parade

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Wow - thanks for checking in. I know it's been a while. (Stay tuned for some experimentation with a nasal cleansing pot.)

I just came from our town's holiday parade. Actually, it may officially be called the Christmas parade. Yeah, I'm one of those pinko commies who likes a nice multi-religious/secular parade actually.

This year, the chicken man and Shriners were absent. I never thought I'd get into parades as much as this but, like, what's up with that? Seriously, did the chicken man have something better to do this morning? I guess so. Hm.

This year, kids dressed as presents was my favorite. They looked really quite pleasantly goofy. J's favorite was the 3-legged dog. Watch for it as it is the SECOND dog that goes by. I have to say that that is pretty good and I'm glad he pointed it out.

Parades are really nice footage for weird movie mashups so PLEASE steal this and make something out of it. My camera is sucking more than ever though so I won't harass anyone to do it.

All right, I hope to be back soon.

admit

Actress Adrienne Shelly was found dead on November 1st in Manhattan. Initially it appeared to be a suicide but Diego Pillco just confessed to her murder.

Shelly co-starred in Trust (1990), a film by Hal Hartley, which is one of my favorite movies. It's a very tender, sometimes awkward story about a relationship and is, admittedly, "artsy".

I'm sad that she is gone.

edit

I've been a fan of the Prelinger archive for a long time. They have oodles of public domain films, mostly of the 16mm educational variety. This one was made in 1941 and is called the Door to Heaven. This is my special creepy edit.

This has sound!

bradyfy

I've wanted to do some tiling for a long time but iMovie wouldn't let me do it. Yay for Final Cut Pro and the library's lab. I was afraid that I was going to stumble around the software when I went to do this but it went fine. I remembered, for the most part.

P.S. I sped up the donut production line for some reason. It just looked better. It's going twice the rate that the line usually goes. It takes time to fry that dough.

P.P.S. The pumpkin spice donuts are out AND they sell KK on campus now.

position

Georges Rousse is a French artist who installs perspective art in buildings that are in transition. Ellen Cassilly and Frank Konhaus of Durham raised the money to bring him to Durham and install art in some of the unused buildings around town. This blue square is in the Chesterfield building on the corner of Duke Street and Main. The art itself is minimalist, in my view, but the significance is great due to its placement. On the way to the installation, we all discovered a long-abandoned work environment. Linoleum floors, long, narrow hallways, gigantic metal desks, fluorescent lights, and frozen, oversized industrial clocks told us that it used to be a floor of administrative offices. I love that a photocopier was incorporated. (I *think* it is a photocopier...)

The circle one was my favorite. It was as if it appeared overnight, leaving scraps of another era intact:


The Chesterfield will be demolished someday soon because it is cheaper to use its foundation than to renovate the existing floor plans, electrical capacity, and plumbing. Durham is growing and its population doesn't desire a building like this. I would prefer that this be preserved in some way and I think it's more than nostalgia. We should remember our old work environments because they tell us where we used to be and where we are going.

The Independent's David Fellerath had an excellent article about it this week. The official site for the project can be found here.

convey

Well, I finally did it. I managed to make it over to Krispy Kreme when they were actually making donuts. In case you're not in the know, this particular branch is special because they supply all of the supermarkets, gas stations, and what have you, PLUS any other Krispy Kreme locations in the area. So they're making a lot of donuts. If you see a Krispy Kreme truck somewhere in the Triangle, in all likelihood it is carrying donuts that originated in this one production line.

These particular donuts were of the jelly variety. I spied some sort of red goo being squirted in by assistants. (They were too far away for my poor camera.)

This movie looks particularly crappy because it is shot through glass. (I've heard that they don't want people taking pictures so I went incognito.) The first part is the worst quality, but it's the most important: when the donuts, happily floating and cooking in hot oil, are flipped so that their other side can be fried as well. For some reason, seeing raw, limp dough puff into a beautiful treat is incredibly satisfying.

P.S. I am eagerly awaiting their pumpkin spice donut. It comes out sometime in the Fall and is very, very good.

P.P.S. Jeez - I sound like such a donut freak in this post. I'm not really.

roast

Ever since Montreal, my new thing is to eat a soft boiled egg in the morning. I have a new hi-tech egg timer and it works really well so I can get it just right. But you have to eat it with good bread or else it's not worth it. You gotta dip, man.

We didn't have any bread at all so I biked over to the local farmers market which is still going strong this time of year. There were a lot of tomatoes, herbs, eggplant and some squash is starting to come in now. And peppers. Here's Alex from Peregrine Farm roasting some peppers. Buy 2 pounds and the roasting is free(!) Then you put them in a paper bag, wait for them to cool down, and peel off the skins. Not pictured: butane tank.

recycle

The ReCYCLEry started back in 2000 with the help of Rich Giorgi, Andrea Richards, and Seth Elliott. The idea was to encourage donations of old/used/broken bicycles and get knowledgable volunteers to fix them up and teach others, especially kids, to do the same. In exchange for putting in some hours at the ReCYCLEry, even if it was fixing up another person's bike, you could earn a bike of your own. The ReCYCLEry has since moved twice from its original location on North Greensboro Street and changed leaders several times, but it's still basically the same idea. A gang of sleepy-eyed but enthusiastic bike mechanics of varying skills, some of quite a lot of expertise, show up on weekend mornings, greet others with coffee, work on the donated bikes, and help anyone that wheels in for repairs. I have volunteered there off and on myself. I love the low-key, amorphous group and I especially like the opportunity to show off my ratchet and wrench set from Sears.

The ReCYCLEry still works the same way but now they are starting a new lending program. You pay $10 to become a member and then they set you up with a key that accesses any one of their blue bicycles at various hubs around town. I think the town of Carrboro is helping them out as well as a way to encourage green transport. Anyway, here is some video of some public sprucing up that was going on this morning as a way of publicizing the new program.

drive

On the way to and from Montreal, I took some little movies of the road. I'm one of those people that is impressed by bridges and monstrous highways. They dwarf the cars and it ends up being sort of beautiful.

There is a place near Atlanta where the roads snake together like some of these roads do. Do they have names for these like they do for bridges? They must.

Both of the movies posted today have sound and they take a tad longer to load than the others. The soundtrack for this one is a song by Antonio Carlos Jobim entitled, "Insentiez". It's a little over the top for this but oh well. I think the pacing works anyway.

fiddle

As I wrote above, I drove to Montreal last weekend. We got there on Friday evening, hit the conference, and then went to dinner in Chinatown. Montreal is a very big place and almost everything is in French. People knew English but I don't know French so I was a bit lost when ordering or trying to find a parking space. That's fine and it made things more exciting.

The next day, I had breakfast with Jamy of Grateful Dating (see link to the right) and afterwards we trolled around the old part of town. It was touristy but only in the sense that it was expensive and a little crowded. As we walked around, I didn't quite feel like a foreigner even though technically, I was. I felt like I was peeking in on a different type of diversity. Canada's concept of diversity has been described as a mosaic rather than a melting pot which implies assimilation. For example, it's very rare to find a place in the United States where everyone speaks something else other than English, and when we do, we put borders around it and consider it different, the "other". Chinatown, little Mexico, K-town. "That's for them. Not us." In Montreal, being bilingual was the norm. My lack of understanding for French wasn't penalized - it was merely an inconvenience. I was missing out on all of the different interpretations, and of course, the ability to readily read street signs, and I honestly felt encouraged to do better rather than feel excluded.

Anyway, here is a guy that was playing in the old part of town. (I should note that he was not actually playing the Revolting Cocks. That is my addition.) I tipped him.



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descend

This is my friend peeking.


Can you see this movie? I changed hosting sites so let me know if you used to be able to watch these (when I was on YouTube) but now you can't. For example, Jerry, can you still not see this?

twirl

Things got a little kooky at another Durham yard sale on Saturday. This is E. who won state champion in baton twirling back in the day. Thanks so much for letting me post this footage, E. You know who you are. We here at Small Pictures are truly honored.









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incubate

We went to a pet store briefly yesterday because, well, that's what you do when you're in mall, wandering aimlessly due to the euphoric nature of the air conditioning. They had a bird room which included, among other things, a cage of two parrots that were incubating eggs. After watching this video a few times, and staying up late thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that these birds desperately, desperately need a nest. I would go mad with all of those wobbly eggs underneath me. A little dried grass and sticks or whatever and they'd at least STAY PUT so that I could sit upon them quite calmly.

However, I don't want to speak for the parrots.









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march

Introducing the Scene of the Crime Rovers! We had our first performance last night at the Culture Crawl in Durham.

Special thanks to J for shooting this video footage. P.S. This is an extended version from yesterday - a new version actually.



Here are some still photos:

microwave

Hi and thanks for visiting.

I bought this toy this past weekend at Z and R and C's yardsale. They had a lot of awesome stuff. I bought a dress, this toy, and handfuls of tea packets. They had all of this tea that included flavors like plum cinnamon, ginger mango, and peppermint. I got all of the stuff for a dollar. They also had this dinette table that was spectacular but, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out where we would put it. It was only $20. Anyway, afterwards, we went to breakfast with B. I love B more than anything.

Anyway, enjoy. And just know that we here at Small Pictures just love comments. It makes us feel like comfy little blue-eyed kittens taking a nap. Or something.

whirl

This is a whirligig at Farrington Village. It sort of looks like something Vollis Simpson may have made. Does anyone know?

spark

Happy Independence Day.


Also, I saw this today at dinner. I want to meet this Stephanie chick. I think she's got something to say.

compare

I'm obsessed with electricity meters and Greenland melting. Is stealing electricity beneath me? I can only think of a few friends of mine that would not steal electricity if they were given the chance and they were really struggling to pay the bill. I want to talk to more people who went through the oil crises of the 1970s. Was gas syphoning really a myth? Who did it? I want to know more. Write a comment!

This one is dedicated to the luscious Duke Power Company, you mysterious monopoly, you...



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ascend

Providence to DC yesterday.

jump

Fun on the trampoline. Stay tuned for a collage-type movie of different people on the trampoline. I need clearance from one more person.