In the spirit of giving characterized by this weekend's National Birthday Party (you thought we only "gave" at Xmas & Tax Time, right?) The Dark Side of the Chalkboard contributed this Superior Snap to today's Silly Sunday Sweepstakes.
You know what to do, correctamundo? Just take a gander at said snap, & conjure a caption. Tippy-type your creative effort in the comments space of this post.
That's it! You'll win nothing tangible for your efforts, except for the knowledge that you've done a good deed on this July 4th weekend, & that you've made more than a few folks chuckle.
So, what are you waiting for? Get tapping pronto...there's no time to lose!
Ella Numera Dos created this montage a couple of summers ago after a visit to Ground Zero in NYC.
HappyBirthday,America; wewon'tforget.
In addition to using different media to create this work, my chica juxtaposed the familiar silhouette of the Statue of Liberty with images from the Twin Towers site, then wrapped it all up with colorized snaps from other lower Manhattan locales.
Included in this collage are shots of Ellis Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, a memorial dedicated to victims by employees of the NY/NY Port Authority, the American flag flying atop the eerie, empty shell of the Deutsche Bank Building (located at 130 Liberty Street, next door to the Twin Towers site), & the Liberty Bell replica cast at the same foundry as its mate in Philadelphia & donated to the people of NYC after 9/11 by the City of London.
The original work is 18x20 inches; Ella Dos reduced this to include in her portfolio when she was applying to college. Lots of the detail has been lost here, since I shrank the collage even more to squeeze it into this post.
When I rummaged around in the chica's portfolio the other day, looking for a copy of the collage, the kid asked a pointed question.
"What are you doing, Mom?'
"Looking for Ms. Liberty. For my post on the 4th."
"Oh."
She allowed as how she's not that fond of Ms.Liberty--the work, not the statue--because she thinks she's grown so much as an artist in the last 2 years. I have to say, though, that this piece has always touched me. The original is hanging on the wall in our family room. It's still one of my favorites.
Today's 4th of July celebration is brought to you by Cate at Show My Face. Have a Happy!
'tis the week, I suppose, for shameless self-promotion. Or, rather, Shameless Shout-Outs of the Familial Variety.
Earlier this week I brought you MOO, the new photo blog created by Ella Numera Dos.The chica's got some great stuff going on. Please shoot over there & let her know your thoughts. Give her a few tips. Encourage the kid a tad. You'll be glad you did.
Today I bring you Miss Jo's San Francisco, which also launched recently. This eclectic collection of photos, good food, gardening and all things Off San Francisco's Beat(en) Path (with apologies to Jack Kerouac) will really set you to cogitating life as we know it.
In addition to telling her own tales from the City By the Bay, "Miss Jo also loves to hear other’s San Francisco stories – old and new – and would be glad to answer questions about The City," Ms. J, also known in these parts as Mrs. Scribe's Lil' Sis, writes. "So please don’t hesitate to write blog comments or send an e-mail. As a thanks, Miss Jo will send you a recipe, or a song from her piano-playing husband, Jeff.
I tell ya, Miss Jo has put a lot of work into this enterprise. Please pay her a visit. She's got an open-door policy, & as she says, she'll reward you for your journey.
The famous fog comes in on little cat's feet, an interesting juxtaposition, Jo says, to the DC heat of her earlier professional career, & the Texas scorchers of her childhood.
Several of us are old enough to remember when King Tut made his last tour of the US. He's hanging out in SFO's Golden Gate Park now, thru next March. Jo also alludes to the Scribe Sisters' passion for Steve Martin & his King Tut Routine.
Miss Jo & Jeff get lots of visitors, as can be expected, since they live in in the beautiful city where Tony Bennett left his heart. And every one wants to sneak a peak at the Golden Gate Bridge, which Miss Jo refers to as International Orange, or IO, for short. Here's they're Dutch friend, Freya, waving Hallooooooooowwww to all her friends back in Holland.
Apparently, temps rarely reach freezing or below in SFO, which makes for a bountiful garden, year 'round. Miss Jo explores The City's Free Fruit Movement. That's a Meyer Lemon Tree in the foreground.
Rudy the Kitty keeps watch from an antique bread table in Miss Jo's Kitchen. Jo & Jeff subscribe to a weekly box of veggies & other goodies from an organic farm near them. Jeff, quite the chef himself, makes homemade pasta, which you can see drying near the window.
And, really, I ain't lion...A sea lion pup crawled out of the San Francisco Bay this week & tried to cross 8 lanes of traffic, without a crossing guard or any other assistance. Fortunately, he was rescued on the median of I-880 in Oakland, & sent to the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito for rehab.
What sweeter snap to close on than one of these gorgeous Calla Lillies, which are just finishing their SFO run for the season. This makes Miss Jo wistful. I certainly can understand why!
Local patrons throng to a local watering hole each week for Trivia Tuesday. DC lobbyists, college kids, teachers, doctors, dentists & probably even Indian chiefs gather to try to best each other in an inane, arcane, pub game.
One of my chicas went Tuesday nite, & she was amazed. All these competitive DC Types were out to show they were the best. And they weren't just competing in the trivia arena. They competed for best team names, too.
Some of the notable teams apparently acquired their names from the Internet, where just about anything is readily available, including Pub Trivia team names, near as I can tell. Crash Test Dummies. Tears for Beers. Michael Vick Humane Society.
But the best, the most original, the funniest, according to my chica?
You've Been ShamWowed, Billy!
RIP to the Loud Pitchman, Billy Mays, dead at the age of 50.
Ella Numera Una didn't have the heart to tell the team that Billy never pitched ShamWow on late-nite TV. That product was for a Billy Mays knock-off--his nemesis, Vince Offer.
They say celebs die in "threes." Well, Billy did his last Shout-Out on Sunday. Karl Malden cruised the Streets of San Francisco for the last time yesterday. And Harve Presnell, who played "Annie's" Daddy Warbucks on Broadway & William H. Macy's creepy FIL in "Fargo," took his last curtain call yesterday, as well.
Any thoughts on this crazy summer? I say RIP to any more celebrity obits...
OK, as a Seasoned Scribe & all, I've seen a lot in my day. But while reading The Washington Post yesterday a.m., I came upon a curious sentence.
"A few Baghdadis drove under the sweltering midday sun honking horns as passengers hung out the windows waving flags and yelling euphorically."
So, I guess if the guys who live in New York are called New Yorkers, & the folks who reside in Texas are known as Texans, then the Iraqis who call Baghdad home are referred to as...Baghdadis? When I first started this enterprise, visions of eurudite pronouncements danced in my head. But truthfully, y'all, it all comes down to my opinion on things.
And I could ooze loquaciously on so many fronts. To generate "traffic," & all that janx. But I basically choose to post about those items of interest to moi. You've read here before about Our Humble High School, & its preponderance of military brats. We took 9/11 mighty seriously. But one thing I've noticed. No one I teach, from the cherub of the 1-Star General to the progeny of the Drill Sergeant, is really totally convinced that Iraq was such a great idea.
My old blog layout was black--remember that?--and featured a Superior San Fran Snap. Shot, I might add, by Ella Numera Dos, she of recent blogging fame. Some of my readers thought the blog's header & its paen to an SFO icon meant I was a liberal, whatever that really means.
The fact is that my youngest chica snapped that iconic shot. And I posted the snap because it's a superior rendition, in old school color, made to look like b&w. That's it. Nada más.
I can't argue the merits of the Iraq invasion...with any great intelligence, anyway. Since 12 of my former students have been thru that revolving door known as Baghdad, I'm only hoping for a relatively calm, peaceful outcome, is all. And now that US troops have started their withdrawal, it'll be interesting to see how the natives handle things.
Before I changed it up, my retro blog design also featured the above snap of John Lennon. The caption read, "He was protesting a different war, but still..."
That's just about how I feel, I guess. I'm sending positive vibes toward the Fertile Crescent & hoping things turn out OK for the Iraqis.
They need to take control of their own lives, their own country. Who's their Baghdadi, anyway?
Well, the old guy got what he deserved yesterday, & then some. But Your Humble Scribe is here to tell you that there's a silver lining to this dark storm cloud that has been hovering over Wall Street since Bernie Madoff's December arrest.
Hard to feel sorry, really, for a guy with those initials. And BM's on his way to the Big House. Which means we won't have to indulge in Madoff humor much longer.
The Madoff jokes are just plain mean. The man generates such a visceral hatred. But I reckon that fleecing your "friends" of $65 billion-plus could engender that kind of dislike. A brief sampling, from the Web:
A Feather Adrift offers the best advice Madoff has received since being nabbed for his Ponzi scheme.
American XS got in on the act in "Weak End to Bernie Madoff "by equating "massive financial fraud with a classic 80's movie."
This February 23rd New York Magazine cover won some sort of award for turning Bernie into The Joker. To quote The Dark Knight, ""I believe…whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you…stranger."
Is It Just Me? says, "So I guess Ruth Madoff’s main cooking tip would be to knead the dough until it’s gone." Mrs. Madoff apparently really did once write a book on Kosher cooking.Who knew?
NYC publishing house Simon & Schuster actually is marketing this book. It could be yours for a mere $9.95. It's an update on a 2003 title that's been customized just for Mr. Madoff. "There was no mistaking who he was," Borowitz writes. "The silver hair, those beady eyes, that sheepish expression that makes him look like a guilty hamster."
But here's the best bash on Bernie & it's not even all that mean-spirited. I'd like to share a little bit of sweet humor coming out of the scanal. In this clip, Ernie & the Cookie Monster "explain" how BM's Ponzi scheme worked, in a spoof on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."
OK, no handguns allowed on PBS. But it's pretty funny ain't it?
I only have one more question. Who would you cast in a "Sesame Street" scene explaining Martha Stewart's Wall Street wickedness?
The youngest chica made the big leap yesterday. As part of a project for school, she entered the blogosphere.
Ella Numera Dos is the proud new owner of a photo blog. She's going to spend the summer visiting other blogs & trying to learn as much as she can about this fluctuating medium we call cyberspace. As part of that, she'll be working toward developing an independent study rubric for her Studio Art/Photo major.
Please drop by MOO & give my little gal some encouragement. Those of you who do weekly photo *memes* such as Weekly Winners & Photo Hunt doubtless will see Ella Numera Dos around. And her Ol' Mama (that would be moi) has told the kid that the blogosphere is a welcoming place, so please make her feel at home.
She wasn't shy about jumping into the deep end. In fact, I think my chica is playing along with Odd Shots, today.
The kid's got a lot of the photo stuff down, as you can see in the mosaic above, but obviously she's still learning. The blogging part will be hit-and-miss. If you see a place where Ella can improve in either venue, please let her know.
Ella Numera Dos snapped all of the Superior Shots above, except for one. That would be the Longhorn Tatoo, captured by Yours Truly. And we know how her Mama feels about that.
In the spirit of giving characterized by this weekend's National Birthday Party (you thought we only "gave" at Xmas & Tax Time, right?) The Dark Side of the Chalkboard contributed this Superior Snap to today's Silly Sunday Sweepstakes.
A Feather Adrift
