Twin City Photos

Leaving my camera laying around or set up on a tripod is always tempting for the junior photographer of the house. Sometimes I find photos on the memory card I know I didn’t take, like this one. She actually takes some pretty interesting pictures. Young minds are not bound by rules.

… of what? See if you can find it. Other than that another violation of the rules of composition.

Shameless imitation of Laurie’s cat photo. Well not really. This is a snapshot, not a photo. Bear has been with us for over half a year, after a hard life before he came to us. He’s comfortable enough with everyone that he submits to being dressed up, but I suspect not to happy about it. At least not yet.

He looks pretty good in an elves hat too.

On the way back from the Holidazzle parade got this shot of the elevator area on level E in the Macy’s parking ramp, a convenient parking spot in downtown Minneapolis. Once we got into the van we backed out of our parking spot and promptly went nowhere. I could quickly see this was going to be long wait. Convinced the wife that I’ll be back in time, got out of the van, down the elevator, and started wandering around downtown camera in hand.

Periodic cell phone check-ins, 45 minutes later, I met up with the crew as they were exiting the parking ramp at street level. My wife told me about how they waited forever in the same spot we’d pulled out of, even though you could see the traffic move down the spiral, and in fact the spiral emptied out while they were still waiting, and waiting, and waiting. How can that be? Had my suspicion but it became crystal clear after I went back to Macys by myself for some photos of the 8th floor Christmas display.

You see there are actually two spirals connecting all the parking levels. The spirals are concentric but offset one level, sorta like two corkscrews intertwined. The reason this is done is because if a single spiral were to connect all levels, it would have to be too steep between subsequent levels. So you end up having spiral one and spiral two, with spiral one connecting to levels A, C, E, .., and spiral two connecting to levels B, D, F, … So why would this make a difference? Well, when you get to street level, there are 3 pay booths. How do you split 3 pay booths between 2 lanes? You don’t. One of the spirals forks into 2 lanes, the other doesn’t. So the spiral with the 2 booths, and all parking levels that feed into it, empties twice as fast as the other. We know this for a fact because my wife’s cousin ended up in the ‘fast’ spiral, and was halfway to New Brighton before we even left the parking ramp. Normally this wouldn’t make a difference, except when essentially everyone is leaving the parking ramp at the same time, such after a major downtown event.

So the mission (for anyone) is to figure which are the ‘fast’ and which are the ’slow’ parking levels. Please post your findings.

Had to buy another el cheapo DVD player to replace the one that sits on my TV in my computer area. Apparently they spoil if you don’t use them for a while, which in my case was 12 months ago, during Christmas break, to watch some DVD’s Santa had brought. This year we hit the jackpot. Three boxed sets, 100 movies each, of B-Movies. I don’t go for the schmucky stuff, but the Horror and Sci-Fi sets look promising. A selection of some of the movies I like see out of them:

• Alien Contamination
• Beast of the Yellow Night
• Chloe, Love is Calling You - Wonder if this was the prequel for ‘Play Misty for Me’.
• Death Warmed Up - I’m sure I’ve eaten it a few times.
• Evil Brain from Outer Space - Let me guess, it floats in an aquarium with tubing attached to it.
• Frozen Alive - Must involve liquid Nitrogen, else doesn’t make sense. Wait, its a B-Movie.
• Good Against Evil - Very original, promises to be good.
• Hercules and the Captive Women - Better screen that one before I let the kids see it.
• Invasion of the Bee Girls - Sounds sweet
• Killers from Space - Another original title, how do they come up with these?
• The Lucifer Complex - I’ve heard of the Oedipus complex, but not this one.
• Mole Men against the Son of Hercules - I think wart men would be more visual.
• The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave - Hope she puts on some makeup.
• One Frightened Night - Guess Evelyn didn’t put on some makeup after all.
• Piranha, Piranha - Sheets of plexiglass with Piranhas painted on them sliding through the water?
• Radio Ranch - with Gene Autry … will there be singing? Or am I thinking of Gene Kelly?
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians - Single-handedly?
• Teenagers From Outer Space - In other words just regular teenagers.
• They - …. what?
• This is not a Test - This is not a test.
• Unsane - Either a typo or Insane must be copyrighted.
• Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women - Hope those astronauts have taken their vitamins.
• The Wasp Women - Is that what happens to Bee Girls once they grow up?
• Werewolf Women - Would be interesting to see a Wasp Women against Werewolf Women sequel.
• The Wild Women of Wongo - Had to google for that one. You can actually watch it online, if you’re willing to put up with ads. The intro looked promising.

As I’m typing this I’m watching Lawrence of Arabia. It has some truly spectacular desert scenery, great cinematography and music, and a bit of true Arab history to boot. They just don’t make movies like that anymore. Too expensive. You gotta see it at least once, but be forewarned, it’s a long movie, with a bit of overacting here and there, but Omar Sharif is great.

Based on what I’ve learned thus far on my current pet project (coming soon), it’s perfectly allright to put pictures of those the DVD sets up there, as long as I don’t have any google ads on my site. Think I’m safe even if wrong.