The way I like to travel…

Posted on June 5, 2012 by pouringmyartout

I am going to do a series of posts today that highlight my peculiar mode or tourism.

People seem to like my pictures of the trip I took to Europe with my daughter, so I am going to show them in groups that sort of show the things I am interested in.

I like dogs…

I am not just a ‘dog’ person, I like all kinds of animals, but I have had some fantastic friends in my life that just happened to be dogs. In fact, you should remind me someday to tell you about some of the strange things that dogs have done just to spend time with me. But that is for another time. I was taking one of my early morning strolls that I like so much in Crans-Montana Switzerland, and I met a nice lady walking a St. Bernard. I asked if I could take a picture, and ended up petting this beautiful creature for quite a while. (The dog, I mean) I have met a lot of St. Bernards, and they all seem to be very sweet natured.

Just a few minutes later, I met this unusual group of furry friends…

The three owners met every day in the park so the dogs could play. The big one is a Bernese Mountain dog, and they are, if anything, even sweeter-tempered than the St. Bernards. The little white dog is, according to their people, the big dog’s girlfriend. Or at least he really, really wants her to be. Their people spent a lot of time making sure he didn’t get too friendly, if you know what I am saying. I helped out by keeping the dogs busy getting their ears scratched.

The Swiss love their dogs. Here are a pair of pals I met strolling through the town…

Just to clarify the issue, I do not go around taking pictures of just any dogs. That would be weird. I only took pictures of the ones that I spent time petting, because at that point, we were friends.

I leave you with one last picture of a friend I made. This little guy lives in Rothenburg, the medieval walled city in Germany…

He had a thing for fresh rainwater.

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This one starts off not being funny at all…

Posted on June 4, 2012 by pouringmyartout

Yes, that is exactly what you think it is. That is one of the many ovens at Dachau concentration camp, where I spent two hours walking around, taking pictures and being lost in a world of horrible thoughts. Dachau is only a few miles from Munich. People must have seen the smoke rising from the chimneys. All the reading and studying of history in the world does not prepare you for being face to face with such a place. There were flowers laid solemnly in each of the ovens. I have no words to describe how I felt when I walked into the first crematorium and saw this sight.

But hey, the trip wasn’t all genocide and mass murder and starvation and cruelty, so let’s move on, shall we.

Our last stop on the Ambassadors  of Music tour was the Medieval German town of Rothenburg. It might be, perhaps, the most beautiful old, walled town in all of Europe…

Here is the band giving their concert in the town square. I guess I could point out now that I do not like to travel like an ordinary tourist. In cities, I tend to seek out the bad places in the bad parts of town, because I like to see if I could survive there. On the other hand, I prefer small towns to big cities, because the people are more friendly, and have more patience. I also think that you do not know a country of a region until you have walked out into the woods.

When I travel, I get up early and go for long walks. I like the empty streets and the sunrises. I have maybe a hundred pictures of Rothenburg, of flowers growing in people’s gardens and the old stone wall that surrounded the place. And of things that just caught my eye. The thing about my early morning walks is that sometimes, things just come together…

You can’t buy this kind of magical moment. You just have to hunt it down.

One other part of the town that I loved was a medieval tavern called Zur Hoel… which means Hell. The joke in town, and this joke is hundreds of years old, is that Rothenburg is the only place you can tell people to go to hell, and it’s a good thing. This tavern was built around the year 900, and is one of the oldest buildings in the little city. I hung out there with Jessica and some of her friends, drank some good German beer, and told the kids some of the stories of my wild youth. It was a fantastic night…

Notice the red eyes, which is sort of what you would expect from a bunch of imps in Hell…

Jessica had some cool… geeky/cool… friends from her high school on this trip with us. I wont mention any names, but you see the guy in the white t-shirt beside her? I had fun on the bus messing with him. When we were crossing the border from France into Switzerland, I happened to notice a border guard leading a German Sheppard dog on a leash towards our bus. I started to act really  nervous and fidget in my seat. I mumbled something like, “Oh, man, I didn’t know there were going to be dogs.” Jessica’s friend asked me what was wrong. “Nothing,” I muttered, “it might not be a drug sniffing dog. Maybe it is just a security dog.” Of course he thought I was kidding. They all knew how much I liked to kid. But I said to him, in a very serious voice, “Do you think you could fit through that window?”  I pointed at the closest window on the bus.

He looked at me in satisfying confusion. “Hey,” I said reasonably, “You don’t think I would be stupid enough to carry drugs in my own suitcase, do you?”

He waited for me to start laughing. Instead, I reached past him and slid the window farther open. “Oh, you should be able to fit through here,” I reassured him, even as I pretended to size him up.

The dog was getting close to the side of the bus.

I proceeded to act really nervous at this point. He was starting to freak out just a little.

“If you run back into France,” I told him helpfully, “they shouldn’t be able to follow you.”

I strung this joke out all the way until the border guard handed the paperwork and passports back to our bus driver. Oh, man, I kill myself, I really do.

We spent a lot of time on that bus, and I started to go a little stir crazy…

Even Jessica was not immune to this condition, and we did what we could to stay sane…

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto. I miss that inflatable neck cushion. We had some good times together.

If you want to see more pictures of Rothenburg, I would not be too disappointed. Or Venice, Switzerland, Paris… even Dachau, if you must. I had fun looking through them again. And I suppose there are a few more funny stories there.

And I have already decided to do a cleaned up version of my first trip to Europe, when I was 23, handsome as all get out, cocky, single and unafraid. With pictures. At least some pictures. But not all of them. Oh, no.

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The people have spoken…

Posted on June 4, 2012 by pouringmyartout

Three or four people said that they would like to see more pictures of our trip to Europe…

And you know I always do as I am told…

The Ambassadors of Music tour lasts almost three weeks. The best musicians from marching bands all over the state are chosen to represent our country, and the highlight of the trip are the concerts. They played in a park in London, a park in Paris, a town meeting hall in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, the town square in Seefeld, Austria, and the town square in Rothenburg, Germany. There were some interesting side trips as well.

That is Jessica, getting all flutey in a beautiful park in Paris. Everywhere they played, the crowds loved the music. They did classical pieces and Beatle songs and lots of other music. After the concert, I wandered around the park and found this…

I did not Photoshop this picture. A French artist put the big face in the little reflecting pool. Artists are cool.

We took a cruise on the river Seine…

And we went to Notre Dame cathedral…

Yes, I took pictures of the big fancy church, but you can see those anywhere… come on, how cute is that little French girl…

Here is Jessica in Switzerland…

That’s right, my daughter can make Switzerland even more beautiful.

Not that Switzerland needs much help…

Here is Jess playing in Austria. Notice they always put her right in front. She is that good…

We took a day trip to Venice…

I had to put in a picture of the Bridge of Sighs… because that is the coolest name ever for a bridge…

Unfortunately, we arrived in Venice during rush hour…

Alright, that is enough for one post. Just so you know, these are just representational pictures of the trip. I have a few hundred pictures, of flowers, and mountains and buildings and dogs and babies and people and… it isn’t easy to narrow it down.

I will be back in a while.

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God save the Queen… Part 3

Posted on June 3, 2012 by pouringmyartout

As I am typing this, BBC America is playing all day coverage of the Queen’s Jubilee, which is sort of awesome. I have sometimes found myself wishing that I could be the Queen for just one day, so that I could run around speaking about myself in the third person plural, and say things like, “We are not amused,” even though everyone would know I was the only one who wasn’t amused. I would find this very amusing… ironically…

I forgot to mention, when I was talking about Windsor castle, that the Queen was gracious enough to throw us a parade when we arrived…

You might expect that to have one parade thrown in your honor would be enough for any group of tourists, but when we went to see Buckingham Palace, the Queen, bless her heart, threw us yet another parade!

She even threw in the Horse Guards, and I do love horses. Thank you, Your Majesty!

What a gracious woman, and a splendid hostess…

Of course we did a lot of the normal tourist things…

We went up in the London eye, so that we could see the big clock and find out what time it was.

Here is Jessica, looking quite fetching, as the English may or may not still say. I didn’t want you to think I just Googled some pictures of London and made this whole thing up.

Here she is in a London phone booth…

My favorite part of this picture is the poor local kid standing to the left, who just wants to call his mates, but being English, is too polite to tell the American tourist to sod off.

I do actually have one piece of advice for you, oh lovely people of Britain. I realize that Lord Nelson is a national hero, and that a monument in his honor was required… but if you make the pedestal too high, no one can even tell who the tiny little statue at the top is supposed to be in honor of…

I mean really, that could be just about anyone up there. Here in America, we get around that problem by making the statues really big.

I don’t want this post to stretch out forever, so I will leave you with one final picture, and some thoughts on England and the English people…

This is the famous White Tower, or the Tower of London. We got to see the crown jewels when we went there. The Queen certainly does know how to pull together a look… with diamonds the size of   baseballs…

The Tower was built around the year 1078… (how cool is that?)… by William the Conqueror. He was, I believe, French. Or at least Norman. He and his other friends from Normandy sailed across the channel, you know, like tourists do, but decided to stay and run the place for a while. In his defense, I thought of doing the same thing, but I am too busy with my blog, and a bus-load of teenagers makes a pretty poor conquering army. The White Tower used to really loom over the city, back when the rest of the buildings were quite a bit shorter. This was done intentionally. This was oppression at its finest and most oppressive. This Tower just sort of screamed; ‘We are here! We are French! Or at least Norman! We are not going away any time soon.’

Now I haven’t gone to the trouble of looking any of these facts up on Google or anything, but have you ever wondered why the English language has different words for the animals than the words for the meat from the animals? Well, let me explain. You raise a cow or a sheep. But you eat beef and mutton. I think, and I may be wrong, but the words for cow and sheep are English. But the words for beef and mutton come from French words. That is because the French conquered you… (hence the name William the ‘Conqueror’)… and lived in big white towers eating their fill of beef and mutton whilst you lived in hovels and did all the sheep and cow raising. You didn’t even get to eat any of the good parts, although I am sure they didn’t mind too much it you gnawed on the occasional cow hide or sheep’s hoof.

It is sort of amazing that you actually help the French out in any of their wars. If I was you, being the grudge carrier that I am, I would tell them if they wanted to stop having wars, they should move somewhere farther from Germany… (Just kidding, Germany… I love you, man)…

While I was wandering the streets of London, I saw a Bobby… (an English policeman) arrest a drunk hooligan. He was so polite about it, I thought I was seeing some sort of street performance, or maybe a TV show being filmed. I love the fact that your policemen don’t carry guns. In California, our cops carry pistols, mace, tasers, clubs, smoke grenades, and in their squad cars they have shotguns and automatic rifles… and that is in the good part of town.

I love the fact that the English love to form lines. They are so orderly. If two English people are standing near each other, they form a line… (or que? cue? You have a word for it, but I have no idea how to spell it)… just out of habit. How sweet is that? I have been to Italy a few times, and they do not form lines… they form… I hesitate to use the word mob, but that is close to what it is. It makes buying train tickets a bit of a chore.

At the hotel we stayed at, whenever the elevator doors were closing, a recorded female voice would say, in that delectable English accent, and oh so politely, “Mind the door.” I loved that. In fact, when I used to have my old GPS system in my car, I set it so that it had an English accent instead of an American one… because it just sounded so much friendlier. I guess that sort of says it all, doesn’t it?

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God save the Queen… Part 2

Posted on June 2, 2012 by pouringmyartout

A few years ago, when Jessica was in high school, she got picked to be on the Ambassadors of Music tour. This is a program where all the best musicians in school marching bands all over California were picked to go to Europe for a few weeks, and play concerts in different cities. (That’s right, Jessica was a band geek. Those kids my friends made fun of in high school are now the cool kids… go figure… and Jessica plays a mean flute)… I got to go along. It was my second time in Europe.

So, in honor of the Queen’s festivities, here are a few pictures and some accompanying observations from our time in England…

We drove straight from the airport to Windsor castle. Notice how I managed to get some pretty flowers into the picture, as well as the beautiful tower. My favorite part of Windsor castle… (named after the famous tie-knot)… was the collection of weapons and armor inside. There were metal chest pieces… (called a cuirass)… taken from the French dead at Waterloo, and weapons from all the parts of the old British Empire. And in a glass-fronted cabinet, I saw the bullet that killed Lord Nelson at Trafalgar, which to a guy who likes military history is pretty freekin awesome.

I walked along the Thames before meeting Jess and some of her friends to have tea at a place that overlooked the river. On the way I saw a boy about 15 years old throwing rocks at the beautiful white swans. I asked him casually if he could swim. He seemed confused and asked me why I wanted to know. I told him that it might be a useful skill to have, considering the fact that if he kept throwing rocks at the swans, he was going to be joining them in the river. He took my point and went on his way.

Then it was on to London for three glorious days.

I wasn’t an official chaperon, so I had quite a lot of time to wander on my own… particularly as Jess had her friends and her boyfriend with her, and the last thing teenagers want to do is spend time with their dad. So I had some quaint little adventures. I found this place…

And I got a pretty good little buzz going on some excellent English beer. They also served these green-lipped muscles in a cheesy sauce that were one of the better things I have ever eaten. I don’t know why the English have a reputation for being less than stellar in their contributions to fine cuisine. It seems a tad unfair.

While I was sitting in the pub, getting my buzz on, my daughter and a large group of her friends wandered in. Man, Americans are noisy. I pretended not to know them, a trick I borrowed from my daughter, by the way, and shaking my head in mock disapproval, said to the waitress, “Americans… you can’t live with them, you can’t invade Iraq without them.” Maybe this was funnier back closer to the event. Now that it is ancient history… wait, what? We are STILL in Iraq you say? Oh, well… she seemed to think it was funny. I guess she was being polite.

One of the highlights of the entire trip was spending a few glorious hours in this place…

Oh, yeah, the Imperial War Museum. I have lots of pictures of the inside, if anyone is interested. Tanks, guns, swords, a Messerschmidt fighter and a Sopwith camel hanging from the ceiling. A buzz bomb, V2 rocket… oh, man, I was in seventh heaven.

Just so you know, I have pictures of us all over Europe, so just let me know if you think I should continue with the saga after my England bit is done. Venice, Paris, the Alps… I could stretch this out for weeks…

These pictures are very large, so I will give you time to digest them. I will be back soon with part 3, where I meet the Queen and get knighted…

Not really, just wanted to see if you had fallen asleep.

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God save the Queen… Part 1

Posted on June 1, 2012 by pouringmyartout

As the world prepares for the Queen’s big party, I thought I would take this opportunity to relate a little of my family history, and also to explain why I love England and the English people.

My family more or less comes from Great Britain. We still have many relatives there. In one of those ironies that I love so much, the spelling of our last name, with the silent ‘e’ on the end, is quintessentially British. Why is that ironic, you are most likely asking? Because when we moved to this country, we didn’t have an ‘e’ on the end of our name. It somehow appeared during the process of becoming citizens of the United States. It may have been a simple typing error. Maybe a clerk just assumed that all English people named Brown must have an ‘e’ on the end of their name. For whatever reason, we decided that it was too much fuss and bother to go to the trouble of fixing it, so there you have it.

I love the British for many reasons. I study military history, and Britain, you may recall, once had a very large empire. They ruled a lot of people. And they don’t like to be pushed around. When you meet the average Englishman, they don’t seem particularly warlike. Quite the opposite, in fact. But just ask Adolf Hitler how tough the British can be when their backs are up against the wall.

The history of our family in England is colorful and varied. We have a great uncle who was mustard gassed in the first world war. He survived, but suffered problems with his lungs for the rest of his life. According to family lore, one of our illustrious ancestors was the next to the last person hung… or hanged(?)… in England for the crime of arson. He wasn’t the last one, or he would have been in the history books. That is just like our family. We participate in history, but we seldom make it. Oh well.

That is a picture of aunt Nora, from Leicester.  I wish it was a better picture, but it is a scan of one tiny part of a family photo, and that is the best I could do. Aunt Nora used to come visit us frequently. She was one of the most wonderful women it has ever been my privilege to know. When my brothers and I missbehaved, she always threatened to ‘Starsky and Hutch’ us. She loved that show.

Aunt Nora worked with Missionaries in Africa between world wars. She was in the London underground stations during the Blitz, when Nazi bombers were bombing that city around the clock. I can picture her, sipping tea, and just deciding that she wasn’t going to let Mr. Hitler get in the way of a good cup of tea. You have to love the British! That and the fact that almost one third of my blog’s view hits come from the UK. Bless their hearts.

And they really know how to name their tea! This is an actual postcard I picked up in London. King George V seems to be delighted to endorse this beverage, as well he should be.

So I stand before you, proud of my English heritage… even though I am adopted, so technically I could be from anywhere… and say with honest sincerity, God Bless the Queen! And all of England and the United Kingdom! I apologize for us dragging you along on that miserably misconceived Iraq invasion thing… and Afghanistan… but that was all Dick Cheney’s fault, which is part of the reason I keep doing mean pictures of him. Because he deserves it. And sorry about our whole ‘Revolution’ phase. You know how kids are, allays rebelling against their parents. But you know we had to move out eventually. That is just the way nature works.

If my family had never moved from England, I like to think that I would be suave and debonair, like  James Bond…

Or maybe Dr. Who…

Although I suppose it is more likely that I would have ended up as a soccer hooligan or a fishmonger, but whatever.

Please stay tuned for part 2, where I will discuss my three days in London, and give more reasons why we should all love the people of Great Britain. They don’t call it great for nothing.

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Sometimes life doesn’t feel real…

Posted on May 17, 2012 by pouringmyartout

Like maybe I am part human and part cartoon.

But I am working on it.

If I meet Roger Rabbit or Dick Flintstone, I will let you know.

Now, back to our show…

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The black flag…

Posted on May 9, 2012 by pouringmyartout

It was a balmy, steamy day, that one particular day, in the year of our Lord 1716. A southerly wind pushed at the sails of H.M.S. Glasgow, a merchant trader out of Southampton. She wallowed sideways in the troughs between the westering swells, hauling her load of goods towards the West Indies at a good clip. She was a stout ship, strong of beam and sleek of keel.

Her Captain, Jedediah Longbottom, stood in his cabin, legs braced wide against the shifting oaken planks. He stared hard at the chart laid out on the table before him, and was pleased with the time they had made. Two more days should see them safely to port. His first mate, Mr. Stubbins, stood near at hand. Tim Lackey, the cabin boy, was placed so as to refill the ship’s master’s cup from the bottle of port that held down one corner of the chart.

The cry of the lookout floated down from the crows nest far above. “A sail, Captain, coming on fast on the port quarter.”

The master and the mate exchanged glances. No need to panic the boy yet, for these were well-traveled waters, but dangerous waters as well.

“She seems to be flying a black flag, Captain, but I can’t make it out yet,” came the call from on high.

There is no good can come from a black pennant, the Captain thought to himself, though he remained outwardly calm.

“It is a pirate, Sir. I am quite sure of it. White bones on the black flag. And she is bearing down hard.” The lookout, a young lad fresh off a farm in Jersey, had let his voice rise to a shrill screech by the time he finished relaying the message. Panic could spread nowhere faster than on a ship on the high seas. The Captain had seen it before.

He turned calmly to young Tim. “Go below and fetch me my red shirt, there’s a good lad,” he said, in a tone of one ordering a breakfast.

As the boy rushed off, the mate cast him a questioning look.

“That way, if I receive a wound, the men wont see the blood,” the Captain said by way of an answer.

The lookout cried from above once more. “It is Blackbeard’s ship, Captain, I’d bet my life on it. I can see the horned skeleton and the heart of blood on the flag, clear as day.”

The Captain thought for a moment, then leaned over the hatch that led below decks to where his sea chest was stored.

“Oh, Tim,” he said with infinite resignation, “you better bring up my brown trousers as well.”

Arrrgggghhhh.

 

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I am not a bloodthirsty psychopath…

Posted on April 24, 2012 by pouringmyartout

I am glad I got that off my chest, because it has been eating away at me…

I did a post early on where I attempted to explain my interest in history, particularly military history, and how it ties in with some of my artwork.  I have said that I am 6 feet 4 inches tall, weigh 230 pounds, and have size 15 feet. Being that big, I have always been very careful to not let myself get angry.  Also, I am a Berkeley hippy by birthright, and I am a sweet, lovable flower child by inclination. I do not actually want to ‘be’ a pirate…

That being said, we all like to picture ourselves as something other than what we are, at least now and again. Somewhere along the line my interest in military history, my self obsession with my own handsome face, and my love of art, all combined to produce some rather strange… (some might even say disturbing)… images. You can go back to my early posts to see more of these.  I taught myself to do Photoshop by taking my face and sticking it in pictures from military history. This combination of things that interested me kept me going when I felt like I would never get the hang of Photoshop.

These pictures do not quite fall into that category. These are not Photoshop pictures. They are multimedia in the truest sense of the word. That pirate picture above combines a pen and colored pencil picture of my face with t-shirt paint hair. One of the swords, one of the pistols and a couple of the daggers are cut from magazines. Most everything else is drawn by hand, but the two sashes are pieces of material from a sewing box. And there are pieces of silver and gold glitter glued in the treasure pile. It is sort of 3D in a way, and catches the light in some interesting ways when you see it in front of you.

I also went through a phase where I cut my heads out of a lot of duplicate photographs. Then I did stuff like this with them…

There are at least 15 of my heads in this civil war picture. And a whole lot of extra blood, in the form of the thick t-shirt paint. I also glued some cotton down to add depth to the gun smoke.

I did some closeups just so you could see the detail a little better.

I admit that this may seem weird to a lot of you, even compared to how weird I usually am. But once again, I can’t explain why I do the things I do. I can’t even explain how I do a lot of the things I do. But despite whatever worries about my sanity you might now be burdened with, I swear that I am completely harmless.

And really, wouldn’t it be awesome to lead yourself into battle like an army of those clones in the Star Wars movie? You only live once? I think not!

I leave you with a picture full of peace and joy, just to cleanse the palate of your mind…

This is a drawing I did after my friends and I had a party way back in the 70’s. I drew it the next morning, putting in every detail I could remember… (Which wasn’t all of them, I can tell you)… but I did throw in the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, just for fun.

(Forget Where’s Waldo, play ‘Find the Freaks’… Google the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, then find them in my picture… 200 bonus points if you find all three)…

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A garage full of weirdness…

Posted on April 20, 2012 by pouringmyartout

Here is an item from my garage/art gallery…

I had a picture of Cherilyn and I, way back before we got married. It was taken some time in the 80’s. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I used this photo to create a new piece of art…

I told you we all have a little barbarian inside us, struggling to break free.

I notice that I once again used some thick paint, not only for the blood, but to add rubies to our fashionable barbarian active wear. Little details can bring a picture to life. And if I do say so myself, we make a good looking pair of rogues… (Dang it, why did Sarah Palin have to ruin the word ‘rogue’ for me?)…

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