LEAVIN... ON A JET PLANE

St. Martin, the patron saint of... ?

Join us, if you are looking for a quick escape:

Cockpit View of Landing at St. Maarten | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com

This is SO cool a place it's got two dictatorships, I mean municipal principals. Half is St. Martin, and the other half St. Maarten. One side wears no underwear. The other favors hats and bow ties.

Here's the landing from the beach. WORTHY!!"

Didn't you enjoy those 32 seconds? You did. Absolutely.

So you see that tomorrow we'll sand blast some sun worshippers who go for a little peace and quiet, a little getaway, AT THE END OF A RUNWAY.

We go directly to the boat, a 45-50 foot catamaran. It doesn't expand, it's I'm not sure how long it is. Pretty much a fait acomplii by now anyway.

We learn that in addition to the captain and cook, there will be a couple from Italy and a couple from Canada. They will be the palest.

There ARE sunny and warm areas of Canada, but they are in Florida.

I think we spend nite one in the harbor or mooring, since we board only an hour and a half or so before sunset. Sailboats sail. They are not fast. To get somewhere, maybe, but we'll see, and after travel for pretty much 12 hours, it won't matter.

I will take many pictures and should get into flickr or some place, so I can broaden it from the several I'd post here, huh?

I'm a computer guy but not to taking one along, so that's it for now.

SHOOTING GULLS

More photography. Went to Lake Buchanen Saturday to meetup with the photo group I belong to... it turned out to be windy and eventually rainy, and the promoted eagles were nesting elsewhere. We did have some gulls follow the boat and believe me, it's not easy to get a good shot of a moving bird while on a moving boat.

Next week we'll be somewhere warm, on another moving boat...

PHOTOGRAPHER BOB WOOD

I am enjoying the creative freedom photography has brought back to me as I believe that there's no bad thing as a bad photo if it resonates with you.

As a young official photoguy for our family (comprised of my mother, my father, and me) I travelled all over Europe, snapping pictures/slides from the top of the Eiffel Tower, to Picadilly Circus, to the Collesium. Venice, the alps. Really good pictures. My mother threw them out without telling me when she moved to Florida.

The DSLR experience is so cheap, easy, and rewarding. I write those words in that order because without the cheap and easy, I'd not go for the freedom it takes to take a lot of pictures, even of the same thing - each expanding my knowledge of what works. Being able to shoot free means your own subjective opinion will always be right for that picture, for you.

I've got pictures I have saved just to think about, to try to figure out what I really like - what is vibrating for me?

Usually I like it when a picture tells a story. There's an action captured, leading to an outcome (the diver is about to kiss the water/ the child is about to get the ice cream/ or an attitude (I am eating this ice cream and don't care how much gets on me/ love/ fun. The vitality of the characters photographed fuels the picture.

I shot 35mm for years, then 110 black and white in a twin-lens relex as a teen on the yearbook staff, back to 35mm, then video in virtually every format up until HDTV. I shot tons I HAVE NEVER SEEN. And don't really want to. Got back into semi-pro 35MM, then DSLR.

But good pictures really do hold up, grabbing powerful memories or emotions, right out of thin air.

I have a picture I took of our small cruise ship in Tahiti, docked so simply and peacefully. It has innocense about it. Two weeks later, the ship caught fire and was scuttled. This was a print and if I get a satifactory scan of it, will post below. I love how it feels.



I feel compelled to point to the right side top of the blog here with a link to more photos.

CONAN IS BEING SCREWED!

It seems wrong, wrong, wrong to me that NBC wants to put LENO back following the 11P E/10P C news and have CONAN's THE TONIGHT SHOW after it at 12:05AM. Apparently CONAN isn't ready to go along.

If you think that - "Well, with all HIS money, how tough is life?" that's just not the point. It takes tremendous drive and talent to get as far as CONAN has - and while he might not be everyone's favorite, cutting him off at the knees is just wrong. It should take time to build his audience.

I blame NBC for being stupid. I blame Jay Leno for his eagerness to shuffle out of the cesspool of his current show and back to a later time slot, no matter what that does to his 'successor.'. Time to step out, Jay. Drive your cars. Do standup. You had your shot. It's over.

Same with Dick Clark, but a totally different story: time to step away.

I CAN FLY!!!

Well, I did fly back in the 70s and 80s. If you want to see me and a buddy doing Ultralights, here's the place!"

CLOSE CALL?

I was eating Raisinettes while getting dressed. I had lucked into the local store brand and they were fresh and good. The raisins were fat and there were some clumps of more than one raisin, covered in remarkably good chocolate.

I'm still a little slow getting my pants on, due to my accident affecting the left foot and a knee that is acting up on my right leg. As I pulled them on, I also had a fist full of Raisinettes, and I thought I lost one of the clumps into a pant leg, but couldn't be sure. Shook them out, but no raisin. Maybe I imagined it.

Here's what could have happened:

Now, later, I am at the physical therapy place. I remove my shoe to expose my foot and in the process, in front of the therapist, that lost chocolate-covered clump of raisinettes falls out of my pants. The therapist gives me a look that is PURE GROSS-OUT, because she thinks "not raisinette." Realizing what she's thinking, I try for a graceful recovery, only to discover there is no escape...

BRING BACK THE DEAD

If someone famous but dead could still be alive today, at the age he or she would be, who would be the best or most interesting choice?

Would Elvis be doing commercials for Weight Loss? He'd be 75.

Would John F. Kennedy be an elder statesman, or just elder? He'd be 93.

Of course we miss many people, but perhaps idealize them the way they were, especially if they passed at the height of their prominence.

I think John Lennon would have aged gracefully, would still be not only cracking wise, but being so. He'd be 70.

Who would you choose?

NO MORE WWW

I missed the change - and apparently, according to a friend who lives on his computer, by a year or so... you don't have to preface web addresses with a "www." I am so used to it, I do so automatically, but HAVE tried without and son-of-a-gun, it works.

Another tiny step forward.

FLOMAX AIRLINES

With the new rules and restrictions placed by the TSA on flights and passengers, especially the "stay seated one hour before landing," there's a huge opportunity for another niche airline - one with pre-pre-screened travelers who might be allowed to potty due to their advanced age.

Heck, I don't care if you put a camera in the bathroom. When ya gotta go, you gotta go! I have been on some flights where they make you sit for way too long due to brief turbulence - actually, I think they make you sit initially, then forget to tell you it's "safe" to walk about the cabin.

And so you hold it and hold it and then your plane lands and taxis to the farthest gate which it turns out isn't ready yet because there's another plane in it and so you sit and sit and then they slowly tug that plane out of the way and your plane slowly moves up - you are in seat 20d and the travelling feebs all stand at once but then the flight attendants loudly remind everyone "we haven't docked at the gate and to be re-seated" and then we eventually do dock "DING!" and then all jump up to be cramped in the aisles grabbing luggage and then we wait again because the gate attendant hasn't moved the Jetway yet and then when that dude gets back from his break and they crack the door, the feebs shuffle oh-so-slowly. Meanwhile my kidneys are, shall I say, "unforgiving?"

I appreciate the need for advanced security, but... "when ya gotta go ya gotta go."

Oh - and to the people who complain about the new generation of scanners invading their privacy? I say: "TAKE A BUS."