Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.
Thanks to Sweetney for posting this; it really does murk with my brain to realize just how tiny we all really are.
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Laurie and I ran across this guy while we were traipsing around the Grape Ranch. These guys are supposed to be big showoffs, right? He was moving around so much and trying to get away from us that this was really the only good picture I got of him, eyeing me warily, like I was thinking of killing and eating him. Which, to be fair, I kinda was.
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We had a wonderful time at the Okemah Jazz Festival over the weekend. The music very rarely became even jazz-adjacent, however, which is fine. We got to hear Susan Herndon play, which was nice as I’ve heard her name, seen ads for her shows, and yet somehow never actually encountered her music:
My favorite part came during the act that followed Susan. They were a sort of soul/R&B/rock and roll group, and it wasn’t their music that made it the best part of the afternoon. Their music was fine, but the part of the show that had me enthralled was that I got to watch people dance, which is always a great thing to do. They were constantly calling on the crowd to come down and make use of the expanse of empty grass in front of the stage:
Now, I’m usually the kind of person that would rather die before I’d get up and dance by myself in front of a bunch of people. Be it at a bar, a wedding, a bar mitzvah - I don’t care, I don’t want to be the first person on the dance floor. Part of this is my natural aversion to being on stage or having people look at me in any way. But another part is that I don’t want to take away from what’s going on with the music; I don’t want to distract audience members away from the band. This lady didn’t have a single qualm about doing it, though; she’s living her life to the fullest:
She was the first one to start dancing, and after a few songs she was joined by a few other people. This lady in particular seemed to be enjoying herself:
I ran this photo through the "Seventies" filter in Photoshop, because, well - the haircut. Anyway, don’t tell me that if someone told you that this photo was taken in 1979 that you wouldn’t believe them. I kid, but seriously this lady was having a great time. Best among them all, though, was the little girl who danced down front during the whole set. We later found out she was the lead singer’s daughter:
Adorable, right? Seriously, keep on the watch for this one. She had the moves and was a natural performer. She’s going to be famous one of these days and I’m going to get a cease and desist order telling me to take down this photo.
These people were having a great time dancing, and though I was too self-conscious to join them I did have a grand time watching. I got to sit there with my Frozen Rose, which is this wonderful concoction they have at Grape Ranch that’s basically a red wine smoothie (I think we’ll be drinking them in Heaven). Seriously, those things are the best; they give you a neat little buzz and keep you cool. So even though I didn’t get up and dance, I have absolutely no regrets.
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This was taken out at Grape Ranch Winery in Okemah, Oklahoma over the weekend. We accompanied our buddies J&L to the Okemah Jazz Festival on their sixth wedding anniversary. Laurie’s dad owns some land up the road from Grape Ranch where he’s starting a vineyard, and after we left the Jazz Festival we spent some time kicking around their acreage, watching the amazing sunset and this beautiful orange moon rising into the sky.
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Tweeting Too Hard
Twitter certainly is fun, isn’t it? This website collects the most douche-tastic and egomaniacal tweets that are out there. The best one I’ve found so far is this one by John Mayer (yes, THAT John Mayer): "I love how some dudes hate me for dating their fantasy girl, as if they were going to if I hadn’t."
Inside an IMAX Camera
Gizmodo gets to take a very rare look into the inner workings of the cameras that make IMAX movies possible. Apparently there are only 26 of these suckers in the entire world.
Beneath New York Harbor
"What lies beneath the surface of New York Harbor? For starters, a 350-foot steamship, 1,600 bars of silver, a freight train, and four-foot-long cement-eating worms."
The Final Frontier
“In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)”
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This photo, from our first trip out to Black Mesa in July 2008, was published this week in the Oklahoma Gazette, as part of my ongoing series called - surprise! - "The Great Oklahoma Road Trip." They haven’t put the story online yet but as soon as they do I’ll give you a link; in the meantime if you’re in the OKC metro be sure to pick up a copy. I’m really proud of the story.
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This has gone around the world and back this week, but I’m going to go ahead and join in the party in case you haven’t seen it yet. There are a lot of "literal" versions of music videos out there, but this one is undoubtedly my favorite.
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Lilies are without a doubt my favorite flower, and in our backyard there are no fewer than six varieties, all of which bloom at different times throughout the summer, planted by our house’s previous owner (or, more likely, by somebody she hired). I am eternally grateful to that woman, and to the people she hired, because the flower beds in our backyard are, with the exception of creeping ivy and their constant need for weeding, a source of joy for me from March through October. These white lilies are one of my favorite things, and they’re blooming now.
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Yellowstone from Andrew Curtis on Vimeo.
My dad’s doctoral thesis was all about Yellowstone, and can you believe that I’ve never been there? This video makes me want to go; it is, after all, in one of the 14 contiguous states I have yet to visit. This video also makes me want to trade up my SLR to something that can do HD video, but if I had to guess which one of those two things was gone to happen first, well, it’s anybody’s guess. Someday!
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So basically what people do at Kerrville is sit around in circles and play music. Most of this music is so good that you find yourself in gaping awe of it; occasionally there is some that’s so bad that you wonder if the songwriter had ever actually heard a song before picking up his or her guitar. This photo is a good depiction of the former, wherein K.C. and David (the MD of Pants) play her song "Redman" for Joe Crookston, who harmonized along after picking up the chorus. And so it goes; after K.C. finished her mainstage show we walked around listening to circles like this until about 3:30 in the morning.
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