a pg-13 post [1]

in an ideal world, i would subscribe to the seattle times. i would be a vital instrument in the resurrection of print media. i'd have stacks and stacks of papers, everywhere. my paper buying ways would make my girlfriend and her advertising clients very happy.

one day she'd walk into my living room and sigh. it would be a pleasant, homecoming kind of sigh. a (how nice to finally be home for) christmas sigh. i might be tinkering with chords on my goodwill piano or vigorously brushing my teeth as i check espn scores or building oragami barnyard animals in our fashionable kitchen nook, but that sigh would send a lightening bolt through the universe. my piano would squak and die (finally, graciously). that nameless cross between toothpaste and spittle would shower my laptop in neon blue. the barnyard animals would lose their legs.

i'm not being overly dramatic, christmas sighs don't belong here. as you may know, beth and i have been recouping from the gre by watching the second season of 24. the constant battle in this endeavor is between my HUGE tv and her NICE house. i always rally for the tv and beth always rallies for the house. you see, even without the hypothetical newspaper piles, my house is a state-registered bachelor pad, a hop-skotch course of dishes, cookies, and clothes. and brown carpet, ugly brown carpet.

still, this lazy summer sigh tells me that a newspaper subscription would change all that. beth would walk into my living room and remember...

[i'm sleepy, so this is to be continued...]

andrew david 'sunset at the intersection of the present and the prehistoric.' puerto vallarta, mexico.

a failed blog entry

a nasty night for blogging. that is, i have some tales to tell, but mark kept me up till midnight. then, by the time that i decided on the next picture to upload, it was 12:15am. so, you'll have to be satisfied with a list:

THINGS I'LL DO THIS WEEK:
monday - listen to anne lamott (a renown mother, author, and bush-berater) and pleasantly discuss milosevic's eternal destiny as we (beth and i) dine at the blue bistro (home of adequate food and blessedly intimate ambience)
tuesday - watch 'american dreamz' with beth, nathan, and julie
wednesday - attend a free ts eliot class (message me for more details!)
thursday - run with mark, go to 'church' (sean's pub)
friday -
saturday - work, go to ikea, go see a baby, dine with (a temporarily babyless) jonathan and kim, and watch an improv performance
sunday - keel over in exhaustion as i watch the final 4 episodes of 24's second season

INSIDE THE HEAD OF A FLUNKING FOTOGRAPHER:
below is an ugly picture of a sunset. the first picture is the original shot. the second picture is the product of several minutes of fruitless photoshopping. here's the deal: when i initially saw this photo, i suddenly thought of a scene from spy games. the film-maker takes libya, a bullet-ridden scene of poverty and chaos, and occasionally interrupts the narrative to give us glimpses of adulterated beauty -- laundry flapping in the wind, a child on a bicycle, a tea house. in the picture below, i was hoping to simulate a similar contrast. somehow i thought that the fiery reflection might serve to accentuate the dull night sky and peeling paint of an otherwise ordinary, not-so-good life.oh, well.

you think i'm weird now? check this out (three)

an excerpt from the notebooks of andrew and hakeem
somewhere around paragraphs 3-4 of page 33
i wrote this ca. 1995


Finally, with a snarl of determination, the chicken flung himself to his feet, only to slip in the bothersome gravy and land flat on his back.

'chirrrrp...chirrrp....' he sounded the ancient call dating back to the days of the roman anarchy [?] (chirp was the universal display of anger for chickens everywhere in the days of old, it became a requirement after augustus caesar was shot in the head with a stray bullet from a small handheld musket [?]) and then righted himself. what he saw before him was what seemed to be a much older, dirtier, and less healthy rendition of bruce lee but with eyes sealed shut.

the old man felt, rather than saw, a spark of intelligence kindle in the beast. again he introduced himself, 'i am bruce lee and you are a chicken named goliath. this is my humble abode. would you like something to eat and some clothes?' the beast nodded. the old man did a triple-axle mid-air somersault and a roundhouse-flip-kick and was back in a flash. the man offerred the chicken a small head of cabbage dipped in gravy, a package of instant hormell chili capsules, and a gravy-coated robin suit.

'cooo...cooooo...' came the chicken's icy response....

[to be continued...and i apologize for the nonsensical parenthetical comments. i was in junior high, give me a break...]


andrew david 'why can't the dudes on the dock move a bit to the south and enjoy the sunset?' puerto vallarta, mexico.

you think i'm weird now? check this out.

an excerpt from the notebooks of andrew and hakeem
somewhere around page 33
paragraph 1
written by andrew
ca. 1995

When he awoke, the chicken was dazed and confused. He lay face-down in a large pile of gravy. Although he (or she) was so disconcerted that he couldn't remember his name, he knew for a fact that he did NOT like gravy. In fact, he could even recall the time when he was a young chick and a farmer had fed him gravy 'cause he needed to be a "nice chunky chicken so we all' can have leftovers after Thanksgiving and for the days ta' come" and when at the first bite he had spewed all over the nearest cow (it actually was a piece of cardboard painted as a cow; the farmer sold tickets to come and see the "talkin', three legged, cow wit' a tattoo of a naked farmer on his purty' little rump," and the cow didn't really talk, the farmer hid his wife behind it, and she answered the curious sight-see-ers questions). He could tell the gravy was old by its milky texture and its aroma of poached trout. After all the miserable years he spent on that farm eating that appalling gravy (what could he do? the farmer had held a knife to his neck. and once the chicken had exceecded the farmer's height, the farmer had pointed a shotgun at his belly. besides, the nastiness was only temporary; he, the chicken, had always regurgitated it soon afterward on some unsuspecting victim, usually the farmer's wife) the chicken had become, unwillingly, a connoisseur of gravy. He could tell with ease that this gravy was past its expiration date, probably homemade, and laced with heroin.

Though he had instantly come to this conclusion, which would have taken experts weeks to discover, his mind was still working slow (some would say his mind was always slow). In fact it took him five minutes to decide to try to get his face out of the disgusting stuff and another five to decide how. When he finally raised his head, now wrinkled due to a long period of exposure to the gravy, he found himself in a dumpster.

The dumpster was basically empty except for the four inch thick layer of gravy he was laying in and a few cabbage heads here and there. In one corner of the cavernous dumpster came a dim light which was partially blocked by the back of what appeared to be an old man. The seven and a half foot chicken tried to right himself but it seemed the gravy had weakened his monumental strength.

At the sudden move, the figure did a 2,700 degree turn (about seven 360s and a 180) in the air and came to face the chicken....




andrew david 'six pictures of a sunset' puerto vallarta, mexico.
these pictures might have had a chance if i had a tripod. in the first picture, i was hoping for a spectactular reflection in the sand. oh, well. otherwise, they're typical sunset photos. i can't even think of a photoshop technique to salvage them.

rhetorical belly flops

my ego is blistered and bruised from a week's worth of rotten arguments. every time i attempt to make a point, i'm suddenly stalled in no-make-sense land. in gre terms, i'm james joyce parading about like john stuart mills. i have several theories for this loss of logic, but it's my bedtime. here are some examples of the points that i have inadequately defended:

1. "rebecca, you and i have a totally different process for deciding whether or not to watch a movie"

2. "beth, i don't like what alcohol does to me; i don't like the way it feels" (i go on to compare it to multiple sclerosis)

3. "ben, several lines of iambic pentameter are just as difficult to write as a haiku"

4. (i can't remember)

5. (also can't remember)


andrew david 'tropicana hotel 1, 2, and 3' puerto vallarta, mexico.
i'm posting these pics, just in case you want to see what a beach-front near-budget hotel looks like.

an oligatory oscar post

watching the oscars made me wish i had cable. jon stuart and the daily show sure beat npr as a source for entertaining news.

i only saw two of the five films nominated for best picture: good night, and good luck and crash. in my opinion, good night was the superior film, but crash probably had greater impact on moviegoers. personally, i thought the film was a bit too obvious. it walloped me on the head with a big fat anti-racism plank. the racism in crash was so blatant that it was hard for me to relate, and i was afraid that people who engage in more subtle (and perhaps more common) racism might miss the point and walk blissfully away without a thought to their own prejudices. but let's be optimistic, maybe if you hit someone hard enough, they just might change their mind.

and, to you english majors, do you think the 'affective fallacy' is a legitmate basis for critiquing film? and how do you spell 'critiquing'?

and, speaking of prejudices, i just saw pride and prejudice this evening--a good film, but isn't it the same as sense and sensibility? jane austen was such a hack. anyway, speaking yet again of prejudice, one of the previews on tonight's film was for brokeback mountain. unfortunately, the preview probably ruined any chance of my seeing the film. no, i wasn't offended by homosexual innuendo, but i was a bit peeved at the background musical score. it sampled unapologetically from the shawshank redemption. and when i say 'sampled,' i mean note-for-note, it was the same (i.e., identical) swelling orchestration that guides us through shawshank. i guess i'm just frustrated by the oddest things--agggggh! jane, i apologize for what i said earlier; it was just a simple misunderstanding. at least you had the decency to steal from yourself...

i guess that leaves me with munich and capote. i figure that capote might even be a good study movie for the upcoming gre.

andrew david 'quiet' puerto vallarta, mexico. day 1.
pictures from my laptop never look the same once i post them on the internet. i'm interested in whether this picture will look too washed out. it might be better as a black and white image.

Alaska pics 1

I'd love to hear feedback on any of these pictures or opinions on which, if any, to print & frame. pictures with an '*' are currently under printing consideration.

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456

78

*1. Andrew David, 'Pensively Beth' Ninilchik -- i think this might have been nice with a little more colour and contrast
*2. Andrew David 'Mt. Redoubt' Nilnilchik -- for some reason mt. redoubt didn't live up to its name in this pic. if it were bigger and brighter, it would offer more contrast to the flowers. as is, its too...backgroundy
3. Andrew David 'Nilnilchik sign' Nilnilchik -- not sure why i decided to post this one. i think i just like signs.
4. Andrew David, 'Potholey Road' Homer -- i like the rust in this picture, but not sure how to accentuate its coolness. oh, well. we actually had to turn back on this road because the potholes and 70% grade would have capsized our rigs.
*5. Andrew David 'Spit' Homer -- perhaps the colours are too washed out here...? i was hoping to let Homer speak for herself.
*6. Andrew David 'Homer berries' Homer -- as you can perhaps tell, i'm not great at night photography (this is at 11:3o or so). i was hoping that the berries would be a little bit more like my shirt in picture #8 -- bright red
7. Andrew David, 'Searching' Ninilchik -- i like this one of beth and the ruffles eating stranger.
8. beth the s.o. 'Run aground' Nilnilchik -- about 60 years ago, when they first built this boat, they apparently had sky-coloured paint.

a secret intermission

hey, instead of using a really clever segue to the second installment of secrets, i am posting this picture. i bet you already dismissed it as yet another picture of a sunset. after all, its simple and a bit lacking in photographic prowess. yet after a moments reflection, i find something striking in the silhouettes, some pictoral essence that demands a defense. but how would i begin such a defense? 'you should like this picture because...' hardly.

once a picture has survived the purifying flames of photoshop, it is in the public domain and my powers of influence are nil. still, i may have one last resort: the title. But where do you stand - could an engaging title impact viewer perceptions? better yet, should an engaging title influence critism or should the art speak for itself? as an english major rather than a photography buff, i'm all for titles. so here are my initial title ideas: 'yet another sunset,' 'yet another sunset in mordor,' 'golgotha,' or 'roman polanski.'

more later; the wind is blowing and i should go to bed...