Pouring My Art Out

And now, some pictures of my elementary school… a post that literally no one will care about… except me…

Posted on July 2, 2014 by pouringmyartout

The one good thing about Kensington Hilltop school is that it is, in fact, as its name implies, on the top of a hill… so I get to throw in some photos of San Francisco in the distance…

I took my daughter, Mollie, up to see my old school. We met my friend, Andy, up there, and the plan was to fly some kites. If the wind is just right, I am convinced you could fly a kite all the way out to the Golden Gate bridge. But the wind died, so I have no pictures of our kite flying… because they didn’t.

But it is always fun to visit the school you went to when you were a kid. Everything is so small.

Just so you know, that cool climbing structure was not there when I was little. We had a basic metal jungle gym. And a metal slide and some swings. And we didn’t have soft rubber mats under any of those things. Kids were tougher in those days. We got hurt and our parents didn’t sue the school.

One cool thing about this school is that when I used to walk home, I could stop and listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival practicing in their garage.

I like the new paint job. When I was young, all the schools I went to were painted this horrible, dull yellow color… the same color as San Quentin prison over across the bay. We were convinced that they used the same paint. There is something weird about going to a school that is the same color as a famous prison.

That is a much more cheerful color.

Man, life was so simple in those days.

Posted in My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged bay area, current-events, humor, Kensington Hilltop school, photography, photos of San Francisco, san francisco, travel | 22 Comments

The best father’s day gift in the whole history of having children… (or): Wow, do my kids know me or what?

Posted on June 20, 2014 by pouringmyartout

Oh yeah… that is exactly what you think it is… a stamp with a picture of my face on it! Being the self-obsessed person that I am, you can surely imagine how freaking exciting this is for me. My older daughter, Jessica, sent it to me. And it didn’t come by itself…

There were three of them. I was sort of wondering why she wanted me to take three pictures of my face with different expressions, and then email them to her. On the other hand, I take so many pictures of my own face… mostly to do funny things in Photoshop for the blog… that I didn’t wonder about it for long.

Sorry about the quality of some of these pictures. Jessica took them while we were Skyping. I didn’t even know you could do that… but hey, now I have even more pictures of my head…

Of course, now I am running around like a crazy person while the crack squirrels that inhabit my cranium are trying to think up weird places to stick stamps of my head… Oh, and my younger daughter and my wife got me this…

So expect some pictures of us making our own cheese… because really… what could go wrong with that?

And before I let you go, I made Jessica take one picture of me while we were Skyping that I think is really cool. I wish I had made her take a video of it, but we all know I am not smart enough to put videos on the blog without help… but trust me, if that fan I am standing under was moving, you would see how awesome my new selfie idea is… try it yourself next time you are skyping with someone. Just turn on your overhead fan, and line it up over your head… (which is why it is called an overhead fan, by the way)… and you too can become:

Helicopter Head!

Oh yeah.

Posted in Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, current-events, humor, photography, self obsessed, selfies, skyping, social-media | 30 Comments

Oh, and I got two new Tweets from Eric Idle of Monty Python… so for those of you keeping score of my celebrity Twitter stalking… that’s 6 from Eric Idle, 1 from William Shatner, 2 from Ricky Gervais, 1 from James May of Top Gear, and 4 from Dana Carvey, who is still following me on Twitter for some unknown reason… but still no love from Hugh Laurie, dang it.

Posted on June 19, 2014 by pouringmyartout

Okay, these are not in order, and part of the conversation is missing, and there is no context, but still… be jealous… be very jealous…

1. Arthur Browne‏@ArthurBrowne1 17h
2. @EricIdle We stole our tune from one of your old drinking songs… out of spite, I believe…
1. Eric Idle‏@EricIdle 17h
2. @ArthurBrowne1 Maybe you were drunk….
1. 3:13 PM – 18 Jun 2014 · Details
3. Reply to @EricIdle
4. Reply to @EricIdle
2. Users in this photo
Suggested users
1. Verified account@
- Verified account@
1. 1. Eric Idle‏@EricIdle 17h
  Why are all the National Anthems in foreign languages?
2. Arthur Browne‏@ArthurBrowne1 17h
  
  @EricIdle Also, I think we have the only one with bombs and rockets in it… so uh… winning???
3. Eric Idle‏@EricIdle 17h
  
  @ArthurBrowne1 Maybe just selling….

Posted in Twitter tweets | Tagged celebrity stalking, current-events, eric idle, famous people, humor, monty python, social-media, Twitter | 33 Comments

More tips for taking great pictures of reef fish when you go to Maui on your second honeymoon…

Posted on June 19, 2014 by pouringmyartout

First of all, and I hate to state the obvious here, taking pictures of fish requires the ability to swim…

Oh, and don’t forget to take the obligatory underwater selfies… those never get old… and a good underwater camera will also greatly add to the likelihood of taking underwater pictures… but mostly, it is about swimming. I swam so much that my rented swim fins wore holes in the tops of my feet. And that hurt. And speaking about things that hurt, try not to be bitten by any sharks, eels, or barracuda. Also, try to avoid being stung by any stingrays, scorpionfish, or sea urchins… and it probably wouldn’t hurt to avoid sharp coral while you are at it.

On top of that, because you will be diving down to follow the fish around, you should avoid attempting to breathe while underwater. Aside from those few things, it is as easy as falling off a log… into a wild ocean full of things that can mess you up…

Wait… would that picture up there make more sense if I flipped it the right way? I just thought it looked sort of cool an artsy like that, but we can try normal too…

Now, back to my tips.

The main thing is that to take a picture of a fish, you have to find a fish. The best way to do this is float around in the water looking all around at the sea floor bellow you. Hey! There is a fish!

You have spotted a fish. Good work. Now, take a deep breath, flip upside down, and propel yourself downwards. Follow the fish. It may take a while. They don’t usually wait for you to get close… because they know they live in a dangerous place…

While you are kicking your feet like a ballerina on crack and steroids, trying to catch up to an animal that swims for a living, while also only being able to use one hand to help you swim because, presumably, you have a camera in the other hand, don’t forget to take lots and lots of pictures… because most of them will be like that one up there… a top-view of the fish. These are the least exciting pictures you can take of a fish… unless it is one of those fish like a flounder that spends all of its life on its side.

Hey… wait… there is another fish!

This brings us to the next tip. Don’t get distracted. You can’t follow two fish at once. Pick one and stick with it till you get a good shot. Then go find the other fish. Later on, when I figure out how to put the videos I took up on the blog, you will see some amusing little movies of how easily I got distracted by other fish. Learn from my mistakes, that’s all I’m saying.

Of course, if you get two fish in one picture, that is just a nice bonus. I can’t find the black and yellow fish on my dive card, but for those of you keeping track, the little yellow one is a yellow tang… also known as a yellow tang surgeonfish.

So, let’s review…

Spot the fish.

Dive down and follow the fish.

Get the best view of the fish, and capture that moment forever…

Then go home and drive yourself crazy trying to decide if that is a reef triggerfish… or a lei triggerfish… and how much it really matters.

Posted in dogs and other animals, My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged fish, hawaii, humor, maui, nature, photography, reef diving, snorkeling, underwater camera | 13 Comments

A guide to taking great pictures of reef fish while snorkeling in the waters off Maui on your second honeymoon…

Posted on June 18, 2014 by pouringmyartout

(or): Really, Arthur… more fish… how long are you going to swim around looking at fish, and are we really going to have to look at every picture of a fish you took?

Hey, I am trying to mix it up a little. This time I am going to give you some actual pointers about how to get good pictures… because those fish do not cooperate at all, let me tell you…

You are swimming around, just sort of floating face-down on the surface, and you spot a fish. Hey, you think to yourself, that is a nice looking fish. I don’t have a picture of one of those yet… so you snap your first picture. Amateur mistake. You are still too far away. And you are looking at them from above, which is the most boring view of a fish.

You take a deep breath and start diving down… one fish turns on its side. That is a good angle, but you are still too far away.

You are now close to the fish, but of course, being the rascal that it is, it tries to swim away, so you get another lame top-down view. Go ahead… chase it… they love it when you do that…

And then there is that magic moment when the fish turns… still trying to get away from the creepy intruder in its underwater realm… and you get a side view… or close to it… that will let you compare it to the pictures on your dive card… once you are back home and have put the pictures on your computer so you can zoom in on them… and you can correctly identify the fish in question… unless it looks like 5 other kinds of fish, or the colors don’t really match up with the pictures of fish you are comparing it to, or maybe the colors are right, but the shape is wrong or the fin is in the wrong place… stupid fish.

Anyway, that is an ornate butterflyfish… and we already saw a picture of one of those, but hey, you are learning stuff, right?

Oooh… there is a striking fish that we haven’t seen before… let’s dive down and take a closer look… remember to take lots of pictures… because most of them are going to come out bad for one reason or another. Yay for digital cameras.

Hey, we are getting good at this. That right there is a threadfin butterflyfish… turns out there are a lot of kinds of butterflyfish.

But you know what never happens? You never just swim around the corner of the reef and come face to face with a nice fish, a cooperative fish, a fish that has such a unique shape and distinct coloring that it is easy to positively identify just by looking at your dive card…

Well what do you know? Look at that. A bluespine unicornfish… just floating there… turned sideways… waiting for me to take its picture…

Oh thank you, bluespine unicornfish… I think I love you.

Posted in dogs and other animals, My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, fish, hawaii, honeymoon, humor, maui, nature, photography, romance, social-media, stupid fish | 20 Comments

101 things you can do on that post where we are trying to break the record for the most comments on a WordPress post… even though WordPress can’t or won’t tell us exactly what that record is… but all of these ideas have been tested and they work, and now that I think about it, I might as well try to break the record for longest title on a WordPress post because for some reason, WordPress seems to give us unlimited room on the topic wall pages when it comes to the titles… and that sounds like a loophole, if you ask me… oh, and the comment post now has 28,078 comments on it, if you care, which is way more than some posts that went viral because the post was about something so nasty that people had to visit it just to insult the writer… and we did all of ours with love and rainbows and unicorns…

Posted on June 17, 2014 by pouringmyartout

The comment record post is a great place to:

1. Meet new people… and lure them to your blog where you can keep them prisoner with your charm and wit

2. Release your inner demons

3. Act out

4. Misbehave

5. Flirt with people… I know this works… Trent, my head minion, got carried away

and flirted with himself so well that he took himself home and had his way with himself.

6. Play with your inner child

7. Detox

8. Ramble

9. Digress

10. Act the fool

11. Show off

12. Contemplate the meaning of the universe

13. Join with another person or group of people and write a poem or a song or whatever

14. Be yourself

15. Be someone else

16. Make a point

17. Take a stand

18. Take a dim view of things

19. Take a nap

20. Take a minute to collect your thoughts

21. Practice your typing… yes, there is that little pressure

22. Take the high road

23. Take a load off

24. Take the midnight train to Georgia… okay, nobody has actually tried that one yet, but if anybody can pull it off, it is you, am I right?

25. Do a little dance

26. Make a little love

27. Get down tonight

28. Impress people

29. Impress yourself

30. Let your hair down

31. Let your guard down

32. Let yourself down… you wouldn’t be the first… heck, let your whole family down if you want to

33. Reach out

34. Make a spectacle of yourself

35. Go down in history

36. Go down in my estimation

37. Frolic

38. Eat

39. Love

40. Pray

41. Pet one of the crack squirrels that live in my head

42. Bust a move

43. Lay down a rap… you can’t be any worse at it than some Canadian minions I could mention…

44. Try something new

45. Improve yourself

46. Improve me

47. Take a walk on the wild side

48. Take a chance

49. Take a poll

50. Take a flying leap

51. Live the dream

52. Share your innermost secrets and desires… hey, who are we to judge you?

53. Spread yourself thin

54. Shake things up

55. Get things moving

56. Get a hold of yourself

57. Be something new

58. Be someone else

59. Learn some things

60. Teach some things

61. Start a movement

62. Start a revolution

63. Stick it to the man

64. Stick it where the sun don’t shine… I have no idea how you would go about doing that, but it sounds interesting

65. Play it safe

66. Play it close to the vest

67. Play it cool

68. Play that funky music, white boy

69. Play around

70. Play for keeps

71. Go for broke

72. Go for the gusto

73. Go for the jugular

74. Go for the juggler

75. Go crazy

76. Go big or go home

77. Go with the flow

78. Let it all hang out

79. Let it be

80. Grab your 15 minutes of fame

81. Feel free

82. Feel cheap

83. Just sit in the corner and watch… because that is hardly creepy at all

84. Start anew

85. Make a friend

96. Make a commitment

87. Make a fool of yourself

88. Tell a story

89. Tell a lie

90. Tell me off

91. Tell it like it is

92. Tell yourself you should have stopped reading these stupid things before you got to number 25, but there is no way you are falling for this guy’s shenanigans and going to that stupid comment post to leave a comment or go scrolling through the old comments looking for fun and adventure and new friends because you are way too smart to be taken in by such an obvious ploy as this ridiculous list!!!

93. Lay down your burden

94. Pick up the pieces of your broken heart

95. Do what feel right

96. Do what you damn well know is wrong

97. Do what you want

98. Do what you must

99. Doo wah diddy diddy dum diddy doo

100. Feel the love

101. Feel just a little bit dirty

—————————-

I hope to see you there… you can click on the link at the top of the sidebar, or use this link to go right to the comment box: http://wp.me/p25PYJ-21u/#respond

… but if you do that, you will miss the joy of scrolling through a bunch of comments…

Posted in stuff about blogging | Tagged 101 things, blogging, blogs, break the record, current-events, humor, rainbows, social-media, unicorns, wordpress | 42 Comments

Fishies!… part 6…

Posted on June 17, 2014 by pouringmyartout

Come here, you crazy Maui reef fish… you will not escape me so easily… I will identify you… oh yes… I will…

Ooooh… what’s that what one called? It is sort of boxy. That should be easy to identify. Let me consult my handy, plastic-encased dive card. Hey… stop swimming away while I am trying to identify you!

Oh, you might be a spotted trunkfish… a male spotted trunkfish…

I mean, how many boxy fish can there be swimming around Maui, right? Oh… wait… turns out there are a few…

Look, there is another one right over there… Oh… you are a little cutie… and according to my dive card, you are a female spotted trunkfish… or maybe a Hawaiian spotted toby…

Why can’t you all try to look more like your pictures on the cards? You make this so difficult. But I am pretty sure… wait…

Oh crap… There is another boxy, spotted fish… so that is either a spotted boxfish… which you must admit is a pretty good name for a boxy, spotted fish… or it is a Hawaiian spotted toby… or a female spotted trunkfish… screw it… the next time I go to Maui, I am going to shoot every damn fish I see with a tranquilizer dart, put it in a cooler full of water, and take it to the aquarium to show to an expert… oh… wait… I could just go to the aquarium and see the fish in the tanks… I bet they have signs telling just what kind of fish they are… but somehow, that seems like cheating. I suppose I could look all these fish up on the interwebs and compare them with better pictures… but that might suck some of the fun out of these posts…

Wait… what is that yellow fish under that outcropping of coral?

Yes… it is long and skinny and yellow… let me try to get closer…

I can’t hold my breath any longer… I hope this picture comes out nice and clear… oh… dang it… well, if I had to hazard a guess, based on the closest match up with the dive card, I would say that is a trumpetfish… or maybe the Loch Ness monster… sigh…

Posted in dogs and other animals, My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged fish, hawaii, humor, maui, nature, photography, reef fish, skin diving, snorkeling, social-media | 12 Comments

Fishies!… part 5…

Posted on June 16, 2014 by pouringmyartout

There I am, swimming around in the waters off Maui, trying to match up fish with the pictures on my dive card… and I must say that I am not thrilled by the way my neck looks all wrinkly… I look like an old sea turtle… sigh.

That, I believe, is a coronet fish… unless it is a needlefish… or possibly a trumpetfish… I have an awesome video of that fish that I took with that cool little Go Pro camera, but you all know I am a computer moron, so I haven’t figured out how to post the videos yet.

That is another raccoon butterflyfish. I know we already saw a picture of one of those, but I didn’t want to waste this one.

That is a 4-spot butterflyfish. Don’t believe me? I will try to swim closer. There are a lot of pictures for me to go through, because when you first see a fish, you take a picture. Then you try to swim closer to get a better picture…

So you end up following the fish all over the reef. And a lot of the shots end up being bad pictures because you just caught the fish from above or directly behind, and you can’t really see them. You have to wait until they turn so you can get them from the side…

But they don’t always cooperate. It is all about persistence and timing.

That is a Moorish idol… I bet I can get closer…

No wonder I wore those holes in the top of my feet with the swim fins.

Oh look, the Moorish idol is swimming by some other cool fish. A lot of times, you end up getting distracted by a new fish before you get a good picture of the one you started following…

But not this time. And I am glad, because that is one handsome fish.

That is an ornate butterflyfish. We actually successfully identified those last two fish, thanks to the fact that the pictures are good, and there aren’t other fish on the dive cards that look like them.

That fish doesn’t seem to be on the cards, which is a shame…

Because the colors on that fish are just plain exquisite.

Posted in dogs and other animals, My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged fish, hawaii, humor, maui, nature, outdoors, photography, skin diving, sports, travel | 12 Comments

Fishies!… part 4…

Posted on June 15, 2014 by pouringmyartout

Look at that intense glare of concentration in my eyes. That is the sort of concentration that it takes to identify tropical reef fish in the waters off Maui… because they do not cooperate in the identification process at all.

I am 99% sure that is a raccoon butterflyfish… I have zoomed in and compared it with the pictures on my dive card, and it is a pretty close match… and it doesn’t look too much like any other fish on the cards. Let’s zoom in a little and see if that helps…

Yup… that should be a raccoon butterflyfish… not to be confused with the long-nose butterflyfish or the bluestripe butterflyfish or the teardrop butterflyfish or the threadfin butterflyfish or the fourspot butterflyfish or the saddleback butterflyfish or the forceps butterflyfish or the ornate butterflyfish or the oval butterflyfish or the pyramid butterflyfish… I swear, I am not making those up, those are all on my two dive cards, and there are probably more of them that aren’t on the cards.

I know, we already looked at a picture of what might be a convict tang surgeonfish, but I like that picture because of the reef… and I like this one too…

I like the way the reef reflects of the surface of the water.

And I like that picture as well… because that is a fish that is proud to be shaped like a fish… whatever the heck kind of fish it is… and because the colors go so well with that cool wiggly way that sunlight has of shining down through the water and then dancing on the seafloor.