PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Form and Flower - Dayton Hudson Ikebana Display By Hiroshi Teshigahara

I finally scanned in the photo's that I took at the display back in 1986. I read on the Sogetsu School website that the show was part of a Walker Art Center program called Tokyo: Form And Spirit. I remember going to that show but I didn't find any pictures. I've posted more pictures of the Ikebana display in a Flickr set here. That's the poster above. Dayton Hudson Department Store used their 8th floor auditorium for a variety of events. The Rolling Stones appeared there in the 1960's. We saw a Hans Christian Anderson display up there in the 1980's. They used to have a Christmas display each year. Santa and his village. I knew a guy who picked up all the displays and had them in his shop for years. I wonder what happened to them.

Ikebana is a Japanese style of flower arranging. It's been around for centuries. Hiroshi Teshigahara was an art student and film maker. Woman In The Dunes and Antonio Gaudi are the only two of his films that I've seen. His father was the Grand Master and Founder of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana back in 1927. Hiroshi made films and created sculpture. He became the school's Grand Master after his father retired. Hiroshi's daughter Akane runs the school since her father died in 2001.

New Camera

I've worked where I work so long they gave me a camera for a present. It's a Pentax and it seems ok. I just got it a few days ago and I'm still learning how it works It's much more complicated than my old camera. That one's a Sony Mavica from 1999. It was like 1.2 MP, the Pentax is 12.1 MP. I had it set for 5.3 MP for the pictures I took the other day when I was at the Mall Of America for lunch. That's still a pretty big picture, especially for use on the internet. The one above is 1944 by 2592 and it's 1.89 MB in size. You can see more of them at Flickr. If you look to the left of the serpents head you can see a L shape. That's where the shiny surface of the store has come off, exposing the sheetrock below. It might have popped off from poor workmanship, faulty adhesive, perhaps poorly applied, or someone, no me, has scarpered off with them as souvenirs. Iwish I had one. Maybe they are on eBay. Here's another picture. There are about 30 more at Flickr. I didn't do anything with them. I kind of want to see what they look at online. That way I can adjust according to what I see.

City Gone Mad

 

I have come to believe it was about 1985 that I started to seriously buy some LEGO. The Basic Brick set 350 had come that year and I got 8 of them for about 12 bucks each. That gave me a nice start on some bulk. I started small, mostly just noodling around. It's the stuff you wouldn't take pictures of, and there wasn't anywhere to put stuff like that. I did take a a roll of 35 millimeter film and printed those pics. This is them, scanned, slightly cropped, with the brightness, color and contrast tweeked a bit.

 

I started making buildings first, then it grew into a statement about uncontrolled building. In the world of those small plastic buildings the right to the air space above buildings gets sold and they build in it. The buildings don't have much detail, especially compared to the Micropolis type building, but that wasn't the point. I certainly didn't have much gray back in those days. It just wasn't as common as it is currently.

 

It's kind of hard to see everything. The pics just aren't well enough lit and it's a pretty big lump of plastic. It was about 2 feet deep, 30 plus inches wide and more than 2 feet tall. The smallest buildings are supposed to be 3-5 story buildings, then bigger ones are built over them, finally the giant upside down U-shaped building gets tossed up. You can see more pics at Flickr.

Chinese Ethnic Groups

 
That's one of a series of 56 Chinese ethnic groups. The Han people are the biggest with 91% of the population. The others share what's left over. I had heard of the Han people and but most of the rest were pretty new. I had heard of Mongolians but  I hadn't ever heard of the Xibe or the Yao. They sure have nice costumes. I though these were really enjoyable pictures to look at. Great bellies on those two guys in the Mongol picture, huh. You can see the rest of the groups here.

 

Some Weather

That's a picture from this page of real nice weather pictures. Lots of good lightning shots too. Thanks to Gary for sending the link along. I really like the picture on the bottom right. I can almost hear the boards flying off that building. Of course, the reality is that building will loose a few boards and sit like that for the next decade. Just after the picture was taken the tornado veered off and went hunting for a trailer park. Luckily they haven't been hunted out of existence yet.

Rock

Bamboo

 

I just liked this photo of some bamboo groove. Here's another.

Gray

Sure is gray looking.

Hosaka Cat

I really liked this photo of a cat.

Where it's from...

 
The title of my blog is taken from a line of dialog that Bruce Campbell speaks in Sam Raimi's Army Of Darkness. If you haven't seen it I would be surprised considering who I am talking to. That's one of my favorite pictures of Bruce above. It's actually a promo pic from the first Evil Dead movie. Below is Bruce introducing the local primitives to his Boomstick.

  
Army of Darkness is certainly one of my favorite films. It's always in my top 100. I have seen it more than a ten times I figure, which is a lot for me. I rarely have time to get back to the movies I have. There are many new things to watch on DVD...although that seems to be slowing down. I just don't seem to pick up as many as I did a couple of years ago. I did buy a lot of TV shows and now I am making DVD copies of the laser discs and tapes I have. If they stopped making films I could just watch my old ones...but where would all those people work...see the problem.

AOD has one of my favorite actors, Bruce Campbell, playing the lead role of Ash. He's probably never destined to be a big name star but he's got a lot of fans, and I consider myself one. His autobiography If Chins Could Kill Confessions of a "B" Movie Actor is a lot of fun. Look for his new book Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way in June. You can see him at http://www.bruce-campbell.com/

I am going to end my first post here to see what it looks like. More in the future. I don't like the spell checker on this interface.