited me to sit down on the couch next to the massive television. I did what I was invited to do and wished that we had a couch like this back at the mine.
After a couple of minutes, her boss ran by and said something about, “being busy fighting fires.” I had a flashback to that previous job where the owner used to stay he didn’t want his managers to be “fire fighters”. He wanted us to be “boat captains”. This would lead into rhetoric about how the “Pre-shift Checklist” was the elixir that prevented fires from cropping up on your ship. That man loves his boat captain analogies almost as much as he love shoveling Grade A cow dung straight down his employees throats.
I wasn’t here for a walk down bad memory lane though. I was here to learn about the possibility of earning a little extra scratch through one of my passions. As I sat on the couch I did start to have a desire to turn on the massive television. It was unlikely that this television was hooked up to cable or satellite. It was even more unlikely that even if it had been I would have been able to find anything on daytime television that was more interesting than snow or the most recent development, the “unusable signal” channel. A favorite channel in the Baier household I would learn soon enough.
As I thought about touching the massive television, the Boss returned in the same rapid gait and uttered something to the effect that he was busy and I could just talk to Shannon. This was fine with me. It was what I preferred. Even though this was hardly what I would classify as a job interview, I still didn’t really want to go through the process of answer questions about my alleged photography skills with a stranger. I am not a person good at being interviewed. Maybe it is because I don’t like being judged. Whatever the reason, my interview skills are probably the reason that the only two jobs I’ve had for an extended period of time have involved Lowell.
I got up and started walking towards what I perceived to be Shannon’s office. To which she indicated that I was heading in the wrong direction. Her office had moved. So I turned and walked in the opposite direction back towards the door. Towards her new office.
I sat down in her office next to a file cabinet with a clear flaw. I noticed this immediately, but because this was to be a pseudo-professional meeting, I let it slide. “It” being an Iowa Hawkeye football schedule magnet.
Shannon is a Panther by education. This is fair enough. I do not hold this against her. Not everybody can go to Iowa State. Yet, when she is asked to pick a side between Iowa or Iowa State she reveals a terrible character flaw by choosing the Hawkeyes.
There was some polite conversation to begin this meeting, but then the conversation moved towards what they needed from me.
“We need close-up pictures of soy bean nuts and roasted corn on a white background. They will be used for a website and brouchures.”
Then she produced two clear bags. One was about ¼ full of soybean nuts. The other was about 1/3 full of roasted corn.
“Sorry, but this is all we have left. We gave the rest to the other photographer. I guess this is where you get to be creative.”
It was a fair enough observation. It does sound like an incredibly boring job. Taking pictures of beans. Where do I sign up? I would learn in the near future that most people seem to think that this involves taking one picture, and then you are done. It is quite a bit harder than you would think. And I allegedly know what I’m doing.
I didn’t want to make the same mistakes as my predecessor. That lady was in the unemployment line. So I asked, “So what was wrong with the other images.”
“Too low of a resolution. Plus you can’t tell whether or not you’re looking at beans or whether you are looking at roasted corn.”
I looked closer at the bags that were in my hands. If you did look closely, they were slightly different. This really only left me with two questions:
“When do you need these by?”
“Pretty soon.”
I knew I couldn’t work on this project tonight. It was Rebecca’s birthday dinner at Shorty and Doris’. I wouldn’t be able to work on it Friday night because that was Friday Night Supper Club and besides being sacred, we were also breaking in Willy’s new pad. I had cleared up Saturday. It would have to be Saturday because Sunday was Mother’s Day.
“Would Monday be soon enough?” I offered, but actually thinking that it wouldn’t be soon enough.
“That would be perfect.” Shannon said.
“What resolution are you looking to get?” I asked my final question.
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask the Boss.”
That concluded the business end of this meeting, I thought. Yet there was one question still to be decided. I had never thought about this question. That question was money.
“How much do you want to be paid?”
I hadn’t really considered that I might have to enter into a negotiation. Another reason I was glad to be dealing with Shannon rather than some stranger.
“I don’t know.”
Shannon quickly answered with, “That is what I told him you would say.”
It hurt to be so predictable, but it has never been my goal to be unpredictable. My goal has always been to be me. Who ever that might be?
So I answered the best way that I could: “Just pay me whatever you were paying the other photographer.”
That seemed to settle it. The business had been settled. Shannon gave me a run down of what they did at her company. They mostly produce football highlight videos for a third party. I scored 2 Cyclone highlight video DVDs. Then she showed me shelves and shelves filled with boxes and boxes that were filled with DVDs for high schools. Apparently the high school videos don’t sell very well. She showed me a list of schools in Iowa for which they produced these videos.
There is one thing that has always annoyed me. It is when people who aren’t involved in a business want to tell you what is wrong with your business. Even though this is a major pet peeve of mine, I couldn’t help but start running my mouth about what I perceived to be their problem.
“These are all large schools. That is why they aren’t selling. What they need to do is focus on small towns that having nothing going on but their high school football programs. Places like Madrid, Harlan, or Aplington-Parkersburg. There might not be as large of a customer base, but these people are going to buy them.”
It harkened me back to a particular customer from my past. I can’t remember his name, but he was an Engineering Professor at Iowa State, allergic to onions, potentially stalking me, and a super sized jerk.
The night that Campus closed one of the first things I did was take down the drive-thru menu board. While I was out there, Professor Know-it-all pulled up to the drive-thru speaker.
“Am I too late!” he bellowed out a half question and a half snarl.
“Yep we closed at 7.” I said, trying not to engage him in conversation but answering his question.
“This is too bad. I think you guys really could have made this work.” He said and then looked off at the distance like people do who are having deep thoughts and are about to say something compelling. What he did say was this, “What you guys needed was a hook. Something to get people in the door.” Then he made eye contact with me and continued, “You should have given people a free drink when they ordered something else.”
He continued the eye contact as if to tell me two things. He didn’t need my approval of his idea and secondly I should acknowledge his wisdom by pointing out the greatness of his idea.
I said, “Yeah that might have worked.” Then I grabbed up my tools and walked back into the story, leaving the genius alone in the night to think his genius thoughts. I’m pretty certain his thought was that he had saved the store. I was going to go in and tell the owner this brilliant idea. The owner would then say something about boat captains and change his mind about closing the store.
In reality I went inside and told some of my fellow Campusites about what I had just endured and we all had a good chuckle at the knave.
Truth be told, there was nothing that was going to save Campus. The owner had wanted to close the store down for years and years. He was emotionally invested in closing the store down. He had done everything possible to make sure it closed and certainly wasn’t interested in any ideas that might actually help the bottom line. On the contrary he was interested in ideas that would hurt the bottom line so that he would have more ammunition to take with him to the corporation as he pleaded with them to let him close it down.
Even if Campus would have been blessed with an owner that was interested in making Campus into a profitable venture, giving away free drinks was possibly the worst idea imaginable. Food cost on a soda is around 3.5%. Food cost on a sandwich is sometimes as high as 60%. You don’t make a profit by giving away the thing that makes you most of your money. Add in the labor involved in making a sandwich and you probably lost money on it. But a person would have to get over 30 free refills to put a dent in your profit margin.
Laughable! The ideas of that knave!
Perhaps that is the exact thought that was going through Shannon’s mind when she said, “Actually the problem is that they try to sell them for fifty-five bucks.”
I conceded her point that these DVDs were in fact priced out of the marketplace. She then offered me any high school DVD that I wanted. There weren’t any areal teams, but I thought that Jay was a graduate of Cedar Rapids Kennedy and they were on the list. Shannon snagged me a copy of their 2006 DVD. I was disappointed to see that the Cedar Rapids Kennedy Cougars had flat out stolen their logo from the Kansas State Wildcats. Whatever happened to originality?
After I had collected up my DVDs the Boss streaked by again and blurted out “RAW!” I now had all the answers I needed to tackle my project. I had a format. Which isn’t the same thing as a resolution, but it worked for me.
I left her office loaded up on DVDs, soy beans, and roasted corn. As I drove back to work I called Jay’s answering machine and left the following message:
“Jay Janson! Jay Janson! Were you a cougar?” I might have growled a smidge as well.
I decided to do this shoot outside. Saturday was a tad bit windy, but I would take the wind for the better light and the joy of working outside. I was also concerned that bright light was also going to make shadows somewhat troublesome. So my plan was to rely a little bit on fill flash and a little bit on the gentle shadow of the garage.
It turned out that the joy of working outside was slightly diminished by the neighbors across the alley. They had chosen this weekend to rent a power sprayer to clean their deck furniture and the toys of their children. This steady noise was not the blissful peace that I had imagined.
When I am working in a creative way, I strongly prefer to listen to jazz or classical, but mostly jazz. In particular I find I respond best to the albums that Miles Davis recorded in the mid 1960s right before he got hardcore into fusion. Although the sound of water hitting plastic at breakneck speed might have fit in decently with “Bitches Brew” or “Dark Magus” it wasn’t doing anything for me on this day. It was not mixing well with “Miles in the Sky”.
So I switched my background music to a little harder stuff. I found that Led Zeppelin nicely covered up the sound of noisy neighbors. Although I’m not sure what the other people in the neighborhood used to cover up the sound of this noisy neighbor.
I shouldn’t go into great detail about what happened when I finally started taking pictures of my subjects. I could. I’m sure that there are many interesting things I could discuss about exposure compensation, depth of field, aperture setting, saturation, sharpness, and leveling tripods. I will leave all that out because I don’t really like to discuss how I do what I do. I like it be sufficient for people to know that I do do what I do.
I will just state that it is a lot harder to tell whether beans are in focus or not. Way harder than it sounds. Let us just say that I eventually got enough of something on the memory card. I had enough to at least present something to Shannon. Whether that something was going to be good enough, I didn’t know. I did know that I was not a gifted commercial photographer and spending an afternoon photographing beans is more interesting than it sounds. I called it a day.
I burned the best of what I had onto a disc and went to visit Shannon again. She was in a rush to go somewhere, so the interaction was brief. I dropped off the disc. She looked them over and said she thought they looked good, but she was not the final word.
I acknowledged her compliment and indicated that it is a lot harder than a person thinks to tell if a bean is in focus.
I then left her to do what she had to do. She said that she would show the bean photos to her boss and they would get back to me today.
I returned to work and felt a little bad. I was worried that the Boss would look at the pictures and tell Shannon that this was the lousiest set of bean pictures he had ever laid eyes on. Then I would get the following e-mail:
The Boss says that your bean photos are no good. Get out of here kid! You got no future!
Unlike Marty McFly though, I can handle that type of rejection. It might be the only type of rejection I can handle, but I handle that type of rejection.
However it wasn’t the rejection that worried me. I would have felt bad for Shannon if she would have had to tell me that I suck. That is a hard thing for one friend to have to tell another friend. Even when it has to be done, like when you have a friend walking around insisting that “Shrek 2” was way better than “Shrek” and you have to tell him to stop doing that because he is embarrassing himself.
As I contemplated this potential dilemma, an e-mail popped into my inbox. It read:
I finally just got your CD to the Boss. When I asked him what he thought, he said something to the effect of, “I think we just found our new close-up photographer.” So my opinion was valid. They are great photos!
I was relieved and excited, but yet I wished that they would use the term “Macro Photographer”. Is that too anal?
After Work Walk
I went through a little walk through the woods after work on Monday. I took the following images. They amuse me. Hopefully you will get some moments of amusement from them as well.
I only came upon 3 deer during my walk. Last week I came upon ten deer. I also did not find the groundhog. Of course, I have seen the groundhog 8 times this year, but never with the right lens. I’m still going to get that groundhog.
Randumbness
I’m going to attempt to get out of the video posting rut that I’ve been in lately. Not that the videos I’ve posted have been bad. In fact, they have been highly entertaining. However, this here “Artist’s Notebook” isn’t supposed to be about funny videos. It is supposed to be about “Yours Truly” and my artistic endeavors and artistic failures. Although it is certainly also about my inspirations. Those videos are a part of my “Online Idea Box”, as I have been known to refer to this thing as.
This “Artist’s Notebook” is also about my more personal inspirations: My friends. So I should reveal what has been up with some of my friends.
The biggest news about my friends would be that Derrick has become the man at his place of employment. I believe his previous job title was “Guitar god” or “Guitar Guy” or “Sales Consultant”. Now his job title is something like “General Manager” or “Store Manager” or “The Man” or “Mr. Man” or “HHIC”.
It is a strange twist of fate that his S.O. Jen was once “The Man”. She hired Derrick on. Now it is a few years later and he is now “The Man”.
There was a store manager in between them, but I fail to recall her name. I do know that the rulers of Derrick’s company did her in on Monday. They pulled the old switching the locks to the door trick. A classic of all passive-aggressive wieners that don’t have the testicular fortitude to do somebody in face to face.
I know from my extensive firing experiences that it takes a man to look somebody in the face and tell them: “Get out of here kid. You’re no good. You don’t have a future”. Of course my extensive fire experience includes firing not a single person.
You see I was once “The Man”. Not with the same company where Derrick is currently “The Man”. Yet, I was the man for a couple of years in a quickly failing restaurant. It was hard to be “The Man” at this place because the owner of the restaurant wanted it to fail. They were begging their understanding of God for it to fail.
I ran what in the politically correct vernacular would be known as a “quick service restaurant” in Campustown. The large overhead of such a business and poor location spelled doom for the restaurant.
While I was captain of this sinking vessel I did not have to fire anybody. I soon realized that most people fired themselves. You set up standards for people. You communicated these standards to the people. You set up consequences for not reaching these standards. You communicated these consequences to the people. When people knew that they weren’t reaching the established standards, they would pretty much quit on their own.
I should point out that I wasn’t exactly setting the bar high either. My minions consisted of High School and College Students. This wasn’t a career stop for them. This was a little bit of spending scratch so they could booze it up on the weekend or go to that Dave Matthews concert or for some it was to pay for their textbooks or their rent.
The good ones already cared about their job, not because they cared about the job. They cared about their job because they were the type of people that did well because what they were doing was what they were doing. In less convoluted terms, anything that they did they were going to do well because the result was a reflection of them. It wasn’t what the job consisted of that was important. Whatever it was, they were going to do it well.
Then there were the employees that failed under my regime. They really failed of their own accord. At least they left of their own accord. Which the majority of them left because their time at Iowa State had concluded or they realized that they could get paid much better doing a much easier job some place else. However I am not typing words out about the people who just moved on to better things. This is about people who theoretically could have been fired. The failures.
My standards were not that high. It isn’t that they were low. It is that when you are stuck working in corporation there are about 1 trillion incredibly dumb rules about every single insignificant aspect of how to do every single mundane job. In huge multilevel corporations like the one that employed me, you will find people that memorize and dream about every single one of these stupid little rules that have nothing at all to do with the success of a business. In fact the enforcement of these rules is a waste of time. Concentrating on the mindnumbing minutia that is the “Proper way to pull eggs from the grill” is allowing insignificance to control the significant aspects of the business.
There were really only a handful of things that I cared about. I never spelled this out, wrote it down, posted it, or handed it out on cards. But if you were to really spell out my rules of management they were simple:
1. Serve the customer, in a fast, friendly manner with a good product.
2. Keep the store clean.
3. Maintain the equipment.
4. Don’t get me in trouble.
People who couldn’t do these things usually phased themselves right out of the business.
WOW! I never meant to drone on and on and on and on and on about it.
Willy had oral surgery last Thursday. It must have went well. He was up and back on the dance floor by Friday night. He even attended the largest Friday Night Supper Club in history. There were 6 people there. Including 3 people that had never made it to a Friday Night Supper Club function before. Jen, Derrick, and Sara now have FNSC Auxillary Member Status.
Jesse did not make it to Friday Night Supper Club because he had his nose broken Friday morning. It was on purpose. It wasn’t like he had lipped off to some dude and got regulated. A doctor busted him up good and attempted to rearrange some of the nose parts so that he can breathe better and make him a little bit softer on the eyes.
I got the pleasure of hanging out in the Ambulatory Waiting Room with Kelly and Mary while the doctors were working him over. It was through a conversation with Kelly that I learned more about his lying, scheming ways. Also I got more ammunition for the Bandwagoner side of the Jesse Howard: Bandwagoner or Innovator debate. Wives sometimes talk too much.
Kelly also regaled me a tale that I will file in my memory banks under the “Great Easter War”. I will not retell the tale at this time, but it might make its way into a short story collection in a bookstore near you.
Last night after work I headed to a park to test out my new camera bag. Once I got to the park I realized I couldn’t test my new bag out because the only thing I had brought with me was my camera and the new bag. I hadn’t brought my old bag that was full of goodies. I was looking forward to doing some bird photography, but that dream was effectively snuffed out by the fact that I had left my telephoto lens in my old camera bag. Therefore I was stuck with only my 50mm lens to try to capture images. The 50mm is a great lens, but birds are known cowards. I believe that they are the first known draft dodgers.
Due to their well documented cowardice (sometimes known as migration but really draft dodging) it is difficult to get close to them with out them taking off. So below are the best pictures I could muster out of the experience. They are failures. I know this fact.
This is going to sound slightly harsh, but it was nice to see a collection of deer without injuries. There is quite an assortment of deer that live in the woods behind my current place of employment. Almost all of them suffer from at least one injured leg.
Sister, The State Fair, and A Few Jokes
For the last few years my sister Teresa has talk a lot of jibber jabber about entering the State Fair crocheting competition. In the same time frame, Monica has made a similar amount of dissonance about entering a painting into the State Fair.
Last year they were together in a contingency of people that made their way to the Fair with me. Once again they began opening their mouths and allowed words to escape about how “next year” they were going to enter their wares. Perhaps it was the heat. Perhaps it was hunger. Perhaps it was hearing the same inane prattle for years, but I believe that I snapped at them.
I can’t recall what I said, but I’m sure I pointed out that I was sick of hearing this same song and dance every year and yet every year the State Fair deadline came and went and all their talk had yet to spawn any action.
It has always been my philosophy to not pay too much attention to the words that people use. Everybody can talk a good game about what they are going to do or how good a person they are. One of the great truths I’ve learned in life is that “action defines character”. If you want to know the truth about a person, don’t listen to what they say. Watch what they do.
At that point they struck a deal. They both agreed to enter something next year. Well as I gaze admiringly at the Photography 139 Calendar on my wall I realize that next year is now this year. That immediately begs the question: “How are they doing?”
At a recent birthday dinner for Monica she revealed that she “still had plans” for the State Fair. So that is where Monica stands.
Teresa on the other hand has been quite diligent in her pursuit of the State Fair. She has been crocheting things left and right. The picture below are her latest creations. What makes these creations impressive is that these bears are a few inches tall.
I wanted to throw out a couple of jokes from the “Showbiz Show” that amused me:
A new video game allows you to form a “virtual band” online with other Xbox users. Those who’ve played it say it’s so realistic you almost feel like an actual failure.
Bono was granted an honorary knighthood, but he’s not entitled to be called “Sir” because he’s not a British citizen. “It’s cool, I wouldn’t want to be called anything that’s not my god-given name,” said Bono. “Yeah, that’d be totally pretentious,” said The Edge.
Former Spice Girl Melanie Brown has given birth to a baby girl, who she claims was fathered by Eddie Murphy. She’s basing this on the fact that the baby is capable of both being totally amazing and putting out crap.
Odonata
I haven’t had the “pleasure” of being on MySpace much lately. Which means that my “blogs” have become sporadic and if I’m not mistaken, lower in quality. I can’t say that this saddens me. There are more important things I should be doing with my time, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times that I miss the moments of entertainment I get from this little site or the contact I lose with some people that I seem to only make through this “social networking” thing. Still, Uncle Sam hit me with a pretty stiff tax bill this year. I should be trying to figure out how to raise the funds to pay the feds off before I end up rotting in debtors prison. Although I do know this one thing about many of my chums. If I do end up rotting in debtors prison, I shant be alone. Some of us will be rotting together. I think I speak for all of us when I say, “Do your worst Uncle Sam! Just not to me, I’m not like normal people. I don’t like pain.”
I have changed the background music for the blog yet again. I will not pretend to have the musical talent or knowledge of at least 4 of the subscribers to this thing. I just felt that I should cool things off a little bit after the hard rocking of Pillar’s cover of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”. I’m also quite certain that somewhere north of where I sit typing, Mike Britson is scoffing at my tenet that Pillar is anywhere near the neighborhood of hard rocking. I can’t dispute this fact. Mike has always claimed to be the “World’s Greatest Music Snob”. I do not think that he has a t-shirt that proclaims this fact, but in my heart of hearts I hope that Stephanie made him a button that did.
I come away from that aside. All I really wanted to point out is the fact that the new background music is “Minuet in G”. It was composed by the great Ludwig Van. It has always been one of my favorite pieces of music. Due to my relative musical ignorance (despite being a wretched to middling trombonesman in my day) I may be interpreting the intent of the music incorrectly. I have always been struck by how desperate this music sounds. It is more than sad. It is desperately mournful. Yet when you feel like it should be too depressed to carry on, it seems to find a way to carry on. In that ability to carry on, I find the song hopeful as well.
Take that for whatever you like. I don’t claim to be an expert. Although I do subscribe somewhat to what Roy Adzak said about art:
“Good art is not what it looks like, but what it does to us.”
Meaning that the person interpreting the art is in many ways more important than the artist. That is a somewhat scary thought. I have the slight delusions of my own artistic ability I don’t like giving up my art and allowing whomever stumbles upon it to translate what it means. I don’t even struggle with the control issues that some of my friends do and it is still difficult.
I guess what makes this concept bearable and allows me to subscribe to it is the fact that the alternative is utterly unbearable. Namely, having to explain the meaning of everything. Of course, this also allows me to view “Minuet in G” as desperate and hopeful in the same breath and dear old Ludwig Van just has to accept it. IN YOUR FACE BEETHOVEN!!
Dictionary Dot Com defines “irony” in such a way: 5.an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
I’m not sure this following tale is actually really ironic in the way the word was forged by its creators or in the “Alanis-Morrisette-I-Clearly-Wrote-A-Song-About-Irony-Where-I-uses-Examples-of -things-That-Aren’t-Ironic” way.
Perhaps it is ironic that I don’t know if this is ironic and I am having a go at somebody else for their ignorance. Perhaps I should just tell the tale.
Not really much of a tale. I have found a home for some pictures of mine. Here is the arguably ironic part: that home is the Boone Homeless Shelter. My church has adopted a room at the homeless shelter. As a congregation we are donating items to fill this room. I have donated a copy of “Happiness Shared: #01” & “Happiness Shared: #02” to adorn the wall of our room.
What I found out tonight is that when each homeless family leaves the shelter and sets up their home, they get to take everything from the room to furnish their new home.
I did not hand the pictures over to Pastor Phil personally. I left them in the hands of my sister Teresa. Allegedly Phil was excited by this donation and thinks that I should donate such pictures every time a new family moves into our room.
In some small way I have a “standing order”. In no small way, this kind of excites me. Looks like I’m just doing good deeds all over the place. But before I break my arm from patting myself on the back, I should show you what is going to the homeless shelter, to somebody’s home, and perhaps someday to a Goodwill Store near you.
So what would these other good deeds be that I am doing? Depending on your ability to recall facts about me, you may remember that a while back I was instrumental ( by instrumental I mean the same way I was instrumental to the success of the BHS Concert Band by holding down the last chair trombone) in the making of a batch of soap. Some of the soap from that batch is going into care packages for people being released from Mitchelville State Penitentiary.
The truth is that I had nothing to do with this donation. It is all Shannon. Yet since, she is donating soap for this cause AND I helped make the soap. I get to glom onto some of her glory. The boys I hang with like to call that bandwagoning. Except for one. He likes to call it innovating.
However, I am going to attempt to make the world a better place in one more way. It is through something I hope to propose and railroad through Friday Night Supper Club through my power of oratory. I won’t tell you what it is, but I will give you a hint. I should also point out that at this time Friday Night Supper Club is a secular organization. I point this out for my sister Teresa.
I like to go out to the woods on my break. Some people like to smoke. I like to commune with nature. No tax on that, suckers!!
While I was out there I went a little crazy with the camera on a fellow that became a buddy of mine. Since he was what I like to call Odonata, I cracked out the 50mm lens. This is a lens that is fine and dandy for Odonata, but then I heard a rustling to the left of me. There he was for the 5th time this year. The groundhog! The problem was that I was unprepared for this development.
I did not have the proper equipment. He was staring me down, practically screaming at the top of his rodent lungs: “I’m ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille!” All I could do was take this incredibly bad picture from about 75-100 feet away. This picture is cropped quite a bit. If you saw the original you would never be able to find the groundhog. That isn’t a challenge. Just a statement of fact.
At least I got a few decent shots of my chum Odonata:
Within these images I find solace, but I’m still coming for you Mr. Groundhog!!!!
Why I Love College Basketball
This is taken from Paul Shirley’s ESPN Diary. It is a retelling of one of the greatest injustices in the history of College Basketball. Plus he only gives a cursory look to my least favorite college basketball memory (I watched that game in F-ing Hunky Dory’s!) and the peripheral reason why I will never have State Farm Insurance.
Because I am an American with at least one functional eyeball and/or eardrum, I was exposed to the regional finals of this year’s NCAA tournament. Usually I pay only cursory attention to the NCAA tournament; unlike most humans, I find college basketball to be subpar.
I’ve never fully grasped why people prefer it to the NBA. In my mind, the NBA is to the NCAA as a bottle of Pacifico is to a can of light beer. Increased consumption of both results in entertainment for all — one just makes the journey a little more enjoyable.
This year, though, I had a reason to watch the tournament. My favorite college head coach, Tim Floyd, managed to unexpectedly lead his Pre-Mayo USC Trojans into the Sweet 16. Sadly, his team lost its game with North Carolina but, because I had given the tournament more than one idle thought, I resolved to watch on.
Thanks to the shockingly humorless commentating and a realization that it matters not a whit to me if someone wins the national championship or the tournament is canceled due to an outbreak of hantavirus, I was quickly relieved of most of my interest in the tournament.
Except for one part: I paid attention to the crying. And that reminded me of why I should cut college basketball fans some slack.
Back before I embarked on my wending professional career, I played basketball at Iowa State. In March 2000, my team played Michigan State in the Midwest regional final, with a trip to the Final Four at stake.
It would prove to be a memorable game for me, but not for reasons I could have anticipated beforehand. In a semi-prophetic turn of events, I became known not for plays I made on the court, but for my actions off it — specifically for my actions at the end of the bench after I fouled out and it became apparent that my junior year of college would not include participation in the Final Four.
I cried. A lot.
This year, when I watched players break down when their respective seasons came to an end, I was sent into flashbacks via my own episode of quasi-post-traumatic stress syndrome. Thankfully, I was able to stave off tears this time. My brothers might have packed me away for admission to the sanitarium if I hadn’t.
My most memorable emotional breakdown was not an isolated event. I’ve cried after many, many basketball losses. In fact, I’m fairly confident that I teared up after every non-win of my junior and senior seasons of college. (I didn’t play much my freshman year. And we lost 18 times when I was a sophomore — I would have needed a tear duct transplant.)
But my moist and salty trend had begun much earlier. After a sub-state loss during my junior year of high school, I spent an hour in a bathroom stall in a locker room in Silver Lake, Kansas. When we lost in the state tournament the next year, it took me two hours to regroup enough to talk to the one college coach whot had waited for me to pull myself together — Tom Brennan, then of the University of Vermont.
But the loss to Michigan State in the Elite Eight was particularly crushing. En route to Big 12 regular-season and tournament championships, we had lost all of four times on the year. I had grown accustomed to winning. Losses came as shocks to my admittedly fragile emotional system.
I had played a fairly significant role on the team. I didn’t start, but was consistently the first player off the bench. That is, until one of our last regular season games, a matchup with Texas in Ames. During the first half, I came down awkwardly on my right foot and broke a bone within. (I, of course, cried when I found out it was broken.)
Because of my crippled status, I didn’t play in either of our first-weekend wins in the NCAA tournament. But I had healed sufficiently to play sparingly in our Sweet 16 thrashing of UCLA. Emboldened by my ability to tolerate foot pain (assist: injection-delivered opiates), coach Larry Eustachy returned me to my sixth-man status in our game against Michigan State.
I played well enough that I was still on the court with about five minutes to go. (Warning: Most of what follows will be extracted from my admittedly fuzzy memory of the events that transpired. Times and scores are approximations, mostly because I don’t want to take the time to do actual “research.”)
We were up by four or five at the time and were playing well. I allowed myself to think — as I was running down the court — “You could be playing in the Final Four next weekend. Gosh, that’s neat.” (I had not yet been exposed to the cruelties of the world outside of the Midwest, so I thought in sock-hop.)
Then, it seemed like life got even better. I caught a pass in the middle of the lane, lofted up a shot, and ran into someone wearing Michigan State green. The referee in my field of vision immediately put his hands on his hips to signal a blocking foul and then dropped his hand like they do, counting the basket I had semi-inadvertently made. We would soon be up by, well, two more than whatever the margin was at the time. Three more if I could summon the wherewithal to make a free throw.
But then I noticed a referee conference develop. There was discord in the striped ranks — debate over whether the foul had been a charge by me or a block by . . . the other guy. The one in the green.
(Again, fuzziness. In my defense, much of what transpired has become twisted because the events quickly became part of Cyclone Nation lore.)
After a lengthy discussion, the officials came to the conclusion that they would call . . . a double foul. My teammates and I were, obviously, aghast. And a little awed. Our feeble minds had not contemplated the double foul to be a viable option.
We did quickly realize the following: Blocking foul, good for us. Charging foul, bad for us. Double foul, bad for us . . . and bad for the referees. Public admissions of ineptitude are rarely looked upon fondly by 18,000 basketball fans.
(Unless those fans are overwhelmingly in support of the team that stands to benefit from the call. Like if the game is played in Auburn Hills, Mich. and one of the teams’ campuses is in East Lansing, Michigan. Not that we found that 10:1 green-to-red advantage daunting. Or that I’m the least bitter about the logistics.)
The basket was waved off, I fouled out, and our momentum came screeching to a halt. I next looked up to watch Michigan State’s Morris Peterson finish off a lob with a dunk, which inspired the partisan Palace crowd to explode. We couldn’t stop the tide and, soon, it was over.
And so I cried.
Fortunately, I was given exceedingly ample time for emotional expression. With a few seconds remaining in a game that was then out of reach, coach Eustachy took it upon himself to demonstrate his frustration with the officials’ work by storming onto the court.
The circus that followed his ejection gave those manning the cameras — both television and standard still-photo — plenty of time to capture my mood. That mood being the one that inspires a clean-cut white kid to make really ugly faces as he cries and tries to hide behind his left hand.
I was sad because we had lost. But my despair was exacerbated by the personal circumstances at work. I had trained hard to return from injury in time to help my team. My efforts had resulted in a tragic loss. Obviously, I had let someone down.
The next 24 hours was a blur. I remember choking my way through a few postgame locker-room interviews, enduring a long charter flight home, and wading through several hundred Cyclone uber-fans who had awaited our arrival in Des Moines.
We had lost on Saturday, which meant that the poignant shots of the Iowa State basketball player crying his naïve little heart out were featured prominently in Sunday papers all over the Midwest. I vaguely remember hearing from a relative that my tear-stained visage made an appearance even in the Los Angeles Times.
I spent that Sunday holed up in my apartment, healing. That sounds melodramatic, but it’s actually true. Basketball was all I cared about. And that spring, it was all anyone in Iowa cared about. We were the talk of the state. Which meant that I felt like I had failed a population base of around 2 million full-on or partial Iowa State Cyclone fans.
And yes, I took myself a little too seriously.
But by Sunday night, I was ready to move on. I had another season to look forward to — my senior year at a Division I basketball program.
With the departure of Marcus Fizer, I undoubtedly would move into a starting role (true). I surely would have an injury-free season for a change (not true). And of course, we would avenge the previous year’s exit from the NCAA tournament (also not true: At the end of my senior year, we became only the fourth No. 2 seed to lose in the first round). Life was full of promise.
On Monday morning, I woke up ready to begin anew. On my walk to campus, I received a few sympathetic greetings from total strangers. I humbly shrugged off their condolences, nobly declining to confirm their rage against referees who had — in their eyes — bungled a call and taken the game away from their Cyclones.
As I did every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I stopped in at the cafeteria on the western side of campus. I opened the door to Friley Hall and grabbed a copy of the Iowa State Daily.
Whereupon my heart immediately dropped into my colon. In the interest of the entertainment of 23,999, and to the horror of one, the editors of the university newspaper had covered the entire top half of the paper, from left margin to right, with a picture of me, crying.
Specifically, this one
I’d like to say that the picture instantly crystallized for me the relationship between sports and money. I wish that what dawned on me at the time was a realization that the NCAA, CBS and the Iowa State Daily cared very little about my feelings — that they cared about selling tires, razors, and ad space to local bars. And if my inability to control my inner infant helped them to accomplish those goals, they would put a picture of it wherever they could.
But, instead of anything so cynical as that, I only realized that each of my walks between classes was going to be extraordinarily awkward.
I ate my breakfast and walked to class. My suspicions had been correct. As they passed, my fellow studentry looked at me with a mix of awe, sympathy and wild-eyed panic.
Except for one person. While I sat in the library, plowing through the mess of hieroglyphics that passed for my engineering homework, a girl walked up and, without hesitation, asked me to autograph the day’s paper.
I resisted the urge to push her down the nearby stairs and politely signed my name.
Eventually, it dawned on me that her request summarized the feelings of everyone who had watched me break down on the bench in Auburn Hills. They weren’t ashamed of me because we had lost, and they weren’t ashamed of me because I had cried like a sixth-grade girl who’s been told she will have to wait another year to get her ears pierced. In fact, they were proud of me for crying. They loved that I cared enough to cry.
Which, I suppose is why people like college basketball. They want to see heartbreak. They want to see the farm kid burst into tears when his Cinderella hopes are crushed by some basketball juggernaut. And they want to see vulnerability in the street-hardened eyes of that juggernaut’s McDonald’s All-American, when his team’s hopes are crushed by someone else.
On and on, until only one team is left. A winner. A conqueror. Whose head coach immediately chokes up on the podium.
(It would seem that sports fans just want to see people cry. Kind of the opposite of the bloodlust we might expect.)
As I watched teams fall in the tournament this year, I was struck with how ridiculous the players look when their seasons end. I know that they’ll probably play more games. For the better players, those will be more important games: Their ability to feed themselves will depend on them.
But, just like the 21-year-old version of me, they don’t know that yet. Their attention was more focused: They cared only about winning that game. And that, I grudgingly will admit, makes college basketball a little more watchable than I would like to admit.
i’m just glad my emotional fragility could contribute to the entertainment of us all.
Source URL: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=shirley_paul&page=Journal-43
Not just a lame 1980 Horror Movie
I became distracted on my way home from work tonight. Before long I felt compelled to do a little photography. Below are some of the fruits of my labor presented in chronolgoical order. Basically I felt like painting with light.
I hope you enjoyed this little presentation.
The Past Weekend
Mr. Wentworth came over to Boone this weekend. So it turned out to be a pretty good weekend. I took some pictures to remember the events that Bill’s presence triggered.
First of all, I have completed the next picture to be hung in Salon 908. Below is a picture of the picture that will replace “Last, Loveliest Smile”.
This picture is an enlargement of a picture that Teresa commissioned me to do for her living room. I have named my color flower pictures the “Earth’s Laughter Series”, but I did not have a name for black and white flower pictures. Until now. The full title of the picture is “Happiness Shared – #01”.
The title comes from the old adage: “Happiness held is the seed. Happiness shared is the flower.”
On Sunday we went to Cold Stone Creamery. I found out Bill is somebody that hates seeing people have a good time at their job. Usually I find that the people that fit into this category hate the job that they have. Bill seems to fit into that category as well. So when we got back to Boone I took a picture of Bill.
Bill complained that I didn’t give him a chance to get ready before I took his picture. I told him that I wasn’t interested in posed pictures. I was interested in pictures of people how they are. A pretentious person might call that candid photography. A pretentious street photographer might call it guerrilla photography. I just call it capture what “is”.
Willy decided not to ride to and fro with us. The weather was warm and he was ready to get on his motorbike.
The second picture was taken from Jay’s automobile. It turns out that being on a motorbike doesn’t automatically make you look cooler. But check out those sexy legs. Ladies.
Some time last week Jay Janson went a milking. There is video tape evidence of Jay’s encounter with an utter, but I have yet to lay my hands upon it. Jay did bring me the coolest memento from his adventure.
I could really go for a Boyd’s malt right now. One of my fondest memories as a child was returning the milk bottles to Boyd’s because I got to put the bottles on a conveyor belt. I’ve always been fond of conveyor belts.
Then on Monday while I was on my break I encountered this fellow.
I have also seen the groundhog that lives behind the building within which I toil 4 times so far this year. I only saw him twice all of last year.
Then despite all of these good things that put me in good humor I came upon something that reminded me that while Spring brings much good to the world it also bring pure unadulterated evil back to Boone.
I have worked in Ames and lived in Boone going on 10 years now. There has been one constant in that experience. The ability of co-workers to constantly deride Boone as being a backward, hick, racist town.
I point to the myriad of good things there are about Boone.
They point to the Speedway.
I don’t have a rebuttal.
They win.
Stupid Speedway