007

Yesterday, I watched three James Bond movies back to back. And that was good. It had been a while since I had seen the original 007 in action. Call me a purist, but Sean Connery is the true James Bond. Dr. Mo, From Russia With Love, and Thunderball. It brought back memories when I first saw Dr. No. The buzzwords among me and my buds were "license to kill". Wow! The Bond movies were the summation of a young man's fancy. Danger, excitement, fast cars and beautiful women. They may look hokey now but at their point in time they were fantastic! Who knew that a martini could be either shaken or stirred? Seeing an old Bond is like revisiting youth. And it's sweet. Very sweet.

My sketch book was in hand and I made a few sketches during Thunderball".

movie for a rainy day

I guess it could be a good movie for any day. I'm speaking of the sci-fi pic Next. I'm not a big Nick Cage fan but this story carries him along. He plays a magician with a talent for seeing into the future for about two minutes. Julianne Moore one of my favorite readheads, plays the tough FBI agent who wants to use Cage's talents to thwart a nuclear attack. And then there is Jessica Biel. She's just hot! She seems to have changed a lot since her preacher's daughter role on television.It's a good film with good visual effects and a good action story.

Todays Music

• Pink
• CVB
• Tobey Kieth

Car Show

It's been along time since I've seen a exhibit of drag racing cars. Most of the cars at this show at the local K-Mart parking lot were drag racing cars. The sanctioning body was the Southern Drag Racing Association. The SDRA set the rules for competing as well specifications for the cars. I was surprised to find that none of the cars were fuel injected, four barrel carburetors were common. NOX was used on almost everything. I talked with a guy that raced a Baretta. It had a small block Chevy engine and turned 148 mph in the eighth mile. That's haulin' and on the bottle. There were other cars such as a bathtub Porshe kit car. It was immaculate powered by a flat four with dual down-draft Webers. The most interesting thing I saw were the junior dragsters. Designed for youngsters, they have one cylinder engines. It was a lot of fun and I would like to smell the rubber burn.

Homeward Bound

Who says you can's go home? I thought it would be a good idea to put together a little video of Bradley, SC. I pondered the format and look a bit. i finally decided that a slide show would do nicely. The use of black and white images would give at somewhat of a vintage effect. Initially, I was going to use handwritten captions but that did not work out. Actually, it would have been too time-consuming. I did not have enough close ups. A crude attempt at humor was made.

Watchmen

The Watchmen is a superhero movie. Someone is killing superheroes and it must be stopped. Time: 1985. Place: USA

The movie is too long, about three hours. They could have cut an hour out of it and had a better movie. The first half really drags as the story is set up. The entire movie is full of hyperbolic action. After a head is smashed a couple of times, continued smashing is purely gratuitous. Most of the movie is dark or shades of gray and when color is used it is less than intense. Character development is fairly well done but could have been better. The flashbacks were kind of annoying. I did like the movie and the sound track was great. Perhaps if I had read the graphic novel?

Common Sense

An Obituary printed in the London Times - Interesting and sadly rather
true.


Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense , who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;

- Why the early bird gets the worm;

- Life isn't always fair;

- and maybe it was my fault.


Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children . It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than t heir victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

I Know My Rights

I Want It Now

Someone Else Is To Blame

I'm A Victim


Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

To crop or not to crop, that is the question.

To crop or not to crop, that is often the question facing a painter or photographer. Why are we asking this question? It is because we are trying to improve composition. Occasionally I finish a watercolor which has great color and technique, but it just doesn't look right. The composition need work--that is my gremlin! I more frequently crop photographs for the same reason. Maybe the horizon is not level or a church steeple is not plumb and must be fixed. I have cut away half a sheet of watercolor with some very good brushwork just to make a good picture. The good brushwork just did not add to the picture.

The photo above is one of my Alaskan photos. I have beefed up the contrast and desaturated the color a bit for the look of a cold day. Although it is good I thought the cropping would make it better. To me landscapes almost always look better in a horizontal format. After deciding that I wanted a distant point on the river to be my focal point is began cropping.

You will note that I cropped off the top of the mountain. I felt it distracted from the river. Notice that almost every line in the landscape leads your eye to the river. Be aware that the center of interest is at the intersection of the lines that would be drawn for the "rule of thirds". Man-made elements are removed as well. I like it. Don't you?

Vincent

My friend Vincent left and did not give me a chance to say "Good-Bye". I found out about his illness on Friday and Saturday he was gone. I have many fond memories of our peddling art in Charleston. We passed many hours in Washington park and on king street hawking our wares. And we talked a lot. We talked about everything like who was the greatest painter or who was the best local painter or who was the hottest Italian ice girl. Yes we did talk about women. Vincent had been amazed when the white girls hit on him in England. It was a new experience for a young man from Charleston. But Vincent was a family man also. He loved his wife and kids. Octavia particularly stole his heart. Girl children do that. He had a habit of disappearing on those hot afternoon and would reappear with customers in tow. He had met them at the bar in a local hotel and sold them on his art before they had even seen it. He was always ready to help at any task when needed.

Yes, I'll miss him, especially his telling folks that we were brothers since we had the same hair style.

(I don't think anyone ever believed him!)

Good-Bye Vincent

Just Puck It!

I attended my first hockey game yesterday. It was kind of a difficult decision. The NASCAR Las Vegas race was on television. Since we got the big screen, it's kind of hard for me to get away and I wanted to see "Rowdy" Busch win in his hometown. But, alas, I went to the hockey game. The local minor league team, The South Carolina Stingrays, was playing the Gwinnett Gladiators. Now, I don't know much about this sport, but if there are a bunch of guys flying around on ice skates with sticks chasing a flat ball, it would have to be fun. And it was. Them fellas really take that game seriously.. Fights break out all the time (I guess they are argueing about the little black thing.) as you can see in that picture in the upper left. I think that the object is for one team to put the flat rubber ball, also called a puck, whose name is no doubt in the Shakespearian tradition in a basket at one end of the frozen floor without suffering extreme bodily harm. The team that does this the most is the winner. Without getting kilt, of course.