Pea Hicks' Poor Music Project

Details:

http://www.optigan.com/instructions.html

Dunno how current this project is, but the person behind the Optigan site contrived this notion of creating fake homebrew music tapes and planting them in thrift stores. Sounds like a fun idea, if tough to execute.

Kinda reminiscent of Yoko Ono's conceptual pieces. Or my stray notion of Bossy Painting (kind of like commissioning art with ideas, but [ahem] no money).

I modestly propose these titles:

"Xmas at the Ambersons 1973"

"the twins Jake & Janey on their new violins"

"garage door diagnostic pt 2"

"Uncle Paul & Aunt Letitia's hollow pine"

"462 people say hello to Sid, 3 say goodbye"


I'm sure you have your own.

the bright lights of Xmas

Long before that spate of iPod ads with the trailing lights, all sorts of lights in motion were captured as lines in still photos. With the advent of groovin' digital cameras, even the likes of me can indulge in this sort of painting with light.

Above and below, 'tis the season with Xmas lights shot with a moving camera & a long exposure. Feelings of vertigo notwithstanding, it's artsy holiday fun.




Below is more of the same without the Christmas touch.






And while I'm thinking of it, thanks to all of you folks out there with day-glo wise men, NORAD reindeer, trippy inflatable carousels and other brightly lit holiday cheer in your front yard. In one of the cars cruising past your front yard & perhaps stopping to see what you and Thomas Edison hath wrought, it may be me saying: "Hell, yeah--Merry Christmas!"

Indeed, a Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Ramadan/Solstice to you all and a Happy New Year, too.

aforementioned gnarly mushrooms

Here are those gnarly neighbor 'shrooms I mentioned back in the Tarantula-baum entry. Weird fleshy things I wouldn't want to elaborate about in prose 'cept to say: cool, huh?



This was the fungi of mid-November (unseasonably warm weather). By now the weather's still unseasonably warm but the 'shrooms have since dried up some and been mowed over. But kudos to the neighbor for having the presence of mind not to mow them down back in their prime.

Del Parrott, one swell guy I'll miss (1910-2006)

As he was my wife's grandfather, I respectfully called him Dr. Parrott. But really he was Del to everyone.

I could go on about all the good or impressive things the man did. Like getting a degree in optometry in the dark years of the not-so-Great Depression with scarcely a buck to his name. Or being active in his community as a Rotarian or many other such details. But I'm less a biographer (or fact checker) than an old friend.

Del loved two things that I noticed. Photography and his family. I've got reels of his old home movies--of his brother on leave from the service, his parents, his wife and two daughters, his grandkids, a succession of family dogs--to back this up. It's a fact.

And all of us who knew him will be that much better off 'cause he was around.

Thanks, Del.