Tom Stancliffe, Carousel 1996
Fabricated silicon bronze, three sculptures approx. 15h x 5 x 5 each for the Cedars Light Rail Station, Dallas Area Rapid Transit authority, Dallas, Texas. Commission awarded through a national competition sponsored by DART. The sculptures relate not only in form to the landscape design but are also intended to recall the evolution of the neighborhood from a cedar forest, to an elegant Victorian neighborhood, to a now light industrial district.
On the way to Toad Corners
I found a picnic table in the large open Pecan Grove area of the Arboretum to sit and read for a bit. A family went by, on the way through the Crape Myrtle Allee to the popular water feature called Toad Corners.
Kids love to play in the water at Toad Corners
Kids love to play in the fountain. Some folks like to make it a destination on hot summer days – sort of an artistic water park.
This means you!
The signage next to Toad Corners sure doesn’t make it look appetising, though.
The family came back from the fountain after about an hour and ate a picnic lunch at a table near mine. They all looked healthy enough.
Renner School House, Dallas Heritage Village
I was wandering around, looking into the historic buildings that have been moved from all over North Texas into Old City Park, now Dallas Heritage Village. Some kid walked into the Renner School House at the same time I did.
“Can you imagine going to school in a room like this?” I asked.
“I’ve been here before, I think. I think it was a field trip,” he answered.
“Look at how each chair holds the desk for the person behind them. Oh, do you know what the little holes are for?”
“For the inks!” he said.
“It’s a shame we can’t go upstairs or play in the playground,” the kid said. “Do you know what all these cans hanging on the wall are for?”
I said, “Those are what the kids brought their lunch to school in. See, they are little metal buckets. They called them lunch pails.”
I kept running into the kid as I walked around the place and he would leave his family, walk up to me and point out something. In the historic barnyard he was looking around, trying to find the rooster that was crowing.
“I think it’s a recording,” I said. “They are playing that sound over and over.”
“It sure sounds real,” he said.
The historic Renner School House, in Dallas Heritage Village, with the skyscrapers of downtown rearing up in the background.
Lunch pails hung on the wall pegs at the Renner School House.
Daily Reader.
Renner School House desks.
Suzy, dressed as a raven, in Moonrise Kingdom.
I very rarely get out to see an actual movie at an actual theatre any more. The biggest reason is that I hate going out to the suburban googleplex with everybody else and paying all that cash for an experience much worse than I can get at home on the HDTV.
One exception, though. Back in the day, back when I still had a life, I used to really enjoy going down to the Angelika on Mockingbird Lane. I would take the DART train down there on the weekend – sometimes not even knowing what I was going to see – and pick one of the offerings from the selection of art-house films. There is a little restaurant attached and sometimes I’d get pot stickers or something else simple to eat – make a leisurely afternoon of it.
There was none of the cattle-car feeling of the googleplex – none of the packs of loud, tittering teenagers, blaring lights and sounds of video games or awful garish food displays… I like the architecture of the Angelika – the open areas with little tables and chairs, the little stands with postcards and literature about the upcoming features – the classic old movie posters. It is a place designed to show a film, not corral huge herds of the faceless public into chutes and strip them of their cash.
There are now a whole set of theaters dedicated to art-house quality cinema in the Metroplex – the two Angelikas, The Magnolia, and the Inwood – to name a few. I love the Inwood especially, but it is a long difficult drive from where I live.
Often, when I look at the list of first run films at the googleplex I can’t find a single one I’m really interested in seeing. Today, when I thought of going down to the Angelika, it was tough to decide which one to see – there was Killer Joe – which looks good, but I wasn’t in the mood for NC-17 today… then there was Beasts of the Southern Wild, set in South Louisiana, but again, maybe too intense for a lazy early Sunday. They are showing a classic, The Graduate, and that would be good… but I’ve seen that film, maybe ten times already.
So I decided on the low-intensity alternative, Wes Anderson’s newest, Moonrise Kingdom. I have enjoyed almost all of his work (not a big fan of the animated film, that Mr. Fox thing) – though his highly mannered style can be a bit shrill at times.
I loved Moonrise Kingdom, by the way. The test for a work with a unique and personal style like Anderson’s is a simple one for me – do I care about his characters? Some of his work is so precious and so complex that the people at the center of the story are lost – and at the end you are left with an empty feeling. A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Moonrise Kingdom is a simply story, however (which I will not discuss – no spoilers here) and the two main characters are sympathetic and easy to relate to. All the messy complexities of a Wes Anderson film are present, but these are played out by the large and familiar supporting cast, and don’t take away from the main conflict at the center.
Strip away all the Wes Anderson shiny trappings and odd eccentricities and it is simply a strange little love story.
When the film ended I thought, “Hey, that was better than I expected,” which is high praise, indeed.
Now I want to go back and see some of those others.
I have been looking for this for a long time… and now, here it is, on Youtube. Alfred Hitchcock’s version of the Roald Dahl short story Man From the South with Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre.
It’s almost a half-hour long… but find a time when you can sit down and watch the thing.
I think this story is the best example of how to manipulate tension, excitement, and dread in a tight little story I have ever seen. This version is a bit droll for my taste – the original text is more horrific. It’s been done and riffed on many times (check out Quentin Tarantino’s version as the fourth and last story in the otherwise-horrible film, Four Rooms).
I try and study it.
This is what I want to write.
“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”
— Neil Gaiman
An interesting list.
Of course….
Shaken, not stirred.
There is no controversy about who is number 1.
From Casino Royale (1953) Chapter 7
“A dry martini,” he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?”
Why flavorful Southern hot sauces don’t pack much heat
I’m sorry, but this is about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. As a child, I lived in a few locations that had… well, let’s say they had a lot of flies – a lot. Swatting flies became a cheap amusement for when there was precious else to do. I would have given anything for this thing.
Now, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.
Salt blasting shotgun eradicates insects with extreme prejudice
I had to watch this… I didn’t think it could be done. Apparently, it can. It has to be real… it’s from the Internet.
MATCHBOOK. bikinis meet their match
Clever matches between bathing suits and books. Each match discovered by hand. We should have been doing this all along, am I right?
Looking for something to do over the Weekend, I was drawn to the Grand Opening of a new food truck park, Dallas’ first, The Cedars Food Truck Park, down in the Dallas Heritage Village on the south side of downtown.
I rode the DART train to the Cedars Station and walked across the no man’s land south of downtown to the park.
Most of the food trucks were in a big arc around the open grounds.
A lot of trucks and a wide variety of food.
There were eighteen food trucks at the park for the grand opening. It’s a little scary how many of them I have already eaten at and written about:
Since I was there early and it was still scorching hot – the lines were non-existent and I chose some sushi from Crazy Fish.
Music was provided by a three piece mountain-folk group, The Sicklies – that I know nothing about but will see again if I have the chance.
The Sicklies
Liquid refreshments were provided by the folks from the nearby bar/club Lee Harvey’s – serving up some beer from the Deep Ellum Brewing Company. Their stout was as excellent a dark beer as I have had in a long time – really good stuff.
Beer from The Deep Ellum Brewing Company, served up by the folks from Lee Harvey’s. The beer lines were plenty long – a lot of thirsty folk.
The whole evening was a blast. As the evening grew long and the air grew cooler the crowd grew until there were long lines at the food trucks and even longer ones for the beer. I didn’t stay too late – I didn’t want to make the walk back to the DART station in the pitch of night.
Sometimes the big city shows you its good side – it did tonight. I’m not sure if it was the presence of all the old historic buildings, the comradeship of the past, or if it was simply a well-planned event, but everyone was smiling and talking to each other. A happy time… with food, and very good beer.
A photographer – You don’t see these cameras very often any more. Shame, really.
For a larger and more detailed version Please Visit the Flickr Page
This is a cool bronze sculpture at one end of the McCasland Sunken Garden at the Dallas Arboretum. You can see the sculpture in the foreground of the photo I used once for a Sunday Snippet I did to practice my character sketches.
These might not be as good as Peggy’s… we seem to be taking pictures of the same things – sort of Dueling Chihulys, so to speak – but it’s all good.
For a larger and more detailed copy, Please go to Flickr
For a larger and more detailed copy, Please go to Flickr
For a larger and more detailed copy, Please go to Flickr
Bill Chance 