Posted by ws1 on:
Not only is this line long.. It's also slow. Of course the chile con queso can't be argued with.. but a 45 minute wait? I think I'll reserve that for the holiday season when friends come back to town and need a hit of #17. Otherwise, you can find me at Lily's eating less-dry tacos for half the price, and none of the tourists.
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Posted by ws1 on:
Though I had a somewhat Lutheran upbringing, and had many a happy holiday season - I am not particularly crazy about Christmas. When I (stupidly) utter this sentiment to family and friends, I get an embarrassing, and near-total verbal ass-kicking. "HOW can you NOT like CHRISTMAS?!".. Then begins a defensive and strangely predictable conversation about those normal things that people like me gripe about this time of year; commercialism, the partial (or total) absence of the original concept of christmas, augmented traditions divorced from their humane origins, holiday stress and expectations - and just not liking red and green together. Actually, I don't even particularly like egg nog, or cinnamon - or most Christmas music (Mommy Got Runover By a Reindeer, Jingle Bells et. al.). Bleh.
All that said, I don't hate Christmas. I love spending time with family. But do my best to manage my expectations, and to keep calm in the lead up to the big day.
So last night, it was shocking to me to find tears in my eyes when I went to listen to my (wonderful and talented) cousin, who sings with the SMHS A Cappella Choir for their 'Annual Winter Concert'.
Something about the harmonizing and collective optimism of young voices all listening carefully to each other, simultaneously and willfully performing something truly well-crafted makes me happy and hopeful (and apparently sappy again about the Holidays). I could go on about how it reminded me about what's best about humanity, but you know that better than I do.
I was in such a good space after the concert that even egg nog sounded good. So I had some. And I still hate it.
But you should still listen to this recording. If it does nothing for you, you might want to check your name tag, because you might in fact, be the devil.
The recording, made last night (with my phone) is of 'We Three Kings' sung by the A Cappella and Madrigal singers combined. It was composed by John Hopkins and arranged by Jack Eskew and Bruce Healey. It's not the best quality, but it gets the job done.
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Posted by ws1 on:
Here are a few shots from the mesa and Hendry's. I'm also testing out the new City2 feature that allows me to post multiple images :)
When Clicking on the thumbnails, be patient, it takes a second or two to load. :)
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Posted by ws1 on:
I know I haven't been posting lately. But I am gearing up for a few new posts in the next month. Before I do, I wanted to share the first of what will hopefully be a new series of posts (to compliment the normal random stuff I send in and write about).
For those of you who don't know what an animated gif is. A gif is a type of image file (like a jpeg). What's special about gifs is that they can let you include more than one frame (like the image below).
As an artist, I get hyperfocused on a lot of strange things. Lately, I've been interested in abstracting what is familiar to me, like this picture of the sewage/creek water flowing out into the ocean at Hendry's ( aka the Pitt, aka Arroyo Burro). When I was a kid, I used to play in this thing.. Now, there's a sign about 20 feet away warning of sewage contamination.
If you think I'm on drugs, or feel like you are after looking at this image, you can see where I'm taking a bit of inspiration from by visiting this site, which has a lot of wonderfully artful and intriguing animated gifs. What I like about them is that they often focus on just a few limited frames of something, which forces you to think about it a bit more than you might if it was a still image.
I think it'll be fun to play with local imagery in the same way.. hopefully I can do this (barely existent) genre some justice. :)
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Posted by ws1 on:
Local culture, happenings, news, art, and other miscellany.
