Gnumoon's Stuff

Recover, rebuild, rebeignet

The Southern tour continues. Today I flew from New Orleans to Charlotte then back to Atlanta. I am sleepy and sunburned. I’m blogging from a super-posh Buckhead hotel from a very high floor, gazing out over the Atlanta skyline and being glad that since I’m here for a conference, work is paying the exorbitant prices for the aforementioned hotel. Seriously, I think one night here costs more than all the hotels on our almost month-long Europe trip, combined.

The only reasons I mention the moolah thing are 1. I’m digging this swanky robe and cushy pillows that came with the room and 2. Somehow I still ended up paying ten bucks a day for internet access. Note to posh hotel proprietors: the Hardee’s in Boone has free wireless access. It might be time to step up your game a tad.

Yeah, so back to New Orleans… some of it is still there. Since the bank of the Mississippi forms a natural levee, the parts of NOLA that you see in movies and go visit are recovering well. The French Quarter and Garden District, though damaged, are slowly getting things back online. Last week Café du Monde went back to serving their obesity-inducing-and-totally-worth-it beignets 24-hours a day, the streetcars are running (albeit on erratic schedules), and the strippers on Bourbon street have wrung the floodwater out of their fishnets and hopped back up on that pole.

The rest of the city is another story. East New Orleans is still largely without power or water, underneath Highway 10 for miles and miles are the rusting carcasses of thousands of vehicles ruined by the flooding, and the ubiquitous “X’s” left by search teams still brand most buildings. A tour guide told us that of the estimated 450,000 people living in New Orleans before Katrina, only 150-200,000 have returned to the Crescent City.

And it isn’t just the city, of course. We took a swamp tour and learned about the devastation in the marshes and outlying areas. On that trip we ran into this big guy pictured here. He’s about nine feet, and came right up to the little boat to snap up treats offered by our guide. Are the treats yummy turtle eggs? Perhaps they’re hunks of raw meat? Nope, they’re marshmallows. He was a big fan of the sugary confection; maybe we should have brought him some beignets from the city. 

I’ll write more about this soon- it’s late and I have conference-a-rama starting in the morning. As far as reflecting on the trip, I will say I’m glad we went. Our silly tourist dollars were much-needed in a city whose will has been tried but not broken. It was important to see beyond the media’s representation of this disaster. Nature doesn’t much care about race or politics- Katrina destroyed lives indiscriminately. What I saw were snapshots of a city trying to regain itself. I saw a very rich man patching his roof in the Garden District and a poor woman pushing a cart on Canal Street, both wearing t-shirts that said simply: “Recover. Rebuild. ReNew Orleans.”

Finally summer?

The blooming mountain laurel thinks it's summer, but methinks that when it's 45 degrees when you wake up in the morning summer isn't *quite* here yet.
Nevertheless, everything is beautifully blooming, and this busy bumblebee was taking full advantage.
Note: I am quite allergic to bees, so I poked my pocket-sized digital camera towards the bushes, hit the shutter, and scooted away before the bee had time to get pissed at me. Turns out he was so busy gorging that my presence was either unknown or completely ignored. (I have a new macro lens for the big camera, but alas, no time to play with it right now. The baby Fuji will have to do.)

Tonight it's off to Tennessee to deposit the Maxer with my family, then it's off to New Orleans. I'll try to post again before we leave and also from vacation, but I'm unsure about connectivity and whatnot. So if I don't see you guys again for a few days, take care!

Currently Listening to: Come Back, by Pearl Jam
Check out my Flickr site: This is what I'm doing until I get a proper portfolio site up. If you have an account, add me as a friend- I have but one at the moment and that borders on sad.

Waybacks from Flickr

Hi there to anyone coming over from The Waybacks' Flickr site. This isn't a Waybacks site, just a random blog of my thoughts and photos, but feel free to browse around and let me know what you think.
(I'm putting this post up because I started getting random hits from Flickr this morning and discovered one of my photos on their site.)  Here's another...Cheers!

300.

Monday's MerleFest Photo: Fiddles onstage during the David Bromberg Quartet

Whoa, this is like, my 300^th post, man. (Typed in  a Janice from The Muppets voice) Sadly, I have nothing witty or insightful to allow this evening. So I guess it’s verrah similar to the other 299 posts, eh?

I’m marking time at work this week…it is mere days until we take a much-needed break from the mountains and head out on a little vacation. To a place where we can drink fruity cocktails on a balcony at 10 am and feel that we’re helping. That’s right, N’awlins. Apparently it’s (mostly) open for business these days, so we thought we’d take our tourist dollars to a place that actually needs ‘em.

The back end of that trip includes a work conference in Atlanta that I’m none too excited about, except for the fact that I’ll get to hang out with K8 for the first time in about three years. Hmm, what to say about you, Katie dear? K8 was around a lot in the “Spring of 98.” “Oh, yes,” Those Of Us Who Were There utter in low, hushed tones, “the Spring of ’98. Indeed.”

One “Spring of ‘98” example: One time in the So98 we got bored, but instead of renting a movie or playing racquetball we got pierced; K8 in her eyebrow, me in my tongue. (ps- don’t ever jab metal through your tongue if you like to do frivolous things like speaking or eating. Ah, the stupidity and brazenness of youth.) 
She later up and joined the Air Force and forbade me from telling them that she’d ever done something so counter-cultural and liberal pinko commie as poking holes in her face.

Many other things happened that crazy semester, and somehow it seems that every evening included K8 challenging me to a wrestling match and then getting her ass flat kicked. Ah, good times.

Currently Listening to: Saul Bellow, by Sufjan Stevens

Random & quotable

Entertainment Weakly (see what I did there?) has just released a list of “Top 10” cult movies. The film experts here agree with two of their choices (Bladerunner and Spinal Tap), and have decided to compile their own list. The only criteria for inclusion on the list are 1.When you mention the film in a roomful of people, at least one person will say, “Oh, wow, I’d forgotten about that one!” And #2, just to up the difficulty for me (what, you didn’t know that “film experts here” are all me? It’s my site.)  is that the movie cannot have appeared on my List of Halloween Movies. So here we go…
(Monty Python has been left off the list because they rule all cult movies, and to include them is unfair to other films. Mr. Creosote said so.)

1. Heathers – Wynona Ryder and Christian Slater at Westerburg High, murdering the A-group in a classic that would NEVER be made these days. 
Veronica: “My teen angst bullshit has a body count.”
2. Explorers – Three misfit boys (including a young bespeckled River Phoenix) build a spaceship out of a Tilt-a-Whirl (The Thunder Road) and go visit aliens.
Heinlein the mouse: “I would like…cheese. Go to hell.”
3. UHF – Weird Al inherits a TV station in one of the funniest movies ever made. Michael Richards will always be Stanley Spadowski to me, not Cosmo Kramer. Also the movie that made me love the standup of one Emo Phillips.
Spatula City jingle: “Spatula City, we sell spatulas… and that’s all!”
4. Stand by Me – The lone Stephen King entry. Four boys set out across the countryside to find Ray Brower’s dead body. This movie taught me the fine art of creative cursing.
Voiceover: “Finding new and preferably disgusting ways to degrade a friend's mother was always held in high regard.”
5. Blazing Saddles – Some will argue that “Young Frankenstein” is the finer Mel Brooks film, but Blazing Saddles wins for me based tollbooth in the desert scene and the line: “Someone's gotta go back for a shit-load of dimes!”  Also, the “They said you was hung!” part. Rent it, you’ll laugh. Or be appalled. Or both simultaneously. It takes a special film to do that to a person.
6. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure – Tim Burton’s first film (besides the wonderful “Frankenweenie.”). This was one of my favorites as a kid and I’ve just recently rediscovered  it and realized how bizarre it is.
Large Marge: “On this very night, ten years ago, along this very stretch of road in a dense fog just like this. I saw the worst accident I ever seen. There was this sound, like a garbage truck dropped off the Empire State Building... And when they pulled the driver's body from the twisted, burning wreck. It looked like this..."
7. Raising Arizona/The Big Lebowski - Coen Bros twofer
8. Princess Bride/Labyrinth - Gnumoon’s childhood twofer
9. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me – The Twin Peaks saga wrapped up in a single film. Bob = freaky, is really the bottom line here. 
Log Lady: “When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy.”
10. Ties between: Gift, A Clockwork Orange, Little Shop of Horrors, Donnie Darko, Cry-Baby, Dead Again.

Anyone have any to add?

Currently Listening to: Bullet with Butterfly Wings, by Smashing Pumpkins (Is this considered old skool now?)
Greatest Product Reviews Ever: The Supersoaker Oozinator Amazon keeps cleaning out the review queue, but the posts just keep oozing in.

Fiddles and sleep deprivation

Friday's MerleFest Action Photo: Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek

It's been a long week, and a long Cinco de Mayo over at The Library. It's time to go pray to Saint Mattress.
ps- I managed to pull a 4.0 gpa somehow this semester. My research teacher must be the easiest grader EVER, considering how much pure bs my proposal contained. Seriously, it was practically an alternative fuel source.

Currently Listening to: List of Demands (Live), by Saul Williams.

I feel the sense of possibilities, I feel the wrench of hard realities.

Wednesdays's MerleFest Action Photo: The Avett Brothers

Sorry I promised more and then disappeared- it’s been crazy here this week. Since I’ve written last, the following things have happened:

-Finished, edited, and submitted a research proposal. (I’m too scared to go pick up the graded paper, honestly) I almost forgot I was taking grad classes. Oops.
- A foreign object (from all the construction around here) became embedded in my eyeball and had to be extracted via long scary instrument. You should be squirming uneasily after reading that- I’ll spare the details.
- Tuesday was the joint “No we aren’t twins but our names are Lindsay and Kindsay and we were born the same day” bday bash at Portofino, and Wednesday my bro and his friend were visiting and we hung out at the Shroom. Good times all around.
-I finally joined Flickr tonight, so I could participate in the “George Hates Everything” pool. Cecily recommended it, thanks!

Here’s some real news, though. Remember the possible photo/journalism job I spoke of last week? Well it happened, and today my first music review ran in the Mountain Times. They didn’t cut the article down or anything- it’s a long story with 2 pictures. Fun stuff.

I’m still digesting last weekend’s festivities, honestly. I got some of my photos printed out today to make choosing the portfolio-worthy ones a more manageable task. I promise to write more about it soon…it would still just be rambling at this point.

The question now becomes: where do I go from here? What is the next logical step in this crazy dance?

Currently listening to: A Celtic Medley, by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
Random Trivia OTD: Jim Morrison anagrams to “Mr. Mojo Risin.”

MerleFest 2006

I survived, I had an amazing experience, and I am exhausted. Promise I'll give a wrapup soon, but for now there's a quickie little gallery over on the side. The final count was 2960 edited photos, 30 sets shot, 4 trips down the mountain and back, 2 memory cards (Marie, they were from Wally-Mart), about 12 thousand Diet Dr. Peppers, and very little sleep. The few in the gallery aren't necessarily the best I took, they're just a few I grabbed quickly. I can't choose wisely now anyway- I lack any kind of discretion at the moment. Must. Sleep.

Also, please note that all these photos are unedited- I usually color-correct, edit contrast and color and whatnot in Photoshop before showing anything I've shot. I'll fix them later so they'll be purty and have correct histograms and all that good stuff.

Artists shot include (I'm sure there are a few I'm forgetting):
Laura Love, The Wilders, Jim Lauderdale, John Prine, Mike Seeger, Chip Taylor, Hot Tuna, The Avett Brothers, The Dillards (from the Andy Griffith Show), Feufollet, Gillian Welch, Sarah Lee Guthrie (Woody's granddaughter), Bob Weir & The Waybacks, Darrell Scott, Sam Bush, The Duhks, Robert Earl Keene, Larry Sparks, The Mammals, Caitlin Cary & Thad Cockrell, Doc Watson, Wayne Scott, Nickel Creek, David Bromberg, The Lee Boys, Jay Ungar, Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, and Emmylou Harris. Whew.

ps- Hey kids, here's a photo tip for ya... always consider all the elements in your composition, not just the subject. Ahem.