Oztoberfest, photos, stormwank, cake fail, football.
Oztoberfest. Yeah. There is a little town near here (yes, even smaller than the one I'm in) called Wamego. It's a pit. I mean it. A total pit. Even when I was in high school, saying "Wamego" was pretty much synonymous with saying "The Place With the Hillbillies That Probably Have Chainsaws And Are Living In A Meat Shortage Type Situation." Wamego is the Belgium to Manhattan's France. The Kentucky to our Ohio. Etc. The only place worse than Wamego is Ogden, which is populated almost entirely by high-school dropouts who entered the military as soon as they could, married their 16 year old cousin, have five children in a double-wide trailer or shotgun house, and are responsible for most of the domestic violence and high crime rates associated with military camp towns.
So we don't go to Wamego often. I wasn't all that thrilled about my mother's suggestion that we go to Oztoberfest. I was even less enthused when she said that some of the Original! Munchkins! would be there. I don't know about you, but just the IDEA of watching wizened Little People shuffling through the Lollipop Guild song makes me want to rend my garment, sprinkle ashes on my head, and cry tears of blood. Still, after considering the fact that Diane Arbus would totally go and take lots of awesome pictures, I figured that I could handle the PTSD and the nightmares, and actually got up and went. Mom has been encouraging me to keep on going out and doing the photography, and it's a good thing. Because honestly, I kind of lost my motivation for taking pictures in Kansas after snapping my nine billionth picture of a picturesque windmill. The line to get in to see the bewizened Original Munchkins was a block and a half long, giving us a perfectly good reason not to attempt to see them. I was relieved. And since the Original Munchkins were charging per autograph fee, I bet I wouldn't have been able to take any pictures without paying it, much less super-creepy Diane Arbus-like semi-candid portraits. Diane Arbus is one of my favorite photographers. I love to look at her pictures over and over again, probing into them, trying to figure out how she tells so much story with such simple images. I probably wouldn't put any of them on my walls at home. But I love them. They have an incredibly sharp edge, but somehow there's a really poignant sympathy and compassion in them, though you get the feeling that the photographer herself has a blunted emotional life, that she's almost trying to find the pain she can't quite feel herself. You can see a gallery here.
Anyway, no Diane Arbus-y pictures, not that I could ever get what she managed. Connections between photographers and subjects happen in an instant; there's a snap judgment in the person looking at you about what they think your intentions are and whether you have a kind eye or a creepy eye. Friend or foe? I've often found it reassuring to look through pictures I've taken of aware subjects and see warmth and openness and connection there (see for example this gallery of Parisians at a Christmas market - and Parisians aren't exactly known for warming up to people quickly). When you spend as much time alone as I do, you get to worrying a little bit that your ability to connect with other people is atrophying. You get really shy and awkward. Photography is a way of being social and interacting with people without having to, well, INTERACT WITH PEOPLE. You can connect with someone and love them very much for an instant, and then it's over, and everyone continues their trajectories without anyone really noticing, but I still have this little moment of intense love for a stranger that I get to keep.
Boy in Flying Monkey Costume, Oztoberfest 2009.
Because photographers are mostly invisible even when they're visible. I feel like I've messed up when someone poses when I aim a camera at them. I've lost my invisibility. Posing isn't the same as reacting. Like in this picture above, the boy is smiling at the camera (a reaction) but his body isn't awkward or stiff (posing). I've done some thinking about why or how this magical cloak of invisibility works, and I think it's that if you're really, really into what you're doing as a photographer, people don't perceive you as someone they need to talk to; there are no social obligations attached to your presence. You're a benign observer. So even though you're there and taking this picture, you become a kind of mirror. And people even perceive you as a kind of benign mirror and lose their self-consciousness. If you're really focused on your process. They can feel it.
Not that posing is always bad. In this picture, three people are posing. The picture is awesome because the fourth person isn't, and there's something really hilarious about it to me. I love this one:
Scarecrow, Flying Monkey, Wicked Witch, and Dorothy. Oztoberfest, 2009.
But in general, the picture that's posed isn't going to be as good as the picture that you get the second after they're done posing and they relax, in my opinion. Or before they're ready to take the picture.
n
See what I mean? This is why sequential shooting is the shizzle for rizzle.
Anyway, that's enough of my photography pedantry. On to the MORE PICTURES! or else you will all be like TL;DR.
There was a Dorothy Look-A-Like Contest featuring adorable little girls in adorable dresses with sparkly red shoes:
Number 6 won. She had a Toto-shaped purse. And while she wasn't our favorite, she really does look like the original Dorothy from the books.
This little one was our favorite on the grounds of pure cuteness.
There was also a dress-your-dog-like-a-character contest. This little guy had wings made of actual feathers:
I think you have to have read the books to get this one:
This kid is watching a grown-up who had just started shuckin' and jivin' to a Neil Young cover guy singing "Sweet Caroline":
The Wamego playhouse (this is where people who can't do stock go to die) was putting on The Wizard of Oz. Their Dorothy bugged me. First off, Dorothy is a little girl. Judy Garland was really way too old to play Dorothy. Instead of having a remarkable little girl, you ended up with a barely competent teenage ingenue who seemed to be perpetually gobsmacked into near stupidity. With a fantastic singing voice, of course. But if I could have my way, casting for The Wizard of Oz would be like casting for Annie: children ONLY. 16 and under for damn sure. And certainly there would be no grizzled 30something barflies who look like they just dragged themselves out of a two-week mean drunk on Jim Beam to play the part of a spunky little girl.
I mean YIKES. And check out how grumpy she is that someone asked for her autograph (oh sweet jesus, Kansans are easy). Because baby is a star, damnit. Of course, she might just be trying to remember how to write her name. It is Wamego, after all.
This thing is evidently the Kansas country cousin of the European Smartcar:
Cf.,
And one more car - come Spring, I am totally going to take the classes to get registered as a SKYWARN spotter, and join the ranks of the amateur storm chasers in the Midwest. After increasing my insurance coverage on my Honda Civic. Or else I'll get a rental car when there are big storms in the forecast. Ha. I tell you true: there are not very many things more fun than racing like hell around country backroads chasing storms. I have done this for purely photographic purposes and had one hell of a good time. It will be considerably more fun when it involves GPS and onboard Doppler radar (both of which I can get on my Blackberry, or I could install SWIFT-WX on my old laptop and connect it to the phone). It is going to be so much fun.
Screenshot of SWIFT WX:
Speaking of Things We Do For Fun: I have not been baking tiny cakes so much lately. I managed to bake a crazy good chocolate cake, and amped on my success, promptly baked the most horrifying carrot cake of all time. It was like something out of a Lovecraft novel. With frosting.
I have begun to suspect that baking cakes might be a skill that will, tragically, elude me. Unless I strike a Faustian bargain with some kind of cake-making demon, and don't think I wouldn't if I knew how to find one.
I might get back to it. I probably will. But me and cakes are officially "taking a break." I've had a pretty big crush on cookies. This might be a good time to find out if cookies and I can really mean something to each other or if it's just an infatuation.
In other news, there is some really freaking awesome football tomorrow. Saints v. Jets: both teams are undefeated, and Sean Peyton is a god among men (even Bill Belicheck thinks so). As much as I love Mark Sanchez, I'm rooting for the Saints in this match-up. Steelers v. Chargers in the evening, and I have to cleave to family loyalties - though the Steelers are my favorite team to read about, and even though I want to have Hines Ward's baby, and even though I'm pretty sure that Troy Polamalu is a Templar Knight, and even though head coach Mike Tomlin is the youngest and cutest head coach ever and looks just like Dr. Foreman on House, we will be cheering on the Chargers because it's Uncle Mike's team and we love him best of all. And also because there is some kind of tiny quantum-teleporting receiver who played at KSU that my Mom likes but I can't remember his name.
I am slowly getting better at understanding the football. Verrrrry slowly. The rules are SO contingent. I am really not understanding how and when it is OK to grapple and tug on people and when it's not, and who and when you can tackle above the waist and when below, and blah blah blah. For now, I tend to sit in front of the TV and get all indignant about fouls that aren't actually happening, and then blink idiotically while people who understand football explain it to me. I'm going to get this. I am. It can't be any harder than reading Quine (which, granted, sometimes made me cry because I felt so brain-damaged). I just have to approach this like a philosopher instead of a historian. There is this whole theory in HPS that we all have competency in both fields, and if I can't cowboy up and grok football, that's probably a sign that grad school really did melt my brain. Now with added irony.
And that's the news. :-)
ETA: my goddamn cut-text didn't work. AGAIN. Forgive me for pic-spamming. I honestly have no idea why it's not working, and I'm afraid I don't have the time or patience to hand code instead of using the GUI (especially since the html doesn't look wrong and I'd probably just get the same results. Too many pictures?). Mea maxima culpa.
EagainTA: Woah, suddenly the cut tag *is* working, or else one of you fixed it in the fashion of a kindly hacker fairy? Weird.
So we don't go to Wamego often. I wasn't all that thrilled about my mother's suggestion that we go to Oztoberfest. I was even less enthused when she said that some of the Original! Munchkins! would be there. I don't know about you, but just the IDEA of watching wizened Little People shuffling through the Lollipop Guild song makes me want to rend my garment, sprinkle ashes on my head, and cry tears of blood. Still, after considering the fact that Diane Arbus would totally go and take lots of awesome pictures, I figured that I could handle the PTSD and the nightmares, and actually got up and went. Mom has been encouraging me to keep on going out and doing the photography, and it's a good thing. Because honestly, I kind of lost my motivation for taking pictures in Kansas after snapping my nine billionth picture of a picturesque windmill. The line to get in to see the bewizened Original Munchkins was a block and a half long, giving us a perfectly good reason not to attempt to see them. I was relieved. And since the Original Munchkins were charging per autograph fee, I bet I wouldn't have been able to take any pictures without paying it, much less super-creepy Diane Arbus-like semi-candid portraits. Diane Arbus is one of my favorite photographers. I love to look at her pictures over and over again, probing into them, trying to figure out how she tells so much story with such simple images. I probably wouldn't put any of them on my walls at home. But I love them. They have an incredibly sharp edge, but somehow there's a really poignant sympathy and compassion in them, though you get the feeling that the photographer herself has a blunted emotional life, that she's almost trying to find the pain she can't quite feel herself. You can see a gallery here.
Anyway, no Diane Arbus-y pictures, not that I could ever get what she managed. Connections between photographers and subjects happen in an instant; there's a snap judgment in the person looking at you about what they think your intentions are and whether you have a kind eye or a creepy eye. Friend or foe? I've often found it reassuring to look through pictures I've taken of aware subjects and see warmth and openness and connection there (see for example this gallery of Parisians at a Christmas market - and Parisians aren't exactly known for warming up to people quickly). When you spend as much time alone as I do, you get to worrying a little bit that your ability to connect with other people is atrophying. You get really shy and awkward. Photography is a way of being social and interacting with people without having to, well, INTERACT WITH PEOPLE. You can connect with someone and love them very much for an instant, and then it's over, and everyone continues their trajectories without anyone really noticing, but I still have this little moment of intense love for a stranger that I get to keep.
Boy in Flying Monkey Costume, Oztoberfest 2009.
Because photographers are mostly invisible even when they're visible. I feel like I've messed up when someone poses when I aim a camera at them. I've lost my invisibility. Posing isn't the same as reacting. Like in this picture above, the boy is smiling at the camera (a reaction) but his body isn't awkward or stiff (posing). I've done some thinking about why or how this magical cloak of invisibility works, and I think it's that if you're really, really into what you're doing as a photographer, people don't perceive you as someone they need to talk to; there are no social obligations attached to your presence. You're a benign observer. So even though you're there and taking this picture, you become a kind of mirror. And people even perceive you as a kind of benign mirror and lose their self-consciousness. If you're really focused on your process. They can feel it.
Not that posing is always bad. In this picture, three people are posing. The picture is awesome because the fourth person isn't, and there's something really hilarious about it to me. I love this one:
Scarecrow, Flying Monkey, Wicked Witch, and Dorothy. Oztoberfest, 2009.
But in general, the picture that's posed isn't going to be as good as the picture that you get the second after they're done posing and they relax, in my opinion. Or before they're ready to take the picture.
n
See what I mean? This is why sequential shooting is the shizzle for rizzle.
Anyway, that's enough of my photography pedantry. On to the MORE PICTURES! or else you will all be like TL;DR.
There was a Dorothy Look-A-Like Contest featuring adorable little girls in adorable dresses with sparkly red shoes:
Number 6 won. She had a Toto-shaped purse. And while she wasn't our favorite, she really does look like the original Dorothy from the books.
This little one was our favorite on the grounds of pure cuteness.
There was also a dress-your-dog-like-a-character contest. This little guy had wings made of actual feathers:
I think you have to have read the books to get this one:
This kid is watching a grown-up who had just started shuckin' and jivin' to a Neil Young cover guy singing "Sweet Caroline":
The Wamego playhouse (this is where people who can't do stock go to die) was putting on The Wizard of Oz. Their Dorothy bugged me. First off, Dorothy is a little girl. Judy Garland was really way too old to play Dorothy. Instead of having a remarkable little girl, you ended up with a barely competent teenage ingenue who seemed to be perpetually gobsmacked into near stupidity. With a fantastic singing voice, of course. But if I could have my way, casting for The Wizard of Oz would be like casting for Annie: children ONLY. 16 and under for damn sure. And certainly there would be no grizzled 30something barflies who look like they just dragged themselves out of a two-week mean drunk on Jim Beam to play the part of a spunky little girl.
I mean YIKES. And check out how grumpy she is that someone asked for her autograph (oh sweet jesus, Kansans are easy). Because baby is a star, damnit. Of course, she might just be trying to remember how to write her name. It is Wamego, after all.
This thing is evidently the Kansas country cousin of the European Smartcar:
Cf.,
And one more car - come Spring, I am totally going to take the classes to get registered as a SKYWARN spotter, and join the ranks of the amateur storm chasers in the Midwest. After increasing my insurance coverage on my Honda Civic. Or else I'll get a rental car when there are big storms in the forecast. Ha. I tell you true: there are not very many things more fun than racing like hell around country backroads chasing storms. I have done this for purely photographic purposes and had one hell of a good time. It will be considerably more fun when it involves GPS and onboard Doppler radar (both of which I can get on my Blackberry, or I could install SWIFT-WX on my old laptop and connect it to the phone). It is going to be so much fun.
Screenshot of SWIFT WX:
Speaking of Things We Do For Fun: I have not been baking tiny cakes so much lately. I managed to bake a crazy good chocolate cake, and amped on my success, promptly baked the most horrifying carrot cake of all time. It was like something out of a Lovecraft novel. With frosting.
I have begun to suspect that baking cakes might be a skill that will, tragically, elude me. Unless I strike a Faustian bargain with some kind of cake-making demon, and don't think I wouldn't if I knew how to find one.
I might get back to it. I probably will. But me and cakes are officially "taking a break." I've had a pretty big crush on cookies. This might be a good time to find out if cookies and I can really mean something to each other or if it's just an infatuation.
In other news, there is some really freaking awesome football tomorrow. Saints v. Jets: both teams are undefeated, and Sean Peyton is a god among men (even Bill Belicheck thinks so). As much as I love Mark Sanchez, I'm rooting for the Saints in this match-up. Steelers v. Chargers in the evening, and I have to cleave to family loyalties - though the Steelers are my favorite team to read about, and even though I want to have Hines Ward's baby, and even though I'm pretty sure that Troy Polamalu is a Templar Knight, and even though head coach Mike Tomlin is the youngest and cutest head coach ever and looks just like Dr. Foreman on House, we will be cheering on the Chargers because it's Uncle Mike's team and we love him best of all. And also because there is some kind of tiny quantum-teleporting receiver who played at KSU that my Mom likes but I can't remember his name.
I am slowly getting better at understanding the football. Verrrrry slowly. The rules are SO contingent. I am really not understanding how and when it is OK to grapple and tug on people and when it's not, and who and when you can tackle above the waist and when below, and blah blah blah. For now, I tend to sit in front of the TV and get all indignant about fouls that aren't actually happening, and then blink idiotically while people who understand football explain it to me. I'm going to get this. I am. It can't be any harder than reading Quine (which, granted, sometimes made me cry because I felt so brain-damaged). I just have to approach this like a philosopher instead of a historian. There is this whole theory in HPS that we all have competency in both fields, and if I can't cowboy up and grok football, that's probably a sign that grad school really did melt my brain. Now with added irony.
And that's the news. :-)
ETA: my goddamn cut-text didn't work. AGAIN. Forgive me for pic-spamming. I honestly have no idea why it's not working, and I'm afraid I don't have the time or patience to hand code instead of using the GUI (especially since the html doesn't look wrong and I'd probably just get the same results. Too many pictures?). Mea maxima culpa.
EagainTA: Woah, suddenly the cut tag *is* working, or else one of you fixed it in the fashion of a kindly hacker fairy? Weird.