Eric et Clare

There are no bad weddings, but this one was especially special. Clare's brother is with the parks dept. so he had them make an entire beautiful park for them and then ordered up my favorite weather: nice.

It was the wedding brought to you by . . the past! At least according to the predominant photographic processes. This stash here was turned into, by reception time, just the greatest photo album. It made me a little sad to see how nice the B&W turned out, because it's not anything like the tones I get with my digital rig and I know I'm never going back down to my darkroom so I just have to live with it.

Tiffany, the Wyfe, and Marie. We picnicked afterwards and what a great idea that was to have that kind of wedding, where you picnic. Even picnicking without a wedding would be nice, I have decided.

The first walk. Eric and Clare have just the highest nice & cool factor of anyone I know, and you can't hope to match them because that would require trying and trying is not cool. You just go to their wedding and be glad they are your friends.

a mail story

I just counted and there are one zillion bands on the internet. It's crazy! And somehow I got into this one band, Reading Rainbow and then somehow bought--get this--a record from them and then somehow they mailed it to me in the mail. What a country/world/ whatever!

But this story is about mail and here are pictures of it. Look what the cool guy or gal or whoever is in this band or maybe at their record label made for me: a collage! That is not a picture of a collage, it is an actual collage. I didn't know people still did that. But now that I know they do, I think I am going to try one too, very soon.

Just really, though, how cool is it that. And the album, Mystical Participation, is so good, too. Makes me want to stop being a collage artist and take up fuzzed-out guitar and drum music.

That is all for now. Fun weekend planned at the Mississinewa reenactment. Let me know if you want to come.

There are so many ways to think about a circus. This kind of old-timey one came to town last night, the kind under a tent where everywhere you look there is a pole in the way, and it lets you think to yourself "this is so authentic, a real, grimy, shady circus. It is so cool that I am here."

And then you get close enough to the albino boa constrictor to see how his tail just kind of dangles there, how he is more of a heavily sedated tube of dead weight than an actual snake and you start to think that the PETA protesters at the gate probably had a point.

Every kid there bought one of these blue light sabers and every last one of them was really, really good at reenacting fight scenes from the newer, especially lame Star Wars franchise. I mean really good, honestly.

A woman ponders her $7 Polaroid of herself with a drugged-up boa constrictor hanging on her neck for dear life. $7 sounds like a lot for a Polaroid, but now that the film is not being made anymore, it is kind of a collectors' item in a way.

Oh, circuses. The clowns deserve so much credit because they're the real strong men that the whole things depend on, the way we hope that they are just funny enough to distract us from the tired and abused animals and people and how when, every time they drop a ball, we remember.

new air

I love Air. Really, and I know they're kind of wussy, but every dang one of their records is, yes, awesome except for that last one which is not. To be awesome four out of five tries is awesome.

I know no one watches videos anymore but this one is worth watching. Kind of trippy in a yellow submarine mode, though I have never actually seen yellow submarine.

I was carrying the camera.

Kitchen show:

From the series "The Noisy Alphabet," now appearing in our kitchen. Copying the pictures from something we found from, where else, the interweb. We're up to the letter "O" right now ("Ooooo").

I like the natural lean of the rider here in "Hup," but the eyes of the creature are wrong.

"EEEEEE" is intense, though. My second favorite.

And I also drew a whale and a boat and the sea. Next time, I will look at a picture of a boat before I start drawing one.

Sam Allgood - bro. from Sam Allgood on Vimeo.

I can't do anything like this on any of my bikes. But I did climb a lot of awesome hills today and met a cool Canadian who wanted to talk about my Mapei jersey.

I like to avoid the politiks here, usually . . . . . . but this is important.

My greenest friends, Ric and Jenn.

Cool segment here from the local Traverse City tv news, which did a piece on house addition Ric and Jenn built out of bottles and logs they pulled from a swamp. In the photo here, they're on Torch Lake enjoying their first voyage on a sailboat they restored this summer. Two of the absolute nicest people I've ever known.

Ric is one of my absolute oldest friends ever, going back to Marshall, Michigan and the days of riding bigwheels up and down Mulberry Street and sleds into trees on "Dead Man's Hill." Do you want to hear the story of why they call it "Dead Man's Hill"? Okay, here it is: once, there was a dead guy there. That was the story passed down to us, at least. Chilling, isn't it? I still carry a scar on my forehead from one of its trees. To this day, my parents won't let me sled head-first.

Last day before school day trip to an ACRES preserve.

new favorite sandwich

ham, tomato, and butter. O, and sardines with mustard and tabasco.

Thank you, Mark Bittman.

I don't have a ton of regrets in life, apart from not asking Amy Timmer to slow skate at our 5th grade skating party back in 1981. A close second would have to be not thinking of owning this bike when our chilluns were little enough to use it. I am almost tempted to go for the third kid just for the opportunity.

What a sweet way to ride that would be. If I ever saw myself owning a tiny dog, maybe one of those could fit there, but that's not likely. Maybe a terrier when I'm older.

From the great Detroit-life blog Sweet Juniper.

Left the dog out in a rainstorm today. oops.

Make magazine shows up in my mailbox every once in awhile, though I don't ever remember subscribing to it. Still, I'm happy to get it. I've never made anything from it, but I've noticed a momentum building, an urge to at least try. Last month, for example, I almost tried out their design for a cool vaccuum extraction coffee maker out of test tubes and stuff. I even went so far as to hint to our school science department head that if there were any unused glassware cluttering a storeroom that I would take it off of his hands. Then I lost interest or got busy or something. I forget.

But this month, I finally found the ambition to complete one of their challenging projects, mainly because all the supplies I needed were within ten feet of me at the time I read the article. So here it is, my first Make object: the DIY ipod speakers.

They actually work, too (kinda)! Yes, those are paper cups with holes in the bottom.

Maybe I could start making and selling them.

"Permanent Camping"

Small houses. We were at Fort Michilimackinac up north last week, looking at the spartan quarters of some Jesuit missionary, a bed and a Bible kind of place, and I go to Catherine "Do you ever fantasize about how great it would be if all you owned was--" "Yes," she said.

moral tales

Jerome in Claire's Knee

One thing I have been doing to hold onto the feel of summer in the last days of my vacation is re-watch two of my favorite of Rohmer's "moral tales": Claire's Knee and Pauline at the Beach.

It is strong medicine for me, mainly because they're set near French beaches and involve people doing very little but casually drifting together and apart, sitting in gardens and airy, sparsely-furnished cottages, maybe going boating. They make summer

seem unassailable by any thoughts of whatever and wherever it is they are summering from. They're like a seasonal pornography--the objectification of summer.

Rohmer's camera work is perfect for it all, too, full of long takes, long, static shots that somehow slow your breath and that I have resolved to incoroporate more into my own life. I'm not sure if that means staring without blinking or how exactly it will work, but I think it is worth trying.

Pauline

Also exciting is that my French is improving from watching these. I still only understand about one word out of every five minutes or so, but I can read the credits in French with a passable, but still ridiculous, of course, accent, and that is a major step for me. I would give anything to be as bad at French as I am at Spanish.

Next up from Netflix: Summer Heights High, to help me return to school mode.

Our city at night.