fowl

Liv and I are still in Portland helping her parents work on their house (a beautiful work in progress!). We took a break on the weekend and Robin came down from Seattle with her new G Shira to hang out and wander around town. We went out for drinks to a great new bar/restaurant on Alberta St. called Zaytoons. It's a lesbian owned neighborhood joint with fancy design elements that has a very contemporary urban feel...super cool. So we did a little photo shoot of us all together.










Then farmer Liv introduced the amazing urban chicken book to us,











so we did the photo shoot again, this time with chicken in tow!



Robin and Shira were particularly pleased to welcome the curly chicken to our party!

long johns

Check out my hottie on the slopes!



























Zoom in for a closer look at the latest in cross country ski fashions.



























And finally, the ass shot!

Old Lady [Speedy]

Old Lady [Speedy]

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A birthday short!

Old Lady [Uncut]

Old Lady [Uncut]

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A birthday serenade, live from Portland, Oregon.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEWEY DEW!

Pucker Up!

Pucker Up

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Elis, Amoreh and I found an eligible girlfriend for T. down by Rio Concho! Learn more at this link!

mama mia sopapilla

This post is a special shout out to T and Liv:
Your mouth is gonna water, you missed it :(
For those not in the know, the fabulous sopapilla pictured here is like a giant elephant ear covered in hot strawberries, topped with whipped cream then and drizzled with scrumptious chocolate sauce.
Mmmmmmm, mmmmmmmm, good.
Another highlight of my time in West Texas.

flaming onion...sideways

flaming onion...sideways

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Hey folks,

In case you have forgotten, this blog is about my A/V adventures, so try a little neck stretch for the next 49 seconds if you want to watch this video.  We learn by doing, right?

Anyway, highlights from a Texan version of a Japanese Steak House.  Globalization in action.

mexico pics

Elis, Amoreh and I took off for Mexico yesterday. For the first time in seven months it rained in Texas, so I didn't get the much wished for time in the sun, but by the time we got to Acuna, the rain stopped and it was at least warm enough for a t-shirt. We wandered around the small border town for a few hours and snapped some fun pictures.
These are some of my favs!

hogs

hogs

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Spring Break in Cuidad Acuna, Mexico!  With baby in tow, we stumbled upon a harley rally!  So much for a quiet day in Mexico with the three year old!

salute

My niece is the cutest ever!
I'm off to see her in less than 8 hours and as usual I am still not packed.
I just banged my head on our ceiling in that tiny ass cellar of ours.
I should not be writing right now, but I HAD to get these pictures up pronto.
Later gators I'm off to Tejas!

Proud American

Check out these three pics. They are from the same outing to New Albany.

New Albany, Ohio

Some pics I took last week from an outing to New Albany. I went to look for a house on 161 that was abandonned. It's been at least 6 months since I drove that route last and in the time since then a huge chunk of land with tons of houses on it has been bought up for development. I took a ton of pictures which I will put into a slide show for another post, but for now, there are the ones I like best. They all reveal that sad transistional space between old and new. I wish I knew what the people who sold their land and houses think about all the changes in that area. For all I know they could be overjoyed at the increase in value of their land...none of the boarded up houses was particularly nice. Anyway, here goes:

young ideas

For Christmas Liv and I bought a collection of postcards from the Wexner Center called "Catalogue Woman: Mail-Order Fashion Foxes." We got this great idea to share the postcards with our creative friends and challenge each other to re-create the fashions for a group photo shoot. I chose this postcard to recreate


We haven't met yet to compare our fashion creations, but here are some photos of my design









Now all I need are the pony tails!

new life church

new life church

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Cornfields all over Ohio are being bought by developers.  One spot in Central Ohio will become the home of a mega church.

shuttered house

shuttered house

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One of my favorite houses on SR161 between Columbus and Newark. I've been drawn to it because of the green shutters. It appears that the land it's on has been bought recently, as all the houses in the area are boarded up. This whole process of urban sprawl is so sad to watch.

caught

caught

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Since the goal of my blog is to document my quest toward 21st Century digital media literacy, I have decided to post snippets of video I film for class projects, family stuff, whatever. So far I have ended up traipsing around all kinds of odd places around Columbus. Fears of being caught have resurfaced for me several times.

barber pole

barber pole

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If you're bored with George, skip the post, but he was full of so many fascinating stories, I couldn't resist making several posts. 

hair pieces

hair pieces

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Gotta love George!  Here he tells the story of his collection of hair pieces.  What a gem.  Read the story of my encounter with George at www.scootking.blogspot.com

topless barber

topless barber

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As promised, the first installment of my visit with George the Barber!

aether

Hey Folks
I am on a conference call as I write and am totally late to a meeting right now, but blogging is addictive and I just spent the last few hours editing this footage from aether last week at Skully's. What a fantastic show, check them out at www.aethersound.com.

This is my new favorite song!
Later gator,
J

aether live at Skully's

aether live at Skully's

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Live performance of Columbus indie band, aether, at Skully's February 24, 2006. Video footage shot by Liv Gjestvang, edited by Julia Applegate

hiya

Hey folks, welcome to my blog. I am confronting my technophobia head on with this blog thing. This is my 7th post and I am attempting to set it up so people can subscribe if they like. So, if all goes well you are here now because you received an invitation from googlegroups. Look around and if you like what's going on here, you can subscribe to the googlegroup and you will get an email whenever I update my blog. And by the way, this blog will chronicle my quest to hone my a/v skills into something worth viewing on a regular basis.
Have fun!

Vroom

Spring is only 25 days away, can't wait to ride!!!!!!!!!!

topless barber

In my quest for a/v expertise, I set off this morning to find a story for my final DVD project in my art class. In the class we are learning how to program DVDs (I had no idea what I was getting into when I walked in there, it caught my attention because it was supposed to focus on podcasting too). Anyway, I've been tossing around several ideas and finally decided to do a project I have had in mind for years.

I am fascinated by the changing landscape all over Central Ohio...the neverending reach of urban sprawl and the consequent replacement of expansive cornfields with pre-fab cookie cutter houses. Every cornfield overturned by one of these horrid developments spells the end for delapidated barns, sheds, homesteads, etc. Everytime I see one of these old structures decaying in an empty field I want to pull over and scout around to see what traces of life are left.

So, I decided to head South toward Chillicothe, one of the relatively new areas targeted by hungry developers.

(What the hell does all this have to do with a topless barber, you are asking yourself right now. I know, I know, but I am longwinded and I need to set the scene, context is everything.)

OK, so I decide to stop first at a new development my Maronda Homes just to see what the landscape of a development in process looks like. Let me tell you, it's freaky and I will write more about it in another blog, I promise. After traipsing around this area for a good hour, I decide to head back to Columbus rather than go to Chillicothe because my camera battery is dying and I am sure I have enough material for the time being.

While driving back I am struck by the stench of garbage all around me and stop to take pictures of an electricity plant, a sewage treatment facility, a prison and a handful of abandonned factories. It's a part of the city I pass every time I drive to Cincinnati, but I've never stopped to look around. More on this later...

So, while heading home up South High St I pass this sign:



Duh, of course I pull into Buckeye Donuts for a giant U-turn. Now that I officially occupy space in blogland, everything is a potential post and I couldn't let this sign go undocumented. So, I jump out of my car, take the shot and then discover this sign on the other side of the shop:



Clearly, this George the Barber guy is a trip. Satisfied with my new blog fodder, I head back to my car and prepare to take off toward home. Just as I am about to pull away, I notice this older guy running down the street after me with an inkpen in his hand. OK, so this is South High Street and strange things happen in this part of town but it's broad daylight and I have just taken a picture of a shop and I am thinking that this running man might have something to tell me about the shop or the sign or God knows what. So, I wait for him to catch up to me and he hands me this pen that reads: "GEORGE THE BARBER 1538 S. HIGH ST. BEST HEAD JOBS IN TOWN"

That's it, he hands me a pen, smiles and then disappears into the ether.

I'm stunned because I am already having a freaky day, but I figure, alright, I am trying to do this a/v thing and this amazing guy just drops out of the universe and lands in my lap and I better go introduce myself, thank him for the pen and at least take his picture so I can include it in the blog. So, for the second time in 10 minutes I do a "U-ey" on High St., park my car and go find this guy in his barber shop. This was at 1:30 p.m. It ends up being 3:00 before I finally leave.

It turns out George is a Hungarian immigrant who left Hungary 50 years ago, right after living through the revolution that toppled communism in his homeland. He shows me pictures of it in the 1956 coverage from Life Magazine, and as if that isn't amazing enough, he then shows me a picture of him as a 9 year old boy clutching a pile of LPs as he is running from blasts in his neighborhood, a picture that is in the same edition of Life Magazine. Oh yeah, and the first thing he asked me when I walked through his door was if I told stories. This all too amazing to believe. One word...SYNCHRONICITY.

This is George:













This is me with George (it was his idea that I sit in the chair and take the picture with both of us in the frame):



Anyway, I am a novice at this stuff, but I am not stupid, so I pull out the video camera and ask him if he will talk to me on tape. He is thrilled to tell his story and immediately starts combing his hair in preparation to be on camera. I have the whole thing on tape and it's amazing, so watch for a post on my vlog as soon as I can get it edited.

Oh yeah and I still haven't explained the title, he's called the topless barber because he cut hair topless one year on April Fools Day. He said no one was doing anything fun anymore, so he set up a sign advertising "Topless Haircuts." He made the national news that day.

Here's George's Barber's Licencse:


Need I say more?

senior dating

Last week my Dad was in town and I got this great idea that he create an account on match.com. We spent about an hour creating his profile and posting it online. We picked HikerGary64 as his screen name and chose a nice picture for his profile.
Check out those great specs!:

I'm not sure this is the exact picture he would have chosen for himself, but it seemed fun to me and it captures his youthful take on life, besides that, it was the best one we could access from my sister's computer (it's a good thing potential dates can't tell he's at the gay pride parade!) Anyway, we put up the picture and his profile and waited to see what would happen.

Less than 6 hours passed by before he got his first wink (a match.com form of flirting) from this lady (she's 71 and calls herself Pearlums):



At this point he wasn't so sure about this match.com thing anymore.
Then, he gets his first email from this woman (dizzyavonlady):



Now he's really not so sure, especially when we open the email and read this message:

"Why dont you take of those stupid glasses act like beinging 64 not 4 ."

I did not touch the spelling, I swear.

Now he's ready to kill me. He's just spent $50 and so far has two less than desirable winks and one bitter email. I'm bad, but it's cracking me up because I know he'll get some good hits eventually and what a great story this all makes. By the way, Liv started harassing me two days into this whole thing because she caught me trying to send a wink on my Dad's behalf....she said it was strangely co-dependent and that I better get a grip and quit checking his site every 4 hours. I shrunk in my seat when she told me that because I know she's right, but it's kind of fun playing matchmaker.

Anyway, in the past week he has been viewed by 141 women and has had several winks from women who might be more his type, including:


She was a hot prospect until he went to dinner with her and reported back to me that she was "too weird" for him. Alas, the adventures of dating in your 60's!

February 13th

So, I spent the whole day in front of my new best friend (my imac) trying to figure out what to do for a podcast, what to do for a vlog, what to do with the rest of my life. So it goes.
I decided to get out the video camera and document my "Modern Ideas" creation, part of a fashion design project I am doing with 7 of the craziest people I know. Alas, it turned into a vlog about failing at vlogging. Follow the link and off you go!