Urban Olympics

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Urban Warriors

After a week of lectures on Medieval Mystics and Masters that kept us out late every night, I ended the week photographing the Urban Olympics put on by a downtown charter school. Various professional offices and other businesses put teams together to compete in silly events, such as mop javalin throwing, toilet plunger toss, a rely race that included a mad dash in high heels  — tag the rider for the tricycle slalom — tag the backward skateboard racer — tag the office chair drag racer — and lastly, tag the tricyclist for the final speed run. There was waterboarding, a 100 yard dash, urban bowling with orange barrels and shopping carts, water fights, and other events. Cherry/See/Reames Architects, who shares office space with ARC, and one of our staff members participated in the event.

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Mop Javalin Toss

 

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Crash and burn on a backward skateboard

 

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Eying the competition

 

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Macho, Macho Man

 

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Toilet Plunger Toss

 

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Waterboarding

 

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Medieval Egyptian dragon costume design

 

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Digging it

 

Infidel Lumberjack

 

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Since we are having branches that have been piling up around the property for the past couple of years chipped, I finally got around to cutting down an old, diseased peach tree that we are not going to irrigate this season because of water restrictions. I was going to cut down the tree with a chainsaw, but the chain come off sawing on the first branch. Since it’s a real pain to put the chain back on the chainsaw, I got a bow saw and discovered I could saw through the branches very quickly, and had the tree cut down by hand in 30 minutes — not much longer than it would have taken me to put the chain back on the chainsaw once I gathered up all the tools and got the chain back on and adjusted properly. Whenever I cut down trees, I can’t help thinking about Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song.”

Laurie put the finishing touches on the catio, including trying to clean the calcium carbonate from water seeping out of the swamp cooler over the years. She was really cute scraping on the glass. The last photo shows the finished catio. The large box leaning against the bonsai shelves has my darkroom sink in it.

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Wild, Wild Life

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In David Byrne’s movie “True Stories” there’s a music video to the song “Wild, Wild Life.” Chad’s gravity defying stunts and Liz’s jumps made me think of Wild, Wild Life. The problem with stunts in the limited space of our dance room/photo studio is that both Chad and Liz jumped so high that they got above where I was framing the photos in several shots.

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Cats & Concert Sunday

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The cats were in winter mode most of the day. Even though it was sunny and a blistering 40º F (4.4º C) outside in the afternoon, Guildenstern, Rosencrantz and Diné chose to lay around on our bed most of the day. We went to the West Side Chior’s Christmas concert Saturday night, and Jerri had me help record the concert. I didn’t think of it, but I could have taken equipment and shot a video of the concert Saturday night. Well, they had another concert on Sunday, so I shot a video of it with my Canon 5D and a stereo mic. The video and sound are great, but it’s going to be a lot of work putting the hour long concert altogether into one video.

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These Eyes

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This jumping spider has plenty of eyes to cry for it’s lost love. Rosencrantz looks nice in stripes, and now that our butterfly bushes are blooming they are attracting all kinds of insects, like the scarab in the last photo.

 

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The Last Picture Show

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We went to the showing of the top 13 films from the Albuquerque 48 Hour Film Festival in the historic Kimo Theater on old Route 66 downtown. The participating teams get topics and then have 48 hours to write, cast, film, and complete final production of their movies. The common elements in each movie were a map, the phrase “You’re so smart!” and the name Roman Rodriguez. The atmosphere was festive and the films were very well done and enjoyable to watch. I hadn’t been in the Kimo in a very long time. It’s a great theater with its glowing skulls and depictions of Anasazi symbols.