Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Visual Crawful: The Photos I Failed to Post Until Today

Blast you, modern life!  With your mandatory tivo watching and your netflix’d multiseries (I finished BSG btw so it’s okay to tell me about “that thing you heard about Capricans") and your incessant laundry-folding and toy-putting-awaying and repetitive transmission-repairing and suchlike impediments to my creative exercises.... all of which is to say, all is well but my STOOPID DREYDEL STORY remains unfinished.  I’ve got ten more handwritten pages to transcribe, and another five or six yet to write, and I’m thinking, it’ll probably be done for Purim, so happy Tu Bishvat to one and all and I’ll just have to resort to something more pedestrian for this holiday-week’s post.

Hmm.  Pedestrian.  Holidays.  Who knows when you are sleeping, or awake?  Who had better not shout or cry?  Who had better be good, for the sake of all that’s holy?  What brings treats for the sweet, and tricks for the slick?  Am I blending my celebrations?  Well, as Whitman said, I am made of multitudes.  (Maybe he just said something like that, but not exactly that, but it’ll do.  Hell, maybe he said “I am matron underwood,” which sort of fits what I heard about him, but he was misunderstood.  And in that grand tradition of being misunderstood...) I am going to observe this holiday-era posting by sharing with you all the delights of the giving season: Halloween!  (If you can stand the pressure on your scrolling-finger, below the halloween photos will be cool-ass photos from the conservatory of flowers, and then some shots from the forebits of the december holidays, and maybe after that, some outdoor shots from Crissey Field.  Thanksgiving was not terribly photogenic, so you dodged that bullet.  THIS TIME.)

Halloween fell in October this year - barely. Let’s see what it brought us. 

First, it brought us a gourd - Mr Moldyface.  He was an illuminating character, though not too bright.

Zach went as a robot from a teevee show about a magical funky dj who brings toy dolls to life so they can learn important lessons about sharing and safety.  That’s probably why he chose to hang out with spiderman and dracula, for whom those values are of special importance. 

Jesse got outfitted as a, or perhaps the, devil.  I entitle this photograph, “angry devil is angry.” It reminds me of, um, angry. 

Soon enough, courteous safety robot assuaged devil’s anguish.  Robot loves devil.  Devil’s predelictions remain undetermined. 

Later that night, Devil walked the streets.  This is definitely the face of a devil that may, or may not, care. 

However, mom did care, and here she is making sure her glucose gang got to the “good” trick-r-treat houses without unnecessary contact with speeding cars.  Thanks, mom!

Devil wants to know what he’s getting into.

After forty-five minutes of “testing the take,” I think the boys hit the wall:

Once you’ve hit the wall, next is the inevitable come-down.  Lisa Simpson experienced it.  Now Safety Robot and Angry Devil know what it is to be reduced to protoplasm in a plastic suit.  So they’re ready for the workplace! 

Halloween treated us all right.  Then we woke up the next morning and it was December already, and time to visit the Conservatory of Flowers again to enjoy their display of model trains and recycled-product-cityscapes.  Plus their regular old coolness.  To wit:

This, for example, is regularly cool - the spires of the east wing and central section of the greenhouse.  I just like the way this one came out.

Inside the conservatory, the jewel glass that looks so boring from the outside really makes good on its name:

In the west wing of the conservatory, unlike some other west wings, there was no executive staff or anxious press corps or sheen of Martinization or whatever they have in the effete establishments back east.  No - this is Frisco, baby, and we’ve got cityscapes made of recycled products! Check it out:

This one includes the golden gate bridge, Bush street Chinatown gate, Academy of Sciences (with bumpy green roof), Ghiradelli Square, TransAm Pyramid, Japanese Tea Garden Pagoda, and the very conservatory in which this photo was taken.  If you have “infinite zoom” capacity on your computer, you can even see a recycled me inside the conservatory taking this photo!  Infinitastic!

Here’s more of the panorama - going from Ghiradelli and the Pyramid, to the old Fed building (made of cassette tapes!) and some old cool office block, a side view of victorian houses climbing up to coit tower, a cable car, the Ferry building and old Mission, the Castro theater, and a firehouse I don’t recognize.  You can even see Lombard Street curving down the hillside, and the top of Lotta’s Fountain.  Good stuff!

The Castro and victorians deserve a better view, and I’m only too eager to oblige:

And what is any San Francisco recycled-products panorama without - BUNNYTRAIN?  Nothing, that’s what.  Good old Bunnytrain.  Still haunting my dreams after all these weeks. 

Returning to the main body of the conservatory, I tried to replicate some photos of pitcher plants I took some years back but lost.  Hope you enjoy them - and remember, they’re carniverous, so watch what you say about them:

That’s enough of the Conservatory.  ENOUGH I SAY!  Let’s move on to “current events.”

We started with halldecking.  As a Jewish-type person, this is not an activity with which I was overly experienced, at least not in terms of electrified garland.  We used to spray fake snow on our front window, in solidarity with the maccabees, but I digress.  What I did this year was actually HANG LIGHTS.  FTW!  Observe my triumphant halldecking skills!!!11|||!

Zach noticed that our decorations were sort of xmas-heavy and wondered how to even the score.  Creative little champ that he is, he envisioned and then created (with maternal assistance) - the Channukah Sloth! 

(and yes, this is that sloth.)

And when it came time to light my de-waxed menorah, Zach made sure to set up a display featuring the best of both our household holidays, with Bitey the Nurtcracker keeping careful, talmudically-ordained watch over its flickering flames:

And let’s not forget that fateful Saturday on which we made schnecken with the family.  Here’s a photo of just a little piece of the total output:

It does your heart good to see that, especially if by “good” you mean “clogged with cholesterol and laboring to supply life-sustaining oxygen to a body engorged with food and bloated with fat”.  Which all brings me back to the clean, fresh, wholesome world I typically inhabit, so let’s wrap this up with a few photos from Crissey Field a few weeks ago:

That’s enough holiday cheer for you.  Go back to your mom’s basement and don’t let me hear a peep out of you till Easter, at which point, the Peeps will probably have the last say.