dayton is not in ohio

Here’s a video I made about the canoe trip I took with my brother and a friend this summer in Mississippi.

It’s really just a (very) glorified slide show, intermingled with a little video that I shot on my camera. I planned on having more video, but the disposable video camera I bought from CVS just didn’t work… should have tested it.

The soundtrack includes Black Water, by the Doobie Brothers, Dueling Banjos from the Deliverance soundtrack (if you’ve seen the movie then you understand the nightmarish significance of that), Copperhead Road, by Steve Earl, and Gonna Fly Now, by Bill Conti, from the Rocky soundtrack (shot out to Philly!). There are also a lot of layered sound effects, so I’d watch it with some good audio, turned way up.

My brother kept bugging me about how long this took to finish up, but I always turn these kinds of things into a big production.

For a bigger view, download the video to your desktop and play it from there, then stretch your video player bigger.

But as Chesterton says, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing….” you know the rest. I’m… I’m, just. I’m speechless. Why do I torture myself.

There are only two reasons why any Philadelphia Philly batter would be the final batter in a ball game. One, you hit a walk-off __________ (home-run, single, anything…) or two, you get the last out.

The same is true in the All-Star game. The same is WORSE in the All-Star game - uh, oh… did I give it away, Aaron Rowand. Oh! Uh.. sorry Aaron, that… that you put a final end to the National League rally…

It’s not your fault. It’s Tony LaRussa’s fault. Two words: A-L-B-E-R-T. P-U-J-O-L-S.

I’m not proud of the fact that I don’t care about those readers who have no idea what I’m talking about. Right now, I don’t care.

It’s worth doing badly.

Here are a few pictures of Anna and I at the Art Institute on Friday, and one at Lowes to do a project on Saturday morning. The first two are from the 17th floor of the school’s Michigan Avenue building - the first looking out the lake, and the second down on the museum. Most folks don’t realize that the the Art Institute owns three or four buildings downtown, in addition to the museum building where my studio is located.

From Anna this morning: “I put my sippy-cup on the counter to warm up. Otherwise, it be too cold.”

She still mixes up her tenses a little, but I don’t think I used the word ‘otherwise’ in everyday conversation until I was at least 25…

…the freedom to buy 50-cent soft-serve from the Swedish, I guess.

The last month has been a whirlwind of making art, final critiques, writing papers, and a canoe trip to Mississippi. I just haven’t had much time to blog. Now I’m faced with finding a job for this summer, but I still want to do a few posts to catch up… so stay tuned, I’m still here…

Anna was playing by herself for a bit this morning, and as I was on my way to the shower I discovered this on the floor. She’s ignored the puzzle, but made a really nice line. It’s the kind of thing that I’d do, and further confirms that she may have a bit of artist in her. Recently she was playing with blocks on the floor, and I asked her to come look at something for a second. She replied, “No papa, I’m busy working on a project. A sculpture project.”

Today was papa’s fun day with Anna. It started out at my studio for a little drawing before the museum opened.

Anna’s work has really developed a lot since coming to grad school.

Next we went to the museum to look at art, do puzzles, play with blocks, and read books. The real highlight, though, was lunch after the museum. Anna’s hands-down favorite: Chinese food. She craves it… it’s all she could talk about all morning. So we hit up Panda Express.

Next, Anna napped for a couple of hours in the pack-n-play under the chopstick bridge. Our plan was then to go to the Univ. of Chicago to play with the golf holes. Mom decided to join us for this leg of the adventure, so even better!

Well, the golf holes, we discovered, were closed down for the day (they’re only supervised from 11 - 2), and they were all covered with black tarps. I took the tarp off of my hole to take some pictures. Anna just ran around in big circles and enjoyed the blustery, chilled fall day. Pardon me… the blustery, chilled spring day.

We then headed home and Karen made this incredible Thai chicken pizza. When I saw this thing of beauty I made her wait for me to grab my camera before she cut it up. This thing was restaurant quality…

To top the day off Karen and I watched LOST. It was a great episode! The survivors almost got off of the island in the 9th, and bought themselves a little time by tying it up, but then floundered in mediocrity and a lack of drive before going into a coma in the 13th. I even wished for a moment that Bobby Abreu had not died in the middle of last season, and could help them out. But no such luck, and our confused, bumbling survivors are still lost.

Wait. No. Sorry. That was the Phillies game. The folks on LOST actually accomplished something.

This picture of Tim Hawkinson’s Uberorgan installed at the Getty Museum in L.A. courtesy of my wonderful California in-laws and their camera phone. Nice shot!

In the college ranks, my boys at FSU took a 12 — 4 loss today.

In the Major Leagues the Phillies were on the winning side of a 12 — 4 battle.

Could this point spread be a mere coincidence? It could be… but it isn’t.

For the first time in my life, one of the teams I wholeheartedly support, beat another one of the teams I wholeheartedly support. Philadelphia Phillies 12 — Florida State Seminoles 4. I did not see the exhibition game (the only similar match-up that I witnessed being FSU vs. Kansas City Royals, circa 1989), and I’m not sure what it would have been like emotionally for me.

The Phillies are 1 - 1 in spring training “grapefruit league” ball, not counting the victory over the ‘Noles.

FSU, a traditionally powerful program, is 15 - 0 to start the season, tying the record for the best start in program history, with it’s only “loss” coming in the exhibition against the Phillies. The Seminoles have outscored their opponents 185 - 55 this season.
One highlight that I sure would have enjoyed seeing was FSU’s Tony Thomas Jr. hitting a solo home run off of Phillies starter Kyle Drabek to lead off the game. But just so the kids didn’t get too big for their britches, Chase Utley went yard in the bottom half of the first for a three run shot and the Fightin’ Phils never looked back.

Ahhh… I’m glad baseball is back!