Monster Art Show

One of the Sesame Street episodes Molly regurgitates in her echolalia has to do with Elmo trying to get ready for the 'Monster Art Show.' Our usual Saturday routine of seeing a move put us on a collision course with the Plaza Art Fair, which is the same basic concept. The theater we go to usually is right there in the thick of it, so my first thought was to park and get on the MAX out of midtown and bus in to the Plaza, then walk through the fair to get to and from the movie.

But show times and whatnot, as we got closer to midtown, I realized the movie I was wanting to see, mother!, would start pretty soon and my second choice was over an hour later.



Whatever the director may say about telling the story of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and God and all that, I see this as a perfect expression of the effects of fame and how easy it is for someone to chose the adoration of nameless masses over the genuine love of one person, no matter what consequences come.

So we got parked, level five instead of the usual two and got to the movie, and after I went walking through the fair with Molly. I can't tell, sometimes she seems to dig this stuff, sometimes she seems to think it's bullshit. When we got heading back the direction of the car she got hard to keep up with and usually I'm prompting her to come on, so I guess that's a thumbs-down review.

So we got to the parking garage, almost to the elevator, when Mo peeled off. I almost got a hold of her arm to steer her down to a seated position on the curb, instead she fell down and hit her head. Not hard, from what I could tell, shoulder first, and the head didn't go down fast like it would if the neck was limp at the time. But still.

It was a seizure. About a minute to ninety seconds I think, it's hard to tell, when someone you love and are supposed to be protecting seizes, time gets distorted, take my word for it. Seconds become weeks, it's true.

Thanks to the art fair, there were a lot of passers by to witness this, so while I'm holding her jerking head to keep it from hitting the pavement a few more times, I'm trying in vain to tell well-meaning bystanders that this isn't a 9-11 situation. The kid has had so many seizures and been transported after so many of them, it's not that I'd never go that way, but it would take more than this. As ridiculous as that sounds to the uninitiated. If I thought she'd hit her head hard enough to have concussion issues, if she'd say puked in the aftermath or acted otherwise out of the norm for postictal Molly, I wouldn't have hesitated to let the paramedics transport her but as it is I signed the waiver and went and got the car.

One of the EMT's was asking her, "what's your name?" And when he got nothing, was like, we have to transport when they can't even give us a name. I'm like, trust me, before the seizure you'd have have gotten the same not-answer. If you ask her "how are you" she'll say "happy" even through tears. I get that the feedback you're getting is outside the norm but for this kid, it's normal as grilled cheese sandwiches and wearing out Liz Phair videos on YouTube.

As they by default loaded her onto the gurney and into the ambulance even as I tried to tell them the ambulance was overkill, just give us a golf cart ride up to the fifth floor where I'm parked, I think I felt a little like Jennifer Lawrence's character in mother!, it's hard to not be listened to. Not be heard. I'm not taking concussion risks lightly, my wife has a TBI with profound consequences. A friend of mine almost lost a kid to a brain bleed after a skateboard incident and he was totally ready to sign off to not transport his kid who was just a couple of hours later in emergency surgery. I get it, but I saw the impact, it didn't look severe, and Molly wasn't acting differently than she does when she has one of these on a nice soft couch or something.

And she was fine. She soon after ate a couple of egg rolls and a bag of 'cheese chips' (her favorite snack of all time, Sour Cream & Cheddar Ruffles), guzzled some Diet Coke, came home and watched a little YouTube, unloaded the dishwasher and slept like a baby.

Bespoke Punk

So it seems like all I ever blog about is Critical Mass, but I'm not as bloggy as I used to be I guess.

Anyway, I made spoke cards for the first six or seven months last year, to the point where people started to ask me if I was the organizer of the vent. Which actually I used as an excuse to quit making spoke cards. I was running out of ideas anyway, and I'm not taking responsibility for anyone's actions the last Friday of the month. Really, not even mine.

But, and this is flattering, people keep asking if I made some. Every time I go to Critical Mass. And last time I went, June (because July I was on RAGBRAI, my mate Eric suggested I do one where I put a T-Rex head on Sarahsaurus Rex. How could I refuse? And thanks to her glorious immodesty, I was able to find the perfect source material to do this.

So Sarah went on the back of the Vegas art, which I guess was a seed of inspiration because then I started thinking of the Great American Eclipse, and I did a spoke card with two different eclipse ideas. Then a friend of mine sent me the art he'd created for a 'Bartle Hall' Black Flag parody logo, and I put that on a spoke card with my own Photoshop job on the Dead Kennedy's 'Give Me Convenience OR Give Me Death' album.

Confluence

So I set out to ride 70 miles last Saturday, RAGBRAI is coming up fast and my conditioning ain't what it was two years ago. My friend Michelle was having a bicycle pub crawl birthday party that evening, so I figured I'd try to include that in it. Between the heat, wind and social interactions, I got to the Red Front where the wild rumpus was to begin exhausted. And with text messages from my wife to bring home groceries.

I ended up at home with barely over 60 miles, having bailed on my friend's party without even getting a good photo of her. I got a couple of our mutual friends pretty good, Pete and Ann, but Michelle doesn't dig being photographed and it takes some time and frames to get her with her guard down. I guess given how she feels about being photographed, my birthday present to her is her picture isn't in this blog post.

It's not much of a gift, it would have been better if I hadn't burned myself out before the party.

Oh, and I got a pic of the new sculpture in the West Bottoms, Confluence. I'm not sure I get it but I think I like it.

Scribe at Work

So riding home from work, looking to meet up with Corinna, she texts me that Scribe is working at Foxx down on the Boulevard.

Scribe is one of my favorite artists, a national treasure really. I've done my best to photograph all his work, but he's too diligent for that to be a real possibility. But I do have a poster sized print of a photo I took of his Resound Fields II billy goat on the All Packaging building on my living room wall. You might notice it on this blog as the wallpaper, too.

When you have the chance to witness greatness, you do it.

I Can See My House from Here

Google Earth can be interesting. The streetview for my house still shows my wife's former roommate's car in the driveway, so it's at least five years since the Google bug with the camera on top drove by. But the satellite has been by since October, when I polka-dotted my car. Judging from the garden beds, I'd say it was after the beginning of March, when Corinna planted a bunch of stuff under row cover.

I think the Google satellite shot even shows how the dots have faded. I made a mistake ordering from Discount Labels. They're cheaper than Gill Studios, the other option, but you get what you pay for. When they faded so fast, I called to complain and was told pinks and reds fade fast. I'm like, bullshit, I see Clinton/Gore stickers on cars that are still red and blue, I just put the dots on in October and they're already almost white. I paid extra for a Pantone match to get PMS215 and it's gone.

I was like, these are 5" diameter bumper stickers, why would you not use UV inks? That would be a custom order, I was told, more expensive and so on. I bet Gill's higher price reflects that they'd use UV inks by default on anything called a bumper sticker (as they should). The best I could get out of Discount was a box of 250 red 5" labels printed with shitty ink that will fade to pink before eventually being white like my pink dots now are.

So Discount Labels did their best to make it right, but sometimes your best just isn't good enough, I'll never buy from them again.

Details

It's incredible how much more detail you see in where you are when you bike instead of driving. The car really isolates you, whisks you past the people and places you go by. Getting off the bike and walking, there's another boost in detail. You're moving so much slower.

So I wanted caffeine, and for me that means Diet Coke most often. La Chaquita around the corner from my house is too close to drive to. Too close to be an interesting bike ride, too. So it was suggested to me that I walk Sheba while I'm at it, and I set out. Ended up extending the walk a bit, it was too short a distance to be interesting even as a walk otherwise. For whatever reason, I'd never noticed that across the street from Christ's Church of the Jesus Hour there's, well, there's Christ's Church of the Jesus Hour. According to the cornerstone, it's got to be the oldest church in the Dotte.

It's boarded up, I guess they moved across the street some time ago (it's been in what I think was originally a grocery store at 18th & State Avenue since the 80s, I think), and there must have been issues with the building. Or maybe they didn't want to sell it to another church that would then be across the street competing for souls to save?

I think I remember they had a radio broadcast of their service on AM radio back when I was in high school, and they keep up the newer of the two buildings, so it must be a going concern though I can't remember ever seeing a car parked there. Which made the parking signage kinda stand out to me. It's posted not once but twice that the parking spots in front of the building are strictly for the church. Which is fine, but I can't figure out who would be trying to poach parking spots there, it's not as if there's any high traffic businesses adjacent to the parking lot. If they ever sold the old church building from 32 AD across the street to another church, maybe, it didn't look like that property had much in the way of parking.

Sheba and I wandered down State to the Have Guns costume shop, which I'd never been in before, and I had a nice tour of the place and visit with Jerry, the owner. That's going to have to be another post, I didn't have my Nikon with me (I take it with me everywhere, so it's really weird that I didn't), so I'm going to have to go back down there and document the weirdness.

Secret Monastery

Corinna was leading me to a pear tree that turned out to be picked already, when I spotted this compound. Like a little log-cabin-style motel or something, pretty new, not much signage to explain it except for an icon. So I asked the woman working a flower bed with a couple of kids, is this a convent?

It's a monastery, Little Sisters of the Lamb. Apparently their order calls it a monastery whether it's nuns or monks. Apparently their monks are fundraising to build a similar deal a couple of blocks away. She offered to show us their chapel, and once we were in there, they said they'd start with a prayer. Fair enough, but I was caught off guard when the sisters started off by singing, beautifully in harmony. I gather their devotions must include quite a bit of singing, though they did top it off with a spoken prayer. The whole setup was interesting, and they were really welcoming. I think me and Corinna have ridden by the place a couple of times without even noticing it.

First Friday

This was the first time I've gotten out to First Friday in a while.

I had an invitation to a gallery show and no parental responsibilities, so of course I made my way down there on the way home from work.

That invite, the friend who sent it to me, I was like, I'm not sure who that is. Looks vaguely familiar and we're 'friends' on Facebook so at some point in time I either sent her a friend request or accepted a request. I'm sure she invited all her Facebook friends to the showing, that's what ya do. And it worked, and it was a cool show.

And I ran into my friend Kim at an adjacent gallery. She was showing her landscapes, mostly with bikes propped in them. They're quite stunning, and it always surprises me she takes most of them with an iPhone. She's got a proper camera as well but unlike me she doesn't lunk it around with her every time she goes on a ride. But she's got a wicked eye, and it seems like every time she goes for a bike ride she comes away with a keeper image.

I don't know why I don't make it out to First Fridays more often. I always have fun when I do, but I almost always make excuses. Saw a good band, Odd-O-Matic, saw Julia, Sedona, Kim, Theresa, Richard, a bunch of friends. Saw guys doing a graffiti tribute to the best baseball team of the past 50 years, the 2015 Kansas City Royals.

Had great chats with total strangers, or I guess they're more like new friends now.

I'm still getting used to my speed lights. I always used to rely on available light for shooting these things, and when it works it's a great look, but so many times it just doesn't work. But the shadows, white balance issues, etc., there's a whole learning curve to strobing things. The good news is it's not blurry, the bad news is the colors, that sort of thing.

The other issue that might inspire me to go back to settling for available light: it's bad enough when you whip out an SLR, some people see a camera and they want to hide. A big camera makes them want to hide even harder. Put a big-ass flash on the hot shoe and the scatter, ducking under furniture and crawling into cabinets and trash cans.

That and I have gotten used to the zero delay thing. With a pocket camera, there's a ton of time between when you hit the button and when the frame gets shot, shutter lag. With an SLR, that goes away, but when you add TTL speed lights, well, it's got to make little test fires to meter the scene and you end up hitting the button when your shot is perfect, then a half second later when the shot is gone, the mirror flips up so the sensor can see your now blurry, moving subject making a funny face because they started talking again.

Maybe once I've worn the new off my Antique Road Show speed lights I'll go back to the available light thing. That's only a slight exaggeration, an SB-910 would have set me back as much as I spent on two SB-800s, the flagship wedding photographer flash Nikon quit making in 2007. That's eight years ago, folks. The fact that they still cost a little bit used, well, that's because the SB-800 is still quite popular among photographers (and on some bench tests actually beats the SB-910, though I think the new one has better remote options, i.e. radio).

So remote triggering has improved since 2007 but light is pretty much the same as it's always been.

I was really surprised, actually, of the friends I saw at First Fridays, Lynne showed up. I see her about once a year in person, she's got a lot of plates in the air and she keeps them all spinning somehow. But she doesn't get out to the fun events very often. I've seen her on Tour de Bier, the Tweed Ride, at Velo+ but not as often as I'd like.