Huge groups of birds are flocking on the open pastures that line the roads I travel on to work. I have my camera with me and I’ve been trying to get a shot of them but normally, the groups are in the middle of large muddy fields. The small sedan I drive wouldn’t make 10 yards in those fields. So, I pass by everyday wishing that I had my wife, daughter, camera and picnic basket with me so we could park and goof off. Today those little suckers moved right up to a side county road that the car wouldn’t get suck on. I turned, parked and hopped out. I got pretty close and started shooting, then ran like a mad man at the flock to get them airborne in unison. I took a few more shots then started walking towards my car. As I looked at my camera’s small monitor to preview the shots, I felt someone looking at me. I’m in the country; in the middle of this field when I look up I see an old dingy truck blocking the small road I turned on. I’ll just talk myself right out of this trespassing, I thought. As I walked closer I could see this guy was raving mad, yelling out of the window of his truck. I see a gun rack and I decide to take my chances driving the car around the truck blocking my escape through a tiny patch of muddy grass. Surely I would get up enough speed to plow through the mud. Thank god I left the doors unlocked. I start running to my car, the guy hops out of his truck failing to realize that he left his truck in drive. As he’s running towards me his truck rolls out of my way. I left him in the dust with a polite hand gesture.

Here is the photo I took:

Most people I send this link to think the video is a joke. It’s not; give it a chance. An old co-worker/friend who considers himself a “music god” pointed me in the direction of Les Savy Fav. I’d heard a few songs from them a while back, but they never grabbed my attention until now. Let me know what you think.

This next band is called The Whitest Boy Alive. One of the members from Kings of Convenience fronts this band.

This is The French Kicks.

Here is another that I can’t stop listening to: Kings Of Leon

The surf popped up just in time for Thanksgiving. We had offshore winds around 10 knots and surf in the chest-high range here in Pensacola. The red tide was present, making the perfect conditions a little askew. Aside from the coughing associated with the red tide, it really was a beautiful day and just what myself and all the other surfers who populate this town needed to work up an appetite; not to mention a little sun and “beach hair” (the effect gulf water has on the average hair style). Here are 2 photos that I took after surfing 17th avenue. We should have more surf this weekend!

Pensacola’s Gallery Night was this past Friday night (11.16.07). Sean Fell from Waterboyz contacted me on Wednesday to see if I had anything to enter for Gallery Night on Friday. Not much notice he admitted, but I had a few pieces lying around that I could bring by; one of which was this painting.

Special thanks to Sean at Waterboyz for the invite and to Kiapo for the great drinks! Until next year.

Did anyone happen to catch a little football game last night (Sunday) between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins? In case you missed it, the final score was 23-28, Dallas. The sad thing about that game is the false hope it gave the little redskins. They really believed they could do it, which almost had me cheering for them. I think that takes the redskins record to 5-5-0. Some might say, at least it’s not a loosing record, on the other hand, it’s not a winning record either. I forget what the Cowboys record is…Wait, 9-1-0, yeah, that’s it. I anticipate the redskins to just fade away this season.
Oh, and thanks for hanging out for the game Tilley.

Side note: Tilley kicked his hat (redskins) around my living room several times which led to the dogs barking at him. It was quite the spectacle.

So, Selva Kumar, a 31 year old male human married a dog named Selvi on Sunday. True story. As a teenager, Selva Kumar beat two dogs to death. Not sure why and I don’t think it’s important. Selva started suffering from all sorts of aliments after committing the horrible killings, so to regain his health he decided to marry a dog as a plea for forgiveness. First off, being newly married myself; I think he married that dog for the wrong reasons. Everyone knows you marry a dog for the love and partnership that only a marriage with a dog can provide. Also, what about the potential spousal abuse that could occur? He’s killed before Selvi, he can kill again.

Chicken wings, who doesn’t love them? I have a love affair with chicken wings that has led me to try every wing joint across the country. Some spicy, some sweet and some tangy (that tangy that makes you cough if you breathe in before a bite); of which, I prefer tangy. The sauce is where it’s at. We all know that chicken is chicken. Free range, caged, injected with hormones, whatever, it all tastes the same. So it’s all in the sauce. Steak, however, is a completely different animal, literally. If you know a good steak than you know that salt and pepper is all a good ribeye needs.

Here is my recipe for the best chicken wings:

Ingredients:

40 chicken drummets (3 packs, they look like little drum sticks which gives you better chicken to sauce ratio, but any chicken will do)
Salt & Pepper
2 Cloves or Garlic
Half an Onion
2 cups ketchup
Half cup brown sugar
2 cups white vinegar
1 table spoon chili powder
4 tablespoons of favorite hot sauce (Cholula)
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Half a cap of liquid smoke (1 teaspoon)

Cooking Instructions:

Start by sautéing the diced garlic and onion to soften the flavors. Then add the ketchup and vinegar. Stir well. Then add the chili powder, favorite hot sauce, cayenne pepper and brown sugar. Bring to a boil then let simmer for 15-20 minutes. Then add liquid smoke and let simmer for another 5 minutes. Sauce is now done.

On to the wings: Put a small amount of salt and pepper on the wings before placing them on the grill. Get the grill to 350 degrees and place all of the wings on. Close the grill and enjoy a beer. Cook the chicken wings until they are done, turning and rearranging regularly. I’ll go 25-30 minutes with them. You get most of the fat out this way and the skin gets nice and crispy.

Take them off the grill and place them in a big bowl. Poor all the sauce on top and enjoy.
The big key here is not to baste the chicken while it’s cooking. It only burns the sauce and leaves a bad flavor. Add your sauce after the chicken is completely done. It’s that easy people. I hope most of you try this out for football Sunday.

I am gathering a group of photos from my archives to get large prints made. I’m tired of them sitting in a folder in my house not being viewed. I finally found a company that can handle any custom film request. A and I is a print lab based in California and they are what appears to be one of the last custom prints shops that can handle any and all film requests. Here are my 2 favorites which were both shot with and 6 x 4.5 Beronica, medium format film camera. Both are photographs of my daughter Carlyn at our tiny home in San Diego.

I get funny looks when I ask Pensacola Photo Supply about any custom processing and print making; which amazes me. You would think that they would try to outsource the work. They are a mom and pop shop standing on the edge of a cliff that is the internet. It’s become too easy to get great deals online. Everytime I go to Pensacola Photo Supply I feel like that isn’t registering with them. They are rude, late and unwilling to try and make things work for the customer while the internet is doing the exact opposite.

Some say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Imitating ideas makes a very fuzzy line in design. Lately, I see plenty of designs with watercolor textures. I started doing this when I was in college. It is where I came from as an artist. Does this mean that every ad or marketing scheme that includes watercolor textures was my idea and it was stolen from me? Nope. The idea is to be influenced by (not steal from) something great.

Complete Dreams Website Design stole from Wildfire and got caught. In early 2006, Wildfire Productions (a website development company Drew Stauffer and I started in 2004) completed a website for a customer trying to increase business at a vacation rental in Nicaragua (Popoyo Rental). Work completed for Popoyo included search engine optimization, site redesign, hosting, and css, php, xhtml development. We received numerous compliments on the site and the customer was very pleased. Within the S.E.O. package we offer analytics (tracking traffic; where did they come from, how long they stayed, etc.).

We kept seeing an inbound visitor to Popoyo Rental from www.chelseaviewmac.com. We checked the link to see what the potential interest might be in our customer’s site. We found our customer’s website hacked up and filled with Chelsea View’s vacation rentals content. It is stated at the bottom of the site “copyright 2007 Complete Dreams”. Well, that’s complete crap. Popoyo Rental: “copyright 2006 by Wildfire Productions” and Popoyo Rental was obviously stolen and altered to fulfill their client’s needs. Here are a few screen shots to give you an idea of how blatant the rip off is.

Here is the Popoyo Rental Site:

Here is the Complete Dreams website ripoff. They took the liberty of keeping, using and selling images and graphics from Popoyo Rental:

Here is a look at the code that confirms that the site was stolen as a whole:

And Finally here is how the morons at Complete Dreams Web Design got caught:

They forgot to switch the footer links.
Nice job guys!

Here is a link that shows how proud they are of “their work”. Complete Dreams is facing legal action by our company. They recently yanked down the Chelsea View site after their customer got wind of this.